Speaker 1: Hello, Maine and Greater New England. We're coming to see
Speaker 1: you guys in Portland and we can't wait. We would
Speaker 1: love to see you there. Yep, we'll be at the
Speaker 1: State Theater on August. If you're interested, you can get
Speaker 1: tickets and information at s y s K live dot com.
Speaker 1: Throws some lobster at us. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryan, there's Jerry over there, and uh whow,
Speaker 1: he's Alie Payton's best record. I think, um no, no,
Speaker 1: hold on no, it's not why he's Ali it's um
Speaker 1: it's not Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, crooked rink between them
Speaker 1: with Summer Babe. Oh no, that was the first one
Speaker 1: that's slanted and enchanted. Okay, that was their first album.
Speaker 1: What a classic, man. I think that's their best one,
Speaker 1: is it not? Well? Cricket Rain gets sighted a lot
Speaker 1: of times is sort of the peak pavement. Uh. Slanted
Speaker 1: is for fans of like the early sloppy days lo fi,
Speaker 1: which we both love. I like, Wow, He's out because
Speaker 1: it was so strange and Weird. I haven't heard that
Speaker 1: one very much. It's great. Okay, they're all They're all great.
Speaker 1: I like him, even right down to the last one,
Speaker 1: the Weird Um Polka experimental album that they came out
Speaker 1: they're playing. Uh, they announced they're playing another couple of
Speaker 1: reunion shows at a festival in Portugal, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: we're in touch with Mr Bob Nistanovich and I texted him,
Speaker 1: It's like, do I have to go to Portugal? Is
Speaker 1: anything bruin here in the States. It's like, because I'll go.
Speaker 1: What do you say? He said, Uh, nothing is of yet.
Speaker 1: He's like, so go with God. Are you going to
Speaker 1: go to ports your goal? Maybe if that's the only
Speaker 1: chance to see Paven again, because I want to go
Speaker 1: to Portugal anyway. You have frequent fire miles to use
Speaker 1: an do it? You totally should and drink some port
Speaker 1: while you're there too. Yeah. You know, my friends opening
Speaker 1: up a wine shop in Kirkwood that is very not
Speaker 1: exclusively Portuguese, but that's where she's from. It's going to
Speaker 1: be featuring a lot of Portuguese wines. That works really
Speaker 1: well with this episode, Chuck, as we'll see later on.
Speaker 1: But just put a pin in Portuguese wine, okay, and
Speaker 1: for later. All right, So you started off by saying
Speaker 1: the words wowie's awe because we're talking about peyote, which
Speaker 1: is an allucinogen. That's right, but um, it's a it's
Speaker 1: from what I've seen, one of the oldest to hallucinogens.
Speaker 1: People were eating mushrooms all over Europe, north central western
Speaker 1: Europe for a very long time, sometimes accidentally, which is hysterical.
Speaker 1: But people have been eating peyote for a really really
Speaker 1: long time too, as we'll see, thousands and thousands of years,
Speaker 1: and as a results, got a pretty interesting little history
Speaker 1: to it, both ancient and modern. And really all it
Speaker 1: comes down to is it's a bineless cactus that has
Speaker 1: a very bitter taste that's not nice, never stands up
Speaker 1: for itself. Um, but it is a spineless cactus, which
Speaker 1: means well, if it's a spinless cactus, that means that
Speaker 1: desert animals probably love to eat it. They don't because
Speaker 1: it has a really bitter taste. And that bitter taste
Speaker 1: is an alkaloid called mescaline, right, And that it's a sign.
Speaker 1: It's nature signs saying don't eat me, right, but just
Speaker 1: so happens that if we humans eat that particular alkaloid,
Speaker 1: we say things like wow, he's alwi. That's right, right,
Speaker 1: so uh, yeah, let's go. It is native to Mexico
Speaker 1: in the southern US. It is technically the scientific name
Speaker 1: is loafa Fhora william Ce. Now we decided that two
Speaker 1: eyes means you pronounced both right, uh. And it grows
Speaker 1: in northern Mexico and South Texas right along the border.
Speaker 1: There knows no borders, that's true. And it loves the
Speaker 1: rocky limestone. And in historical documents it's had a range
Speaker 1: all the way up to New Mexico perhaps, and we've
Speaker 1: either changed that with human interaction or that was just wrong.
Speaker 1: But it definitely grows along the border. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: looks like a little uh did growing up? Did you
Speaker 1: ever see those little tomato pincushions. Yeah, oh yeah, it
Speaker 1: looks sort of like that, but it's not red, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess. And it doesn't have pin sticking out of it. Now,
Speaker 1: although you could stick a pin in it, sure you
Speaker 1: could put a bird on it, it would be very
Speaker 1: disrespectful to the spirit within the payote though, that's right.
Speaker 1: It probably wouldn't like that very much. That's true, like
Speaker 1: a little Payote voodoo doll. Sure. Um. So, like we said,
Speaker 1: the mescaline is is to tell animals stay away, don't
Speaker 1: eat me. Um. They also think it's possible that has
Speaker 1: something to do with communications between plants. It may do
Speaker 1: a number of different things actually, But one of the
Speaker 1: things about payote is it has this reputation, a very
Speaker 1: mystical reputation, not just because it's a psychedelic and a leucinogen,
Speaker 1: but because it is really really hard to find until
Speaker 1: it's not. It's got this reputation where you'll be looking
Speaker 1: all over for payote. It grows in the rocky soil,
Speaker 1: and typically it will grow under like a creosop bush
Speaker 1: or a mesquite tree or something like that nurse plant. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: but you can you could have looked all over underneath
Speaker 1: the creosoat tree or whatever, and you walk away and
Speaker 1: then you're like, I'll just go back and look again,
Speaker 1: and there it is, just staring you right in the face.
