UKC

This is a fascinating article for anyone interested in hallucinogens, religions based around the same, cultural anthropology or the impacts of tourism:

https://daily.jstor.org/the-colonization-of-the-ayahuasca-experience/

For example I was intrigued to find that there are synthetic religions in Brazil based on Catholicism that use ayahuasca.

I think all religions are synthetic!

You meant syncretic?

Thought provoking read—thanks for posting!

I have mixed feelings.

About the piece itself, it's a shame that after such a thoughtful analysis that the author would resort to the threadbare metaphor of colonisation, which is so tired as to signal complete lack of imagination in the user. There is often a lot of damage done by Western presence in other parts of the world, but the ties to colonisation are weak in the modern context. The author has clearly swallowed the relevant ideology whole in this respect.  

On the content, I can only share the author's revulsion of the fetishisation of the various aspects of ayahuasca rituals, the damage done to local communities and the environment, and the general distastefulness and often shallowness of practice in general (shared with what has become of events such as Burning Man, for example, with its VIP area for tech billionaires etc.). There is also something in the notion that shamans and curanderos operate within a culturally specific framework, such that their methods and knowledge don't necessarily carry over to Western mindsets. The baggage that one brings to a psychedelic experience has a massive effect on how it turns out—one can see this even from one Westerner to the next, without speaking of crossing major cultural boundaries.

On the other hand, there is a lot to be said for the universality of aspects of the experience. The author himself seems to concede that this is true for the drug itself—we all have a human brain, and the active ingredients do what they do in all members. Likewise for aspects of the experience. I haven't been on one of these retreats, so I don't know what the ceremonies involve, but the sensation of having smoke blown on your face, hearing the penetrating ring of a bell, discerning the tone of shamanic jabbering and the like could well act at levels that are less culturally conditioned. Natural elements and scenes have ways of being universally understandable, so the jungle setting of the experience and the presentation of natural artefacts could have significant valence for a Westerner.

Ultimately, I agree that we in the West should forge our own path. I have nothing against pharmahuasca, and you only have to compare 4-AcO-DMT to mushrooms to realise that one is 90% there with just the active ingredients—they very fact of attributing an "earthy, organic quality" to the mushrooms over the powder is more (sub)cultural baggage. I've always gone to the hills with a good friend to enjoy these things, without much in the way of ritual, unless it's genuinely meaningful (nothing contrived sits well). I'll even stick up for that awful, sneering, neo-colonial British shaman Ross Heaven who suspected that some such elements are distractions. In the West, people form superstitions, devise coping mechanisms, and invent cheap thrills that they bring out during a trip. It happens a lot. Some of these become concretised into rituals, although they don't tend to be conceived that way. It's a strange kind of alienating reverence to assume that none of the aspects of an "authentic" ceremony in Peru don't serve the same purposes for the locals.

It's a great topic. In many ways, it recapitulates some of the major cultural battles of the moment. I'm going to side with respectful universality.

Jesus wants you for a sunbeam

Over my head I'm afraid. Something about the last sentence? Took it the wrong way if so.

Somewhat on-topic; I've seen images of Norse standing stones depicting the Christian Christ in full knot-work and runes, with large Argaric mushrooms sprouting from his head. Would have been amazing to witness that chapter in history. 

But was that before or after the ayahuasca?

It's amazing how recurrent the mushroom figure is in art from all over. Norse, pre-Colombian, paintings from Tassili n'Ajjer...

Then there's the whole Santa Claus, reindeer urine, agaric tale. Might be a bit farfetched, but it's a good one as far as all-encompassing theories go, even down to the red and white details and the elves.

I used synthesis as I saw it as applying a little more widely than syncretic, which in this context refers to merging of religions. As some of the ayahuasca uses described here are not specifically religions I thought it was safer to stick to the more general ‘synthetic’.

Thanks for an interesting response. Regarding the point about the use of colonisation, I think this is a bit of a red herring. It’s used in the title but there’s very little about it in the body of the article. I wondered if it had been titled by someone else.

