Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (40 page)

So, already there is confusion. The term ayahuasca refers both to the vine
and to the hallucinogenic drink made from the vine, almost always with one
or several additional ingredients. This usage is an example ofwhatwe can call
Amazonian synecdoche-naming something after just one of its components.
For example, the term camalonga refers both to the yellow oleander and to a
shamanic drink made not only of yellow oleander seeds but also of garlic or
white onion, camphor, and aguardiente, distilled fermented cane juice. Similarly, the term grasa de bufalo, buffalo fat, refers both to buffalo fat specifically
and to an ointment used for the relief ofjoint pain, of which buffalo fat is one
of many ingredients.

The term ayahuasca is in the Quechua language. The word huasca is the usual Quechua term for any species ofvine. The word aya refers to something like
a separable soul and thus, also, to the spirit of a dead person-hence the two
common English translations, "vine of the soul" and "vine of the dead." The word ayahuasca can apparently have either connotation, depending largely on
cultural context. Quechua speakers in Canelos or on the Napo, as well as the
mestizo shamans with whom I have worked, translate the word into Spanish
as saga del alma, vine of the sou1;3 people on the Bajo Urubamba often translate
the word as soga de muerto, vine of the dead, based on a local association of the
jungle generally, and ayahuasca in particular, with a malicious ghost called a
bone demon, which seeks to eat people or kill them through violent sexual
intercourse.4

FIGURE 8. Cooking the ingredients for the ayahuasca drink.

The ritual use of ayahuasca is a common thread linking the religion and
spirituality of almost all the indigenous peoples of the Upper Amazon,
including the mestizo population; it seems probable that the shamanic practices of most of western Amazonia-Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador,
Peru, Bolivia-form a single religious culture area. Ayahuasca use is found
as far west as the Pacific coastal areas of Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador;
southward into the Peruvian and Bolivian Amazon; among the Indians of Colombia; among the Quichua, Waoroni, Shuar, and other peoples of
Ecuador; and in Amazonian Brazil.5 Luis Eduardo Luna has compiled a bibliography of more than three hundred items and has enumerated seventy-two
indigenous groups reported to have used ayahuasca.b

The ayahuasca drink has several primary actions: it is a hallucinogen,
emetic, purgative, and vermifuge. In fact, there is reason to think that the ayahuasca vine was first used for its emetic, purgative, and vermifuge activities.?
Even today, the ayahuasca drink is often called, simply, la purga, and is used
to induce violent vomiting, with hallucinations considered side effects;' indeed, ayahuasqueros are sometimes called purgueros.9 But the emetic effect of
the ayahuasca drink has spiritual resonance as well; vomiting shows that the
drinker is being cleansed. La purga misma to ensena, they say; vomiting itself
teaches you.'°

Interestingly, given the emetic effect of the ayahuasca vine, the term used
by mestizo shamans to describe the hallucinatory mental state induced by
ayahuasca is mareacidn, from the verb marearse, to feel sick, dizzy, nauseous,
drunk, seasick. When the ayahuasca has taken hold and one is hallucinating,
one is said to be mareado; it is a good thing to be buen mareado after drinking
ayahuasca. The term has been extended to include the effects of psychoactive
plants such as toe that have no emetic effect.

It is harmaline, one of the (3-carboline components of the ayahuasca vine,
that makes the ayahuasca drink such a potent emetic and purgative. These
gastrointestinal effects appear to be related to the ability of harmaline to inhibit peripheral monoamine oxidase-A (MAO-A); overdosing on an MAO inhibitor-they are sometimes used as antidepressants-is known to cause
nausea and vomiting.- Harmaline is also found in Syrian rue, Peganum harmala, from which it was first isolated and after which it was named ;12 like the ayahuasca vine, Syrian rue has been used as an emetic and vermifuge. Doses of
harmaline as small as 200 mg orally produce nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea
in human volunteers. Five grams of Syrian rue seeds produce mild nausea and
vomiting; higher doses produce both vomiting and diarrhea, in some cases
serious enough to be incapacitating.13 It also appears that there is habituation
to the emetic and purgative activity of harmaline: shamans, who have drunk
ayahuasca hundreds or thousands of times, seldom exhibit its emetic or purgative effects.