Speaker 1: Trip over a rock and you land on it. Right
Speaker 1: there's the payot. So it's got this kind of neat
Speaker 1: little uhum reputation for for hiding, playing hide and go
Speaker 1: seek with you, and then it's like, okay, all right,
Speaker 1: go ahead and eat me and trip trip. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say something else. Uh, like I said, it is
Speaker 1: not red. Um, they can be brighter green, but uh,
Speaker 1: they can also look sort of bluish. Yeah, which is interesting.
Speaker 1: That nice like steel blue green. It's a pretty color.
Speaker 1: It is um and they grow and usually in clusters
Speaker 1: with multiple plants, but sometimes you can find them individually
Speaker 1: and they I think they're very pretty, that little pink,
Speaker 1: white and yellow flowers. Um. They grow very low to
Speaker 1: the ground and they're just uh, it looks like you know, stubby, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little stubby tomato with um. Yeah. But it's not
Speaker 1: it's not completely round. It has like sections. It's oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's almost a little bit too. Yeah. So um yeah,
Speaker 1: I see what you mean. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: We're on beauty right now. Everyone. That's not true. Oh um.
Speaker 1: So this plant in particular has a weird history of
Speaker 1: getting confused with other plants because some of the other
Speaker 1: plants that go around it are also um consumed by
Speaker 1: some of the indigenous tribes in the area and have been.
Speaker 1: But there's like a type of peyote plant that won't
Speaker 1: it's not psychedelic. It just makes you kind of sleep.
Speaker 1: There's something um called the plant that has miss colbeans
Speaker 1: um that are intoxicons of their own type, but they
Speaker 1: can also kind of kill you. Uh. There was a
Speaker 1: while there where payote Um was called both uh Lapaphoria
Speaker 1: Lapaphora william z and and Hellonium louini. Right, both have
Speaker 1: two eyes on the end. And then somebody's like, now
Speaker 1: that's the same plant. So there's a lot of confusing
Speaker 1: horticultural history associated with I wonder why with payote it
Speaker 1: was playing tricks, is what it was. So there is
Speaker 1: a you know, people have used it not only for
Speaker 1: um religious purposes, although that's a large part of it,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to in depth. But it does have
Speaker 1: some anti microbial properties. I've seen that for in really
Speaker 1: low doses that um. Certain tribes have used it for indigestion,
Speaker 1: to treat wounds, to give them energy to work on
Speaker 1: a computer for days on end your hangovers. Uh, And
Speaker 1: like anything psychedelic you could um technically you can use
Speaker 1: it to help treat mental illness, but they don't study
Speaker 1: that stuff in the United States. So again it's always
Speaker 1: very hard to think about any sort of ecstasy or
Speaker 1: magic mushrooms or anything without studying like clinical studies. Well,
Speaker 1: they and they did study for a while. UM mescaline,
Speaker 1: once they isolated it from peyote was used like LSD
Speaker 1: was in the fifties until LSD came along. And they
Speaker 1: used it because they thought that maybe you could glean
Speaker 1: information about the root cause of schizophrenia by giving mescal
Speaker 1: into people with schizophrenia. But they found out it was
Speaker 1: too unreliable. People's experiences were too different UM and there
Speaker 1: was no kind of UM structure that that the individual followed.
Speaker 1: And plus they found out people with schizophrenia could tell
Speaker 1: the difference between their delusions and delusions brought on by
Speaker 1: mescal iguage. Is pretty interesting. Yeah, and when was that
Speaker 1: in the fifties. I guess pre fifties because LSD came
Speaker 1: along in So when you harvest peyote, UM, you cut
Speaker 1: off that stem really close to the ground and they're
Speaker 1: known as buttons. They look like I guess I've described
Speaker 1: as pincushions, but they look like a little buttons. It
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah, and Ed here Ed wrote this article
Speaker 1: the grab st He said a typical trip is four
Speaker 1: to six buttons and I thought that seemed like a
Speaker 1: lot of peyote, because I had seen photos of some
Speaker 1: buttons that were like as large as the palm of
Speaker 1: your hand. And I'm trying to imagine eating eight things
Speaker 1: that big, pier eight tomatoes that large. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of tomatoes. But then I looked at other pictures and
Speaker 1: I guess those were like just super big peyote buttons,
Speaker 1: and most of them were a couple of inches and
Speaker 1: circumference here that big. I thought they were more like
Speaker 1: the size of a quarter or something like that. I
Speaker 1: think between a quarter and like a silver dollar maybe,
Speaker 1: or a shilling for our friends in the UK? Is
Speaker 1: that a Is that a quid? How does that all work?
Speaker 1: A shilling? Oh man, we're gonna get emails about it.
