December 11, 2018 • 44 mins
One day in the Amazon Basin, a shaman put together a plant containing DMT with a vine that allows the body to absorb DMT. The combination, a foul-tasting, wildly hallucinogenic brew called ayahuasca, has changed cultures throughout the Americas.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hold on and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Brian, there's Jerry over there,
and this is stuff you should know. The poor attempts
(00:23):
at Spanish edition and yet another drug cast mm hmm,
covering all the drugs everybody, one by one, and this
one isasca. We'll have to do one just specifically on
d m T sometime too, all right, because there you
(00:43):
know it's the d m T is the base of ayahuasca,
but it's different. I mean, there's other stuff going on
with ayahuasca that d MT doesn't have them spoiler alert.
DMT is its own thing for sure, from what I
can tell. Ye, okay, so it's agreed then, Chuck, Yeah,
but you just ruined this whole episod Oh sorry, Well
let's go back to the beginning then. Uh. Yeah. Ayahuasca
(01:07):
it has a bunch of different names. And this is
something I didn't know because I'm a dummy. I didn't
know anything about ayahuasca except to use it as jokes.
You know, it's been sort of a running punchline, like
you know, you have to forgive me, I'm on ayahuasca
that kind of thing. But uh, I thought it was
that was the name of like a plant, and it
(01:28):
was one plant called ayahuasca, sort of like what's the
what's the other plant? The corn Yeah, just sort of
like corn um. No, the one that like, you know,
the doors took the Yeah, mescaline. Yeah, but that's not
the plant. What's the plant is mescal in the plant
(01:51):
to what a peyote? That's right, But that's the mescalin
buttons on a peyote plant, right, which we haven't covered yet.
We should do one a peyote. Bam, another drug cast
come and at you. But ayahuasca is not to the
name of a plant. Uh. It is actually a concoction
made from a couple of different plants. Yeah. Yeah, and
(02:13):
originally it was just one plant actually known as the
vine of death. These let's see what we can do. Okay,
you did the time wasting throat, clear that move it's stalling.
So if you go and drink ayahuasca today, you're probably
getting one that's a combination of a plant called psycho
(02:36):
Tria voritas. I think I got that and a vine
known as Banistereopsis copy c A a p I so psychotria,
voritas and bareness. Man, there's a lot of letters in
that one. Yeah, but if it's it's pronounced like it
(02:57):
looks banistereopsis, you got it all right? Copy right? And
that one, the second one, the copy is the vine, correct,
that's the o g ayahuasca ingredients, right, the vine of death.
And this is I guess we haven't even really said.
We've danced around it. It is a a drug concoction
(03:18):
that they have been taking, um since who knows when,
but since before Europeans arrived in the New World, a
long long time in South America. Yeah, and specifically they
think it may have originated among the Napo Runa tribe
in Ecuador, right, but it's spread throughout the Amazon basin.
(03:39):
And today, if you are a well to do tech
worker who makes your way down to South America, you're
probably going to go to Peru to check out your
ayahuasca trip. Yeah. This became a thing, weirdly uh in
Silicon Valley. Uh. If you were a young, rich entrepreneur
(04:03):
in Silicon Valley that has a couple of hit apps
on your hand, it became a thing to throw on
your hoodie and travel to South America to take part
in an ayahuasca ceremony, and I'm not sure. I mean,
I guess I know what happens is one one dude
does that and then says, bro, you gotta do this
(04:26):
right a late night conversation, A burning man opens the Absolutely,
that's how it went down, and then before you know it,
it's a thing. Right. You know, there's some kids in
Silicon Valley being like, wait a minute, wait a minute,
are they making fun of us right now? And then
they feel that that hood that they've never even put
over their head, itching their neck, and they're like a
(04:49):
stupid stereotypes being true? Oh man, at any rate? Aahuasca Yes,
so um, it did start out as a traditional but
there's like, you know, the whole popularity that grew among
Westerners traveling down to South America for whatever reason. I'm sure,
um for vision quests, for fun, a drug they hadn't
(05:10):
tried yet, who cares. There's a lot of reasons that
people travel down to South America to partake in this um.
Certainly most of them not nefarious or dumb. Um. Probably
a lot of the reasons were great, But the the
influx of Westerners and Western money has radically altered ayahuasca
(05:31):
and and the ceremonies and rites and the people who
perform ayahuasca ceremonies just over there, like the last ten
or so years dramatically. Yeah, one might even say that
the Western white man has ruined the whole thing. I
think that there's I think it's been commercialized, but that
there are still very much um, the the original or
(05:54):
the real deal is protected in many ways by by
the people who are like, yeah, you guys, go drink
it over there. We've got our thing going on over here.
And in fact, there's at least two churches in the
United States that practice ayahuasca diets. UM that that are
real deal religions as far as the Supreme Courts concerned. Um,
(06:17):
that clearly show that there are there is real legit
ayahuasca ceremonies being practiced throughout the world. I think both
of them are are from Brazil. Yeah. In two thousand six, UH,
the Supreme Court said that, uh the n I Oh
Do vegetal U d V was a legit religion. They
(06:39):
are in fact from Brazil Christian spiritualists. About seventeen thousand
UH adherents all over the world. Uh. And the literal
translation of that religion is the Union of the Plants. Right,
So it's like a plant religion and aahuasca is at
the center of this. Uh. Yeah. The other one is
(06:59):
a Christian syncretism like Santo. Yeah, that one is like, Um,
they incorporate not just indigenous Brazilian and South American beliefs,
but also some African indigenous beliefs, are folk beliefs as well.
Like it's it's a whole um, very big inclusive pantheon
(07:22):
that that is centered around visions from ayahuasca, like an
ayahuasca sacrament. It's pretty interesting. Yeah. Both protected in the
United States by law. Now that this is part of
this plant concoction is part of their religion. They cannot
be arrested for doing this because the legalities of it
is is is technically illegal. Um. It's a little great
(07:46):
whether or not the actual plant is illegal, is that right? Yeah?
Supposedly the plants themselves are not illegal. It's the combination
or the brew made from them that's illegal. That's what
I saw. I don't know that that's necessarily true, and
I would guess if the plants are still legal now,
they won't be in two three years, because you know, why,
(08:08):
why make it legal? Why let it be legal? Yeah,
it's something people get enjoyment for. It comes from the earth.
Let's outlawed. Yeah, I don't know if enjoyment is quite
the right word though, from the way that um the
Grabster puts it that the an ayahuasca trip is not
necessarily fun. It's a harrowing psychological spiritual journey that you're undertaking.
(08:31):
All right, let's take a break, okay, alright, see you
getting excited over there. Uh and we'll talk a little
bit more about d m T and and kind of
what's going on in your body physiologically right after this.
(09:07):
All right, So d m T, which you mentioned at
the onset the the one part of this concoction, the
p veritas contains d m T. You're gonna pronounce that,
Oh yes, it's methyl trip to mean. Oh look at
you just rolls off the tongue now, doesn't it. Uh
So this is something not exclusive to p e verritas.
(09:28):
It's found in a bunch of psychedelic substances. And this
is something that can cause hallucinations, perhaps changes in your perception,
your state of consciousness, your sense of self which will
really get into it. It has a lot to do
with the ayahuasca journey. Um. However, if you just eat
the d M t UM, it's not gonna have this
(09:50):
this kind of effect on you because Uh, there's an
enzyme called UH monoamine oxidase, and that's gonna break it
down in your digest to system before it gets absorbed.
So you have to combine that with this copy vine
which prevents the uptake of it. Yeah, the copy vine
has an alkaloid called harmala alkaloid, and harmalines are psychotropic
(10:14):
and of themselves, which is why the UM the copy
vine alone used to just be ayahuasca. But the fact
that it prevents UM, your your the monoamine oxidase to
break down the d M t it allows your body
to absorb it and all of a sudden you're tripping balls.
(10:35):
Although I hear it's not all of a sudden. I
think it's it takes a good thirty minutes to come on,
and then it takes like a supplementary boost UM an
hour or so later to to really bring on like
the kind of transcendent experience that people are looking for
when they take ayahuasca. So you've got the you've got
(10:57):
the d m T being absorbed. That's the one to
punch right. You've got the d MT itself, and then
you've got the plant that allows the d m T
to be absorbed. And when you put those two things together,
the p veritas and the b copy, that's what the
that's the ayahuasca that you read about advice, that's what
they're talking about. Yeah, and these you know, this is
administered by a shaman um someone who ideally as a
(11:21):
shaman that knows what they're doing. And there's sometimes there
are other plants that are brewed in there as well,
but uh not always. And sometimes it's brewed separately and
then combined later. Sometimes it all depends on which shaman
you go to, of what the ritual is like. Sometimes
you're included as part of it um. Sometimes it's like
a thick liquid t. Sometimes it's a paste. H it's
(11:44):
been described. No matter what it is, it seems like
around the horn. Everybody says it tastes awful, so awful
that that you can very easily throw up, which is
something that's pretty common with the um with an ayahuasca
it experiences. I didn't get that from the from the
taste though, I got that that that was like, once
(12:05):
it's in your body, it makes you nauseous and you
throw up, right, But like, oh this taste so bad,
I'm gonna puke it up. No, no, because then it
wouldn't be in your body long enough to be absorbed. Right.
