Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of our
Speaker 1: discussion of psychedelics with a special focus on psilocybin mushrooms.
Speaker 1: Um So, in the last episode, if you haven't heard
Speaker 1: that yet, you should probably go back and listen to
Speaker 1: that one first. That's where we lay the groundwork for
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff we're talking about today. Where
Speaker 1: we ended up talking about a little bit about the
Speaker 1: history of psychedelics, about where we stand in that history,
Speaker 1: which will explore more over the next couple of episodes.
Speaker 1: We talked about a lot of the common features of
Speaker 1: the psychedelic experience and what those reported features have in
Speaker 1: common with, say, what William James described as the mystical
Speaker 1: experience or the religious experience. So we talked about like
Speaker 1: the ideas of the psychedelic experience being ineffable or hard
Speaker 1: to put into words, often having this quality of veridicality
Speaker 1: or the noetic quality, seeming like it isn't just an experience,
Speaker 1: but that it's somehow imparts true information do you? Right?
Speaker 1: And then we also just talked about in general terms
Speaker 1: like what is a drug? What what does this term
Speaker 1: drug mean? Why do we apply it to some substances
Speaker 1: that have a physiological effect on us and not to others?
Speaker 1: And then what indeed is a psychedelic and uh and
Speaker 1: again all those properties that we typically associate with the
Speaker 1: psychedelic experience. Right. And one of the funny things is
Speaker 1: when I was growing up, I thought of drugs as
Speaker 1: one class of things that are all equally bad, um
Speaker 1: and you know, all equally scary. And of course this
Speaker 1: was you know, United States drug policy conditioning as it
Speaker 1: filtered through into the education system. Uh. And in in
Speaker 1: a way you can kind of understand, like, you know,
Speaker 1: you want kids to be aware of the dangers of
Speaker 1: messing with addictive substances. You don't want kids trying out, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, heroin or cocaine or even tobacco. Really you know,
Speaker 1: like yeah, I mean as a as a father, I
Speaker 1: totally get that. But then all these other things get
Speaker 1: lumped in with that stuff, right. And yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we could certainly a lot has been said, a lot
Speaker 1: has been written, and we could probably spend a whole
Speaker 1: time just dissecting the war on drugs and what what
Speaker 1: didn't work, um, and just sort of some of the
Speaker 1: problematic aspects of the messaging. Uh, because I remember growing
Speaker 1: up and going to these like the dare rallies at school. Um.
Speaker 1: This is like like a a US educational outreach program
Speaker 1: um to keep kids off of drugs. And and there
Speaker 1: was this it did feel like drugs were just the enemy.
Speaker 1: And then anything else you might be take, like there
Speaker 1: was medication. Drugs certainly wasn't something that would a term
Speaker 1: that would be used to describe Thailand all or anything. Um.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, and in doing this you end up
Speaker 1: like like just vilifying all these substances, uh, and in
Speaker 1: making and also perhaps making them more appealing in a
Speaker 1: certain sense, you know, because you're telling all these kids
Speaker 1: know this is dark, dangerous stuff, don't and near the
Speaker 1: dark magic um of drugs. And and at the same
Speaker 1: time it can lead to this false impression that drugs
Speaker 1: were a product of the nineteen sixties, or at least
Speaker 1: of the or the mid twentieth century, that we had
Speaker 1: like a time before drugs. And then suddenly, h here come, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, here comes the psychedelic counterculture. Here comes the marijuana. Marijuana,
Speaker 1: of course came in earlier. Uh. The same can be
Speaker 1: said of cocaine uh and UH and opium and uh
Speaker 1: and so forth. But but still there's you could easily
Speaker 1: get this false idea in your head that these were
Speaker 1: products of modern society. There were new modern problems, and
Speaker 1: certainly there are versions of these substances that were modern,
Speaker 1: and problems that they introduced were thoroughly modern. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: for for instance, you know, things like when you start
Speaker 1: talking about like crack cocaine or you start talking about heroin, um.
Speaker 1: You know, those are the more modern twists on on
Speaker 1: very old organisms, you know, going back to the poppy
Speaker 1: seed or the coca plant. Yeah, and even referring to
Speaker 1: the more psychedelic substances, not say like opium based alkaloids
Speaker 1: or something like that. But uh, you know, psilocybin and
Speaker 1: l sc LSD was in a way kind of invented.
Speaker 1: It is a compound that was isolated from the urgad
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty eight, I think it was, and then
Speaker 1: first you know, Albert Hofmann figured out what it was
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties, so that was kind of new.
Speaker 1: But psychedelics in general were not new, It's certainly been around.
Speaker 1: They've been used by humans for hundreds or thousands of years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking about organisms. We're talking about species
Speaker 1: that evolved to thrive in our world. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: take psilocybin for instance. Again, it's found in some two
Speaker 1: hundred different varieties of a two hundred different species of mushrooms,
Speaker 1: and um, exactly why they have these properties is still
Speaker 1: something that scientists or are looking into. But according to
Speaker 1: a two thousand eighteen study from Ohio State University UH
Speaker 1: the psychedelic properties of pilocybin containing mushrooms, it may have
Speaker 1: evolved as an app a tight suppressant to deter insects
Speaker 1: that frequented the the animal dung from which the mushrooms grew,
Speaker 1: which is which is interesting, Yeah, because that is that's
Speaker 1: not even a quality of the psychedelic experience that we
Speaker 1: even touched on in the previous episode. But there is
Speaker 1: an appetite suppressant that is taking place as well. So
Speaker 1: maybe a lot of the classic effects that we identify
Speaker 1: as psychedelic are merely byproducts of the of the compounds
Speaker 1: that the primary evolutionary purpose of which is an appetite
Speaker 1: suppressant that that's just hypothesis. Right. With the hypothesis, it's
Speaker 1: still still an open question. But but yeah, there's no
Speaker 1: such things as LSD. Munchie's right, I mean, there are
Speaker 1: funny enough that there are much weirder hypothesis, I mean,
Speaker 1: much weirder ones that a lot of the In the
Speaker 1: last episode we talked about the people with the sort
Speaker 1: of mico centric worldview who come to see you know,
Speaker 1: like Terrence McKenna and the people who come to see mushrooms.
Speaker 1: Is some in some way kind of secretly running the world,
Speaker 1: and some of these people, you know, they'll get into
Speaker 1: ideas of how, well, really the reason that psilocybin exists,
Speaker 1: you know, this compound has these effects on us, is
Speaker 1: that evolved as some kind of communication mechanism where the
Speaker 1: mush you know, the fungus world is trying to break
Speaker 1: through to us because we're the like dominant moving species
Speaker 1: that controls energy and ecosystems, and it's trying to get
Speaker 1: through to us and open our minds to its priorities.
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting. Now, certainly we're not going to get
Speaker 1: into the question of whether psilocybin containing mushrooms are gods
Speaker 1: or whether they're conscious or whether they're conscious. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: I think maybe Edward Ocone might have something to say
Speaker 1: about that, but he does, uh yeah, and we'll touch
Speaker 1: on that a little later. But even but I don't
Speaker 1: want to associate him too much with this um with
Speaker 1: right with the you know, the sort of more extreme
Speaker 1: version of this. But in terms of just associating psilocymon
Speaker 1: and psychedelics with gods, there's nothing new about that. We'll
Speaker 1: get into that as we go here. One of the
Speaker 1: connections that mckinna makes in his stone and Ape hypothesis
Speaker 1: is that since you have psilocybin growing out of the
Speaker 1: dung of verbivores, namely a cattle, this would have been
Speaker 1: something they would have become obvious to people's that were
Speaker 1: rearing cattle in the ancient world, and then it would
Speaker 1: have traveled with them as they brought their cattle with them.
Speaker 1: And he makes a case I'm not sure exactly how
Speaker 1: strong it is for the various cattle gods of antiquity, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of you know, horned gods, the
Speaker 1: golden calf. Yeah, part of their association is with the
Speaker 1: psilocybin mushrooms that would have been almost like the milk
Speaker 1: of the animal. Like the animal produces meat, the animal
Speaker 1: produces milk. The animal produces this substance that allows us
Speaker 1: to engage in a mystic experience. That's an interesting potential
Speaker 1: ecological relationship. I mean the same way that zoonotic diseases
Speaker 1: follow human civilization where they've got domesticated animals, right, because
Speaker 1: they're in close proximity to certain domesticated animals, the diseases
Speaker 1: that affect those animals have a greater likely of jumping
Speaker 1: over into you know, into the human strains, right. Um.
