Plant Medicines, Healing and Psychedelic Science Cultural Perspectives

Table of contents

Preface (TBA)

Introduction

Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Clancy Cavnar & Alec Dawson

Background: This book is a result of the conference Psychedelic Science 2017, held in Oakland, 19- 24 April 2017. The conference was organized in three simultaneous tracks: Clinical Research, Interdisciplinary Research, and Plant Medicines. Beatriz Caiuby Labate was the curator of the Plant Medicine Track.

1. Who is Keeping Tabs? LSD Lessons from the Past

Erika Dyck Psychedelics fell from medical grace nearly half a century ago, but recent activity suggests that some researchers have “high hopes” for their return. Are we at risk, however, of facing the same historic challenges with a new generation of psychedelic enthusiasts, or have the circumstances changed sufficiently to allow for a new path forward? The twenty-first-century incarnation of psychedelic research resurrects some anticipated hypotheses, and explores some of the same applications that clinicians experimented with fifty years ago. On the surface, then, the psychedelic renaissance might be dismissed for retreading familiar ground. A deeper look at the context that gave rise to these questions, though, suggests that, while some of the questions are common, the culture of neuroscience and the business of drug regulation have changed sufficiently to warrant a retrial. Historically, LSD and its psychedelic cousins were not simply victims of unsophisticated science; drug regulators arguably squeezed them out of legitimate existence based on assumptions about their perceived dangers, side effects, and potential for abuse. I examine the historical clinical uses of LSD in Canada, including the facility that led to the coining of the term “psychedelic,” and the infamous Hollywood Hospital that offered psychedelic treatments for addictions, to explore some of the lessons that a close reading of LSD’s past has to offer.

2. Peyote’s Race Problem

Alexander Dawson

In the years since peyote became a controlled substance in Mexico and the US, a steady stream of advocates and activists have laid claim to two types of exemption, rooted in both US Law (the First Amendment) and International Law (the 1971 Vienna Convention on Psychotropic Drugs). Indigenous peyotists, in particular, have been largely successful in making a claim to a legal right to be exempt from national prohibitions on peyote possession and consumption. This has represented a significant advance in indigenous rights; yet, in both contexts it has had the unpleasant effect of signaling that a drug that is otherwise so dangerous as to be prohibited should be permitted for Indians, because they are somehow essentially different from all other citizens. This, then, is Peyote’s Race Problem. The ways in which we have created a legal framework that makes peyote use licit among indigenous peoples has hardened a certain notion of profound, an unalterable difference to the point that Indian bodies are said to be incommensurably different from the bodies of others who might desire to consume peyote, but for whom it is deemed too dangerous. This presentation seeks a way out of that dilemma by asking two questions. The first is, How is it that peyote became an Indian thing? The second asks, What would the story of peyote look like if we included the long history of non-indigenous peyote use in the narrative? As for the former, in seeking to answer this question, we are confronted with a long history in which colonial and modern states have actively policed peyote, repeatedly relegating it to the realm of indigeneity even when it seemed likely to escape. And, with the latter, we see a history of people silenced, erased, and made invisible because their own experiences do not fit within systems that seek to different Indian bodies (mystical, out of control, impulsive, primitive) from European bodies (rational, ordered, disciplined).

3. Undiscovering the Pueblo Mágico: Lessons from Huautla for the Psychedelic Renaissance

Ben Feinberg

While the physiological effects of the consumption of psychedelic mushrooms are probably consistent across individuals in different cultural and historical settings, the ways in which they are perceived to work, the contexts in which they are taken, the problems they are perceived to address, and the degree to which their efficacy is assessed are all discursively constructed in ways that are fluid and contested, and may vary greatly. The town of Huautla de Jimenez, in the Sierra Mazateca of Oaxaca, Mexico, is well known as a space where the use of mushrooms is culturally elaborated, and foreign and urban visitors have come to the area to use them since the 1950s, producing an often-imbalanced cross-cultural dialogue about their effects. In this presentation, I provide a brief overview, based on 25 years of ethnographic research, of the different expectations of visitors and Mazatec-speakers, and the changes in Mazatec discourse about mushroom use. I suggest that the Western discourse about the "therapeutic value" of mushroom use, with its focus on individual wellness, often assumes a universality that erases context and the ways in which Mazatec-speakers understand the value of the “child saints.” At the same time, these differences do not forestall the possibility of productive engagement and collaborative research between Mazatec-speakers and outsiders.