Speaker 1: That's okay. A shilling is like twenty pence. I think
Speaker 1: you're going on record. But four to six buttons, Um that,
Speaker 1: like you said, it's really better. So a lot of
Speaker 1: times people won't want to eat it. Um. There are
Speaker 1: all different kinds of ways you can make the tea
Speaker 1: with it, and we're not giving you a how to write,
Speaker 1: but um, it's as simple as that. This is how
Speaker 1: people take peyote. Sometimes they'll grind into a powder and
Speaker 1: snorted or into a pill. I saw that you can
Speaker 1: smoke it too, when it's dried and powdered. I've never
Speaker 1: heard of that before, but I ran across it. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing. If if you're down south of the
Speaker 1: border and you're out hunting for peyote, uh, and if
Speaker 1: this is something you want to do, more power to you,
Speaker 1: but be respectful of the plant. Don't go digging it
Speaker 1: out with a shovel by the roots because you're gonna
Speaker 1: kill the plant. Yeah, that's extremely disrespectful to a peyote plant,
Speaker 1: especially in the edition of like um groups indigenous tribes
Speaker 1: that take payote for ritual purposes. You do not kill
Speaker 1: the plant. You don't cut off the peyote button so
Speaker 1: um low that the roots can't regenerate, and you don't
Speaker 1: dig the plant out. Yet despite that, people do it
Speaker 1: all the time. And then that combined with feral pigs
Speaker 1: who like to eat it and trip, they really trip.
Speaker 1: I don't know, they definitely like to eat peyote, so
Speaker 1: probably um those two combined have really kind of put
Speaker 1: a hurt and on payote um and it's range so
Speaker 1: people who are like conscious of this stuff say, well,
Speaker 1: you can also get mescaline out of what's called the
Speaker 1: San Pedro cactus, which grows up in the Andes and
Speaker 1: that's not threatened, are vulnerable, and then get it there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just go go un improve, don't stop in Mexico, keep
Speaker 1: going south. Should we take a break. Let's take a break.
Speaker 1: Charge all right, let's take a break, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about that mescaline right after this.
Speaker 1: Should know okay, stuff, you should know mescaline that is
Speaker 1: the primary psychedelic chemical, and that was synthesized What did
Speaker 1: you say nineteen eighteen or nineteen nineteen nineteen by Ernest
Speaker 1: Spa Ernest Ernest Smith. That's how you'd say the A
Speaker 1: with the new lat Yeah, so you go Ernt Smith,
Speaker 1: an Austrian chemist. Sorry, Ernest, I do like your name.
Speaker 1: Who I did a little researchers not. This is kind
Speaker 1: of the thing he did that's big enough. Don't you
Speaker 1: think the guy isolated mescaline for Pete's sake? Oh no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not knocking it. I was just uh, I thought
Speaker 1: it was gonna be like and you know what else
Speaker 1: he did? And this is kind of what he did.
Speaker 1: He's known for that, right, like Joseph Priestley, who was like,
Speaker 1: I discovered nitrous oxide and I also discovered ten other
Speaker 1: things and start on Beverly Hills nine two And have
Speaker 1: you ever seen my shirt? It's the Judas Priest logo,
Speaker 1: but it says Jason Priestly. It's pretty great. Is his
Speaker 1: face anywhere in it? Or is it just it just
Speaker 1: looks like the Judas Priest logo, but it says Jason Priestley. Nice,
Speaker 1: I gotta see that. I like some of those shirts.
Speaker 1: That's it's one of the good ones. The one I
Speaker 1: used to hate was the when Farfik new Again was
Speaker 1: the big thing and the hippies would wear the effin gruven.
Speaker 1: I hated those all right. So um sith sith isolated mescally.
Speaker 1: In the following year, the pharmaceutical company Mark is like, oh,
Speaker 1: we'll just turn this through. No pharmaceutical started to get
Speaker 1: studied and released, and UM things were going along fairly
Speaker 1: swimming lee for it. Um it's a fennel ethel amine,
Speaker 1: which makes it different. Actually, um LSD and psilocybin, which
Speaker 1: our trip to fans. They're in the indole family um
Speaker 1: Fennell ethel mean is the family that mescalin is in
Speaker 1: and m d M A is in. And it's no
Speaker 1: coincidence that m d M A and mescalin are in
Speaker 1: the same family because the chemist who created m D
Speaker 1: m A, Alexander Shulgin, he was inspired to create something
Speaker 1: like mescalin from a mescaline trip. He went on, Uh,
Speaker 1: imagine being like, oh I really like that psychedelic I
Speaker 1: just took let me tinker around and make my own
Speaker 1: version of it, and he created m D M A
Speaker 1: as a result. It's kind of an homage to mescalin.
Speaker 1: He created m D M A and two C b U. Yeah. Well, um,
Speaker 1: what what mescalin does? It binds to the serotonin receptors
Speaker 1: in your brain, and just like UM LSD or magic
Speaker 1: mushrooms and stuff, it's going to cause a sense of
Speaker 1: loss of the cell for ego and ayahuasca. We did
Speaker 1: one on that too, righte. And the interesting thing is
Speaker 1: is ed describes a tolerance with other psychedelics. So in
Speaker 1: other words, if you take a bunch of mescaline, uh,
Speaker 1: it will build up a tolerance for LSD. Let's say,
Speaker 1: which is I guess it hits those same receptors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, so, which is I guess a problem if
Speaker 1: you take a ton of LSD. But but I have
Speaker 1: a friend from college. I won't name him. But one
Speaker 1: of the funniest quotes h he has about the old
Speaker 1: days is I've definitely forgotten I've taken acid and taken
Speaker 1: more acid. That's a T shirt right there too. That's deep.