Speaker 1: But you could say the same thing about things that
Speaker 1: are not diseases but other follow on organisms, for example,
Speaker 1: psilocybin mushrooms right right. Yeah. Now, to be clear, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, as we're discussing the show before, I think
Speaker 1: it's always um too tempting to try and point to
Speaker 1: a single thing as being like the prime motivator in
Speaker 1: the creation of mythologies and the genesis of gods and
Speaker 1: so um. You know, I'm kind I'm open to the
Speaker 1: idea that psilocybin could have played a role in the
Speaker 1: character of some of these guys. And we do see
Speaker 1: specific gods as we'll discussed that have clear iconography associated
Speaker 1: with psychedelic substances, but of course there are there's so
Speaker 1: many other processes going on in the generation of divine
Speaker 1: entities in the human mind. Well, one interesting question, at
Speaker 1: least interesting to me, is the question of why did
Speaker 1: we start taking these substances. Clearly, the use of psilocybin
Speaker 1: goes way back into history, and we'll talk sort of
Speaker 1: about the natural and cultural story of of psilocybin, especially
Speaker 1: in a in a bit, But like why what benefit
Speaker 1: biologically would there have been to doing this? I mean,
Speaker 1: is it something that humans do just as a sort
Speaker 1: of like byproduct of the way their brains work, and
Speaker 1: there is no real biological benefit or is there a
Speaker 1: biological benefit that maybe we don't fully recognize. Is there
Speaker 1: an adaptive reason to take psychedelic drugs? Yeah, because a
Speaker 1: lot of times we think of these substances as being
Speaker 1: especially in the Western context, you know, purely recreational, purely
Speaker 1: even hedonistic, and that's not what we're seeing out of
Speaker 1: the especially the more recent studies and even the studies
Speaker 1: of the nineteen fifties and sixties. And it's also not
Speaker 1: what we see in traditional societies that use them, there
Speaker 1: was an attempt and these were used very seriously as
Speaker 1: a means of solving problems and uh, communing with the
Speaker 1: mystical world, etcetera. Yeah, that's exactly right, and and so
Speaker 1: you can I mean, one thing that automatically sticks out
Speaker 1: there for me is that if there is some kind
Speaker 1: of adaptive value to these things, it could have some
Speaker 1: kind of uh, you know, social reinforcement role. Right, You know,
Speaker 1: this is a common kind of thing. You say, what
Speaker 1: is the value of X cultural practice? Very often you
Speaker 1: could say, well, maybe it's strength and strengthen social bonds
Speaker 1: in some way, you know, helps groups work together better. Um,
Speaker 1: it helps them share information and bond better, so they're
Speaker 1: more effective as a hunting team or something like that.
Speaker 1: So that's a possibility, but we don't know that's the case.
Speaker 1: But another way of thinking about it is, could we
Speaker 1: better understand the uses of psychedelics and humans and the
Speaker 1: reasons for those uses by looking at the effects of
Speaker 1: psychedelics in other animals. Uh So, for one thing, there
Speaker 1: are some people in the world that actually gives psychedelic
Speaker 1: drugs to domestic animals for ritual and practical purposes. And
Speaker 1: there's one example I came across the I thought was
Speaker 1: a really interesting study. This is a study by Bradley
Speaker 1: Bennett and Rokyo Alarcon called Hunting and Hallucinogens the use
Speaker 1: of psychoactive and other plants to improve the hunting ability
Speaker 1: of dogs. So this is giving psychedelic substances to animals
Speaker 1: with a purpose that's it's not research related, but also
Speaker 1: not um purely recreational like some of these videos you
Speaker 1: see of say, squirrels allegedly consuming psychedelic mushrooms. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: so this would be something parallel to an adaptive value
Speaker 1: in a hunting scenario. And so this paper was in
Speaker 1: the Journal of ethno Pharmacology in two thousand fifteen. So
Speaker 1: the authors here looked at the use of psychoactive substances
Speaker 1: by two tribes in South America, the Shuar and the
Speaker 1: Quechua of Ecuador, who are reported to give hallucinogenic plants
Speaker 1: to their hunting dogs in order to improve their hunting ability.
Speaker 1: And the authors find that this practice is prevalent and
Speaker 1: they think it's likely adaptive. Now, what good would it
Speaker 1: do to give a hunting dog a hallucinogen, right, it
Speaker 1: seemed to me if you didn't think too deeply about it,
Speaker 1: that just seems counterproductive. Right, It's going to make the
Speaker 1: dog distracted, probably less effective, right. Yeah. The idea is
Speaker 1: that what it would would alter its perception of reality.
Speaker 1: But doesn't it need a fine tune perception of reality
Speaker 1: in order to do it's hunting exactly? But the authors
Speaker 1: quote hypothesize that hallucinogenic plants alter perception in hunting dogs
Speaker 1: by diminishing extraneous signals and by enhancing sensory perception, most
Speaker 1: likely old faction, or the sense of smell that is
Speaker 1: directly involved in the detection and capture of game. Now
Speaker 1: this is interesting because we always have to recognize that
Speaker 1: a dog is a far more uh, smell based creature
Speaker 1: than than we can really almost more, it's more more
Speaker 1: smell based than we can imagine, Like, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we're such a visual species and uh and certainly, uh,
Speaker 1: psychedelics are going to alter the sense of smell. And
Speaker 1: we discussed that briefly last time, Like you, smells may change,
Speaker 1: smells may seem strange, and imagine that in a creature
Speaker 1: for whom smell is this really rich means of sensing
Speaker 1: the external world. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think in
Speaker 1: the same way that the psychedelic experience is often ineffable.
Speaker 1: There's this quality to it that you can't describe once
Speaker 1: it's over and communicate to other people. I think probably
Speaker 1: the sense experience of other kinds of animals, animals like dogs,
Speaker 1: is probably ineffable and and un understandable from our point
Speaker 1: of view, Like there's no way for you to picture
Speaker 1: or put yourself into the level of chemo sensitivity of
Speaker 1: a dog there, you know, their level of engagement with
Speaker 1: all of the chemical signals going on around them that
Speaker 1: we only get this tiny, blunt, faint kind of whiff
Speaker 1: of um and and so. Yeah, so that's obviously an
Speaker 1: important part of their hunting perception. But of course they
Speaker 1: have other senses to They've got hearing and smell and
Speaker 1: all that. So maybe what's going on again, we don't
Speaker 1: know this, This is just what the author's hypothesize, you know.
Speaker 1: In the last episode, we talked about how one of
Speaker 1: the common reported effects of taking psilocybin as a holy
Speaker 1: synogen is the experience of heightened perceptions, like you know,
Speaker 1: colors might seem more more vivid or brighter, or you
Speaker 1: might feel like you have in a more cute sense
Speaker 1: of hearing. Um, it's hard for me to imagine that,
Speaker 1: like the you know, you actually have greater resolution in
Speaker 1: your eyeballs for sight, But there might be something going
Speaker 1: on in the brain where suddenly more power is devoted
Speaker 1: to noticing detail in what you see or something like that. Um,
Speaker 1: And so you can imagine maybe the same news true
Speaker 1: in these hunting dogs. Maybe you know, brainpower gets sort
Speaker 1: of reorganized in a way where there's new levels of
Speaker 1: attention to detail and smell that would normally be dedicated
Speaker 1: to other senses or other distracting mental processes. But then again,
Speaker 1: we don't know that's the case. That's just interesting possibility
Speaker 1: for what's going on here. If this is in fact adaptive,
Speaker 1: which the authors think it probably is. Uh. The author
Speaker 1: is also right, this is funny that quote. If this
Speaker 1: is true, plant substances might also enhance the ability of
Speaker 1: dogs to detect explosive drugs, human remains, and other targets
Speaker 1: for which they are valued. So so the drug dogs
Speaker 1: will now be given will be given drugs. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is interesting and a possible future in which let's say,
Speaker 1: explosive sniffing dogs will be micro dosing um or or
Speaker 1: perhaps macro dosing in order to find what they're looking for. Uh.
Speaker 1: We do want to stress that we are not encouraging
Speaker 1: anyone out there to uh take a psychedelic substance an
Speaker 1: attempt to carry out any particular tasks in their life.
Speaker 1: UM No. We're also not encouraging people to dose their
Speaker 1: pets or domestic animals with substances you might not know
Speaker 1: the effects of. I mean, that's just not advisable. But this,
Speaker 1: this does remind me, of course, micro dosing is this
Speaker 1: is what's supposed to trend and like Silicon Valley and
Speaker 1: so forth, where take a little bit less a little
Speaker 1: bit of some sort of psychedelic in order to give
Speaker 1: you with what some supposed slide edge of whatever your
Speaker 1: coding job happens to be, etcetera. And uh and I
Speaker 1: don't know. I even't looked at the research on that
Speaker 1: to see if there is any research on that to
Speaker 1: say exactly how that holds up. Um, but it does.