But I think the taste and the memory of the taste,
combined with the nausea is enough to throw up. But
the whether whether you do throw up or not, it's
not necessarily like you're going to throw up. There the
(12:29):
the point, one of the points of an ayahuasca ceremony
is to throw up. You're meant to throw up, um,
and you're you will actually be forced into this either
if you don't do it from the ayahuasca. You may
also be given something like tobacco juice, like a water
with tobacco that's soaked in it for a while, and
you'll be told to drink that so that you will
(12:50):
throw up. Because this idea of purging, whether it's throwing
up or diarrhea, is a very frequent side effect of ayahuasca,
very frequent. Um, you are you are meant to be
purging your your body, and it's meant to be this
kind of symbolic spiritual purge of your ego, of all
the nastiness, of all the horrible nous that's a part
(13:13):
of you. You're getting it out as part of the
trip and as the trip sets in. Yeah, and the
taste has been described. The New York Times has said
it's like a um, muddy herbal taste. Uh. Someone from
vox dot com took it a gun named Shaun Illing.
He described it as a cup of motor oil diluted
with a splash of water. So I read, I read
(13:34):
it's almost as gross as a necko wafer. I don't
think I've ever had a neco wafer. Good on you have?
You know? What? Am I crazy? What are they not?
Go wafers like old timey kind of like chalky candy
that comes in a role. You've seen them. Probably you've
(13:54):
seen them and my old timey candy days exactly. I'm
sure I did. Yeah, So all right, I guess we
should talk a little bit about uh. Like you said, Um,
it's orange. It's origins in the Napo River basin by
this Runa tribe like you said, Uh, And it's called
the vine of Death or the mother vine this copy,
(14:15):
and they think that early on they may have just
taken this copy by itself, right, because the Brew it's
got the harm alins in it, that's not only an
m A o I but also has like its own
kind of psychoactive stuff going on. So that was the
original ayahuasca. Yeah, And we have written accounts from like
the seventeen hundreds when Jesuits would go to the Amazon
(14:38):
to try and you know, christianize folks and trip balls. Yeah,
because I'm sure the entry was like whoa, and that's it.
Did you hear about the guy that was just killed
the missionary? Yes? On sendin Ali's Sentinel Island. Yeah, he
he It's like something from a movie. He went at
first and child shot an arrow through a bible that
(15:02):
he was holding. Apparently I hadn't heard about that, Yeah,
because he had. He went back a few times and
was like journaling about it and said he basically like
held up his bible. It's like something from a movie
and an arrow was shot through it. And I'm like, dude,
if that is not like, if you believe in God,
that's a sign from God. Well, you you remember the
turnaround the man in the whole episode we talked about them. Yeah,
(15:26):
they were the ones that like you, like everyone knew
you just don't go anywhere near him. And some fishermen
had been killed like years a few years back, and
this guy I guess had tried um he decided he
was going to be the one. Yeah. I don't actually
know enough about the story, but he clearly was trying
to jane access to them. Yeah. Yeah, he was trying
(15:48):
to spread the word of Jesus and paid, like you're
not supposed it's illegal, I think, to even trespass there.
But he paid people sort of under the table to
take him there, and they did so, and those people
were arrested. Uh, and his family is saying, you need
to let these people go because he like really wanted
to do this. I see. It's very interesting. Yeah it is.
It's crazy, but I just like that sounds like something
(16:10):
you would make up from a movie, like shooting an
arrow through the Bible they're holding upright, you know. Uh.
So we got a little sidetrack, but we were talking
about the Jesuits like having this on record in the
seventeen hundreds when they went and they were like, hey,
there's something going down down here. That's very interesting. Yeah,
And even William S. Burrows wrote the Yahee Letters um
(16:31):
in nineteen sixty three, and it was about his experience
with the Iowa scar vine. And apparently the the practitioners
at the time knew, um well into the to the
the twentieth century, that you could combine it with the
p veritis fine and and have a completely different experience.
But that wasn't necessarily the point. That was like an
(16:52):
optional ceremony you could perform. But the most, the most
widespread and traditional ceremony was just the vine of death, right. Yeah.
And then at some point somebody started putting them together
and worried about this got out and the mid two
thousand's is when it just ayahuasca like kind of hit
the public consciousness in the West. Yeah, I mean in
(17:15):
the sixties, of course, uh in in certain uh you know,
subcultures in America, they knew about it because of william
S Burrows and people seeking out you know, things like
peyote and all kinds of psychedelic experiences, but it definitely
was not sort of in the main stream until you know,
not not too long ago. And even still I think
(17:36):
even at the time it was strictly the harm alines
and and just the the vine that was being used,
the copy vine. It wasn't, it wasn't. Somebody started putting
it together frequently with them the veritas plant, and that's
when it became hugely popular. Yeah, so popular now that
(17:58):
there is iowasa get tourism big time like going on
in South America. And uh said the central part is
Peru's uh a room bomba valley. And if you, I mean,
if you are going down for an ayahuasca experience like
a spiritual quest, is is the reason you're going down there.
I don't fault you for that at all, um, But
(18:21):
you have to understand the the You have to do
your research. You can't just show up in South America
and be like, all right, somebody give me some ayahuasca,
because there are a lot of um in scrupulous and
nefarious outfits that have come up to to take advantage
explicitly of that kind of Western tourist, the ill informed
(18:44):
Western tourist who is going to have a horrible, terrible
trip and not going to get the spiritual experience you're
looking for. Um. So you have to do your research
because there are some legitimate ayahuasca outfits in South America.
But you, um, they're they're not going to take you
if you just show up down there and you're gonna
end up in some some in a bad situation. Yeah
(19:06):
for sure. Um So, taking part in one of these ceremonies,
let's say you do find like a legit shaman who's
willing to take your American dollars or whatever, however you're
paying your golden gets and drinkets. Uh, it's still it's
sort of funny. It all goes back to Burrows with
(19:27):
the set and setting thing, which is what he famously
preached about any psychedelic experience is to really put a
lot of thought into the set, in the setting where
you're gonna do this so it goes well for you.
Um So, as this uh concoction is being brewed, like
I said before, sometimes you're taking part in this and
helping to mash it up and brew the t um.
(19:50):
But what they're really trying to do is, um, the
whole ceremony isn't just like for show. It's it's all
part of the thing to get you settled in and
focused on kind of the right things going in, Like
what do you want to accomplish here. What do you
want to find out about yourself? What questions do you
have about yourself? And really get into that that frame
(20:11):
of mind as they hand you your puke bucket. Although
I would recommend bringing your own, Oh yeah, I hadn't
thought about that. I would not want to reused puke bucket.
Good lord. I hadn't even considered that it would be
B y O B for me. So, um yeah, I
can just totally see how as a as a Westerner,
you would just be like, come on, we don't need
(20:32):
the ceremony stuff like this is just give me the
good stuff. But that, like you said, that's the point
is to ease you into it, to get your mind
and body prepared for this, this enormous trip you're about
to go on, because if you just get dropped right
in the middle of it without any kind of preparation
or without any kind of assistance, you're going to lose
(20:52):
your marbles pretty pretty well. Um So that that is
a big part of going on in Iowaska. A journey
is is having somebody who's competent, trained, and um empathetic
and willing to stay there with you to prepare you
to stay with you, to keep an eye on you.
You need to be monitored. You can't be up and
(21:13):
like just running off into the jungle by yourself, because
terrible things are gonna happen to you in that situation. UM.
And then to help you afterward as well, and from
from some of the preliminary research that's starting to come in,
if you undertake an ayahuasca journey, I guess is that
it's the best word I can come up with. UM.
(21:34):
Under the right setting, under the right guidance, with the
right support, both pre during and after, it can have
profound effects on your spirituality and your sense of connectedness
to the universe. It can also possibly help you with
UM with diagnosed mental illness as well. Yeah, well we'll
get to the illness part, mental illness part at the end.
(21:56):
But UM, just your standard is sort of truth seeker,
let's say, okay, UM, it's very much tight into like
what the in ideal conditions and like the sixties and
seventies with ellis well and just beyond but the LSD
experience and that Uh, there was a lot of talk
in the sixties about the ego and every you know,
(22:18):
hip musician and in the United States, talked about stripping
away the ego from Brian Wilson to the Mamas and
the Papa's too, you know, Neil Young, Uh is stripping
away that ego of yourself basically, which which means kind
of getting outside yourself to the point where, uh, you're
(22:39):
not looking at the world around you and how it
affects you. But uh, there there is no you. There
is no It's a loss of self such that's so
profound that you can only see the world and people
around you as they exist in reality. Uh. It's it's
a pretty sort of deep, trippy thing to try and
describe in words on a podcast, but I think that's
(23:01):
sort of the general thing is is uh washing that
ego down to where it's not around anymore, and you
get like a true sense of the world around you,
like for the maybe for the first time. Yeah. Yeah.
