references about DMT in the popular media

[faustus]

hi all,

i'm looking for recent references (2005 to present) about DMT, primarily print media e.g. books, magazines, newspapers, but also internet websites (so long as it's mainstream) and film, etc. can anyone recommend any?

especially about smoked DMT, but anything really, even if it's about a major drug bust, or how evil DMT is. if the full-length article requires a subscription, then i'm happy to buy it (but depending on price).

and if i find anything of interest, i'll post it here.

gracias!

in my searches so far, i've found this from time magazine, april 2009:

*****

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8...1889631,00.html

Down the Amazon in Search of Ayahuasca

Although his parents urged him to study medicine, Jimmy Weiskopf dropped out of college and in the 1970s moved to Colombia, where he eventually began to focus on a different kind of elixir. The New York City native became an early advocate for the hallucinogenic plant mixture ayahuasca. For centuries, Amazonian Indians have been drinking ayahuasca, also known as yaje — a combination of the ayahuasca vine, tree bark and other plants — to achieve a trancelike state that they believe cleanses body and mind and enables communication with spirits. Weiskopf, who has published a 688-page tome about ayahuasca, was once among a tiny coterie of foreigners using the potion, but these days he has lots of company. (Read "Colombia's Drug Extraditions: Are They Worth It?")

Word of ayahuasca's healing properties has brought a growing number of New Age tourists from the U.S. and Europe, some of whom pay thousands of dollars to stay at jungle lodges where Indian medicine men guide them through all-night ayahuasca rituals. Sting and Tori Amos have admitted sampling it in Latin America, where it is legal, as has Paul Simon, who chronicled the experience in his song "Spirit Voices." "It heals the body and the spirit," says Eustacio Payaguaje, 51, a Cofán Indian shaman who regularly treks to Bogotá to lead weekend ayahuasca ceremonies in the city. "It is medicine for the soul." (Read "The Year in Medicine 2008: From A to Z.")

But as the subtitle of Weiskopf's 2004 book, Yaje: The New Purgatory, suggests, ayahuasca is not for the faint of heart — or stomach. Drinking a few ounces of the sludgy brown liquid usually leads to a violent purge from both ends of the body. Beat Generation novelist William Burroughs, seeking to get high on Colombian ayahuasca in the early 1960s, described hurling himself against a tree and barfing six times. At a recent ceremony on the outskirts of Bogotá, most of the 40 participants packed sleeping bags, water bottles — and rolls of toilet paper. Sting, in a Rolling Stone interview, made clear that ayahuasca is no party drug. "There's a certain amount of dread attached to taking it," the singer said. "You have a hallucinogenic trip that deals with death and your mortality. So it's quite an ordeal. It's not something you're going to score and have a great time on."

Although the hallucinations induced by the substance can be pleasant, some people experience nightmarish visions that last for hours. The agony, Weiskopf says, is part of the allure. "You get these near death experiences," he says. "And once you see life from the perspective of death, you become a bit more philosophical and have a better sense of what's important and what's not."

Because it contains the hallucinogenic alkaloid dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, drinking ayahuasca in the U.S. is illegal. But traditional use of the plant potion is permitted in much of South America. Its mecca is the Peruvian city of Iquitos, which hosts the annual International Amazonian Shamanism Conference and is home to about a dozen lodges that cater to curious foreigners. At first, local residents feared that a flood of stoned beatniks would turn Iquitos into an unruly rain-forest Woodstock. "I thought they'd be from the hippie graveyard, with tattoos and sunken faces," says Gerald Mayeaux, a Houston native who runs The Yellow Rose of Texas restaurant in Iquitos. "But these are doctors and lawyers. These are professional people."