Speaker 1: It does remind me of a recent Saturday Night Live
Speaker 1: sketch and which there was a there's a film reviewer
Speaker 1: who appears on Weekend Update who instead of micro dosing
Speaker 1: to go review films as macro dosing. So he's taking
Speaker 1: like a colossal amount of psychedelics and then going and
Speaker 1: seeing just whatever the Hollywood films of the day happened
Speaker 1: to be and then having these just crazy um reviews
Speaker 1: of them. I recommend everybody check that out. I haven't
Speaker 1: seen that one now. I think something that's interesting about
Speaker 1: this hunting dog study, though, is that it it kind
Speaker 1: of like roughly falls in line with some of the
Speaker 1: arguments the McKenna maide back in ninete and Food of
Speaker 1: the Gods for psilocybin aiding humanities ancestors along three different levels.
Speaker 1: So but but one of the key areas is that
Speaker 1: he was pointing to the work of psycho pharmacologist Roland L.
Speaker 1: Fisher uh saying, quote, small amounts of psilocybin consumed with
Speaker 1: no awareness of its psycho activity while in the general
Speaker 1: act of browsing for food and perhaps later consumed consciously
Speaker 1: in part a noticeable increase in visual acuity, especially edge detection.
Speaker 1: As visual acuity is at a premium among hunter gatherers.
Speaker 1: The discovery of the equivalent of quote chemical binoculars could
Speaker 1: not fail to have an impact on the hunting and
Speaker 1: gathering success of those individuals who availed themselves of this advantage.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, yeah, yeah, um. And and he also argues
Speaker 1: that at higher doses, restlessness and sexual arousal would have
Speaker 1: played a role. And then finally shamanistic ecstasy would have
Speaker 1: would have of course been an important part and it
Speaker 1: clearly was an important part of the use of psychedelics
Speaker 1: early people. Now I'm not I'm not saying that this
Speaker 1: paper really backs up McKenna in any meaningful way here.
Speaker 1: And I'm also not sure if his interpretation of Fisher's
Speaker 1: work is completely fair or if he's leaning into his
Speaker 1: assumptions on this. But you know, if if psilocybin makes
Speaker 1: a hunting dog slightly better at hunting, or a hunter
Speaker 1: gather slightly better at their thing, then I think this
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting. I mean that the same case
Speaker 1: can can and is made for natural substances that work
Speaker 1: as stimulants, which of course are widely used through human culture.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, for every employee out there who's
Speaker 1: not micro dosing with psilocybin, everybody else is micro or
Speaker 1: macro dosing with caffeine, ultra dosing on or um. Goodness.
Speaker 1: I remember hearing tales of like the older newsrooms where
Speaker 1: a cigarette met was a was a request where someone
Speaker 1: would be like working on a deadline and they're drinking
Speaker 1: coffee and they need somebody to actually like stick the
Speaker 1: cigarette in their mouth to give something and light it
Speaker 1: up for them so they can have the the nicotine
Speaker 1: rush to finish their job. Or even the cliche of
Speaker 1: the use of cocaine in business in Wall Street. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or and before that, the you know heard tales of
Speaker 1: you know of labors, you know, being depending on cocaine
Speaker 1: back back in the day as being like a primary
Speaker 1: mean of just getting through the labor of the day.
Speaker 1: And of course in the armed forces of centuries you
Speaker 1: see a lot of use of stimulants. Certainly we've talked
Speaker 1: about this in the show before. The use of stimulants
Speaker 1: by the Nazis during the Second World War was pretty extensive,
Speaker 1: especially in the Liftwaffe, and and today you still see
Speaker 1: variants various stimulants that are designed for you some long
Speaker 1: flights in military context. All right, well, I think maybe
Speaker 1: we should take a break, and then when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will talk a little bit about animals self administration
Speaker 1: of hallucinogens. Alright, we're back. So before we get into
Speaker 1: the self administration of psychedelics by animals, it's just a
Speaker 1: quick reminder that animals in general I have are known
Speaker 1: to make use of various chemicals in their environment. It
Speaker 1: may be something more internal, like a poison dart frog
Speaker 1: acquiring its toxicity via the plants that it consumes, or
Speaker 1: it could be something like lemurs that take a centipede,
Speaker 1: crush it, and spread the the toxicity of the of
Speaker 1: of this species on their fur, presumably to keep insects away.
Speaker 1: So there are plenty of cases like that where it's
Speaker 1: either a more complex part of the creatures physiology or
Speaker 1: it is something that they are doing almost like tool
Speaker 1: use of the toxins in their environment. Great example of
Speaker 1: this I remember from our Squirrels episodes was the ground squirrel. Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think some western United States or
Speaker 1: western North American ground squirrel has a strategy for avoiding
Speaker 1: its rattlesnake predators, which is finding discarded rattlesnake skins after
Speaker 1: the snake sheds its skin, chewing that up and rubbing
Speaker 1: it all over its body and the bodies of its young. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's brilliant. But so these are all, you know, self
Speaker 1: administrations of of chemicals by animals. So would animals take
Speaker 1: psychedelic drugs given the opportunity do Do they just seek
Speaker 1: these things out and consume them voluntarily? It's one thing
Speaker 1: if maybe an animal consumes a hallucinogen by accident, you know,
Speaker 1: because it's just there's a psychedelic compound in their environment
Speaker 1: and they happen to eat it while they're foraging, versus
Speaker 1: behaviors were it really does seem like they're actively seeking
Speaker 1: it out and after they have the experience once try
Speaker 1: to repeat it. Have you ever seen the movie The Bear? No,
Speaker 1: I haven't, so I forget the French director's name he
Speaker 1: directed the original, or the name of the rose Um.
Speaker 1: But but The Bear I remember as being a very
Speaker 1: fun film about this this bear, using lots of like
Speaker 1: real bears used in the film. But there's a sequence
Speaker 1: in which the bear eats a psychedelic mushroom and has
Speaker 1: a psychedelic experience and it's pretty wonderful of you. If
Speaker 1: you don't see the whole movie, I recommend everyone check
Speaker 1: out that sequence on like YouTube if it's still out there. Well,
Speaker 1: the Bear would not be alone in the animal kingdom,
Speaker 1: it turns out. So there is a paper that I
Speaker 1: want to refer to here from the International Journal of Addictions.
Speaker 1: This is from nineteen seventy three, so a lot of
Speaker 1: thinking about drugs has changed since then, but this does
Speaker 1: document some like recorded animal behaviors that are pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: So this is called an the Logical Search for Self
Speaker 1: Administration of Hallucinogens by Ronald K. Siegel, And so it's
Speaker 1: been reported previously by Wasson in nineteen sixty eight, who
Speaker 1: will learn a bit more about later in the episode,
Speaker 1: that reindeer often self administer hallucinogenic mushrooms known as Amanita
Speaker 1: muscaria or fly A garic. And they will find these
Speaker 1: mushrooms when they're available and they will eat them. So
Speaker 1: if you've never seen what these look like, they're worth
Speaker 1: looking up. They're kind of the classic like toadstool looking mushroom,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of the red and white spotted cap uh.
Speaker 1: And the reindeer are also known, interestingly to try to
Speaker 1: ingest the urine of humans who have been consuming this
Speaker 1: same species of mushroom for psychedelic purposes. Wasson wrote in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight quote when human urine or mushrooms are
Speaker 1: in the vicinity, the half domesticated beasts become unmanageable. All
Speaker 1: reindeer folk know of these two addictions. Reindeer like men
Speaker 1: suffer or joy profound mental disturbances after eating the fly agaric.
Speaker 1: So Segell writes that the normal diet of a reindeer
Speaker 1: is almost entirely composed of lichens, and so you know,
Speaker 1: lightlife in the tundra can be gastronomically boring sometimes, but
Speaker 1: they do also appear to have this strong instinct toward
Speaker 1: the consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms and the human urine containing
Speaker 1: the active metabolites of the same mushroom. So, according to Siegel,
Speaker 1: the Chukchi people of the eastern Arctic Russia region the
Speaker 1: Chukchi Peninsula sometimes take fly agaric intentionally, which leads to
Speaker 1: quote elation, sedation, colored visions, and hallucinations, and the reindeer
Speaker 1: who can acquire these compounds through raw mushrooms or human
Speaker 1: urine quote become just as drunk and have just as
Speaker 1: great a thirst. At night, they are noisy and keep
Speaker 1: running around the tints in the expectation of being given
Speaker 1: the long four fluid and when some is spilled out
Speaker 1: in the snow, they start quarreling, tearing away from each other.