And the the ego in and of itself isn't a
bad thing, like it's it's they think that it developed
among animals, is a like that's your sense of self awareness.
(23:22):
That's the thing that leads you to want to preserve
your own life, to get away from danger, to realize
that like you can die because there is a you, right,
It's a very basic thing. Um. The problem is is
in humans, as we've evolved, our ego has also evolved,
and it can get to a point where it's unhealthy,
it's kind of toxic. It can help you develop bad,
(23:44):
bad relationships, people don't want to be around you. It
can also affect your self esteem if your egos underdeveloped.
There's a lot of problems that can go wrong with
the ego, and so a lot of people who prescribe
psychedelics to deal with that kind of thing, say, psychedelics
strip away the ego. And now that we've gotten to
the point where where we are advanced enough as a
(24:05):
civilization that we can give people acid and put them
in the an MRI machine, the Wonder machine and watch
what happens, we've shown that, Yes, it seems like the
the areas that are responsible for generating the ego, don't
they get kind of turned off while you're under the
influence of psychedelics, and it allows you to connect to
(24:27):
see outside of yourself, to see that you are connected
with all of this other stuff. So this whole ego
depletion or ego stripping, um, it's a major component of
not just ayahuasca, but all psychedelics. But it is a
big it's a big reason why people undertake ayahuasca. UM
journeys again, but get this scissor. There was something I
(24:49):
hadn't realized before, Chuck, So that from those m r
I studies, they found that, um, there's something called the
default mode network, which is the thing that keeps your
body humming and keeps your It's the part of your
brain that's going while you're not thinking, right, And they
found that when the default mode network is suppressed and
(25:11):
your frontal cortex is activated, that's when it seems that
your um, your ego is at the least, it's when
your egos turned off and you're free to connect with
the universe or whatever. Right. Well, that default mode network
is a very primitive part of our brain. It's a
very primitive system of our brain, and it kind of
(25:33):
suggests in a way that the loss of ego is
something that we may eventually evolve to. In't that cool
because if your frontal cortex is what's being activated in
your default mode network is inactivated, that's like your ancient
brain and your evolved brain. One's activated and one's one's suppressed,
(25:53):
and your egos gone. That That says to me like, well, yeah,
if we keep evolving a frontal cortex, I wonder if
lose our ego at some point or at least it
will be radically altered. Interesting, I thought so too. Yeah,
so what can happen? Uh? You know, like like any
sort of psychedelic trip, it's going to be completely um,
(26:14):
singular to the person that's doing it. There is no
across the board sort of sweeping statements you can make.
But um, you strip away that ego and anything can happen.
From feeling connected to the more connected to the universe
or the earth or the tree, or leaning against or
maybe the father that passed away when you were a
(26:34):
child that you didn't have a relationship with, or the
uh loved one that you currently have a toxic relationship with.
You can feel sort of a not imaginary but it
is in your mind, but a bond uh. And that
they're not like right there in front of you. Um,
just new understandings of relationships that may be complicated or
(26:55):
toxic in your life right exactly like you're you're you're
seeing them in a different way because of the ego loss. Yeah, yeah,
I think that's fascinating. Um. And like you said, it
is a symbolic death of the ego, which is why
that vomiting is important. Like in theory, I guess you're
you're vomiting up that ego and then it's go time. Um.
(27:17):
Apparently you can hallucinate your death. Uh. And like you
said before, it's not often looked at it's like, hey man,
this is this is gonna be a great time. Um.
But at the same time, I think it's also typically
not like looked at as like some horror show that
you're about to undergo. Um, although it can be. But
it's just a profound, uh, emotional and psychological experience. Exactly.
(27:43):
I've never done it. I mean this is from researching
it right exactly, which is like we've never been to
the sun either. But we talked about that. Yeah, and
that went great. Actually, now that you mentioned it, should
he use a different example. Uh, let's take another break
and then we'll talk about what you kind of teased
earlier with um uh ahuasca and how it could be
(28:04):
used to treat addiction or PTSD or other mental illnesses.
Right after this, Okay, Chuck, So we're back and we're
(28:33):
talking about using ayahuasca as a tool like taking that
experience of being outside of yourself have connected to the
rest of the universe of reevaluating your life in a
lot of ways to cure mental illness UM. And one
of the things that it's been I guess some studies
(28:53):
have actually shown like now this this actually works is
to treat addiction um, whether it's cigarettes or booze or
drugs or whatever, that that you can undergo an Iahwaska ceremony.
People have and have come out on the other side
like I'm good, I don't need that the cigarettes or
booze or drugs or whatever. Yeah, And one of the
(29:15):
one of the suggestions for what's going on with this
that I saw is that you are actually healing the
psychic damage that's causing you to self medicate in the
first place, something probably from your past, and then so
you with without that need to self medicate, you don't
have necessarily the desire to drink or smoke cigarettes or
(29:37):
whatever that you used to, which is a different model
of addiction that's kind of starting to gain a little
bit of traction, but is also very controversial because it
makes it sound like addiction is a choice but you're
self medicating. You're choosing to do all those drugs and
like throw your life away because of some psychic trauma.
But there there does seem to be a camp in
(29:58):
in medicine that is saying like this actually might have legs.
It kind of makes a lot of sense. And from
what I can tell, those ayahuasca studies kind of or
a checkmark in that view's favor. Yeah, And I think
that can work in conjunction with the other piece, which
is removing that ego. Even if it's for whatever how
many hours that you're undergoing this trip um could just
(30:21):
simply disrupt that. You know, you often hear about addiction
being like this sort of cycle, like a cyclical thing um,
and even just disrupting that cyclical path of that circular
path um can be enough to sort of get you
on the off ramp, uh, from using yeah, get you
(30:42):
on the off ramp, gets you yeah, on the off ramp, Yes,
that's how you said, right, yeah, and then eventually off
that off ramp onto a nice chill side street yeah,
and maybe a nice drive into the country past a
few cows and then sleep. Yeah. I had a therapist
one time that talked about getting off of the highway.
(31:06):
It was a metaphor that actually worked for me. But
like choosing to get off the highway when certain things
were happening, and sometimes something that simple is just kind
of clicks in, like, oh, if I notice something's going on,
I'm speeding down the highway towards the badness and just
get on that exit ramp and now I'm in my neighborhood.
Now I'm hanging out with cows in a nice pecolic pasture. Uh.
(31:29):
PTSD is another specifically, I think a lot of times
with military PTSD. UM, they've been, you know, using psychedelics
more and more in ayahuasca is no stranger to this
treatment and UM, while it is not a magic pill,
they are doing some studies on this and it seems
like uh, and like with all these is tough to
get funding for these kind of studies sometimes, but it
(31:51):
does seem like it's gaining more ground in the medical
community to try out these kind of experiments. Well, they're
trying like hell to get some of these studies underway
in the United States. But because ayahuasca is considered a
Schedule one drug, which is the the worst most nefarious drugs,
of all, Um, they can't. They just I don't think
there's been a single study in the US. But fortunately
(32:14):
they can just go down to South America and do
the best they can with some of the Ayahuascar centers
that are down there and the like. Again, there are
some legitimate Aahuascar centers that take Western tourists for ayahuasca journeys.
UM and some groups are are going down there to
partner with those centers to study people, and some of
(32:34):
the people they're trying to study our PTSD patients, and
they think that if ayahuasca is helping people with PTSD,
which it seems to be, it's it's basically negative exposure
therapy where you're dredging up all of those worst, your
worst memories that are causing your PTSD, which is bringing
(32:55):
them to the surface and allowing your awareness to kind
of shine a light on them and say, Okay, I'm
going to recategorize these now. And they're not being categorized
as bad and and frightening as they were before. It's
not as traumatic as as they were originally categorized. Yeah,
and and specifically in this study that you're thinking about,
(33:15):
is uh we're talking about is combat veterans suffering from
PTSD and it's the Temple of the Way of Light.
