Search the Community

New paper out, looking quantitatively at the alkaloid content of Tetrapterys mucronata. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pca.2548/abstract Long story short, it contains substantial amounts of bufotenine and 5-MeO-DMT, and smaller amounts of 5-MeO-NMT and 2-Me-6-MeO-THβC. That explains how it could be used without admixture as the basis of a psyhoactive brew: both bufotenine and 5-MeO-DMT have been reported active without MAOI admixture (though the authors don't seem to make that connection). Odd choice of plant to analyze though. T. mucronata has only been reported as the basis of an ayahuasca-like brew by one person (R. E. Schultes), and even he seems to hedge his bets about it. The language is very ambiguous both in his 1975 De plantis toxicariis... XIII article and his 1990 book The Healing Forest (coauthored with R. F. Raffauf). It's not clear, but he may be suggesting that this use was heard secondhand from a native, rather than directly observed. Or maybe his notes from the trip were just not clear... the claim dates from an expedition he took with Isidro Cabrera in the early 1950s, but he didn't publish anything about the plant until over two decades later. This is interesting, because recent chemical analysis of a vine sold as Tetrapterys methystica (which has been more reliably reported as the basis of an ayahuasca-like brew) did not show any known alkaloids. Then again, the vendor who sold that bark is not exactly known to be reputable... so perhaps it's a case of misidentified vine?