Speaker 1: The clumps of snow moistened with it. And that's another
Speaker 1: quote from Wasson. One report quote stresses the passion of
Speaker 1: the reindeer for human urine is so intense that it
Speaker 1: is likely to make it dangerous to relieve oneself in
Speaker 1: the open when there are reindeer around. There's also some
Speaker 1: scant evidence that reindeer who ingest these compounds subsequently isolate
Speaker 1: themselves from the herd. But again the evidence here is
Speaker 1: not clear uh, and self isolating behavior could have other
Speaker 1: causes that this lines up with other observations that seagull makes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Wasson did a lot of work regarding fly agaric uh
Speaker 1: and this was, you know, an extremely ancient shamanistic and
Speaker 1: toxican that was used by the uh Tunguska tribes of
Speaker 1: ancient Siberia. And he even presented it as a potential
Speaker 1: candidate for soma. Somos is mystical substance that was consumed
Speaker 1: in Vadic India and uh and it's been interpreted, Uh,
Speaker 1: nobody's quite sure what exactly it was, but it's in
Speaker 1: it's been interpreted as having been hume, cannabis or got uh.
Speaker 1: If fedra is a strong candidate, they often see discussed.
Speaker 1: And then sometimes the cases made for psilocybin as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it may have been different substances at different times too,
Speaker 1: that's always important to keep in mind. H McKenna of
Speaker 1: course makes an argument in his book for psilocybin and
Speaker 1: that it spends a lot of time. He spends a
Speaker 1: lot of time with that. But but some is certainly
Speaker 1: a fascinating substance to try and unravel because it was
Speaker 1: an important Indo European substances, again described in the Vedas.
Speaker 1: It was also seems to be the same thing as
Speaker 1: a homa, which was an important pres Oroastrian substance in Persia,
Speaker 1: and it was attributed with all sorts of mystical and
Speaker 1: curative properties. It was quote the pillar of the world
Speaker 1: and uh. And some still make a case for psychedelic
Speaker 1: substances being in play here, while others are kind of
Speaker 1: strongly in the ephedra realm, so seeing it more as
Speaker 1: like a purely a stimulant. Yeah, that's interesting and honestly,
Speaker 1: I really did not know much about liegaric before before
Speaker 1: looking at this. So oh yeah, there's uh if I
Speaker 1: recall correctly, there are even people who make interesting commentary
Speaker 1: about Santa Claus and flying reindeer in relation to this.
Speaker 1: I've read about this. Yeah, the myth of the flying
Speaker 1: reindeer comes from them eating these mushrooms or eating the
Speaker 1: urine of people who have eaten the mushrooms and loosening
Speaker 1: the bonds of Earth's gravity. So Segel actually looks at
Speaker 1: a number of other recorded patterns of self administration of
Speaker 1: psychoactive substances and animals. In another example he gives is
Speaker 1: the mongoose, which has been reported to seek out hallucinogenic
Speaker 1: toads and other prey containing potentially psychoactive compounds during hunting,
Speaker 1: even when other prey are available. To read this quote,
Speaker 1: some mongooses in the West Indies and the Hawaiian Islands
Speaker 1: apparently ingest Buffo Marina's toads, which I should add um
Speaker 1: are now known as the Rinella Marina toads, the cane toad,
Speaker 1: the scourge of Australia, which we've talked about in a
Speaker 1: recent episode about anibalism or almost cannibalism, because apparently these toads,
Speaker 1: uh you know, the they like to eat their own
Speaker 1: tadpoles and juveniles. But these toads, quote contain the hallucinogen bouffattenine,
Speaker 1: and to continue this phenomenon is something of a mystery,
Speaker 1: since other toads as well as other natural prey, are
Speaker 1: more abundant in these regions. While it is not known
Speaker 1: if there are psychoactive effects resulting from such ingestions, the
Speaker 1: mongoose goes out of its way to ingest a variety
Speaker 1: of psychoactive compounds and poisons, including the poison bulb of
Speaker 1: scorpions and the sting which he quotes another author, which
Speaker 1: it seems to consider a bond bush. That's interesting considering
Speaker 1: you know that the mongoose is invasive. It was introduced
Speaker 1: to Hawaii as well as you know, other other places
Speaker 1: such as the Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, etcetera. And then the
Speaker 1: cane toade as well. Right, yeah, the cane toade, I
Speaker 1: think is originally native to South America, primarily um And
Speaker 1: and that's not it were all of the potential animal
Speaker 1: self administrations of psychedelic compounds that have been recorded by
Speaker 1: you know, people observing animal behavior. Just a few quick
Speaker 1: notes mentioned In a little article in the Pharmaceutical Journal
Speaker 1: in two thousand ten by Andrew Haynes, which has a
Speaker 1: truly horrible title that I'm not going to read and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna assume was assigned by like a web editor,
Speaker 1: it mentioned something about animal junkies. Yeah, well it was
Speaker 1: a different time, Okay. So a few examples mentioned here
Speaker 1: are apparently that big horn sheep of the Canadian Rockies
Speaker 1: apparently seek out and consume psychoactive lin quote in scraping
Speaker 1: it off the rock surface, they can wear their teeth
Speaker 1: down to the gums. Uh. And in the rainforests of
Speaker 1: South America, apparently jaguars are known to sometimes not on
Speaker 1: the roots and bark of the yaga plant, which is
Speaker 1: this is the plant that is from which the d
Speaker 1: m T has has derived. Yeah, it's the plant used
Speaker 1: in the making of ayawascate, and the jaguars apparently tend
Speaker 1: to so. After they gnaw on this plant, they have
Speaker 1: been recorded acting playful and kind of kitten ish uh.
Speaker 1: And some wild animals in Africa, including boars porcupines, some
Speaker 1: primates like man drills, are known to dig up and
Speaker 1: eat the hallucinogenic roots of the aboga plant. I love
Speaker 1: that the idea of a jaguar consuming this and just
Speaker 1: kind of being it's almost like it's eating cat and
Speaker 1: up for something. It's just a little playful where when
Speaker 1: the jaguar is considered such a spiritual animal in the
Speaker 1: traditions of like Amazonian people, and it's like it's the
Speaker 1: kind of spirit that you would perhaps encounter while on
Speaker 1: an ahuasca journey. Well, this has even been hypothesize. This
Speaker 1: is certainly not known, but it's been speculated that maybe
Speaker 1: the consumption of ayahuasca as a sacred right came from
Speaker 1: observing the jaguar doing this, and so like the ideas
Speaker 1: that you know, the jaguar is this powerful spiritual beast
Speaker 1: and that its behaviors might have been copied by humans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this center This is something important we didn't mentioned in
Speaker 1: the first episode. We talked about humans gradually figuring out
Speaker 1: what they could eat and what they couldn't eat. Of course, uh,
Speaker 1: humans can also look to see what other animals are
Speaker 1: capable of eating, which is not always a definite sign
Speaker 1: that you should eat it. There are things that animals
Speaker 1: can eat in certain species can eat that we absolutely cannot.
Speaker 1: They might have different enzymes and stuff that we don't.
Speaker 1: But then again, if you see an animal completely avoiding
Speaker 1: a particular substance, you know, that might be a clear
Speaker 1: sign that you should avoid it as well, or perhaps
Speaker 1: that the magic of cooking is necessary in order to
Speaker 1: harness it. And then if you see some sort of
Speaker 1: peculiar behavior taking place after an animal consumes something, well
Speaker 1: maybe more study is required. Now, just the fact that
Speaker 1: an animal will self administer a drug is clearly not
Speaker 1: evidence that that drug is a good thing or a
Speaker 1: healthy thing for that animal to consume. Right, I mean,
Speaker 1: we've all seen our pets consume things, right that that,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's making a
Speaker 1: wise choice, and it's an environment or I think about
Speaker 1: the their lab studies where you know, mice lab mice
Speaker 1: will have the option to sell off administer addictive drugs.