UH in the Amazon has partnered with a group in
Spain and the UK, the International Center for Ethnobotanical Research
and Service in Spain and then the Beckley Foundation in
the UK, and they're treating close to six combat veterans
(33:38):
a year and it says it's the largest psychedelic study
UM ever undertaken. So yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah, I
know that they're using um M d m A to
treat PTSD as well. And then I can't remember the
name of that one treatment. But remember you like follow
a pen with your eyes while you're going over your
worst memory and it it recategory eyes. Is the memories
(34:01):
is less scary. I want to remember that one. Yeah,
I can't remember what we talked about it and but
that apparently works really well too, so without the vomiting, right,
that's a big part of it though, my friend just
bring your own bucket. UH. Problems with ayahuasca. UM it
is not generally toxic and you would have to take
(34:23):
so much ayahuasca sort of like when we were talking
about marijuana, like is there even a lethal dose? Can
you even say that because the lethal dose apparently for
ayahuasca is twenty times what you had normally taken a
typical ceremony. Uh, as the grabster put it, or uh
he might have been quoting someone, but it's uh, could
could anyone even choke this much of that down? Right? Probably? Not?
(34:47):
Is that even possible? But there have been I mean,
there have been some deaths that have been related to ayahuasca,
and and when you dig a little deeper, you find like, oh,
it wasn't actually the ayahuasca directly that pause this, but
the people would not have died had they not been
in South America on the ayahuasca journey, right. Yeah, There's
(35:09):
this one guy who um who died in I believe
two thousand fourteen. He was an American You no, he's British,
I'm sorry. And his name was Henry Miller. And he
died on the way to the hospital because he'd gone
kind of non responsive. And the Iowa Squeros Iowa Iowa square, Yeah,
(35:31):
I said it, um that took him to the hospital,
had him on a motorcycle. He fell off the motorcycle
and died of a head injury on the way to
the hospital. So it wasn't the ayahuasca that killed him,
but he wouldn't have been on the motorcycle in the
first place had he not been on this ayahuasca trip.
So the shorthand and the headlines is a man dies
from ayahuasca. Yeah, there have been some other cases where
(35:54):
like people would be having a bad trip and maybe
attack someone else and that would lead to violence or
death or just this year in two thousand eighteen in Peru,
um an eight one year old shaman woman was shot
and killed. Uh, and then a Canadian man was murdered
for revenge for that killing. But supposedly this had nothing
(36:17):
to do with like being under the influence, but it
was some sort of dispute that happened during this this
whole conflict. Yeah, the woman was named Olivia Arevalo and
she was the spiritual mother of Peru's second largest indigenous tribe,
the Shapebo Canibo. And this guy, this Canadian guy named
Sebastian Woodruff, shot and killed her allegedly because um her
(36:43):
son owed him money. He was there to learn ayahuasca,
and I guess he didn't feel like he'd gotten his
money's worth, so he killed her. He killed this this
woman the shaman, the spiritual leader of the second largest
tribe in in Peru, and he was Canadian. Yes, yeah,
I know. It was surprising, not a very cana anything
to do, No, it really wasn't. But the the whole
thing really revealed the problems that that have been developing
(37:07):
from this ayahuasca tourism. First, this guy was down there
and wanted to learn about ayahuasca so we could take
it back to Canada and appropriate this culture. There's problem one. Two.
He didn't get his money's worth, so he shot and
killed the woman who was supposed to be teaching him.
It's a big problem as well. But then also between
the Iowa squeros and the practitioners who are are hosting
(37:31):
these tourists, and then the governments of the countries that
they're hosting them in. There's tensions there as well, because
this village said, there's police everywhere, the police never come here,
but then a Canadian man goes missing, and now our
village is overrun with with police, like, what's the what's
going on here? Um? So there's there's a lot of
(37:51):
tension that's being There's a lot of simmering tension that's
being heated by this, this Western ayahuasca tour is um
and um. It's kind of largely in part because it's unregulated,
but also because a lot of people going down there
don't have respect for what they're doing. And then also
a lot of the people who are popping up as
(38:11):
Iowa squaros don't have any respect for what they're doing either.
So the the respect that's been given to this, this
tradition for so many hundreds or thousands of years being lost,
and then on top of that, the ayahuasca that they're
they're drinking is so wildly more potent than what traditionally
(38:31):
was all those hundreds of thousands of years, you know,
the Jesuits version of ayahuasca um. That's really kind of
I think fueling this kind of recklessness that's that's becoming
part and parcel with ayahuasca used down in South America. Yeah,
because some of these areas are are poor, and so
all of a sudden it becomes a hip thing for
(38:53):
UH Westerners with money to come down there with cold
hard cash. And then, like you said, they're appropriating their culture.
So that's one strike, But then to appeal to these people,
all of a sudden, they're not as like, you know,
we don't want to freak people out maybe by being
too traditional, so we're gonna westernize our own methods a bit.
(39:16):
So and let's say let's get a website going uh,
and then we'll be the go to for when they
come down here. So then they're undermining their own culture. Um,
and it's just sort of becoming a big mess. It
sounds like yeah, and again I think like if you're
going down there, like whether you're Western or um Asian
or whoever you are, if you're going down for a
(39:36):
vision quest, that's not that's not what's being you know,
brought out as as the fault. The fault is if
you're if you're going down there because it's hip or
because you just want to party or because a friend
did it, um, and you're not you're not being respectful
of it. Then that's where the the issue seems to
be arising from ayahuasca anything else you know. Oh yeah,
(40:02):
there is one thing that we didn't cover, um that
that can happen because the copy vine is a m
AO inhibitor. There's a lot of other things um that
can actually kill you that are pretty normal, like interactions
you can have drug interactions with things as normal as chocolate,
because the UM monoamine oxidase typically breaks these things down. Uh.
(40:28):
And if it's being inhibited so that the ayahuasca can
work its effects. You if you eat chocolate, your toast.
And one of the other things that UM that it
can do is so the mono the m A O
ies prevent your serotonin from being taken up. And that's
how d M t acts on the brain. It goes
(40:48):
into where serotonin receptors normally fit and just says, let's party, right. UM.
So with all this extra serotonin floating around, if you
also happen to be on an S s r I
serotonin reuptake inhibitor, UH, you've got too much serotonin. You
can go into what's called serotonin shock. This is where
the diarrhea comes in. That's one of the um the
(41:12):
symptoms of serotonin shock, but that's one of the mild symptoms.
You can also um have seizures. You your heart can
also stop, and you can die from having too much
serotonin flooding your brain. So that's that is a direct
way you can die from ayahuasca. But it's not from
the hallucinogen. UH. The aspect of it. It's from the
(41:32):
m A O. I. So when they're when they show
up from uh, the Silicon Valley, and they say they're translating,
and they're like, hey, bro, he wants to know if
you've got anything, if you've had anything in your body.
And then you're like, no, just mine my Selexa and
a wolf down at Toblaron on the way way over.
I'm good, let's do this. Yeah, let's skip the ceremony.
(41:52):
Just let me drink that stuff, right you just yeah,
you mash the shaman's face out of your way, like,
get out of here. Just give me that. I know.
I know why we haven't been selling tickets in Seattle
so much. Oh no, Seattle we love. That's not Silicon Valley.
Oh that's right. I love San Francisco to we love.
We love all people. We love all of you, everybody.
We love all potential ticket buyers are egos are are
(42:14):
down in the pits. Uh. If you want to know
more about ayahuasca, man, do some research. Uh there's a
lot of it out there, so do it. Um. And
since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Yeah,
I'm gonna call this short and sweet, but we did
get an answer to something. Uh remember in the fire
(42:35):
Twuks episode you could not remember that game and we
got everything from sim City to uh civilization. Yeah, none
of them were right. But our friend, our new pal,
Mike man Goba, Mike says this, guys that just listened
to the fire Twalks episode and also shout out to
(42:55):
two things. All the people who wrote in and spelled
it fire twalks yeah, and then all the firefighters. We
went from a lot of firefighters and they all, every
single one of them said yep, it's chili. Josh did
not overstate the chili. Yeah. And they're all very nice
and said, you guys got most of this right. Um,
anytime it's something really specific like that, we're gonna get
(43:18):
some stuff wrong. But they were like, you guys did
a good job. And one of them even had a
joke that said, if you're at a party, how do
you know if there's a firefighter there? And the answer is, oh,
don't worry, they'll tell you that was from a firefighter.
So I guess they have a simple tamer about it.
Uh So, anyway, guys listening to the fire TALKX episode,
and he talked about the old game that burns buildings
(43:39):
to the ground if you don't have a fire station.
And that game is called Pharaoh, Yes, Pharaoh, yep h
a r a o h yep. You're building an Egyptian
civilisation yea. And he said it's an expansion game. The
expansion game is called Cleopatra, and it was one of
my favorite games, which I still play today. Keep up
(44:00):
the chatter, Mike, man go thanks a lot, Mike. That's
exactly what it was, and never in a million years
would have remembered that that it wasn't beating like gos
uh oh is that what we're calling him? Yeah, all right,
thanks a lot. Goes. Well, if you want to be
like Gobs and rescue us by reminding me of something
I can't remember what it was, or just correcting my syntax,
(44:23):
you can get in touch with us. We're all over social.