Yeah, it's probably yet another case of a publisher picking a title that only modestly aligns with the content.

As to why the single mention in the article was enough to provoke me into a response, I have a lot of exposure to the anthropological literature through one of my jobs and it's depressing what proportion of all studies use this single lens to look at their topic. It's intellectually deadening to see such conformity when there's so much to be said.

Briefly...I'm leaning to be dismissive of those in the West seeking the authentic Ayahuasca experience. Its just another element of narcissism (I find my truths only in the exotic and esoteric, preferably involving money, with some kind of trendy Wellness cachet attached) and ignorance (of what else is available / possible). 

I like your going to the hills with a friend. Matches my own experiences of LSD and mushrooms. I've had many of the experiences described in that article without needing a befeathered shaman banging a drum or jaguar's tooth

From the article 'A report last year indicated that ayahuasca tourism has boosted jaguar poaching and other environmentally destructive activities, as well. Charlatans manage to convince unwitting outsiders that a big cat’s tooth or some similar trinket is a traditional spiritual enhancer for their ceremonies, when in fact it is patently not. It is just a symbol of destructive ignorance.

This is impossibly insulting to indigenous communities, who often faced active persecution—saw their healing psychedelic plants burned and their ceremonies belittled or criminalized—by militias, missionaries, and officials motivated by racism, or by the American-led War on Drugs. Sudden outsider interest in their plants and ceremonies can come off less as empowering respect, more as extractive exploitation and appropriation of locally meaningful practices for more powerful groups’ needs'

How depressing.

Later in the article 'It just means that outsiders need to be far more conscientious of how and why they are engaging with other cultures’ ayahuasca traditions—and to consider building their own.'

Absolutely

Myself too.

Well played, though to answer I may incriminate my self.

I think this is a very salient point, though not confine to the West necessarily. It seems often just the shift in novelty and being deposited in a setting one is less attached to is half the process. You less likely to be bothered by your mundane irritations in a Peruvian hut or on a Tibetan hillside.

It's all dress ups, one way or another, no different to the crowds who hang about Dharamsala or the Dead Sea or Burning Man. The Amazonian's thought Catholicism esoteric enough to be part of their rituals (along with a healthy chunk of having it forced on them), much seems no more than the quest for the exotic. How many people will only heed advice from an ethnic guru? Is it the unique tryptamines that's working or are the dream-catchers and incense doing half the job?

I like the footage of Bruce Parry doing DMT snuff in Venezuela (Columbia maybe, upper Amazon Basin regardless) as it's so devoid of ritual. There's a bit of stuff initially, but it's in full day time in a village centre with kids and families going about their business, huffing the stuff carried in a paint tin, seemingly part of day to day life. The 'shaman' stuff isn't secreted away at all and, at least from seeing Parry's reactions, is no less profound. In Tuva, where Siberian Shamanism is still a real thing, the shaman is likely to be the guy at the gas station who fills you up 6 days a week, voyages into the spirit realm to find lost ancestors disguised as abscessed teeth on the 7th.

I concur that the theatrics are not necessary aside from being a primer, but as some degree of theatre is present always (a Scottish mountain is as much set and setting as a thatched hut in the jungle) it's whatever provides the experience one is seeking. The most profound 'long trip' (as opposed to the short DMT experience where setting is near-irrelevant) I've had was mescaline in downtown Tokyo during the day.

For whatever Timothy Leary means to some people, I think his idea of 'psychedelic tours' was interesting, going to major world cultural centres like Jerusalem, Kyoto, Athens, Bodhgaya, Xian, Medina etc and taking psychedelics and exposing oneself to the vectors of world culture. Sign me up.

I think the opposite to be true as well, and its something Sufism seems to promote; hiding away in seclusion with all this doesn't do much for the greater good. Yes yes it's a nice time, but the world's problems are not in remote jungles. Anyone can dabble in altruism and revelation alone in a tee-pee with nothing to distract them, but does ayahuasca / zen / Krishnamurti / Hasidism achieve much at a Trump rally or in the streets of Mosul? To paraphrase yet another religion, 'all this is great, but can you do it with job, family and bills to pay because that's where the world is at'.