Speaker 1: You know, they can self administer morphine or whatever, and
Speaker 1: sometimes this is used in studies to figure out how
Speaker 1: to break addictions, like what kinds of opportunities when offered
Speaker 1: to mice, will be more attractive to mice than just
Speaker 1: trying to self administer more doses of morphine. Right, But
Speaker 1: then again, you know we're talking about like morphine uh
Speaker 1: in like a drip or something, right, which is not
Speaker 1: not something that would encounter in the natural world obviously,
Speaker 1: and and also any of them. And to be I
Speaker 1: just want to say I used morphine as a just
Speaker 1: an example there. I don't remember what exactly the compound
Speaker 1: was they study, but it's something like that, right. Well,
Speaker 1: it seems like a lot of those studies do use
Speaker 1: synthetic drug compounds. So it's not like say we put
Speaker 1: we put a mouse in a you know, a small
Speaker 1: ecosphere with some psychedelic mushrooms and just see to see
Speaker 1: just how much you would eat, you know it, something
Speaker 1: like that. It tends to be like a drip of
Speaker 1: some sort of synthetic version, some artificial substance that's created
Speaker 1: from a naturally occurring uh substance. But yeah, so the
Speaker 1: question is like, with these psychedelics, self administration of psychedelics
Speaker 1: by animals, why do they do it? Why do they
Speaker 1: seek hallucinogenic substances? It would seem in many cases to
Speaker 1: be maladaptive. Now, we do have the one hypothesis already
Speaker 1: that there are perhaps ways in which some psychedelic compounds
Speaker 1: could alter brain function in a way that heightened sensory perception.
Speaker 1: Maybe it helps in hunting by making you know, by
Speaker 1: giving you stronger attention to your old factory senses, and
Speaker 1: makes you better at sniffing out prey. That's possibility, you know,
Speaker 1: it's also possible. I've seen some authors speculate that maybe
Speaker 1: they consume these substances out of some equivalent to the
Speaker 1: human experience of boredom. You know, they're they're seeking novel experiences,
Speaker 1: which does that is a drive. The general drive to
Speaker 1: seek novel experiences is something that has in some cases
Speaker 1: an evolutionary purpose. We've talked on the show before about neophilia, right,
Speaker 1: the the idea of like animals that seek novel experiences
Speaker 1: or go toward unfamiliar objects may often more often put
Speaker 1: themselves at risk of danger, but they also set themselves
Speaker 1: up for bigger rewards. So if you're in a your
Speaker 1: a raccoon living in a city, and you approach an
Speaker 1: unfamiliar object in a parking lot, it could be full
Speaker 1: of milkshake, it could be full of fries, but it
Speaker 1: also could kill you, you know, so it's sort of
Speaker 1: like a higher stakes way of playing the life game.
Speaker 1: You know, you get bigger risks bigger rewards. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: of course another example, just a quick one to throw
Speaker 1: it is a is just the obvious consumption of of
Speaker 1: of overripe fruit, which in which fermentation has taken place,
Speaker 1: and you essentially have naturally occurring alcohol. Not the synthetic
Speaker 1: version of this that we have today. Uh, you know
Speaker 1: anytime you go to you know, pick up beer or
Speaker 1: wine or hard liquor what have you, but just the
Speaker 1: fermented fruit that animals do still do eat when they
Speaker 1: when they find it. Well, I don't know what are
Speaker 1: that some I mean those are still made by fermentation,
Speaker 1: right what you're talking about beer and wine? Beer and wine?
Speaker 1: Is there something going on there? I don't know about
Speaker 1: I thought it was still fermentation was the process by
Speaker 1: which the alcohol was generated. Yeah, but it's it's different
Speaker 1: than than the fruit, like you know, it's it is,
Speaker 1: that's true. You're not eating the grape right, Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a Basically we've taken the naturally occurring um fermentation
Speaker 1: process and these fruits and we have we have harnessed
Speaker 1: it and uh, we've we we've learned how to how
Speaker 1: to concentrate it. So like a bottle ever clear is
Speaker 1: a rather different scenario compared to just some you know,
Speaker 1: some fermented fruit that's so littered on the ground beneath
Speaker 1: the tree. Yeah, and alcohol is clearly a case where
Speaker 1: animals will often have often been observed self administering drug. Now,
Speaker 1: we don't usually think of alcohol as psychedelic, it's not really,
Speaker 1: but but like you know, elephants will seek out fermented fruits,
Speaker 1: some primates will, it's a common thing. Um. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: another question, is I guess this is sort of similar
Speaker 1: to the thing about um seeking novel experiences as a
Speaker 1: as a certain instinct, especially and maybe mammal brains. I'm
Speaker 1: sure some probably some bird brains to write, you know,
Speaker 1: but what if there's some drive and maybe like some
Speaker 1: mammal brains and some bird brains that seeks altered states
Speaker 1: states of consciousness is a form of what's known in
Speaker 1: some of the literature is deep patterning. There's a tendency
Speaker 1: toward habit breaking that is made possible by some of
Speaker 1: these drugs, which I think we'll get into more of
Speaker 1: the research about that in the next episode. And that's
Speaker 1: a very important therapeutic use of it. Uh. I mean,
Speaker 1: a lot of the early research on the use of
Speaker 1: psychedelics in a therapeutic setting was about say, breaking addictions. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's a form of habit breaking or deep patterning
Speaker 1: of of mental processes or mental behaviors. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: wonder if it's possible there is some kind of instinct
Speaker 1: for that in other animal minds, not just in human brains,
Speaker 1: a tendency to seek out chemicals that allow you to
Speaker 1: adapt to new ways of doing things. Could this actually
Speaker 1: be a drive that's selected for Again, that's speculative, but
Speaker 1: it's interesting to consider. But maybe we should get into
Speaker 1: the history of human use here of these substances. Yeah,
Speaker 1: con certainly human use of psychedelics does go back to
Speaker 1: ancient and prehistoric times like that is that that is
Speaker 1: universally accepted. Uh. You know the key stuff substances mentioned previously.
Speaker 1: It can be found across the continents, and a humans travel,
Speaker 1: they continue to encounter new species as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're parts of the world where there does seem to
Speaker 1: be more of a concentration of them, such as you know,
Speaker 1: Mezzo in South America. Uh. But you do find psychedelic
Speaker 1: substances all over the place. I mean, I think Michael
Speaker 1: Pollen in his book how to change your mind, which
Speaker 1: we mentioned in the last episode and is one of
Speaker 1: our major sources here, which is fantastic. It is wonderful. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, he argues, I'm not sure if he's correct,
Speaker 1: but he argues that basically pretty much every culture in
Speaker 1: the world, how as some kind of tradition of using
Speaker 1: compounds from natural plants and substances to alter consciousness, with
Speaker 1: pretty much the only exception being some Arctic people's because
Speaker 1: they didn't nothing like that grew around there, right. But
Speaker 1: but even then, I mean, we have the Siberian use
Speaker 1: of the uh the fly agarics uh so see, and
Speaker 1: then the other side of that being like to what
Speaker 1: extent did they stick with it? To what did did
Speaker 1: they lose the substance, did the substance fallout a favor? Uh?
Speaker 1: That sort of thing, you know, some of that we
Speaker 1: saw with with some example. But uh, I was reading
Speaker 1: around about this, uh in the aforementioned sources. But also
Speaker 1: I picked up a book off and turned to on
Speaker 1: our other show, Invention, which is the seventy grade Inventions
Speaker 1: of the Ancient World. It's the classic. Yes, it's really good.
Speaker 1: It's written by Brian and Fagan, who is just a
Speaker 1: you know, an authority in ancient technology and ancient invention,
Speaker 1: and it provides just overviews of various um cultural inventions,
Speaker 1: technological inventions, etcetera. And Uh. One of the chapters he
Speaker 1: writes UM with Richard Rudgley, who is an author of
Speaker 1: several books on the history of psychedelic substances and and
Speaker 1: other substances in human culture, and they point out that
Speaker 1: basically without written reports to go on, you know, with
Speaker 1: truly ancient people, we we tend to have to look
Speaker 1: for three types of evidence for the consumption of drugs
Speaker 1: or some sort of psychedelic substance, right, because how do
Speaker 1: we know what they were taking? Right? So we have
Speaker 1: to look first of all for botanical remains associated with barrels,
Speaker 1: burials or or agriculture. So, you know, a kid, do
Speaker 1: we find the botanical remains of say cannabis, uh, inside
Speaker 1: of a tomb or you know, among the arch archaeological
Speaker 1: remains of an agricultural site. The next thing we look
Speaker 1: for is artifacts to contain residues. Uh, So is there
Speaker 1: a residue of, say, cannabis in this device? And then
Speaker 1: clearly if if the device itself looks like it was
Speaker 1: clearly used for the consumption of drugs, such as a pipe,
Speaker 1: which you know some of you might be saying, well,
Speaker 1: pipe could be used for just a tobacco, Well, bingo
Speaker 1: tobacco also a drug, so that counts. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: of course artistic motifs that depict mind altering plants or
Speaker 1: fung gui that is another big one, though I will
Speaker 1: say a complication there is that very often with the
Speaker 1: artistic motifs there's an argument about exactly what they represent.