One of the most popular lodges, Blue Morpho, is run by Hamilton Souther, a California native who moved to Peru in 2001 to learn about medicinal plants from local Indians. After receiving the title of master shaman, Souther set up Blue Morpho, a collection of charming thatch-roofed huts and nature trails with a ceremonial roundhouse where Souther offers ayahuasca sessions for a mostly U.S. crowd. As the only full-fledged gringo shaman in the Peruvian Amazon, Souther is a natural interpreter for tourists navigating the mysteries of traditional Indian culture and its sacred plants. "These are people who are interested in their own spiritual growth and development," Souther says. "For me, it's an expression of their courage to come all the way down to the Amazon on the hope that [ayahuasca] may be able to help them."

Many of Souther's guests shun alcohol and recreational drugs. Some experiment with ayahuasca to address emotional, physical or psychological problems that Western medicine has failed to alleviate. Others hope to time-travel in order to confront childhood traumas. Some even view ayahuasca as a way to kick their addiction to prescription drugs.

Although traditional-medicine practices had been waning in some Indian communities in Latin America, ayahuasca tourism has helped spark a revival, as guiding foreigners through the ceremonies can provide a decent income for shamans. The business has become so popular that at the airports in Iquitos and the Colombian Amazon city of Leticia, locals trying to drum up clients for freelance medicine men stand outside the terminals shouting "Ayahuasca! Ayahuasca!"

Outsiders, however, are advised to proceed with caution. Even among devotees, there's a consensus that people with heart ailments, high blood pressure or mental disorders should steer clear of ayahuasca. And, Souther says, mixed with certain foods or recreational drugs like cocaine, ayahuasca can be toxic, even fatal.

Despite these provisos, Weiskopf, who says he has taken the tonic hundreds of times "with everyone from guerrillas to government ministers," remains a passionate advocate for ayahuasca. A growing flock of travelers are heading to Latin America to explore the experience for themselves.

[FancyPants]

Daniel Pinchbeck article in Rolling Stone magazine.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story...ychedelic_elite

[faustus]

ta fancypants

MODS: perhaps more appropriate to be moved to the news subform?

here's one from reuters, 2007:

***********

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/i...549439120070608

Vision-inducing drug makes new inroads in Peru

Fri Jun 8, 2007 11:58am EDT By Walker Simon

PACHACAMAC, Peru (Reuters) - A powerful hallucinogenic vine, long revered by Amazon Indians as a tool for peering deep into the psyche, is drawing interest from urban Peruvians and enticing foreign visitors to Peru.

Known as the "vine of souls" in the Quechua language of the ancient Inca empire, ayahuasca contains dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a chemical resembling the structure of psilocybin in psychedelic mushrooms.

Banned in the United States but legal in Peru, ayahuasca increasingly draws foreigners and has grown into a million dollar business. It is also seeping into Peru's medical mainstream as a handful of psychologists and doctors tout its therapeutic benefits.

"Ayahuasca means exploration. It works to better see where we are, where we are coming from and where we are going," said psychologist Javier Zavala, a self-styled curandero or healer, as he opened an ayahuasca session one recent Saturday night.

"I will give you only a small cup," he told some 20 European, North American and Peruvian vision seekers, including an advertising executive, a film editor, and an engineer who had gathered near the ruins of a pre-Inca civilization on the southern outskirts of Lima.

They took turns kneeling before him to receive the dark liquid poured from a bottle. Then, following native tradition, Zavala stood and blew a spray of sweet scented water north, south, east and west to clear noxious spirits.

"In the Amazon, ayahuasqueros would give you a big cup," he said. "You would see hell and feel like you are dying. That is not the objective here."

Lights off, he waited about half an hour before beginning to chant softly, mixing Indian and Spanish words, scraping leafy branches on the floor.

His chants, known as icaros, set off a surge of visions and welling emotions, several of those present said after their overnight experience.

A 42-year-old Spanish man said he regressed to the first years of his life and planned to ask his parents to forgive him.

A Peruvian librarian, 49, said ayahuasca-induced visions of geometric shapes and baby items helped her to heal from the death of her baby at delivery almost 20 years ago.