You can find those links at stuff you should Know
dot com and you can just send us an email,
wrap it up, speck it on the bottom, and send
it off to stuff podcast All stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
(44:43):
it how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hold on and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Brian, there's Jerry over there,
and this is stuff you should know. The poor attempts
(00:23):
at Spanish edition and yet another drug cast mm hmm,
covering all the drugs everybody, one by one, and this
one isasca. We'll have to do one just specifically on
d m T sometime too, all right, because there you
(00:43):
know it's the d m T is the base of ayahuasca,
but it's different. I mean, there's other stuff going on
with ayahuasca that d MT doesn't have them spoiler alert.
DMT is its own thing for sure, from what I
can tell. Ye, okay, so it's agreed then, Chuck, Yeah,
but you just ruined this whole episod Oh sorry, Well
let's go back to the beginning then. Uh. Yeah. Ayahuasca
(01:07):
it has a bunch of different names. And this is
something I didn't know because I'm a dummy. I didn't
know anything about ayahuasca except to use it as jokes.
You know, it's been sort of a running punchline, like
you know, you have to forgive me, I'm on ayahuasca
that kind of thing. But uh, I thought it was
that was the name of like a plant, and it
(01:28):
was one plant called ayahuasca, sort of like what's the
what's the other plant? The corn Yeah, just sort of
like corn um. No, the one that like, you know,
the doors took the Yeah, mescaline. Yeah, but that's not
the plant. What's the plant is mescal in the plant
(01:51):
to what a peyote? That's right, But that's the mescalin
buttons on a peyote plant, right, which we haven't covered yet.
We should do one a peyote. Bam, another drug cast
come and at you. But ayahuasca is not to the
name of a plant. Uh. It is actually a concoction
made from a couple of different plants. Yeah. Yeah, and
(02:13):
originally it was just one plant actually known as the
vine of death. These let's see what we can do. Okay,
you did the time wasting throat, clear that move it's stalling.
So if you go and drink ayahuasca today, you're probably
getting one that's a combination of a plant called psycho
(02:36):
Tria voritas. I think I got that and a vine
known as Banistereopsis copy c A a p I so psychotria,
voritas and bareness. Man, there's a lot of letters in
that one. Yeah, but if it's it's pronounced like it
(02:57):
looks banistereopsis, you got it all right? Copy right? And
that one, the second one, the copy is the vine, correct,
that's the o g ayahuasca ingredients, right, the vine of death.
And this is I guess we haven't even really said.
We've danced around it. It is a a drug concoction
(03:18):
that they have been taking, um since who knows when,
but since before Europeans arrived in the New World, a
long long time in South America. Yeah, and specifically they
think it may have originated among the Napo Runa tribe
in Ecuador, right, but it's spread throughout the Amazon basin.
(03:39):
And today, if you are a well to do tech
worker who makes your way down to South America, you're
probably going to go to Peru to check out your
ayahuasca trip. Yeah. This became a thing, weirdly uh in
Silicon Valley. Uh. If you were a young, rich entrepreneur
(04:03):
in Silicon Valley that has a couple of hit apps
on your hand, it became a thing to throw on
your hoodie and travel to South America to take part
in an ayahuasca ceremony, and I'm not sure. I mean,
I guess I know what happens is one one dude
does that and then says, bro, you gotta do this
(04:26):
right a late night conversation, A burning man opens the Absolutely,
that's how it went down, and then before you know it,
it's a thing. Right. You know, there's some kids in
Silicon Valley being like, wait a minute, wait a minute,
are they making fun of us right now? And then
they feel that that hood that they've never even put
over their head, itching their neck, and they're like a
(04:49):
stupid stereotypes being true? Oh man, at any rate? Aahuasca Yes,
so um, it did start out as a traditional but
there's like, you know, the whole popularity that grew among
Westerners traveling down to South America for whatever reason. I'm sure,
um for vision quests, for fun, a drug they hadn't
(05:10):
tried yet, who cares. There's a lot of reasons that
people travel down to South America to partake in this um.
Certainly most of them not nefarious or dumb. Um. Probably
a lot of the reasons were great, But the the
influx of Westerners and Western money has radically altered ayahuasca
(05:31):
and and the ceremonies and rites and the people who
perform ayahuasca ceremonies just over there, like the last ten
or so years dramatically. Yeah, one might even say that
the Western white man has ruined the whole thing. I
think that there's I think it's been commercialized, but that
there are still very much um, the the original or
(05:54):
the real deal is protected in many ways by by
the people who are like, yeah, you guys, go drink
it over there. We've got our thing going on over here.
And in fact, there's at least two churches in the
United States that practice ayahuasca diets. UM that that are
real deal religions as far as the Supreme Courts concerned. Um,
(06:17):
that clearly show that there are there is real legit
ayahuasca ceremonies being practiced throughout the world. I think both
of them are are from Brazil. Yeah. In two thousand six, UH,
the Supreme Court said that, uh the n I Oh
Do vegetal U d V was a legit religion. They
(06:39):
are in fact from Brazil Christian spiritualists. About seventeen thousand
UH adherents all over the world. Uh. And the literal
translation of that religion is the Union of the Plants. Right,
So it's like a plant religion and aahuasca is at
the center of this. Uh. Yeah. The other one is
(06:59):
a Christian syncretism like Santo. Yeah, that one is like, Um,
they incorporate not just indigenous Brazilian and South American beliefs,
but also some African indigenous beliefs, are folk beliefs as well.
Like it's it's a whole um, very big inclusive pantheon
(07:22):
that that is centered around visions from ayahuasca, like an
ayahuasca sacrament. It's pretty interesting. Yeah. Both protected in the
United States by law. Now that this is part of
this plant concoction is part of their religion. They cannot
be arrested for doing this because the legalities of it
is is is technically illegal. Um. It's a little great
(07:46):
whether or not the actual plant is illegal, is that right? Yeah?
Supposedly the plants themselves are not illegal. It's the combination
or the brew made from them that's illegal. That's what
I saw. I don't know that that's necessarily true, and
I would guess if the plants are still legal now,
they won't be in two three years, because you know, why,
(08:08):
why make it legal? Why let it be legal? Yeah,
it's something people get enjoyment for. It comes from the earth.
Let's outlawed. Yeah, I don't know if enjoyment is quite
the right word though, from the way that um the
Grabster puts it that the an ayahuasca trip is not
necessarily fun. It's a harrowing psychological spiritual journey that you're undertaking.
(08:31):
All right, let's take a break, okay, alright, see you
getting excited over there. Uh and we'll talk a little
bit more about d m T and and kind of
what's going on in your body physiologically right after this.
(09:07):
All right, So d m T, which you mentioned at
the onset the the one part of this concoction, the
p veritas contains d m T. You're gonna pronounce that,
Oh yes, it's methyl trip to mean. Oh look at
you just rolls off the tongue now, doesn't it. Uh
So this is something not exclusive to p e verritas.
(09:28):
It's found in a bunch of psychedelic substances. And this
is something that can cause hallucinations, perhaps changes in your perception,
your state of consciousness, your sense of self which will
really get into it. It has a lot to do
with the ayahuasca journey. Um. However, if you just eat
the d M t UM, it's not gonna have this
(09:50):
this kind of effect on you because Uh, there's an
enzyme called UH monoamine oxidase, and that's gonna break it
down in your digest to system before it gets absorbed.
So you have to combine that with this copy vine
which prevents the uptake of it. Yeah, the copy vine
has an alkaloid called harmala alkaloid, and harmalines are psychotropic
(10:14):
and of themselves, which is why the UM the copy
vine alone used to just be ayahuasca. But the fact
that it prevents UM, your your the monoamine oxidase to
break down the d M t it allows your body
to absorb it and all of a sudden you're tripping balls.
(10:35):
Although I hear it's not all of a sudden. I
think it's it takes a good thirty minutes to come on,
and then it takes like a supplementary boost UM an
hour or so later to to really bring on like
the kind of transcendent experience that people are looking for
when they take ayahuasca. So you've got the you've got
(10:57):
the d m T being absorbed. That's the one to
punch right. You've got the d MT itself, and then
you've got the plant that allows the d m T
to be absorbed. And when you put those two things together,
the p veritas and the b copy, that's what the
that's the ayahuasca that you read about advice, that's what
they're talking about. Yeah, and these you know, this is
administered by a shaman um someone who ideally as a
(11:21):
shaman that knows what they're doing. And there's sometimes there
are other plants that are brewed in there as well,
but uh not always. And sometimes it's brewed separately and
then combined later. Sometimes it all depends on which shaman
you go to, of what the ritual is like. Sometimes
you're included as part of it um. Sometimes it's like
a thick liquid t. Sometimes it's a paste. H it's
(11:44):
been described. No matter what it is, it seems like
around the horn. Everybody says it tastes awful, so awful
that that you can very easily throw up, which is
something that's pretty common with the um with an ayahuasca
it experiences. I didn't get that from the from the
taste though, I got that that that was like, once
(12:05):
it's in your body, it makes you nauseous and you
throw up, right, But like, oh this taste so bad,
I'm gonna puke it up. No, no, because then it
wouldn't be in your body long enough to be absorbed. Right.