Speaker 1: Like there are people who make the case that there
Speaker 1: are stone age cave paintings that indicate the consumption of
Speaker 1: psilocybin mushrooms, but I think that's not that's not clear.
Speaker 1: Not everybody agrees on what's being represented there, right, And
Speaker 1: you get into complex issues with symbolism too. I mean, basically,
Speaker 1: you could you could have something that looks like a
Speaker 1: mushroom and an ancient work, and one side might say, well,
Speaker 1: that's a mushroom. The other side might say that is
Speaker 1: a fallus, and then others might say, well, this could
Speaker 1: be very much be both, And then what does that
Speaker 1: say that the fallus in the the mushroom are combined
Speaker 1: in the same artistic tradition, etcetera. But for instance, just
Speaker 1: to put you to drive home some of the periods
Speaker 1: of time we're talking about here. Um, we know that
Speaker 1: domesticated opium pops up in the sixth millennium b C
Speaker 1: in the Western Mediterranean based on Neolithic burial sites. And
Speaker 1: then a cannabis pipe cup dates back to the third
Speaker 1: millennium BC in Central Asia. And then we have peyote
Speaker 1: cactus imagery and what is now Mexico and Texas from
Speaker 1: three thousand to four thousand years ago. We also know
Speaker 1: that the Aztecs used multiple different psychoactive plants for shamanistic purposes,
Speaker 1: drawing on the long traditional usage of these substances by
Speaker 1: other peoples of Mezzo and South America. And then there are,
Speaker 1: for instance, the statues of the aztect god Zochupeli, that
Speaker 1: clearly feature the motif of psychoactive plants. Yeah, Zochipele is
Speaker 1: an interesting figure. I was gonna say something a bit
Speaker 1: about him later, but I guess maybe I'll mention it now.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk a good bit about the use of
Speaker 1: psilocybin mush hims in Mesoamerica. But psilocybin mushrooms are not
Speaker 1: the only psychoactive substances that were used by the Mesoamericans
Speaker 1: and their religions such as the Aztecs. Plenty of other
Speaker 1: plants played a role as well. And this as to
Speaker 1: god zoch peally, his name means something like the prince
Speaker 1: of flowers, which is great, but he's been suggested by
Speaker 1: several scholars as sort of the embodiment of a number
Speaker 1: of sacred and theogenic plants known to the Aztecs, including
Speaker 1: you know, everything like morning glory and tobacco, and a
Speaker 1: number of flowers and trees that have some degree or
Speaker 1: another of psychoactive compounds in them. I'll throw in real
Speaker 1: quick just to summarize, though. Fagan and Rudgley uh point
Speaker 1: out that psychedelic substances are quote both deeply embedded in
Speaker 1: many cultures in prehistoric and ancient Eurasia and intimately bound
Speaker 1: up with their ceremonial and religious life, and that also
Speaker 1: likewise in the America's it was quote both prevalent and ancient. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's clear, and that's an interesting thing, which
Speaker 1: you know, we were talking about the drug war mentality earlier.
Speaker 1: You know, one thing I remember when I was growing
Speaker 1: up was that there was a clear cultural antagonism between
Speaker 1: drug use on one hand and religious authority on the
Speaker 1: other hand. It seemed like one of the main things,
Speaker 1: one of the main cultural messages I remember hearing from
Speaker 1: religious authorities in America, I guess, which would primarily be
Speaker 1: you know, Christian authorities, was against the use of drugs,
Speaker 1: which is at a surface level kind of counterintuitive because
Speaker 1: on you know, the use of psychedelic substances goes so
Speaker 1: far back in religious history with you know, many of
Speaker 1: the religions of the world. And because we talked about
Speaker 1: in the last episode, a very common response to people
Speaker 1: taking psychoactive substances is not saying like, well, well now
Speaker 1: I'm going to discard my religion and just throw myself
Speaker 1: fully into secular modernity and become an atheist or something. No,
Speaker 1: it tends more often to encourage people to think more spiritually,
Speaker 1: to be to be more believing in some thing beyond
Speaker 1: the material world. Yeah. Absolutely. Um. You know, this also
Speaker 1: reminds me to that, you know, growing up in the
Speaker 1: with the War of drugs mentality is that when you
Speaker 1: did learn about religions, modern religions that incorporate, uh, some
Speaker 1: drug it it felt like shocking. Like the first time
Speaker 1: you heard about the Rastafari faith. Uh, you know, you
Speaker 1: were like, whoa, they smoke cannabis as part of their
Speaker 1: their faith. You know that that seems shocking. Or you
Speaker 1: hear about traditional um Native American groups that would utilize
Speaker 1: substances like say pioty and and that would seem shocking,
Speaker 1: And of course it shouldn't because again, all these different
Speaker 1: traditional and ancient religions seem to have been rooted at
Speaker 1: least in part in these substances. Yeah, i'd say non
Speaker 1: drug based religions or the exception, not the rule historically. Um.
Speaker 1: But then again, I mean, I think at a deeper
Speaker 1: level of analysis, you can kind of see why there's
Speaker 1: been that conflict between say, you know, especially a culturally
Speaker 1: dominant religious authority and the use of psychedelic substances, even
Speaker 1: though they might encourage general spiritual feelings and beliefs. I
Speaker 1: think in some cases, the religious condemnation of psychedelic use
Speaker 1: might be rooted in the antiheterodoxy sort of impulse, you know,
Speaker 1: meaning like you don't want people thinking they've received new
Speaker 1: information from God or the gods. You know, you don't
Speaker 1: want people thinking that like, wait, you know, the dogmas
Speaker 1: of my church aren't aren't all there is there, there's
Speaker 1: I'm getting new messages things are doing, because then you
Speaker 1: can't control doctrine. Like a common feature I guess of
Speaker 1: of monotheistic religion today is to sort of have a
Speaker 1: set law and to say, okay, we you know, we
Speaker 1: we have received all of the revelations and the rules
Speaker 1: and the communications from the divine in the past, and
Speaker 1: now everything is locked down and there will be you know,
Speaker 1: the phone lines are cut. There is no further revelation,
Speaker 1: right if God is still speaking. That can be a
Speaker 1: dangerous thing to some people, especially the people that are
Speaker 1: in a position of power. But it also seems like
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that is more of a risk
Speaker 1: if your religion has drifted away from the sorts of experiences,
Speaker 1: you know, drug related or otherwise that enable that kind
Speaker 1: of experience. You know. So we'll get into an example
Speaker 1: of that, I think in a bit. But then again,
Speaker 1: even without you know, drugs at all, I mean, heresies
Speaker 1: are always an issue to some sort of established religion.
Speaker 1: Somebody is going to come along that has a new
Speaker 1: vision of how this faith should work, how it's going
Speaker 1: to work with a uh, with with society, with culture,
Speaker 1: with the individual, and that is always going to be
Speaker 1: dangerous to to somebody. Yeah, and I'd say maybe one
Speaker 1: other reason you can see the religious opposition to drug
Speaker 1: use is probably just something more rooted in what we
Speaker 1: were talking about at the beginning of episode of the episode,
Speaker 1: which is like a failure to make crucial distinctions between
Speaker 1: the the effects of these different compounds and how they
Speaker 1: play out in culture and in people's lives. Like I
Speaker 1: can understand why if you have a religion that's trying
Speaker 1: to encourage social orderliness, why it might be against say
Speaker 1: the consumption of alcohol. You know, like alcohol is is
Speaker 1: just crime fuel? Alcohol is this like hugely this the
Speaker 1: substance which you know, despite it, I enjoy having a
Speaker 1: beer or cocktail or something. But you can understand why
Speaker 1: the temperance movement arose. You know, people were seeing like
Speaker 1: alcohols it's running rampant through the culture, and in some
Speaker 1: ways it still is. Yeah, it is a very destructive force.