Rather, for the shaman, ayahuasca is a teaching plant; it is through the
hallucinogenic power of the ayahuasca drink that the hundreds of healing
plants, including the plants used for magical attack and defense, reveal their appearance and teach their songs. It is the ayahuasca drink that nurtures
the shaman's phlegm, the physical manifestation of shamanic power within the body, used both as defense against magical attack and as a container
for the magic darts that are the shaman's principal weapon.

On Terminology

The Quechua term ayahuasca is used primarily in present-day Peru and Ecuador; in Colombia the common term for both the vine and the drink is yage or
yaj6, from the Tukano language. The Shuar of the Upano Valley in southeastern
Ecuador call the vine natem, the companion plant yaji, and the drink natem,
after the vine;, the closely related Aguaruna call the vine datem, the companion
plant ydhi, and the drink ydhi, after the companion plant. In both cases, the
term yaji or ydhi probably refers to Dip(opterys cabrerana. Luis Eduardo Luna
has listed forty-two indigenous names for ayahuasca 3

Dip(opterys cabrerana was previously classified as Banisteriopsis rusbyana,
and the change in nomenclature has led to some confusion. The term chagraponga is apparently used in Colombia, and ocoyage and huambisa are used
in Peru, but there is considerable inconsistency. Cha(ipanga, a variant of the
Colombian term, is used in Peru; yage oco, an inversion of the Peruvian term, is
used in Colombia.4The word oko means "water" in all the Tulcanoan languages .5
Some mestizo shamans around Iquitos refer to ocoyage simply as yage, the Colombian term for ayahuasca, confusing things still more. Jimmy Weiskopfclaims
that ayahuasca drinks made with chacruna are characteristically found in the
Iquitos area, and those made with chagraponga in the Putumayo;b Marie Perruchon indicates that the Shuar combine the ayahuasca vine exclusively with
chagraponga to make their hallucinogenic natem,7 but the identification is no
clearer here than it is in Michael Harner's work.$ My experience has been that
there is too much individual variation in the drinks prepared by different shamans to support much generalization; for example, for a period of time, don
Roberto made his ayahuasca drink with leaves of both chacruna and ocoyage;
don R6mulo Magin, also near Iquitos, used chacruna and his own cultivar of
sameruca.

The term sameruca appears to derive from the Shuar word samiruk.9 Some
mestizo shamans, such as don Romulo Magin, considerPsychotria carthaginensis and P. viridis to be simply different types of chacruna, which can be used
interchangeably; others, such as don Roberto, distinguish P. viridis by the term
chacruna legitima, genuine chacruna.

NOTES

1. Perruchon, 2003, p. 216.

2. Brown, 1978, pp. 121, 123.

3. Luna, 1986c, pp. 171-173.

4. Weiskopf, 2005, pp. 148-151.

5. Schultes & Raffauf, 1990, p. 282.

6. Weiskopf, 2005, pp. 151-152.

7. Perruchon, 2003, p. 216.

8. Harper, 1971, p. 153.

9. The term is used by Shuar shaman Alejandro Tsakimp in Rubenstein, 2002, p. 141.

Combining the Plants

How in the world did indigenous peoples in the Upper Amazon come up with
the idea of combining DMT with an MAO inhibitor? Many mestizo shamans will
claim, of course, that the plants themselves taught humans how to do this.
Other commentators point to some mysterious ecological wisdom found only in
indigenous peoples. I think the answer is simpler. I think people were looking
for a better way to vomit.