But I think the taste and the memory of the taste,
combined with the nausea is enough to throw up. But
the whether whether you do throw up or not, it's
not necessarily like you're going to throw up. There the
(12:29):
the point, one of the points of an ayahuasca ceremony
is to throw up. You're meant to throw up, um,
and you're you will actually be forced into this either
if you don't do it from the ayahuasca. You may
also be given something like tobacco juice, like a water
with tobacco that's soaked in it for a while, and
you'll be told to drink that so that you will
(12:50):
throw up. Because this idea of purging, whether it's throwing
up or diarrhea, is a very frequent side effect of ayahuasca,
very frequent. Um, you are you are meant to be
purging your your body, and it's meant to be this
kind of symbolic spiritual purge of your ego, of all
the nastiness, of all the horrible nous that's a part
(13:13):
of you. You're getting it out as part of the
trip and as the trip sets in. Yeah, and the
taste has been described. The New York Times has said
it's like a um, muddy herbal taste. Uh. Someone from
vox dot com took it a gun named Shaun Illing.
He described it as a cup of motor oil diluted
with a splash of water. So I read, I read
(13:34):
it's almost as gross as a necko wafer. I don't
think I've ever had a neco wafer. Good on you have?
You know? What? Am I crazy? What are they not?
Go wafers like old timey kind of like chalky candy
that comes in a role. You've seen them. Probably you've
(13:54):
seen them and my old timey candy days exactly. I'm
sure I did. Yeah, So all right, I guess we
should talk a little bit about uh. Like you said, Um,
it's orange. It's origins in the Napo River basin by
this Runa tribe like you said, Uh, And it's called
the vine of Death or the mother vine this copy,
(14:15):
and they think that early on they may have just
taken this copy by itself, right, because the Brew it's
got the harm alins in it, that's not only an
m A o I but also has like its own
kind of psychoactive stuff going on. So that was the
original ayahuasca. Yeah, And we have written accounts from like
the seventeen hundreds when Jesuits would go to the Amazon
(14:38):
to try and you know, christianize folks and trip balls. Yeah,
because I'm sure the entry was like whoa, and that's it.
Did you hear about the guy that was just killed
the missionary? Yes? On sendin Ali's Sentinel Island. Yeah, he
he It's like something from a movie. He went at
first and child shot an arrow through a bible that
(15:02):
he was holding. Apparently I hadn't heard about that, Yeah,
because he had. He went back a few times and
was like journaling about it and said he basically like
held up his bible. It's like something from a movie
and an arrow was shot through it. And I'm like, dude,
if that is not like, if you believe in God,
that's a sign from God. Well, you you remember the
turnaround the man in the whole episode we talked about them. Yeah,
(15:26):
they were the ones that like you, like everyone knew
you just don't go anywhere near him. And some fishermen
had been killed like years a few years back, and
this guy I guess had tried um he decided he
was going to be the one. Yeah. I don't actually
know enough about the story, but he clearly was trying
to jane access to them. Yeah. Yeah, he was trying
(15:48):
to spread the word of Jesus and paid, like you're
not supposed it's illegal, I think, to even trespass there.
But he paid people sort of under the table to
take him there, and they did so, and those people
were arrested. Uh, and his family is saying, you need
to let these people go because he like really wanted
to do this. I see. It's very interesting. Yeah it is.
It's crazy, but I just like that sounds like something
(16:10):
you would make up from a movie, like shooting an
arrow through the Bible they're holding upright, you know. Uh.
So we got a little sidetrack, but we were talking
about the Jesuits like having this on record in the
seventeen hundreds when they went and they were like, hey,
there's something going down down here. That's very interesting. Yeah,
And even William S. Burrows wrote the Yahee Letters um
(16:31):
in nineteen sixty three, and it was about his experience
with the Iowa scar vine. And apparently the the practitioners
at the time knew, um well into the to the
the twentieth century, that you could combine it with the
p veritis fine and and have a completely different experience.
But that wasn't necessarily the point. That was like an
(16:52):
optional ceremony you could perform. But the most, the most
widespread and traditional ceremony was just the vine of death, right. Yeah.
And then at some point somebody started putting them together
and worried about this got out and the mid two
thousand's is when it just ayahuasca like kind of hit
the public consciousness in the West. Yeah, I mean in
(17:15):
the sixties, of course, uh in in certain uh you know,
subcultures in America, they knew about it because of william
S Burrows and people seeking out you know, things like
peyote and all kinds of psychedelic experiences, but it definitely
was not sort of in the main stream until you know,
not not too long ago. And even still I think
(17:36):
even at the time it was strictly the harm alines
and and just the the vine that was being used,
the copy vine. It wasn't, it wasn't. Somebody started putting
it together frequently with them the veritas plant, and that's
when it became hugely popular. Yeah, so popular now that
(17:58):
there is iowasa get tourism big time like going on
in South America. And uh said the central part is
Peru's uh a room bomba valley. And if you, I mean,
if you are going down for an ayahuasca experience like
a spiritual quest, is is the reason you're going down there.
I don't fault you for that at all, um, But
(18:21):
you have to understand the the You have to do
your research. You can't just show up in South America
and be like, all right, somebody give me some ayahuasca,
because there are a lot of um in scrupulous and
nefarious outfits that have come up to to take advantage
explicitly of that kind of Western tourist, the ill informed
(18:44):
Western tourist who is going to have a horrible, terrible
trip and not going to get the spiritual experience you're
looking for. Um. So you have to do your research
because there are some legitimate ayahuasca outfits in South America.
But you, um, they're they're not going to take you
if you just show up down there and you're gonna
end up in some some in a bad situation. Yeah
(19:06):
for sure. Um So, taking part in one of these ceremonies,
let's say you do find like a legit shaman who's
willing to take your American dollars or whatever, however you're
paying your golden gets and drinkets. Uh, it's still it's
sort of funny. It all goes back to Burrows with
(19:27):
the set and setting thing, which is what he famously
preached about any psychedelic experience is to really put a
lot of thought into the set, in the setting where
you're gonna do this so it goes well for you.
Um So, as this uh concoction is being brewed, like
I said before, sometimes you're taking part in this and
helping to mash it up and brew the t um.
(19:50):
But what they're really trying to do is, um, the
whole ceremony isn't just like for show. It's it's all
part of the thing to get you settled in and
focused on kind of the right things going in, Like
what do you want to accomplish here. What do you
want to find out about yourself? What questions do you
have about yourself? And really get into that that frame
(20:11):
of mind as they hand you your puke bucket. Although
I would recommend bringing your own, Oh yeah, I hadn't
thought about that. I would not want to reused puke bucket.
Good lord. I hadn't even considered that it would be
B y O B for me. So, um yeah, I
can just totally see how as a as a Westerner,
you would just be like, come on, we don't need
(20:32):
the ceremony stuff like this is just give me the
good stuff. But that, like you said, that's the point
is to ease you into it, to get your mind
and body prepared for this, this enormous trip you're about
to go on, because if you just get dropped right
in the middle of it without any kind of preparation
or without any kind of assistance, you're going to lose
(20:52):
your marbles pretty pretty well. Um So that that is
a big part of going on in Iowaska. A journey
is is having somebody who's competent, trained, and um empathetic
and willing to stay there with you to prepare you
to stay with you, to keep an eye on you.
You need to be monitored. You can't be up and
(21:13):
like just running off into the jungle by yourself, because
terrible things are gonna happen to you in that situation. UM.
And then to help you afterward as well, and from
from some of the preliminary research that's starting to come in,
if you undertake an ayahuasca journey, I guess is that
it's the best word I can come up with. UM.
(21:34):
Under the right setting, under the right guidance, with the
right support, both pre during and after, it can have
profound effects on your spirituality and your sense of connectedness
to the universe. It can also possibly help you with
UM with diagnosed mental illness as well. Yeah, well we'll
get to the illness part, mental illness part at the end.
(21:56):
But UM, just your standard is sort of truth seeker,
let's say, okay, UM, it's very much tight into like
what the in ideal conditions and like the sixties and
seventies with ellis well and just beyond but the LSD
experience and that Uh, there was a lot of talk
in the sixties about the ego and every you know,
(22:18):
hip musician and in the United States, talked about stripping
away the ego from Brian Wilson to the Mamas and
the Papa's too, you know, Neil Young, Uh is stripping
away that ego of yourself basically, which which means kind
of getting outside yourself to the point where, uh, you're
(22:39):
not looking at the world around you and how it
affects you. But uh, there there is no you. There
is no It's a loss of self such that's so
profound that you can only see the world and people
around you as they exist in reality. Uh. It's it's
a pretty sort of deep, trippy thing to try and
describe in words on a podcast, but I think that's
(23:01):
sort of the general thing is is uh washing that
ego down to where it's not around anymore, and you
get like a true sense of the world around you,
like for the maybe for the first time. Yeah. Yeah.