Speaker 1: Another issue, of course, is you know we taught described
Speaker 1: pre we talked about previously the description of these substances
Speaker 1: as being boundary dissolving, and a lot of times boundaries
Speaker 1: are very important in an organized religion, the boundary between
Speaker 1: the the n group in the outsider, the boundaries between
Speaker 1: particular casts or divisions within a particular religious group. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, to the people controlling the religion, the people,
Speaker 1: uh you know, in the upper echelhon of the religion,
Speaker 1: boundary dissolution could be dangerous. Yeah. I can absolutely see
Speaker 1: that in the same way that you might view alcohol
Speaker 1: in as crime fuel. Psychedelics are in some ways heterodoxy
Speaker 1: fuel or just general questioning and uh, dissolution of of
Speaker 1: established order fuel. Yeah. The way mc kenna put it
Speaker 1: to any the sans a lot of time talking about
Speaker 1: um cooperative societies and then the dominator societies, and his
Speaker 1: critique was that alcohol is like the the ideal drug
Speaker 1: of a dominator society, that those that and along with stimulants. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I think we should take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back we can discuss a little more of
Speaker 1: the more recent history of psilocybin mushrooms, especially in meso America.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. Alright, we're back. We're we're looking
Speaker 1: to meso America now, which again is a is a
Speaker 1: part of the world where you see so many different
Speaker 1: powerful psychedelic substances. Really, some of the most powerful naturally
Speaker 1: occurring psychedelic substances on Earth can be found in this
Speaker 1: part of the world. And of course this is also
Speaker 1: part of the world with a very uh complex and
Speaker 1: bloody history. Uh and uh and where we see this
Speaker 1: prime clashing of cultures as a Western colonialism enters the picture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly right. So the my collegist Paul Statements, we were
Speaker 1: talking about how far back uh the use of psychedelic
Speaker 1: substances goes. In his book Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World,
Speaker 1: Statements argues that the sacramental use of psychoactive mushrooms goes
Speaker 1: back at least seven thousand years, probably extends into Paleolithic times.
Speaker 1: We don't know exactly for sure, but one of the
Speaker 1: most well documented religious uses of psychedelic mushrooms is the
Speaker 1: apparently long running use in Mexico and Central America of
Speaker 1: a species of peloscopy now believed to be a Pelosopy
Speaker 1: Mexicana that was then known to the Aztecs as Teo
Speaker 1: Nana coadle, which was historically translated as God's flesh. But
Speaker 1: I've also seen translated I think more recently and simply
Speaker 1: as the god mushroom. So there might be some blurring
Speaker 1: of the line there where there are word means flesh
Speaker 1: or mushroom, there might be some overlap there, but we
Speaker 1: don't know exactly how far back The use of solosities
Speaker 1: among the Meso Americans goes earlier. You mentioned you know
Speaker 1: the art motifs as one clue, and there are archaeological
Speaker 1: artifacts found in Central America, I think primarily in Guatemala,
Speaker 1: now known as the mushroom Stones, and these are attributed
Speaker 1: to the Mayan civilization. They depict humans, animals, and gods
Speaker 1: as sort of hybrid mushroom beings with mushrooms stems and
Speaker 1: caps erupting up out of their bodies, kind of like
Speaker 1: the lowand Men's you know the lionman statuette from Europe
Speaker 1: showing the humanoid figure with the lion's head, showing early
Speaker 1: ideation about monsters and fantasy hybrids. Except this would be
Speaker 1: like the fungus minch. Oh wow, this is like in
Speaker 1: indentons and dragons. This would be the Makonids, which are
Speaker 1: the mushroom people of the under dark. Oh, what what's
Speaker 1: that movie you you were telling me about a long
Speaker 1: time ago. It was like matanga mushroom horror film about
Speaker 1: these human annoyed mushrooms and this infection that turns people
Speaker 1: into mushrooms shandling mushroom creatures. Oh yeah, they're they're Also
Speaker 1: that's a central conceit of the setting of the video
Speaker 1: game The Last of Us, which court Aceps invades humans. Uh.
Speaker 1: But anyway, this is a slightly different thing because it's
Speaker 1: not showing like fungus erupting as a as a disease
Speaker 1: out of people, but more like they are these uh,
Speaker 1: these fungus beings that seem I don't know. They're generally
Speaker 1: depicted as kind of like serene and like this is
Speaker 1: a good thing. We don't know exactly what these ancient
Speaker 1: mushrooms don't signify, but many scholars have interpreted them as
Speaker 1: reflections of the religious significance of psychedelic mushrooms for the
Speaker 1: Mayan culture and so much of the world became aware
Speaker 1: of the existence and use of psychedelic mushrooms during the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties due to the work of people like the
Speaker 1: biologist Richard E. Shaltis, who studied indigenous people's uses of
Speaker 1: psychoactive plants, especially in Mexico and in the Amazon Basin,
Speaker 1: and public widespread awareness of the uses of psychedelic musho
Speaker 1: rooms in southern Mexico, specifically to Nana Coadle owes a
Speaker 1: lot to an article published in Life magazine in May
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven written by a then vice president of
Speaker 1: JP Morgan, the the investment bank and financial services company UH.
Speaker 1: This vice president of JP Morgan was named R. Gordon Wasson,
Speaker 1: who was also a mycologist. He and his wife were
Speaker 1: both very interested in mushrooms UH, and he happened to
Speaker 1: be a mushroom enthusiast. I think he was pushing a
Speaker 1: kind of personal theory that mushrooms were the genesis of
Speaker 1: all religions and spiritual beliefs. But this article from Life
Speaker 1: magazine in nineteen fifty seven was called the Discovery of
Speaker 1: Mushrooms that Caused Strange Visions, and then also with the
Speaker 1: title seeking the Magic Mushroom. I think one was the
Speaker 1: cover title and one was on the article. But I
Speaker 1: want to stress again that despite the magazine editor's word
Speaker 1: choice there of the discovery of mushrooms that caused Strange Visions,
Speaker 1: Wasson did not in any way actually discover psilocybin mushrooms.
Speaker 1: They were known to the indigenous peoples of Mexico and
Speaker 1: Central America for hundreds or thousands of years. Uh, they
Speaker 1: just weren't widely known about in many other cultures in
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. Beyond that. Now, I think it is
Speaker 1: important to note too that people like Wasson and Schultz, Uh,
Speaker 1: these were a different breed of professional like so so
Speaker 1: much of the time, when when we think about the
Speaker 1: emergence of psychedelics, we think of unfairly we think of
Speaker 1: Timothy Leary and or even you know, we think more
Speaker 1: in like a nineties context, we think of Terence McKenna.
Speaker 1: People were more uh you know, embody ements of counterculture,
Speaker 1: and that is not what these individuals were about. In fact,
Speaker 1: I believe it was it was Wasson who really did
Speaker 1: not like what he saw in the counterculture. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he was kind of anti hippie. Oh. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I'm not surprised. Weren't you saying something about McKenna
Speaker 1: talking about salts? Oh yeah, yeah. He he pointed out
Speaker 1: that Schultz was pretty much the complete opposite of someone
Speaker 1: like Timothy Leary, that he, you know, he was a
Speaker 1: botanist and a scientist, uh and he was at Harvard
Speaker 1: at the same time while Leary was approaching psychedelics from
Speaker 1: a social science perspective, but also with arguably far less
Speaker 1: dedication to the rigors of scientific investigation and with a
Speaker 1: strong inclination towards celebrities, celebrity and the trappings of guru.
Speaker 1: But Schultz's was also highly influential on a whole range
Speaker 1: of people, including EO. Wilson, but also people like William Burrows.
Speaker 1: That's interesting again that the just the the impact of
Speaker 1: their work is essential when you consider like all strains
Speaker 1: of knowledge and interest in psychedelic substances. Well, so one
Speaker 1: question you might have is like if there were people's
Speaker 1: of especially like Southern Mexico and Whaka, who were practicing
Speaker 1: the religious use of psilocybin mushrooms. Um this question of
Speaker 1: like why didn't more people outside of the region know
Speaker 1: about this? And I think there's a very good reason
Speaker 1: actually why some of the indigenous peoples of southern Mexico
Speaker 1: would keep these mushrooms and their uses a secret, as
Speaker 1: a sort of underground parallel ritual to the Catholicism that
Speaker 1: took hold of the region beginning in the sixteenth century,
Speaker 1: and that reason was psychedelic mushrooms in their religious uses
Speaker 1: had been brutally persecuted hundreds of years before by the
Speaker 1: Christian conquistadors in what the ethnobotanist Jonathan Ott has called
Speaker 1: the pharmacratic Inquisition UH. Basically, when the Spanish attacked and
Speaker 1: began to colonize Mexico and Central America under Cortes in
Speaker 1: the early sixteenth century, the Catholic missionaries among them became
Speaker 1: aware that some parts of Aztec religion relied on the
Speaker 1: consumption of fung guide that allowed the Aztecs to actually
Speaker 1: see and receive guidance from their gods, and so these
Speaker 1: ritual feasts of the too Nana Coadle would sometimes be
Speaker 1: used for the purposes of divination where you try to
Speaker 1: like receive guidance from the gods, or for other purposes
Speaker 1: like ritual healing. And the mushroom rights were witnessed and
Speaker 1: described by a Spanish francis and friar named Bernardino de Sahagun.