"I appreciate my life in a new way and my life with my grown daughter," she said.

The plant often triggers geometric patterns resembling that of Indian weavings and pottery as well as serpents and other jungle wildlife in an uncanny reflection of its historic use in the Amazon, a number of scholars say.

It also produces other effects, causing some of those present to resort to blue vomit pails placed handily beside them.

Ayahuasca is prohibited in the United States, with one exception. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that U.S. followers of a Brazilian-based religion can import and use ayahuasca tea in ceremonies.

A small number of Peruvian psychotherapists and doctors say the plant can bring unconscious material into the conscious awareness.

"The insights about one's own life, the direction one is moving to, the family appear many times as visual images emotionally charged; these can be taken to therapy," said Eduardo Gastelumendi, a psychiatrist in Lima.

Others say it can be used to kick addictions to drugs and alcohol by helping to trigger buried memories.

For Veronica Lopez, 29, a graduate student from Spain, the session at Pachacamac took her into a deep reflection that she said brought inner peace.

"I saw jungle plants coming closer to me in spinning yellow and green geometric patterns," she said. "Then I felt a serpent enter inside me, merging into my skin and tugging at my cheeks, then it left through one of my raised arms."

[faustus]

LA times, 2008

***********

Strange brew; A new generation of seekers is turning to a psychotropic jungle potion in search of enlightenment

By Gina Piccalo,

Feb. 3, 2008

In an affluent corner of Encinitas, just north of San Diego, a young medicine man named Lobo Siete Truenos sits cross-legged on the polished wood floors of a backyard temple. Here in this suburban sanctuary, behind the gates of a faux-Spanish villa, just past the manicured lawn and an artificial lagoon, he's carefully unpacking a collection of stones, feathers and oils that he'll use for an all-night spiritual odyssey that will kick off after sunset.

If all goes as planned, Truenos' nine participants--all seeking his psychedelic "doctoring"--will sip a murky, foul-tasting potion and then wait, eyes closed in the dark, for it to take effect. Wooziness may be followed by nausea, then probably vomiting. For many, a kaleidoscopic array of geometric patterns could emerge. Others may be greeted by friendly plant-like creatures, gnomes, elves or even a giant anaconda--known by indigenous tribes as Mother Ayahuasca, omniscient ruler of the plant kingdom--who communicates telepathically. And the really lucky ones may be treated to a cinematic review of their lives, each scene illustrating a moral failing.

"It's a deep process," Truenos says, as he places his precious stones on a tapestry woven with wild serpentine patterns. "It's certainly not a game. It takes a lot of purifying to serve this medicine."

Truenos, 34, is precise about his tools because, when they're correctly assembled, they constitute what he calls "the fire altar of the eagle and the condor." But these instruments are just supporting players for the evening's star attraction, an inky fluid that Truenos has stored in three plastic drinking bottles.

This liquid is known variously as hoasca, yage, caapi and daime, but in the U.S. it's most commonly called ayahuasca. (The word, which comes from the ancient Incan language Quechua, means "vine of the spirits" or "vine of the soul.") Tribes of Central and South America--Shipibo, Kofan and Tukanos among them--have used the drug for hundreds of years or more in their spiritual practices. In Ecuador, Brazil and Peru, the drug is legal and attracts many pilgrims to ayahuasca ceremonies every year.

The brew was introduced to pop culture in 1963, when Beat writers Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs published their collected correspondence on their ayahuasca experiences in "The Yage Letters."

In the U.S., ayahuasca remained for years a largely underground phenomenon that, like peyote and psilocybin mushrooms, attracted a following of academics, journalists, psychiatrists and other soul-searching intellectuals. Now, thanks in part to a 2006 Supreme Court ruling, ayahuasca (pronounced EYE-yah-WAH-skah) appears to be gaining in popularity. East Coast writers have generated interest among the intelligentsia, and online head shops are selling ingredients for making the ayahuasca brew. At the same time, some scientific studies suggest that ayahuasca has legitimate uses as an alternative psychotropic medicine that can abolish depression, cure addiction and improve brain function.