Speaker 1: That's the eighties dead T shirt. It is um f
Speaker 1: and grooven. Remember that, Yeah, I remember? No? Okay, no, no,
Speaker 1: no mindset funking Grooven. So um. When peyote binds to
Speaker 1: those serotonin receptors, some of the cells that it binds
Speaker 1: too are responsible for something called nausea, and one of
Speaker 1: the hallmarks of a peyote trip is you um very
Speaker 1: typically feel nauseous and vomit for a couple of hours
Speaker 1: sometimes leading up to the trip, and it's really slow
Speaker 1: to cross the blood brain barrier, so it takes hours
Speaker 1: to to come on. Yeah, but it also has a
Speaker 1: real slow burn, a long burn to it, So compared
Speaker 1: to other trips, it's actually a very long lasting trip,
Speaker 1: sometimes twelve hours as opposed to say six eight hours
Speaker 1: for LSD or mushrooms or something. Twelve hours is the
Speaker 1: trip you're going to be on on Payote. It's also
Speaker 1: like really well known for being extremely visual and having
Speaker 1: some interesting like body feelings to it too. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: you can feel nauseous, you can feel euphoric. You can
Speaker 1: feel euphoric and nauseous, but you're gonna feel it in
Speaker 1: your body as well as have a lot of like
Speaker 1: really trippy visuals. I think didn't they take peyote in
Speaker 1: Doors movie? Yeah? And that's a really good he vomited
Speaker 1: I think? Right for megrind did That's where the whole
Speaker 1: lizard king thing came from? Because I think they took
Speaker 1: peyote in the desert. But it's also related to peyote
Speaker 1: in a different way too, isn't it the Doors? Right?
Speaker 1: Because Aldus Huxley wrote Doors of Perception. He was a
Speaker 1: big mescaling guy. Whitn't he that that book was about
Speaker 1: his first mescaling trip, right, And that's where the Doors
Speaker 1: got their name. And then Jim Morrison went on to
Speaker 1: write a bunch of bad poetry. Oh man, I thought
Speaker 1: American Prayer was one of the coolest albums of all time.
Speaker 1: I bought his poetry book. I was, you know, I
Speaker 1: was way into the doors for like everyone for a
Speaker 1: brief time in college, and I bought the book and
Speaker 1: ever the poetry books and everything, and did you ever
Speaker 1: listen to the album? Yeah? I thought it was all great.
Speaker 1: Now though it might I'm kind of like, that's not
Speaker 1: a great poetry, although maybe it is. What do I know,
Speaker 1: I'm the poet. You didn't even know it. So um.
Speaker 1: There's one other thing about Algius Huxley too. He coined
Speaker 1: the term psychedelic, really, and he coined it after his
Speaker 1: first mescaline trip. Interesting, so mescalin, not even just peyote,
Speaker 1: Mescalin has given the world m D m A the
Speaker 1: doors in the word psychedelic. I'm gonna have to tell
Speaker 1: Noel that because movie crushed listeners will laugh at this.
Speaker 1: Noel describes about of movies as psychedelic. Oh yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: bet he described Mandy as psychedelic. F Oh totally. I
Speaker 1: mean you could have to you could not describe it
Speaker 1: as psychedelic. Yeah, absolutely. Um, alright, so let's talk about
Speaker 1: the history a bit. They've done some carbon dating. I
Speaker 1: read this one study of these peyote buttons at an
Speaker 1: archaeological dig site that said that use. It suggested that
Speaker 1: use went as far back as fifty b C and
Speaker 1: that those buttons still had mescaline in them. That would work.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine tripping on seventy undred year old Payote buttons?
Speaker 1: I mean, wouldn't that be something that you shouldn't do? Well?
Speaker 1: I wonder if that makes it weaker or if it's
Speaker 1: like a fine wine, if it's like strap in this
Speaker 1: this is seven thousand year old mescaline. Yeah. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine like a bottle of wine from Thomas Jefferson cellar,
Speaker 1: which apparently that stuff is not very good to drink. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's just like a flashy thing that super rich people
Speaker 1: want on their shelf. Yeah. Yeah. So the name though,
Speaker 1: they think is derived from uh can you pronounce that?
Speaker 1: The now? Now, it's all it's a it's the southernmost
Speaker 1: group of the Aztecs. Okay. But the word they use
Speaker 1: it is pay a tool p E y O t
Speaker 1: L payotal, Yeah, payotal, payotal, payotal. That's yeah. I think
Speaker 1: we got there. And they don't know what it means.
Speaker 1: But some people think it might means the word glistening,
Speaker 1: but not everyone is on that train. That's it you
Speaker 1: could easily lose the the meaning of a word for glistening.
Speaker 1: You know, that's that's a high priority. But it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful word. But that first, The first mention of Westerners
Speaker 1: encountering peyote is in this sixteenth century study called the
Speaker 1: Florentine Codex, and there was a Franciscan missionary who wrote
Speaker 1: it named Bernardino de Sagan Sahagun. And he wrote, and
Speaker 1: this is in the late fifteen hundreds, on him who
Speaker 1: eats it or drinks it, it takes effect like mushrooms.