4. The Use of Salvia divinorum from a Mazatec Perspective

Ana Elda Maqueda

Salvia divinorum is a medicinal and psychoactive plant endemic to the Mazatec Sierra of Oaxaca, Mexico. The Mazatec people have been using the leaves for centuries in ceremonies as a treatment for arthritis and inflammation, headaches, gastrointestinal problems, and addiction to cocaine, alcohol and inhalants, among others uses. Recent pharmacological findings support these different applications. The active principle of salvia, the terpene salvinorin-A, is a uniquely potent and highly selective kappa-opioid receptor agonist, and, as such, it has tremendous potential for the development of a wide variety of valuable medications. Among them, the most promising include safe non-addictive analgesics, antidepressants, anti-inflammatories, neuroprotectors, short-acting anesthetics that do not depress respiration, medications for the treatment of addiction to stimulants and alcohol, drugs to treat disorders characterized by alterations in perception, including schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, and bipolar disorder, and drugs to treat diverse types of tumors. The Mazatec consider salvia to be a very powerful plant-being that should be treated with utmost respect, and the preparation for the ceremony requires a strict regimen. The Mazatec chew the fresh leaves at night while chanting and praying. In the Western use of salvia, the dry leaves are potentiated in extracts to be smoked. A lack of information about the appropriate doses and other considerations while smoking the extracts could result in overwhelming experiences due to the high potency and fast onset of the substance. For the Mazatec, smoking the plant is not the preferred mode. How could we create a bridge between the two perspectives? Besides salvinorin-A, at least 10 other compounds are present in the leaves. Is it a good idea to use only one of them, or are we missing something in the Western use? In this chapter, I will try to clarify the best ways to use salvia for medicinal, psychotherapeutic, and inner exploration purposes.

5. Examining the Therapeutic Potential of Kratom within the American Drug Regulatory System

O. Hayden Griffin, III

Kratom is one of many traditional drugs that has recently gained attention in the West. Kratom comes from the Korth tree (Mitragynine speciosa), a plant native to Africa and Southeast Asia, but

Beatriz Caiuby Labate has a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. Her main areas of interest are the study of psychoactive substances, drug policy, shamanism, ritual, and religion. She is Adjunct Faculty at the East-West Psychology Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco and Visiting Professor at the Center for Research and Post Graduate Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Guadalajara. She is co-founder of the Drugs, Politics, and Culture Collective, in Mexico (http://drogaspoliticacultura.net), and co-founder of the Interdisciplinary Group for Psychoactive Studies (NEIP) in Brazil, as well as editor of NEIP’s website (http://www.neip.info). She is also Chief Editor at Chacruna (http://chacruna.net). She is author, co-author, and co-editor of seventeen books, one special-edition journal, and several peer-reviewed articles (http://bialabate.net).

Clancy Cavnar has a doctorate in clinical psychology (Psy.D.) from John F. Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill, CA. She currently works in private practice in San Francisco, and is an associate editor at Chacruna (http://chacruna.net), a venue for publication of high-quality academic short texts on plant medicines. She is also a research associate of the Interdisciplinary Group for Psychoactive Studies (NEIP). She combines an eclectic array of interests and activities as clinical psychologist, artist, and researcher. She has a master of fine arts in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute, a master’s in counseling from San Francisco State University, and she completed the Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is author and co-author of articles in several peer-reviewed journals and co-editor, with Beatriz Caiuby Labate, of eight books. For more information see: http://neip.info/pesquisadore/clancy-cavnar