For ayahuasqueros such as Truenos and the eclectic mix of button-down professionals and New Age acolytes joining him on this night, the potion may be a conduit to higher consciousness. Who exactly are these psychotropic explorers? Truenos won't reveal much about them, except to say that the owners of the home in which they are meeting are retirees (young ones, it appears) and that participants typically include doctors, lawyers, celebrities, New Age healers and academics. They're working folks, he says. "People from all walks of life."

For them, the vision-inducing elixir made from Amazonian jungle vines and leaves opens doors to parallel realities where mystical creatures reign. Because ayahuasca must be exactingly prepared and administered to achieve the desired benefits, a cadre of itinerant shamans such as Truenos has emerged, roaming the U.S. to host marathon candlelight ceremonies in yoga studios, private homes and remote open spaces, and charging as much as $200 a person for each session.

The concoction itself is said to taste so vile that most people fight their gag reflex to swallow it. Devotees liken the flavor to forest rot and bile, dirty socks and raw sewage. Vomiting is so common that indigenous shamans often refer to the ceremony as la purga, or the purge. And ayahuasca can severely test the commitment of its followers: The potion often reveals its celebrated wisdoms only after repeat encounters.

The payoff, adherents say, can be life-altering. Debilitating illnesses such as chronic depression or addiction may disappear after just one session, some say. Others say they shed their egos for a night, finally seeing their lives with a startling clarity.

With that kind of reputation, ayahuasca has predictably intrigued celebrities known for charting the supra-conscious: Oliver Stone, Sting and Tori Amos have sampled it and openly discussed their experiences. "It's quite an ordeal," Sting told Rolling Stone in 1998. Amos talked on BBC Radio 4 in 2005 about how she envisioned having a love affair with the devil during one ayahuasca encounter.

In Peru, ayahuasca ceremonies are so common that the nation's tourism bureau tracks the number of visitors seeking the sacred brew. But no one needs to travel to Peru to experience ayahuasca in 2008. A community, shepherded by ayahuasca shamans, has begun to emerge in the United States. It initially established itself in New Mexico. And now--in an act of psychedelic entrepreneurship and under the aegis of his spiritual and religious society, Aurora Baha--Truenos is bringing the ayahuasca ceremony to Southern California.

ayahuasca traditionally is made from the boiled or soaked bark and stems of Banisteriopsis caapi--also known as the ayahuasca vine--in combination with the leaves of Psychotria viridis (a bush that contains the alkaloids needed to produce ayahuasca's psychoactive compound, dimethyltryptamine, or DMT).

But ayahuasca is no recreational drug. Unlike a drag on a marijuana joint or a snort of cocaine, even a single encounter with ayahuasca can be life-threatening under some circumstances. It poses serious risks when taken with certain medications, such as SSRI antidepressants; reputable shamans strictly prohibit the use of the beverage by anyone taking these drugs. Some also demand abstinence from alcohol before a ceremony. A Canadian woman, albeit with advanced diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease, died in 2001 after an ayahuasca ceremony. An autopsy gave the official cause of death as fatal nicotine poisoning due to tobacco mixed with the ayahuasca preparation, an unusual method of brewing the drink. But ayahuasca's supporters consider the risks associated with the brew easily avoidable with strict adherence to their shamans' orders. The rewards, they say, are worth the risks.

"It's totally new, unlike LSD, unlike [psychedelic] mushrooms, unlike anything else," says artist Joel Harris, a Santa Clarita native who first heard about the brew from his roommate in the U.S. Marines in 1998 when they were stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C. A couple of years ago, Harris says, he sold his possessions, decamped to Peru and took up ayahuasca as a quasi-spiritual practice.

"It brings your awareness to a place where it's understood that you are connected to everything on Earth," he says. "If everyone had a chance to do ayahuasca, the entire reality would shift and we would be living in peace."