Speaker 1: Also also he sees many things which frightened one or
Speaker 1: make one laugh. There you have it pretty straightforward stuff
Speaker 1: for sure, but it definitely goes to show like, yeah,
Speaker 1: people have been eating mushrooms in Europe for a very
Speaker 1: long time. UM. So over time, from like the sixteenth
Speaker 1: century onward in North America, UM, people would come in
Speaker 1: contact with tribes that had like peyote rituals, and they
Speaker 1: would try peyote themselves and they'd be like, this is crazy,
Speaker 1: but this is great, or I puked my brains out,
Speaker 1: this is awful. Um. It's all these stories kind of
Speaker 1: started to come out. UM. And then over time peyote
Speaker 1: used really diminished. It used to be very widespread, not
Speaker 1: just where it grew, but even beyond its range. Like Um,
Speaker 1: indigenous tribes in the area used to trade, so it
Speaker 1: people who took peyote ritually. UM even after Colombian contact,
Speaker 1: was pretty extensive. But then once like the missionaries took
Speaker 1: hold and European governments took hold UM, that really got
Speaker 1: outlawed to where it was basically boiled down to one
Speaker 1: tribe called the Hui Chall. Actually, look that one up,
Speaker 1: is it we It's hoy but the the c h
Speaker 1: O L is the um the one he emphasized, So
Speaker 1: it's Hochal, beautiful Charles, that's even better than Peyotal, at
Speaker 1: least that's what the YouTube told me. The YouTube Emma
Speaker 1: saying the one with the spiral, is that one accurate?
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure they're They're mostly accurate. Hoch Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: So the ho ch All are very well known for
Speaker 1: being the tribe most associated with payote ritual use these days,
Speaker 1: but they're also very much opposed to UM western encroachment,
Speaker 1: sometimes violently so. But I think those two are very
Speaker 1: much interconnected. Yeah, I thought it was really interesting. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. I mean, um, instead of getting rid
Speaker 1: of all the things that we did and just swapping
Speaker 1: it out for Christianity like they were being told to do,
Speaker 1: they would just say, hey, man, I'll incorporate some of
Speaker 1: your Christian ideas into our payote ceremonies. Yeah, and not
Speaker 1: just them, but the Native American Church, which will talk
Speaker 1: about later, they did basically the same thing. That's right. So, um,
Speaker 1: you've got us uh a lot of payote use that
Speaker 1: kind of went down to um one tribe and in
Speaker 1: a weird way, it rebounded. No, it went, it shrank,
Speaker 1: and then it contracted eventually even larger than before to
Speaker 1: where it is today. Yeah, Peyota used today is far
Speaker 1: more widespread than it was a thousand years ago, isn't
Speaker 1: that interesting? Well, part of it because of you know,
Speaker 1: American tourists, that's definitely part of it. And American tourists
Speaker 1: were turned onto peyote by a guy who was a
Speaker 1: U c. L A anthropology student back in the sixties
Speaker 1: named Carlos Castaneda. That guy. Did you ever read any
Speaker 1: of casts and news books? No? But he has been
Speaker 1: sort of exposed as a fraud and a con man
Speaker 1: in most academic circles, they will they will call him
Speaker 1: that right in academic circles, right now, if you step
Speaker 1: over a few rings to the new age circle. The
Speaker 1: guy is a legend. And he wrote these books, um,
Speaker 1: that were supposedly ethnographic studies about Don Juan Mattis. And
Speaker 1: this is where Portuguese wine comes in, Chuck, did you
Speaker 1: read this any, Carlos Castana, Yeah, okay, yeah, back in
Speaker 1: the day, good stuff. Yeah, it was very interesting. I
Speaker 1: only remember. I mean i'd heard of him, but from
Speaker 1: the Bong Water song. What what is that? They had
Speaker 1: a song called folk Song where she talks about you know,
Speaker 1: I went somewhere looking for that Carlos Castana experience. Oh,
Speaker 1: bong Waters the name of a band. Yeah, I got you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great name for a band. They were great.
Speaker 1: Um so Carlos Castaneta Um, he created these ethnographic studies
Speaker 1: that he turned into books that sold like ten million copies.
Speaker 1: And it was him being indoctrinated into the Peyote way
Speaker 1: of life by a Peyote magician, a Yaqui Indian named
Speaker 1: Don Juan Maddis. And the Portuguese wine comes in because
Speaker 1: his long time companion is convinced that Don Juan didn't
Speaker 1: exist and that Carlos Castaneda made him up and actually
Speaker 1: named him after Matteus, the Portuguese wine that she and
Speaker 1: he used to drink together all the time. But she's saying, like,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean he's a fraud. That he he you know,
Speaker 1: combined all these lessons and everything that he learned from
Speaker 1: his own payote trips to kind of create this character
Speaker 1: that was like almost a spirit character, right, And everybody said, no,
Speaker 1: he's a fraud, like this was this was put out.