It's been said that the true skill of the shaman isn't in healing, it's in picking people who are about to get better naturally anyway...

Yes: I'm thoroughly enjoying these fascinating threads, but given my former role as a pillar of the community, the only thing I'll admit to taking is the Fifth.

Whisky you mean?

Ayahuasca at a Trump rally? There's a vision of Hell...

Never been known to turn it down.

Yes. Aside from the overwhelming boorishness, from what I've seen of ayahuasca it hasn't been picked up by the rave scene, suggesting it's not an energetic, crowd-dissolving type thing. Reports that it involves spewing into a bucket at some point could be part of that,

On a similar note, there was a report from a presenter in a Biden crowd after the results and he states there was a strong smell of marijuana about. I wonder what a Trump rally smells like - diesel exhaust, cheap perfume and buffalo wings maybe?

It is good isn't it. A healthy dialogue about aspects of drugs apart from their criminal status is always a good thing. I'm bored of being told about them by people who haven't used them. I believe Jon nailed it by saying it's like having cycling only described from the perspective of an A & E nurse.

(cue the usual retorts of "so you only want to hear about it from those you agree with then?", to which I remind them, no, only those who have experienced them).

I know a guy who used it a few times to get sober. It worked for a while but he relapsed. But he was a chronic relapser. Seems a dangerous step TBH, a powerful drug to beat addiction to another powerful drug. I think it was Florida he'd go off to every few months for his retreats and work with the Shaman.

Really interesting article, thanks for posting. Certainly agree with the idea

outsiders need to be far more conscientious of how and why they are engaging with other cultures’ ayahuasca traditions—and to consider building their own.

This is already happening a bit: there are already companies that run magic mushroom retreats in Europe that take a bit from the ayahuasca ceremony tradition. I'd also ask, "why ayahuasca?" - but then I've never tried it so I don't know if/how the experience of the drug itself is particularly favourable compared to all the other drugs that could be used in a similar way. As far as I'm aware there's no research at all comparing the efficacy of different drugs for different psychotherapeutic purposes, if that's the aim of doing an ayahuasca trip (rather than for shits and giggles, although I understand the former is more likely than the latter).

Of course a lot of people want to try a drug that's got the history and cultural significance of  ayahuasca for just those reasons - and there's nothing wrong with that, it's fascinating. But for all the reasons the article points out, the tourist trade makes me queasy.

Personally, I would definitely want to avoid throwing up and having the shits from taking an unmeasured dose of the brew (which I imagine is also really really disgusting to get down) if those elements of the experience could be avoided by using an optimised dose the synthetic version "pharmahuasca". If I decided that I wanted to try orally active DMT, that is - when I can think of plenty of other things I could eat that might be more up my street. And while I can imagine the appeal to others, tripping in a far-removed cultural setting with a load of spiritual mumbo-jumbo that I didn't understand (and wouldn't believe in if I did) wouldn't be for me. If I was doing it for psychotherapeutic purposes, I'd want a one-on-one therapist I could relate to; or if I was doing it for "personal development" or just plain fascination with the drug itself rather than the culture surrounding it, I'd choose a comfortable setting either with friends or on my todd. But I know a lot of people like the whole ceremony/guide thing to make them feel like they're in safe hands, rather than just shoving a load of drugs down their face themselves and seeing what happens. I can see the advantages.

I feel like we're getting somewhere closer to a sensible path these days with thoughtful articles like this one, the chat on here, the research on psilocybin, the magic mushroom retreats in Europe, etc. There's definitely an increasingly mainstream cultural shift towards accepting that psychedelics don't really fit the "drugs are bad, just say no" agenda I grew up with.

I'm not sure what the dangerous step is - sounds like it helped, at least a bit. There's another traditional hallucinogen called ibogaine that has a better record for treating addiction. Apparently the experience is significantly more harsh than ayahuasca and certainly less likely to attract a tourist trade to Gabon and Congo where the tree containing it grows.