Excessive levels of serotonin in the brain may cause nausea and vomiting
as a result of the vagus nerve being overstimulated. Diarrhea may also occur,
as peripheral serotonin in the digestive tract stimulates intestinal motility.' It
is not clear what role, if any, DMT plays in modulating the emetic response to
harmaline.

I have found no direct evidence that either of the usual companion plants,
chacruna or ocoyage, has emetic or purgative properties. However, it is noteworthy that two Psychotria species, P ipecacuanha and P emetica, are widely
used emetics, the former in Brazil and the latter in Peru. P. ipecacuanha is the
source of the widely used emetic syrup of ipecac. In the Colombian Vaupes, a
shrub whose leaves are added to the ayahuasca drink, and which Schultes and
Hofmann have identified as ocoyage, is called by the Tulcano "the ayahuasca
that makes you vomit."3

If the companion plants have any emetic properties of their own, it is plausible to hypothesize that the ayahuasca vine and its companion plants were first
combined in order to synergize or modulate their emetic and purgative effects,
with the serendipitous result of creating an effective delivery form for DMT.

NOTES

1. Callaway, 1999, p. 255.

2. See generally Grieve, 1931/1971, pp. 432-434.

3. Schultes & Hofmann, 1992, p.121.

It is in fact the companion plant-chacruna or ocoyage or sameruca-that
contains the potent hallucinogen dimethyltryptamine (DIM). But while DIM
is effective when administered parenterally, it is, when taken orally, inactivated by peripheral MAO-A, an enzyme found in the lining of the stomach, whose
function is precisely to oxidize molecules containing an -NH2 amine group,
like DMT.14

There are thus two ways to ingest DMT or plants containing DMT. The first
is by parenteral ingestion-using a route other than the digestive tract, such
as smoking, injection, or inhalation-which bypasses the MAO in the stomach lining.15 A number of indigenous peoples around the Orinoco Basin in
Venezuela inhale a snuff called epend, made from the sap of several trees in
the genus Virola that contain large amounts of DMT;16 and the Guahibo Indians of the Orinoco Basin use a snuff called yopo, also called cohoba, vilca, and
huilca, made from the DMT-rich plant Anadenanthera peregrina.'7 Ethnographer Patrick Deshayes has described how the Cashinahua and other peoples along
the Rio Purus produce a finely ground crystalline form of chacruna mixed
with ground tobacco, which shamans inhale using a snuff tube while drinking ayahuasca, in order to speed their visions.,'

It is also possible to mix the DIM with an MAO inhibitor that prevents the
breakdown of DIM in the digestive tract. That is just what the ayahuasca vine
contains-the (3-carbolines harmine, harmaline, and tetrahydroharmine,
which are potent inhibitors of MAO-A. Combining the ingredients of the ayahuasca drink allows the DMT to produce its hallucinogenic effect when orally ingested-a unique solution that apparently developed only in the Upper
Amazon.19

It is probably worth noting that the ayahuasca drink tastes awful. It has an
oily, bitter taste and viscous consistency that clings to your mouth, with just
enough hint of sweetness to make you gag. The taste has been described as
being bitter and fetid, like forest rot and bile, like dirty socks and raw sewage,
and like a toad in a blender.20 There are also significant differences between
parenterally administered DIM and the ayahuasca drink. The effects ofparenterally administered DIM appear with startling rapidity; as one user colorfully
put it, "The kaleidoscopic alien express came barreling down the aetheric
superhighway and slammed into my pineal. 1121 In addition, these effects are
short-lived-not much longer than thirty minutes-which at one time earned
DIM the street appellation businessman's lunch.22 On the contrary, the effects of
the ayahuasca drink appear slowly, even slyly, in thirty to forty minutes, and
then last approximately four hours, depending on the strength and constituents of the particular mixture.

Remarkably, while tolerance to the emetic and purgative effects of harmaline develops over time, consistent users of DMT, such as shamans, do not
develop tolerance for its hallucinogenic effects .23