Journalist Erik Davis, a longtime chronicler of emerging religious practices and author of the 2006 book "Visionary State: A Journey Through California's Spiritual Landscape," gives Harris' comments more context. "For a variety of reasons," Davis says, "with some negative side effects, ayahuasca has been able to enter into Western culture in a way that preserves a ritual format and a spiritual intention and gives it a much more potentially transformative effect. Psychedelic mushrooms can take you just as far out, but the way they've been adapted by Westerners has been more informal, which means they have the potential to be used in much more erratic ways."

New York writer Daniel Pinchbeck brought ayahuasca to the attention of liberal thinkers, detailing his mind-blowing journeys with the brew (and numerous other hallucinogens) in a pair of books: 2002's "Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey Into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism" and 2006's "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl." "When I published my first book in 2002 and I spoke to audiences, 50% to 80% of the people hadn't heard of ayahuasca," Pinchbeck says. "Now everywhere I go, everyone is familiar with it."

Truenos, a former comparative religion student and computer engineer, is relatively new on the ayahuasca circuit. And he's unusually candid about his practice compared with other ayahuasqueros. Most established ayahuasqueros operate in secret, speaking in code on the phone for fear of attracting too much scrutiny from the authorities. Federal law classified one of ayahuasca's components, DMT, as a controlled substance in 1970.

However, Truenos suggests that he does have the U.S. Supreme Court to fall back on, at least for the moment. In February 2006, the court ruled (in Gonzales vs. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal) that practi- tioners of the U.S. branch of the Brazil-based Christian spiritist group Uniao do Vegetal--which uses hoasca, the traditional brew that others call ayahuasca, as a sacrament--have the right to legally consume the beverage under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. That law aims to prevent the federal government from "substantially burdening" a person's free exercise of religion, the court said.

Truenos took the court decision as a green light. He and his wife, Gabriella, have been leading ceremonies for several years. They haven't consulted attorneys; instead they take their orders from the "Creator," he says.

"We have been operating completely above the radar because we understood that in this country, if any church is given protection or recognition by the government, that recognition or protection is given uniformly, or it'd be unconstitutional," Truenos says.

and now the couple, who sometimes live in Austin, Texas, have become a pair of jet-setting ayahuasca missionaries. Tonight's ceremony in Encinitas was preceded, Truenos says, by a few days of "doctoring" in the Bahamas. After the gathering they'll be off to minister to wounded souls in Topanga Canyon on the occasion of the winter solstice.

As Truenos sees it, the legal decision by the nation's highest court, the media's percolating interest and his rising profile as a shaman are all part of a grand supernatural plan. The Divine Mother, he says, is laying the groundwork to prepare the developed world for "the great coming of age of humanity."

With his scruffy beard, long white robe and skullcap, Truenos looks a bit like a post-conversion Cat Stevens. He speaks in the colorful, metaphor-rich language of Native American tribal elders. With just an hour to go before tonight's ritual, he explains his reasons for going public with his practice. "The medicine wants to be properly represented," he says, delicately placing the containers of murky ayahuasca on a sacred mat, a tapestry woven by Peruvian women during an ayahuasca ceremony. "It wants to be known in an integral way."

All this heavy-duty mysticism is more than a little incongruous amid the nouveau wealth of Encinitas. But he deflects any suggestion that by "doctoring" the wealthy he's neglecting the needy.

"We live in different times than our predecessors," Truenos says. "There has been a promise throughout every culture that there would be a moment in humanity's history where we would have social and economic justice. One of the things the fire altar states is that this day that has been promised has arrived, and so with it all of the various hallmarks are sure to be emerging in humanity. This includes a spiritual solution to humanity's economic problems so there isn't a disparity between the poor and the wealthy."