Bruce Parry took ibogaine with the Babongo people in Gabon in an episode of tribe. Two days of experiencing all the worst things you've ever done but from the perspective of those you hurt doesn't sound like there'll be a queue of people round the block for it.

I thought he had a false sense of confidence that it had magically cured him. He thought he basically was no longer an addict, which I know people who get to that stage but he was weeks in. But he was desperate. He had severe PTSD from his time in the military, mainly from kosovo, so wouldn't go near AA due to the God connection (there is secular AA). He'd had a 20 year battle with addiction. He's still alive but when I first met him he was a physical beast, when I last saw him he was a shadow of that person, couldn't run a few miles without walking. He helped me get sober so we stayed in contact through a lot of it but he's since moved away for a fresh start. 

The guy I know said something similar, he was basically reliving the hurt he'd put people through whilst vomiting.. 

It’s a long time since I saw it but if that is the episode I think it is, it included some of the most honest and open television presenting I’ve ever seen. I think there were a lot of edits as it all got very emotional and I recall thinking (in a childish and cynical “edge lord” manner wrt Parry’s military past) “he’s killed people, using a teaspoon, and it’s coming back to haunt him horribly”

Yes. If my experiences are anything to go by, the positive effects from a strong/non-recreational psychedelic experience feel really profound at first and fade quite rapidly over the course of weeks or perhaps months. A lot of people (including Bruce Parry) who feel they've gained something important from psychedelics try to keep the benefits alive through meditation, which takes a fair bit of effort. That said, with death anxiety (rather than addiction or depression) it does seem that a single profound experience can cause a permanent step change, more like a 'cure'.

This. I think Parry is well qualified to go into these experiences, with his background of immersion in other cultures and an almost gonzo agenda where he accepts his presence and tries to work around it. None of the generic hippy drivel that often goes with this stuff. He references the experience in other stuff he's done.

Personally I think a powerful drug experience to dislodge addiction is a good idea. It's all chemicals going around ones head. Most of these strong tryptamines are predictable and guidable experiences and a lot more reliable than years of lightly chipping away. Other powerful experiences seem to also jolt people out of old imprints and into new ones, but often seem a lot harder to orchestrate.

For what it's worth I think the drug itself is only part of what can reset someone out of destructive behavior patterns, it only creates the window through which new behaviour can be introduced. Aside from the act of intentionally taking something to address the specific problem, the work is done by whatever new stuff is entered to replace the old dysfunctional stuff, and then to reinforce it. Like Jon mentions, the wonders of psychedelics tend to fade and normalize over time, like the wonders of most things ie travel, xmas etc, so like anything needs to be reinforced.

Tryptamines are not magic, it's absurd to expect a single dose to rewrite an entire addiction problem. To be useful for things like addiction they need to be part of a greater lifestyle realignment, just like any method. Where I think they may have advantages are with the jolt they provide - the window they can open is pretty direct, reliable and navigable, and short enough to be less subject to being adulterated by other things.

Any tourism industry rarely brings out the best of the host society. I'd assume the ayahuasca variety has many elements also found in time shares, taxi driving and whale watching.

I fondly recall the counter to Reagan's "just say no" campaign being "just say know". Simple, slightly subversive, succinct and a pre-internet era of an intelligent debate being overwhelmed by sheer volume of noise compared to signal. We are where we are now in spite of all the talk, not because of it.

Eboga is the plant preparation, Ibogaine is the synthetic. There's quite a network of Ibogaine 'facilities' around in places where it's not outright banned. Czechia has (or at least had, no idea now) places and there was a well known guy running sessions on a boat in international waters off San Diego.

It sort of came and went about 20 years ago, the last time tryptamines were a popular topic before the current resurgence. I have a feeling the heroin trade at the time fueled interest, and maybe the meth epidemic of today just doesn't have the same drive, or even work for it.