Speaker 1: There is actual anthropological field work, and he basically lied
Speaker 1: and made all this stuff up and was exposed later
Speaker 1: on by some colleagues who really went to great trouble
Speaker 1: to expose him and undermine him because he sold two
Speaker 1: million books ten million books still selling them too. It's
Speaker 1: like that guy, remember that big controversy, Like, jeez, when
Speaker 1: was it probably twenty years ago when or maybe not
Speaker 1: that long when Oprah exposed or yeah, she had him
Speaker 1: on the show A Million Little Pieces that I read
Speaker 1: that book. I really enjoyed it, and then found out
Speaker 1: afterward about the fact that a lot of it was
Speaker 1: made up, and I didn't care it was like, well, fine,
Speaker 1: call it a novel. Then enjoyed it. Yeah, but Over
Speaker 1: really did not let that one go. Remember, she brought
Speaker 1: him back on for just like she went on TV,
Speaker 1: like vouching for the guy or not vouching. But essentially
Speaker 1: you're sort of vouching if you recommend his book, I guess,
Speaker 1: but really, I I don't know. I think the follow
Speaker 1: up episode was unnecessary and really put the guy in
Speaker 1: the stocks. Basically. Yeah, I just remember thinking at the
Speaker 1: time he just should not have called it a memoir,
Speaker 1: just called it a novel. But and not to diminish
Speaker 1: anyone's experience and rehab, which I think was the problem.
Speaker 1: Is it kind of very much people, I think so.
Speaker 1: I mean, he basically made up some stuff about a
Speaker 1: real life tragedy that people go through. Was that twenty
Speaker 1: years ago? I don't think it was. When when I
Speaker 1: think I was, I think it was like fifteen, because
Speaker 1: it was right before I worked Here's when I worked
Speaker 1: with the Chicken Killers well set uh so peyote. As
Speaker 1: far as Westerners go, um, it was really the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Its effects were first discussed by a doctor in Texas
Speaker 1: named J. R. Briggs, who apparently just kind of stumbled
Speaker 1: upon it when he met someone from the Kiawa tribe
Speaker 1: who sold him some buttons, tried it out, wrote about
Speaker 1: it in eight seven and and get this. He he
Speaker 1: wrote that he um it was a respiratory stimulant and
Speaker 1: his heart started racing. And within a year the company
Speaker 1: Parke Davis from Detroit, had a Payote tincture out that
Speaker 1: They said, we'll replace the addicting cocaine for a respiratory stimulant.
Speaker 1: And it was mescaline. Yeah, mescaline tincture. He just dropped
Speaker 1: some mescaline. Well used to be the Wild West, didn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is a Detroit, well, the wild Midwest. I've
Speaker 1: got one more story about this too, alright, Park Davis
Speaker 1: out of Detroit, Alistair Crowley. I don't know how he
Speaker 1: found out that they had this mescaline tincture, but he
Speaker 1: shows up at their door in Detroit, you know, Alistair Crowley,
Speaker 1: the occult. Sure, he shows up and knocks on the
Speaker 1: door with his scepter and he goes, I hear that
Speaker 1: you have some Payote tincture. Do you mind whipping me
Speaker 1: up a special batch? And they did, and he said
Speaker 1: it was like the best payote tincture he's ever had, really,
Speaker 1: out of all the payot tinctures, I guess he'd had
Speaker 1: a lot of them. He wrote a book called Like
Speaker 1: the Irie of a Mad Drug Fiend or something like that,
Speaker 1: So I mean he knew what he was talking about.
Speaker 1: But that's a good read. But the chemist at a
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical company whipped up a special batch of peyote tincture
Speaker 1: for him because he showed up on the doorstep. I
Speaker 1: wonder if he goes by the lab and he's like, guys,
Speaker 1: this for Alistair Crowley just content, Yeah, it's a little
Speaker 1: extra mustard in this one. So um. And there was
Speaker 1: a pharmacologist named Louis Lewin or Lewis Lewin, and he
Speaker 1: was the first to publish an analysis of these alkaloids
Speaker 1: that we were talking about. And this is a so
Speaker 1: stuff was going on back then in the late eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds that they didn't quite understand, but they were writing
Speaker 1: about it. There's also an article from the Aspen Times,
Speaker 1: and I think that it's just a newspaper article about
Speaker 1: some like white pioneer types who found some peyote buttons
Speaker 1: from running into an indigenous tribe and took him in Aspen,
Speaker 1: Colorado eventually was settled exactly. That's pretty bunny. Alright, Let's
Speaker 1: take another break here and we'll talk about the Native
Speaker 1: American Church right after this stuff you should know, rush
Speaker 1: stuff you should know, so check. There's something really weird
Speaker 1: about payote in modern times, and that is that the
Speaker 1: Native American Church um takes peyote. But the Native American
Speaker 1: Church is made up of plenty of tribes that never
Speaker 1: were exposed to payote traditionally. That was all a byproduct
Speaker 1: of the forced relocation and reservation settlements that the American
Speaker 1: government forced upon them. Right, so they'll be like a
Speaker 1: Native American tribe in Canada that can take this. Canada
Speaker 1: is nowhere near the natural range of peyote. And it's
Speaker 1: not like it was traded all the way up into
Speaker 1: Canada back in the day. It literally came out of
Speaker 1: this intermingling in the Oklahoma territory. And what makes it
Speaker 1: even more interesting to me is that you can trace
Speaker 1: it back to basically one man named Kwana Parker, who
Speaker 1: was a Comanche chief who was a bad a dude.