And the the ego in and of itself isn't a
bad thing, like it's it's they think that it developed
among animals, is a like that's your sense of self awareness.
(23:22):
That's the thing that leads you to want to preserve
your own life, to get away from danger, to realize
that like you can die because there is a you, right,
It's a very basic thing. Um. The problem is is
in humans, as we've evolved, our ego has also evolved,
and it can get to a point where it's unhealthy,
it's kind of toxic. It can help you develop bad,
(23:44):
bad relationships, people don't want to be around you. It
can also affect your self esteem if your egos underdeveloped.
There's a lot of problems that can go wrong with
the ego, and so a lot of people who prescribe
psychedelics to deal with that kind of thing, say, psychedelics
strip away the ego. And now that we've gotten to
the point where where we are advanced enough as a
(24:05):
civilization that we can give people acid and put them
in the an MRI machine, the Wonder machine and watch
what happens, we've shown that, Yes, it seems like the
the areas that are responsible for generating the ego, don't
they get kind of turned off while you're under the
influence of psychedelics, and it allows you to connect to
(24:27):
see outside of yourself, to see that you are connected
with all of this other stuff. So this whole ego
depletion or ego stripping, um, it's a major component of
not just ayahuasca, but all psychedelics. But it is a
big it's a big reason why people undertake ayahuasca. UM
journeys again, but get this scissor. There was something I
(24:49):
hadn't realized before, Chuck, So that from those m r
I studies, they found that, um, there's something called the
default mode network, which is the thing that keeps your
body humming and keeps your It's the part of your
brain that's going while you're not thinking, right, And they
found that when the default mode network is suppressed and
(25:11):
your frontal cortex is activated, that's when it seems that
your um, your ego is at the least, it's when
your egos turned off and you're free to connect with
the universe or whatever. Right. Well, that default mode network
is a very primitive part of our brain. It's a
very primitive system of our brain, and it kind of
(25:33):
suggests in a way that the loss of ego is
something that we may eventually evolve to. In't that cool
because if your frontal cortex is what's being activated in
your default mode network is inactivated, that's like your ancient
brain and your evolved brain. One's activated and one's one's suppressed,
(25:53):
and your egos gone. That That says to me like, well, yeah,
if we keep evolving a frontal cortex, I wonder if
lose our ego at some point or at least it
will be radically altered. Interesting, I thought so too. Yeah,
so what can happen? Uh? You know, like like any
sort of psychedelic trip, it's going to be completely um,
(26:14):
singular to the person that's doing it. There is no
across the board sort of sweeping statements you can make.
But um, you strip away that ego and anything can happen.
From feeling connected to the more connected to the universe
or the earth or the tree, or leaning against or
maybe the father that passed away when you were a
(26:34):
child that you didn't have a relationship with, or the
uh loved one that you currently have a toxic relationship with.
You can feel sort of a not imaginary but it
is in your mind, but a bond uh. And that
they're not like right there in front of you. Um,
just new understandings of relationships that may be complicated or
(26:55):
toxic in your life right exactly like you're you're you're
seeing them in a different way because of the ego loss. Yeah, yeah,
I think that's fascinating. Um. And like you said, it
is a symbolic death of the ego, which is why
that vomiting is important. Like in theory, I guess you're
you're vomiting up that ego and then it's go time. Um.
(27:17):
Apparently you can hallucinate your death. Uh. And like you
said before, it's not often looked at it's like, hey man,
this is this is gonna be a great time. Um.
But at the same time, I think it's also typically
not like looked at as like some horror show that
you're about to undergo. Um, although it can be. But
it's just a profound, uh, emotional and psychological experience. Exactly.
(27:43):
I've never done it. I mean this is from researching
it right exactly, which is like we've never been to
the sun either. But we talked about that. Yeah, and
that went great. Actually, now that you mentioned it, should
he use a different example. Uh, let's take another break
and then we'll talk about what you kind of teased
earlier with um uh ahuasca and how it could be
(28:04):
used to treat addiction or PTSD or other mental illnesses.
Right after this, Okay, Chuck, So we're back and we're
(28:33):
talking about using ayahuasca as a tool like taking that
experience of being outside of yourself have connected to the
rest of the universe of reevaluating your life in a
lot of ways to cure mental illness UM. And one
of the things that it's been I guess some studies
(28:53):
have actually shown like now this this actually works is
to treat addiction um, whether it's cigarettes or booze or
drugs or whatever, that that you can undergo an Iahwaska ceremony.
People have and have come out on the other side
like I'm good, I don't need that the cigarettes or
booze or drugs or whatever. Yeah, And one of the
(29:15):
one of the suggestions for what's going on with this
that I saw is that you are actually healing the
psychic damage that's causing you to self medicate in the
first place, something probably from your past, and then so
you with without that need to self medicate, you don't
have necessarily the desire to drink or smoke cigarettes or
(29:37):
whatever that you used to, which is a different model
of addiction that's kind of starting to gain a little
bit of traction, but is also very controversial because it
makes it sound like addiction is a choice but you're
self medicating. You're choosing to do all those drugs and
like throw your life away because of some psychic trauma.
But there there does seem to be a camp in
(29:58):
in medicine that is saying like this actually might have legs.
It kind of makes a lot of sense. And from
what I can tell, those ayahuasca studies kind of or
a checkmark in that view's favor. Yeah, And I think
that can work in conjunction with the other piece, which
is removing that ego. Even if it's for whatever how
many hours that you're undergoing this trip um could just
(30:21):
simply disrupt that. You know, you often hear about addiction
being like this sort of cycle, like a cyclical thing um,
and even just disrupting that cyclical path of that circular
path um can be enough to sort of get you
on the off ramp, uh, from using yeah, get you
(30:42):
on the off ramp, gets you yeah, on the off ramp, Yes,
that's how you said, right, yeah, and then eventually off
that off ramp onto a nice chill side street yeah,
and maybe a nice drive into the country past a
few cows and then sleep. Yeah. I had a therapist
one time that talked about getting off of the highway.
(31:06):
It was a metaphor that actually worked for me. But
like choosing to get off the highway when certain things
were happening, and sometimes something that simple is just kind
of clicks in, like, oh, if I notice something's going on,
I'm speeding down the highway towards the badness and just
get on that exit ramp and now I'm in my neighborhood.
Now I'm hanging out with cows in a nice pecolic pasture. Uh.
(31:29):
PTSD is another specifically, I think a lot of times
with military PTSD. UM, they've been, you know, using psychedelics
more and more in ayahuasca is no stranger to this
treatment and UM, while it is not a magic pill,
they are doing some studies on this and it seems
like uh, and like with all these is tough to
get funding for these kind of studies sometimes, but it
(31:51):
does seem like it's gaining more ground in the medical
community to try out these kind of experiments. Well, they're
trying like hell to get some of these studies underway
in the United States. But because ayahuasca is considered a
Schedule one drug, which is the the worst most nefarious drugs,
of all, Um, they can't. They just I don't think
there's been a single study in the US. But fortunately
(32:14):
they can just go down to South America and do
the best they can with some of the Ayahuascar centers
that are down there and the like. Again, there are
some legitimate Aahuascar centers that take Western tourists for ayahuasca journeys.
UM and some groups are are going down there to
partner with those centers to study people, and some of
(32:34):
the people they're trying to study our PTSD patients, and
they think that if ayahuasca is helping people with PTSD,
which it seems to be, it's it's basically negative exposure
therapy where you're dredging up all of those worst, your
worst memories that are causing your PTSD, which is bringing
(32:55):
them to the surface and allowing your awareness to kind
of shine a light on them and say, Okay, I'm
going to recategorize these now. And they're not being categorized
as bad and and frightening as they were before. It's
not as traumatic as as they were originally categorized. Yeah,
and and specifically in this study that you're thinking about,
(33:15):
is uh we're talking about is combat veterans suffering from
PTSD and it's the Temple of the Way of Light.
UH in the Amazon has partnered with a group in
Spain and the UK, the International Center for Ethnobotanical Research
and Service in Spain and then the Beckley Foundation in
the UK, and they're treating close to six combat veterans
(33:38):
a year and it says it's the largest psychedelic study
UM ever undertaken. So yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah, I
know that they're using um M d m A to
treat PTSD as well. And then I can't remember the
name of that one treatment. But remember you like follow
a pen with your eyes while you're going over your
worst memory and it it recategory eyes. Is the memories
(34:01):
is less scary. I want to remember that one. Yeah,
I can't remember what we talked about it and but
that apparently works really well too, so without the vomiting, right,
that's a big part of it though, my friend just
bring your own bucket. UH. Problems with ayahuasca. UM it
is not generally toxic and you would have to take
(34:23):
so much ayahuasca sort of like when we were talking
about marijuana, like is there even a lethal dose? Can
you even say that because the lethal dose apparently for
ayahuasca is twenty times what you had normally taken a
typical ceremony. Uh, as the grabster put it, or uh
he might have been quoting someone, but it's uh, could
could anyone even choke this much of that down? Right? Probably? Not?