This sort of response is typical of Truenos, who gives few straight answers about his background but plenty of mystic filigree. Indeed, over the course of several conversations, his story became increasingly fluid, evolving with every telling. The covenant of his spiritual society, Aurora Baha, a baroque document posted at www.aurorabaha.org detailing the tenants of his faith, is also ever-changing. Though he established his society's covenant in 2005, he said it "continues to go through revisions."

What Truenos will reveal is that he was born in the Dominican Republic, is of Lebanese, Basque and Taino descent and has lived in the northeastern U.S. He prefers to keep his birth name private. He left home at 15, he says, because of "a spiritual crisis." A "personal crisis" followed at 23, after which he returned home to attend engineering school at Clarkson University in upstate New York. His adopted name, Lobo Siete Truenos, means Wolf Seven Thunders; medicine men in northern Mexico gave him the name "Lobo," he says. Truenos was introduced to ayahuasca in 2001, and after a series of ceremonies, he journeyed to Peru to be closer to native ayahuasca culture. Later, by a strange confluence of events he declines to detail, he became a voting systems supervisor for New Mexico during the 2004 election.

In any case, his life as a bureaucrat ended abruptly. In 2005, he established Aurora Baha, which shares some principles, such as spiritual unity and the unification of mankind, with the Baha'i faith. However, Aurora Baha is independent of the Baha'i organization, which has about 5 million members worldwide. Now Truenos has devoted his life to holding ayahuasca ceremonies wherever he is called.

"What ayahuasca provided to me, initially, was a sense of connectedness that I didn't even realize I was missing," he said during an interview several weeks before the Encinitas ceremony. "That connectedness to all life, to all things, an opportunity to know myself more deeply as a mirror of my most inner tendencies and motivations and intentions. It's very profound in that way. It also gave me a direct avenue for receiving answers to questions that I couldn't find anywhere else."

He believes that, in addition to carrying out the will of the Divine Mother, he has been tapped to help fulfill a prophecy that has been expressed by all the world's religions. That prophecy will see the indigenous peoples of North and South America united, he says.

"this could never be a recreational compound," says Dr. Charles Grob, head of adolescent and child psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance. "It's too unpredictable and dangerous." But Grob, one of a handful of scientists who has studied ayahuasca, thinks there may be some legitimate medical uses for it. In 1993, he led a team of researchers that conducted the first medical study of its long-term effects on 15 members of the Brazilian ayahuasca church Uniao do Vegetal. The team found that some church members experienced remission of their addictions, depression or anxiety disorders without recurrence. In the same study, published in 1996 in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, pharmacologist J.C. Callaway discovered an increased density of serotonin reuptake sites in the blood platelets of habitual ayahuasca drinkers, suggesting an antidepressant effect similar to what is now achieved by prescription drugs such as Prozac and Zoloft.

"I was suffering from severe depression," says Xthas Hoy, 32, a high school math teacher who says he has taken ayahuasca hundreds of times in the nine years since he has joined PaDeva, an ayahuasca church with Wiccan and pagan influences in New Mexico. "I went through the entire pharmacy, everything from Wellbutrin, Zoloft, Xanax and Prozac," Hoy says. "Within hours of the first time I drank ayahuasca, I've never had a recurrence again. From that moment on, there really was no question that this was my path." (Hoy is now a priest offering ayahuasca ceremonies for a suggested donation of $75 to $300 per person.)

Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine, counters that ayahuasca's effectiveness in treating depression isn't exactly groundbreaking. Science shows, he says, that any serious jolt to the system--shock therapy included--can bring the mind out of depression. That doesn't mean ayahuasca treatment is the wave of the future.

Nor are ayahuasca's quasi-religious effects any great revelation, Shermer says. History is rife with strange rituals believed to inspire divine intervention. "In a way, the ayahuasca phenomenon taps into a lot of what religion is. There's the social aspects of religion, and then there's the transcendent, spiritual aspects to it." There's no reason, he says, that ayahuasca wouldn't trigger feelings of transcendence any more than deep meditative prayer. "The monks used to self-flagellate to change their brain chemistry."