Speaker 1: He was like one of the last holdouts and then
Speaker 1: managed to go from like um like basically at war
Speaker 1: with white settlers in the American government to one of
Speaker 1: the leading leading politicians of the Oklahoma Territory who actually
Speaker 1: bridged the gap between um, the white government and the
Speaker 1: Indians who have been relocated. Um he somehow rather than
Speaker 1: just being he went from bitter enemies to Okay, let's
Speaker 1: figure out how to do this the right way. But
Speaker 1: he was the one who introduced payote to the Oklahoma territory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he went to Mexico in the eighteen eighties and I
Speaker 1: guess brought a bunch back with him. So this stuff
Speaker 1: is great. He said, let me just put a little
Speaker 1: bit of this in my hat and I'm gonna ride
Speaker 1: back with it. But the Native American Church became official
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighteen, which I thought was interesting, like right
Speaker 1: around the same time that Mescaline was synthesized. And no
Speaker 1: one really knows how many people they have because it's
Speaker 1: not like um ed Ed says, it's like not a
Speaker 1: tightly knit organization. It's more like a set of principles.
Speaker 1: And my the first thing he came to my head
Speaker 1: is like, it's probably because they're not They're not after anything.
Speaker 1: It's like the Southern Baptist convention is very everyone knows
Speaker 1: exactly how many members there are there because it's very
Speaker 1: strict and formal codified. Because there's uh, I imagine they
Speaker 1: have an agenda of some sort. Sure, I don't think
Speaker 1: there's anywhere near the same agenda as among the Native
Speaker 1: American Church. But they do share the fact that they
Speaker 1: are a Christian organization. Oh yeah, that's as far as
Speaker 1: I know. They are Christian based Peyote Church. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well the other interesting thing is you said, because it's
Speaker 1: sort of a um, a mix of all different kinds
Speaker 1: of tribes and people's that they have just sort of
Speaker 1: settled on. Um. Like it's it's not like if they
Speaker 1: use like drums in a ceremony or a rattle and
Speaker 1: a ceremony, it's for that specific tribe. They're more like
Speaker 1: generic Native American items, right, Yeah, it's almost like, um,
Speaker 1: this is yeah, there's no better way to put it really,
Speaker 1: or they'll have, you know, even if they didn't use
Speaker 1: TPS in their tribe, they will have the Peyote Ritual
Speaker 1: ceremony in a TP its representation, part of its representation.
Speaker 1: But also it was just a practical measure too, because
Speaker 1: on the reservation under the very watchful eye of like
Speaker 1: the White army officers who were in charge of ridding
Speaker 1: Native Americans of their customs and ceremonies. They couldn't do
Speaker 1: these payote rituals out in the open any longer, so
Speaker 1: they actually took them inside in secret into TPS, which
Speaker 1: is why they're conducted in tps still today. Originally it
Speaker 1: was just to keep from under the eyes of the
Speaker 1: people who are charged with overseeing them eradicating their culture. Interesting,
Speaker 1: so they're like, let's just keep it in the TP, right,
Speaker 1: what happens in the t P state, You got it. So,
Speaker 1: a modern ceremony in the Native American church with peyote
Speaker 1: is usually specific and it's focused on like healing most likely,
Speaker 1: and it's led by something called a roadman. You sit
Speaker 1: around that fire, you take your payote, and you strap
Speaker 1: in for an all night experience where you're supposed to
Speaker 1: like really be into it. You're not supposed to lay
Speaker 1: back and look at the stars or take a nap
Speaker 1: or anything. You're supposed to really focus on. I guess
Speaker 1: what you're trying to accomplish, right, or what the peyote
Speaker 1: is telling you to pay attention to. Like you're yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not like like check out my hand. I'm waving
Speaker 1: in of my first everybody see that funking groove in. Man,
Speaker 1: how long has this been happening? It's like two hours? No, man, right.
Speaker 1: And there's this science scientific American writer named John Horgan
Speaker 1: who wrote about being in a um Native American church
Speaker 1: payote ritual and he said, like, man, people were sobbing,
Speaker 1: people were throwing up, like there was it was very solemn,
Speaker 1: he said, and they were just being taught a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff by the payote. Very interesting. And the Native
Speaker 1: American churches in the United States the only group that
Speaker 1: is allowed to um, trade, sell, possess, grow ingest payote.
Speaker 1: And actually I don't think all of them can grow.
Speaker 1: I think you have to be a licensed payo tero
Speaker 1: to to grow or harvest payote um. But you can
Speaker 1: be like I'm a member of the Native American Church
Speaker 1: and I can take this and for a while, UM,
Speaker 1: from I think vent eight until the nineties, you had
Speaker 1: to be a Native America to be considered a member
Speaker 1: of the Native American Church by the US government and
Speaker 1: be um subject to be allowed to eat peyote. But
Speaker 1: that's not the case anymore. No, there's a Supreme Court trial.
Speaker 1: I think it's right. The American Indian Religious Freedom ACX
Speaker 1: and seventy nine four basically said it can't be very specific,
Speaker 1: so it's unconstitutional. So you could technically join the Native
Speaker 1: American Church. You could technically submit um and petition the
Speaker 1: government and register with the government and be a peyotero
Speaker 1: and grow peyote and take it and eat it. Yes,
Speaker 1: you Chris Ball. That's who Chuck speaking to right now.