(34:47):
Is that even possible? But there have been I mean,
there have been some deaths that have been related to ayahuasca,
and and when you dig a little deeper, you find like, oh,
it wasn't actually the ayahuasca directly that pause this, but
the people would not have died had they not been
in South America on the ayahuasca journey, right. Yeah, There's
(35:09):
this one guy who um who died in I believe
two thousand fourteen. He was an American You no, he's British,
I'm sorry. And his name was Henry Miller. And he
died on the way to the hospital because he'd gone
kind of non responsive. And the Iowa Squeros Iowa Iowa square, Yeah,
(35:31):
I said it, um that took him to the hospital,
had him on a motorcycle. He fell off the motorcycle
and died of a head injury on the way to
the hospital. So it wasn't the ayahuasca that killed him,
but he wouldn't have been on the motorcycle in the
first place had he not been on this ayahuasca trip.
So the shorthand and the headlines is a man dies
from ayahuasca. Yeah, there have been some other cases where
(35:54):
like people would be having a bad trip and maybe
attack someone else and that would lead to violence or
death or just this year in two thousand eighteen in Peru,
um an eight one year old shaman woman was shot
and killed. Uh, and then a Canadian man was murdered
for revenge for that killing. But supposedly this had nothing
(36:17):
to do with like being under the influence, but it
was some sort of dispute that happened during this this
whole conflict. Yeah, the woman was named Olivia Arevalo and
she was the spiritual mother of Peru's second largest indigenous tribe,
the Shapebo Canibo. And this guy, this Canadian guy named
Sebastian Woodruff, shot and killed her allegedly because um her
(36:43):
son owed him money. He was there to learn ayahuasca,
and I guess he didn't feel like he'd gotten his
money's worth, so he killed her. He killed this this
woman the shaman, the spiritual leader of the second largest
tribe in in Peru, and he was Canadian. Yes, yeah,
I know. It was surprising, not a very cana anything
to do, No, it really wasn't. But the the whole
thing really revealed the problems that that have been developing
(37:07):
from this ayahuasca tourism. First, this guy was down there
and wanted to learn about ayahuasca so we could take
it back to Canada and appropriate this culture. There's problem one. Two.
He didn't get his money's worth, so he shot and
killed the woman who was supposed to be teaching him.
It's a big problem as well. But then also between
the Iowa squeros and the practitioners who are are hosting
(37:31):
these tourists, and then the governments of the countries that
they're hosting them in. There's tensions there as well, because
this village said, there's police everywhere, the police never come here,
but then a Canadian man goes missing, and now our
village is overrun with with police, like, what's the what's
going on here? Um? So there's there's a lot of
(37:51):
tension that's being There's a lot of simmering tension that's
being heated by this, this Western ayahuasca tour is um
and um. It's kind of largely in part because it's unregulated,
but also because a lot of people going down there
don't have respect for what they're doing. And then also
a lot of the people who are popping up as
(38:11):
Iowa squaros don't have any respect for what they're doing either.
So the the respect that's been given to this, this
tradition for so many hundreds or thousands of years being lost,
and then on top of that, the ayahuasca that they're
they're drinking is so wildly more potent than what traditionally
(38:31):
was all those hundreds of thousands of years, you know,
the Jesuits version of ayahuasca um. That's really kind of
I think fueling this kind of recklessness that's that's becoming
part and parcel with ayahuasca used down in South America. Yeah,
because some of these areas are are poor, and so
all of a sudden it becomes a hip thing for
(38:53):
UH Westerners with money to come down there with cold
hard cash. And then, like you said, they're appropriating their culture.
So that's one strike, But then to appeal to these people,
all of a sudden, they're not as like, you know,
we don't want to freak people out maybe by being
too traditional, so we're gonna westernize our own methods a bit.
(39:16):
So and let's say let's get a website going uh,
and then we'll be the go to for when they
come down here. So then they're undermining their own culture. Um,
and it's just sort of becoming a big mess. It
sounds like yeah, and again I think like if you're
going down there, like whether you're Western or um Asian
or whoever you are, if you're going down for a
(39:36):
vision quest, that's not that's not what's being you know,
brought out as as the fault. The fault is if
you're if you're going down there because it's hip or
because you just want to party or because a friend
did it, um, and you're not you're not being respectful
of it. Then that's where the the issue seems to
be arising from ayahuasca anything else you know. Oh yeah,
(40:02):
there is one thing that we didn't cover, um that
that can happen because the copy vine is a m
AO inhibitor. There's a lot of other things um that
can actually kill you that are pretty normal, like interactions
you can have drug interactions with things as normal as chocolate,
because the UM monoamine oxidase typically breaks these things down. Uh.
(40:28):
And if it's being inhibited so that the ayahuasca can
work its effects. You if you eat chocolate, your toast.
And one of the other things that UM that it
can do is so the mono the m A O
ies prevent your serotonin from being taken up. And that's
how d M t acts on the brain. It goes
(40:48):
into where serotonin receptors normally fit and just says, let's party, right. UM.
So with all this extra serotonin floating around, if you
also happen to be on an S s r I
serotonin reuptake inhibitor, UH, you've got too much serotonin. You
can go into what's called serotonin shock. This is where
the diarrhea comes in. That's one of the um the
(41:12):
symptoms of serotonin shock, but that's one of the mild symptoms.
You can also um have seizures. You your heart can
also stop, and you can die from having too much
serotonin flooding your brain. So that's that is a direct
way you can die from ayahuasca. But it's not from
the hallucinogen. UH. The aspect of it. It's from the
(41:32):
m A O. I. So when they're when they show
up from uh, the Silicon Valley, and they say they're translating,
and they're like, hey, bro, he wants to know if
you've got anything, if you've had anything in your body.
And then you're like, no, just mine my Selexa and
a wolf down at Toblaron on the way way over.
I'm good, let's do this. Yeah, let's skip the ceremony.
(41:52):
Just let me drink that stuff, right you just yeah,
you mash the shaman's face out of your way, like,
get out of here. Just give me that. I know.
I know why we haven't been selling tickets in Seattle
so much. Oh no, Seattle we love. That's not Silicon Valley.
Oh that's right. I love San Francisco to we love.
We love all people. We love all of you, everybody.
We love all potential ticket buyers are egos are are
(42:14):
down in the pits. Uh. If you want to know
more about ayahuasca, man, do some research. Uh there's a
lot of it out there, so do it. Um. And
since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Yeah,
I'm gonna call this short and sweet, but we did
get an answer to something. Uh remember in the fire
(42:35):
Twuks episode you could not remember that game and we
got everything from sim City to uh civilization. Yeah, none
of them were right. But our friend, our new pal,
Mike man Goba, Mike says this, guys that just listened
to the fire Twalks episode and also shout out to
(42:55):
two things. All the people who wrote in and spelled
it fire twalks yeah, and then all the firefighters. We
went from a lot of firefighters and they all, every
single one of them said yep, it's chili. Josh did
not overstate the chili. Yeah. And they're all very nice
and said, you guys got most of this right. Um,
anytime it's something really specific like that, we're gonna get
(43:18):
some stuff wrong. But they were like, you guys did
a good job. And one of them even had a
joke that said, if you're at a party, how do
you know if there's a firefighter there? And the answer is, oh,
don't worry, they'll tell you that was from a firefighter.
So I guess they have a simple tamer about it.
Uh So, anyway, guys listening to the fire TALKX episode,
and he talked about the old game that burns buildings
(43:39):
to the ground if you don't have a fire station.
And that game is called Pharaoh, Yes, Pharaoh, yep h
a r a o h yep. You're building an Egyptian
civilisation yea. And he said it's an expansion game. The
expansion game is called Cleopatra, and it was one of
my favorite games, which I still play today. Keep up
(44:00):
the chatter, Mike, man go thanks a lot, Mike. That's
exactly what it was, and never in a million years
would have remembered that that it wasn't beating like gos
uh oh is that what we're calling him? Yeah, all right,
thanks a lot. Goes. Well, if you want to be
like Gobs and rescue us by reminding me of something
I can't remember what it was, or just correcting my syntax,
(44:23):
you can get in touch with us. We're all over social.
You can find those links at stuff you should Know
dot com and you can just send us an email,
wrap it up, speck it on the bottom, and send
it off to stuff podcast All stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
(44:43):
it how stuff Works dot com
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Josh Clark
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