But all the medical skepticism in the world may not counteract the upsurge in grass-roots interest in ayahuasca that the Internet has propelled in the last five years. The Burning Man-friendly social networking website Tribe has its own ayahuasca subgroup. Erowid, a sort of Wikipedia of psychedelics, tells visitors everything they need to know about the brew. And aspiring ayahuasqueros can order Banisteriopsis caapi and Psychotria viridis directly from the online head shop Azarius for about $22 to $30 per 50 grams.

Among the more outspoken academic ayahuasca converts is British journalist and author Graham Hancock, who was researching a book on human origins ("Supernatural: Meetings With the Ancient Teachers of Mankind," published in 2006) when he stumbled on what he perceived to be uniform patterns in the cave drawings of primitive man. He came to the conclusion that the phenomenon was inspired by the sudden discovery of hallucinogenic plants. This led Hancock to ayahuasca, which he says he has taken 26 times since 2003; he credits it with improving his life.

Still, Hancock tempers this praise with a warning. "It is extremely powerful," he says. "Its effects can be deeply disturbing, and there may be some short-term trauma, almost like a post-traumatic shock disorder, with coming to terms with very disturbing insights about yourself."

So what has it done for him? "I'm a better husband and father," Hancock says. "My behavior is much more examined."

inside the encinitas backyard temple, Truenos pulls out two feathers and an eagle's wing. The red-tailed hawk feather represents love and laughter, he says. The pheasant feather stands for mercy. And the eagle's wing is used to fan ayahuasca drinkers who are "having a hard time" during the ceremony. He stresses that these feathers aren't artifacts--they're medicine. "It's more than symbolism," he says.

Truenos' ceremonies borrow heavily from indigenous practice. To prepare for his ayahuasca drinkers, he pulled an all-nighter, clearing the ceremonial space of negative energies with tobacco smoke. He had already soaked and boiled the plants down to the dark essence of ayahuasca.

Now that the fire altar is ready, he leaves the temple to eat a plate of fish and rice in his guest quarters. The ceremony participants will arrive soon, and he seems to be psyching himself up. Truenos mentions a recent private ayahuasca session in which a participant experienced "a trust crisis," refusing to believe Truenos could heal him. Mother Ayahuasca admonished the man for such self-delusion, leaving him writhing on the floor, wracked with emotion.

Despite this harrowing episode, Truenos believes ayahuasca's dark reputation is exaggerated. It is transformative and healing, he says, a cure for the "cancer of indifference," a remedy for our "failures in integrity." But it's even more than that.

"Some people," he says, "need to be frightened by the way they live their lives."

Credit: Gina Piccalo is a Times staff writer. Contact her at [email protected].

[GingaNinja]

The DMT molecule: A tryst with spirits, elves and aliens

not sure if thats exactly what you want

In the last ten years, there has been a slowly growing occurrence of underground ayahuasca religious ceremonies in Southern California, and primarily in Los Angeles. These ceremonies are spread by word of mouth, and entrance to it carries a donation. It’s a ‘donation’ because it can’t be called an ‘admission,’ which is considered taxable income. Also, the ayahuasca drink used in the ceremony is illegal. What is ayahuasca, and why is there a ceremony surrounding it? First of all, ayahuasca is a religious drink consumed by indigenous Indians in the Amazon. It’s hush-hush here in this country because the drink is technically illegal. This is because its active psychedelic component is a compound called DMT (the illegal part.)

DMT is short for dimethyltryptamine. It occurs naturally in mammalian brains, albeit in extremely small amounts. It is a psychotropic drug. It can be extracted and refined from certain plants, such as mimosa hostilis. DMT is also a Schedule 1 drug in the United States. This means, very simply, that ingesting this innocuous-sounding substance lands you in very hot water with your local drug and law enforcement authorities.