Speaker 1: Is Chris Ball the guy who's listening. Okay, gotcha. I
Speaker 1: hope there is one Chris Ball. I kind of hope
Speaker 1: there's not. No for legal reasons. But this was all
Speaker 1: necessary because here in the United States, of course, um,
Speaker 1: it was classified as a habit forming drug in n
Speaker 1: which it's not, which is not. And uh, let me see,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy the US past the Comprehensive Drug Abuse
Speaker 1: Prevention and Control Act, where they had to put everything
Speaker 1: in categories, scheduled it as a Schedule one, labeled it
Speaker 1: as a Schedule one substance, which is of course the
Speaker 1: worst of the worst, they say, which is not. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of it. You got anything else? Yeah,
Speaker 1: one thing I forget to say is um even though
Speaker 1: it's not related to LSD or mushrooms, it's frequently compared
Speaker 1: to it in potency. And I saw that it's thirty
Speaker 1: times less potent than then psilocybin. That pot is, yeah,
Speaker 1: thirty times less. Put This just seemed really weird to me,
Speaker 1: but I saw it in like an actual study from
Speaker 1: San Diego State and Tijuana Tech Party School. Um, and
Speaker 1: it's like one thousand to three thousand times less potent
Speaker 1: than LSD. Interesting, Well, then what is this twelve hour like, well,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean it's not gonna like get on top
Speaker 1: of you and you can have a really bad trip
Speaker 1: and it's kind of like you're gonna trip for twelve hours.
Speaker 1: But supposedly dose specific like a graham of gotcha, got
Speaker 1: maybe mescalin is just completely bonkers. The difference between the two. Well,
Speaker 1: because LSD they've sent the size down to you know,
Speaker 1: it's a little tiny piece of paper, it's not eight buttons.
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh, I think that's it. Then that's payote Yeah, um, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about Payote, go read
Speaker 1: some Carlos Castanado books. And since I said that it's
Speaker 1: time for the listener mail. This is on eyewitness testimony.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, uh, I thought i'd chip in a little
Speaker 1: bit about my own personal experience. So I've been living
Speaker 1: and working in Japan for the last fifteen years. I've
Speaker 1: noticed I'm perfectly capable of identifying Japanese. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, I can sometimes recognize and pick out students
Speaker 1: that I taught many years ago on the train or
Speaker 1: the mall with relative ease. I live and work in
Speaker 1: the Kansai area, which is a little smaller than New
Speaker 1: York City in terms of population, so I see a
Speaker 1: lot of people. Meanwhile, back in the States during the holidays.
Speaker 1: One time, I was shopping with my family, spotted my
Speaker 1: mom from across the store and walked over to her.
Speaker 1: When I got closer, it wasn't my mom, it was
Speaker 1: another woman that looked about the same agent height. And
Speaker 1: he wrote back after I told him I was going
Speaker 1: to read it and said, you know, I just want
Speaker 1: to point out him just a white dude, Just a
Speaker 1: white dude, right uh? And he said, so, I think
Speaker 1: it's not that we are somehow magically better at identifying
Speaker 1: our own race, but are just better at identifying the
Speaker 1: kind of people that we are usually surrounded by, which
Speaker 1: is usually our own race. Very good point. Was this
Speaker 1: guy's name Chris Ball? No, he said, I thought you
Speaker 1: might find that interesting. Anyway, If you're ever in Japan again, Josh,
Speaker 1: let me know. And just one small question for you.
Speaker 1: Did you ever take the janguage the janguage the Japanese
Speaker 1: Language proficiency test, which I think they call the Jangled Test?
Speaker 1: For sure? Did I ever take it? No? Had I,
Speaker 1: I would have failed spectacularly. It's one of the great
Speaker 1: shames of my life that, after all these years and
Speaker 1: being married to a woman of Japanese ancestry, I I
Speaker 1: speak very little Japanese. Al Right, well, he says, I've
Speaker 1: just gotten done writing a book for the first level.
Speaker 1: I'd love to send it to you. Oh yeah, please,
Speaker 1: Chris is from Clayton McKnight Clayton, and he said, ps.
Speaker 1: One of the textbooks I use in class as a
Speaker 1: hippie character in it named Rob. No, that's what he said. Wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would love to have that book because I would
Speaker 1: like to learn Japanese. Yeah, Clayton, Thanks Clayton. I've been
Speaker 1: to Kanzi too before. They have a beautiful airport there
Speaker 1: that was designed by Renzo Piano. Nice. It's worth even
Speaker 1: just looking up pictures of it. That nice. Did you
Speaker 1: ever stay in that t W a hotel in New York? No?
Speaker 1: Have you? No? But I saw it in in a
Speaker 1: magazine article and I thought it looked pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does look cool. I haven't been to New York
Speaker 1: for a while. Yeah. The problem is staying out of
Speaker 1: the airport. Yeah JFK. I mean, I guess if you're
Speaker 1: just like staying there overnight for a connecting flight at work,
Speaker 1: let's do it all right. Uh. If you want to
Speaker 1: get in touch of this, like Clayton did and um
Speaker 1: offer us a language book or anything, or just to
Speaker 1: say hi, you can go onto stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: dot com and check out our social links there, and
Speaker 1: you can send us an email to stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: i heeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works. For more
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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.