Speaker 1: This is a section of de Sahagoon's work that is
Speaker 1: also quoted in Pollen Quote. These they ate before dawn
Speaker 1: with honey, and they also drank cocaw before dawn. The
Speaker 1: mushrooms they ate with honey, and when they began to
Speaker 1: get heated from them, they began to dance, and some
Speaker 1: sang and some wept. Some cared not to sing, but
Speaker 1: would sit down in their rooms and stayed there pensive like.
Speaker 1: And some saw in a vision that they were dying,
Speaker 1: and they wept, And others saw in a vision that
Speaker 1: some wild beast was eating them. Others saw in a
Speaker 1: vision that they were taking captives in war. Others saw
Speaker 1: in a vision that they were to commit adultery and
Speaker 1: that their heads were to be bashed in there for then,
Speaker 1: when the drunkenness of the mushrooms had passed, they spoke
Speaker 1: one with another about their visions that they had seen.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. I also love the mention of the honey,
Speaker 1: because I think there's sort of two avenues here. Like
Speaker 1: one is that, of course, uh, some many of these
Speaker 1: psychedelic sceptance, especially the mushrooms, are pungent in their taste,
Speaker 1: and there's something you know, I didn't need a mask
Speaker 1: it in somewhere or another. But also I've read how
Speaker 1: honey could have been used traditionally to preserve u psychedelic substances,
Speaker 1: particularly mushrooms, and that you and that even there's this
Speaker 1: idea that certain need traditions arose out of that um,
Speaker 1: which of course is the fermentation process with the honey
Speaker 1: to produce an alcoholic beverage. Yeah, that's interesting. I had
Speaker 1: had not heard that, But so you might expect what
Speaker 1: the Catholic reaction of this is. In fact, I bet
Speaker 1: something some of this reaction is coming through even in
Speaker 1: the way that Bernardino de Sagoon describes these experiences, because
Speaker 1: you notice he tends to emphasize what he thinks are
Speaker 1: at least like negative hallucinogenic experiences about war and about
Speaker 1: death and and about being eaten by an animal. The
Speaker 1: Catholic missionaries viewed the Aztec consumption of this and other
Speaker 1: psychedelic plants as a form of depraved pagan idolatry that
Speaker 1: needed to be wiped from the face of the earth.
Speaker 1: It's basically the same anti psychedelic messaging that you saw
Speaker 1: in the sixties, right, the same like the kids are
Speaker 1: taking this and they're having bad trips and forcing themselves
Speaker 1: through key holes. They're picking up the axe and going
Speaker 1: going after you know, the grandparents. Right, they're confusing a
Speaker 1: baby with a basketball and raising the basketball as their
Speaker 1: own and uh and creating a college fund for the basketball.
Speaker 1: Clearly this this has to be stopped. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: exactly right. So yeah, the the Catholic missionaries wrote that
Speaker 1: they believe the consumption of Tonana Coddle was away for
Speaker 1: the Aztecs to receive messages from the devil and from demons.
Speaker 1: And of course it must have seemed especially perverse to
Speaker 1: the to the missionary mindset that at the at the time,
Speaker 1: the Aztec priests would have been understood to be eating
Speaker 1: this thing called God's flesh, given the parallels to the
Speaker 1: Catholic right of holy communion, in which you would eat
Speaker 1: bread and drink wine representing the flesh and the blood
Speaker 1: of Jesus Christ. So the Catholic missionaries tried to put
Speaker 1: down the ceremonies of the selosities, and they encouraged the
Speaker 1: substitution of what Jonathan Ought referred to seemingly by contrast
Speaker 1: as the placebo sacraments of the Catholic Eucharist. But fortunately,
Speaker 1: despite the persecution by the Catholic colonizers, these mushroom rituals
Speaker 1: did continue in secret through to the modern day, especially
Speaker 1: in more remote and mountainous regions like in southern Mexico
Speaker 1: and Mohaka. Now, questions of how they use these substances
Speaker 1: were used as a fascinating subject unto itself, and when
Speaker 1: we're you know, not gonna have time to fully examine.
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole books have been written describing this.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, you know, it's basically the idea is that
Speaker 1: set and setting would again be of primary importance here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about that in the last episode. But the
Speaker 1: importance of the surroundings and the mindset going in right,
Speaker 1: and then some of the more fat fascinating examples that
Speaker 1: we see in the Amazon, you know, where ayahuasca is
Speaker 1: brewed from the the aga vine, uh, etcetera. Uh. But
Speaker 1: you know, they also turned to other substances as well
Speaker 1: as what and they also turned to dreams in the
Speaker 1: shamanistic practice, which I think is interesting as well. Like
Speaker 1: it's not like these were the that these substances were
Speaker 1: the only tool that was utilized. They would also refer
Speaker 1: to dreams and then and in terms of the shamanistic
Speaker 1: use of the substances themselves, it's you might think that
Speaker 1: such practices would simply involve a shaman giving you a substance,
Speaker 1: guiding you through the experience to help you with your problem.
Speaker 1: And this is true. This is what you would see.
Speaker 1: And you see this reflected in the Western uh some
Speaker 1: of the Western research that will be discussing later. You
Speaker 1: see it in some of the you know, the counterculture
Speaker 1: and underground uses of it. But in the classic scenarios
Speaker 1: that the shaman was sometimes the one to ingest the
Speaker 1: substance alone and solve your problem for you, which seems
Speaker 1: kind of counterproductive or counterintuitive at first, right the idea
Speaker 1: that you would you would go to the shaman and
Speaker 1: the shaman would take a psychedelic in order to help
Speaker 1: you with your problem, and you wouldn't take anything. But
Speaker 1: this could well be the case in some of these situations.
Speaker 1: You know that the shaman would step outside of of
Speaker 1: their own self uh in order to tackle your problem
Speaker 1: head on and help you solve it. Yeah, exactly so.
Speaker 1: So to finish the story, in the nineteen fifties, this
Speaker 1: Jp Morgan Banker we mentioned right our Gordon Wasson. He
Speaker 1: traveled to Wahaka in Mexico and he met with an
Speaker 1: experienced psiloscopy shaman known as a curandera or which meants
Speaker 1: like a healer named Maria Sabina, who allowed him to
Speaker 1: participate in a psilocybin healing and divination ritual known as
Speaker 1: a vilada to the Mazo tech people, and Wasson wrote
Speaker 1: about this experience in that Life magazine article we mentioned
Speaker 1: inteen fifty seven, and subsequently scientific interest in the mushroom skyrocketed.
Speaker 1: People eventually sent samples of the fruiting bodies of the
Speaker 1: mushrooms to Albert Hoffman, the man who first isolated LSD
Speaker 1: twenty five from urghot rye and discovered its effects the
Speaker 1: decade before, and Huffman and colleagues were able to isolate
Speaker 1: the psychoactive compounds in the mushroom, and of course Hoffman
Speaker 1: had to try some out himself, and for a while
Speaker 1: before the anti counterculture backlash and the drug war crackdown,
Speaker 1: psilocybin was researched by psychologists psychiatrists as a potential tool
Speaker 1: for understanding human cognition, expanding consciousness, and treating addiction and
Speaker 1: mental illness. But of course then came the dark days
Speaker 1: right beginning in the nineteen seventies, where the association of
Speaker 1: psilocybin with hippie culture and recreational drug use created this
Speaker 1: stigma around research. Legal barriers went up that made research
Speaker 1: more practically difficult, and a lot of mainstream research attention
Speaker 1: just turned away from psilocybin in particular, uh and psychedelics
Speaker 1: in general. And I guess that's where we'll have to
Speaker 1: stop for this time until we come back next time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the journey continues. The trip is not over. It
Speaker 1: will continue in episode three of this journey. So in
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you want to check out more episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, check out past episodes
Speaker 1: that have dealt with psychedelics, uh, such as the Timothy
Speaker 1: Leary episode, the John C. Lily episodes, or some of
Speaker 1: these other episodes we've alluded to. You'll find them there.
Speaker 1: That's the mother ship Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: And if you want to support the show, the best
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Speaker 1: huge thanks as always to our audio producer, Maya Cole.
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