By the accounts of people who have ingested DMT, the experience begins with the visual appearance of geometric shapes of increasingly complexity. This is then followed by the gradual imposition of a subjective perceptual reality populated by entities of either animal and/or non-human form, and interestingly, of creatures which resemble contemporary descriptions of aliens. There are also encounters with human spirits (who may or may not be relatives.) The preceding is a grossly simplified encapsulation of the sensory experience and it should be noted that the duration and appearance of these entities varies from individual to individual.

Now, these perceptual experiences may or may not sound like the psychotropic adventurer’s cup of tea (which is how ayahuasca’s consumed) but there’s a caveat to this ticket-to-fairyland beverage; the taste of ayahuasca is indescribably vile, and the Indians also refer to ayahuasca as la purga, (the purge) because the consumer will inevitably vomit, or have extremely loose bowels. There are alternative and less gastro-intestinally distressing ways to ingest DMT, such as smoking it, or injecting it. Both are disquieting prospects, because in order to smoke it, you must know how to chemically extract and refine it. To inject it is an even more physically invasive procedure that immediately bumps DMT consumption into a much more serious category of psychotropic exploration. DMT is not for the bong and pizza crowd.

So what’s the point of ingesting DMT if it can either make you hurl or require that you have a background in organic chemistry? It isn’t called the ‘spirit molecule’ for nothing, because the transcendent qualities of DMT cannot be disputed. The ingestion of DMT in the form of ayahuasca is a sacred function by amazonian Indian shamans and tribes. It is also part of religious ritual by the Christian Santo Daime sect of Brazil. DMT is one of the few psychotropic substances where users frequently describe interactive encounters with personalities.

DMT’s consciousness-altering experience has been sampled by William Burroughs, Allen Ginsburg, Terence McKenna and Timothy Leary. They all attest to DMT’s potent launching of the subject into a sometimes frightening plane of reality. But they all agree it is a powerful psychoactive experience. The "trip" itself seems (in a distillation of several accounts) to break down into specific stages:

Firstly, geometric patterns appear in the subject’s vision. They grow in intensity and complexity. They are not static, but mobile, and constantly changing into higher orders of shapes and size. The second stage is the movement of the experimenter through a metaphorical transitional structure; this could be a huge tunnel, encountering a "membrane" of light, beyond which dim figures can be seen, or entering a vast hall or chamber, where the topmost dome or ceiling opens up to whatever the individual is then about to experience. And this next part is where it gets tricky.

Depending on whom you talk to, this next stage ranges from traumatic to awe-inspiring. Various animals may be seen. Most encounter the "machine elves." In some experiences, they’re literally wearing elf-garb, down to pointy hats. In other instances, they may have an insectoid appearance. They’re all under four feet high. Many times they’re aware of your presence, and may try and interact with you. There’s a strong impression they’re workers. But even this stage is a preamble. If you’re lucky (or unlucky) you might next encounter the "alien entity." This personality fits most contemporary descriptions of an "alien" – large head, narrowing chin, black slits for eyes. Their demeanor can range from indifferent, to curious, to outright hostility.

Many of those who have partaken of either ayahuasca or DMT testify that the stages of experience described above may not happen during a single trip. Sometimes it takes multiple DMT sessions to progress toward the next phase. It’s as if there’s an acclimation mechanism at work. Because of the seemingly organized aspects of the DMT-induced experience, some experimenters have hypothesized that DMT turns off filtering mechanisms in the brain that prevent certain visual and auditory stimuli from interacting with our cognitive processes. These stimuli are assumed to be unrelated to our consensual reality, to our coping & survival in it, and therefore our neurobiology has evolved to block it from our consciousnes. In other words, if these filtering mechanisms didn’t exist, we’d be swamped by so many audiovisual phenomena that we wouldn’t be able to focus on our immediate survival needs.

So where’s the auditory and visual stimuli coming from? Is it generated by our subconscious, by some part of our brain that’s been locked away for hundreds of thousands of years? The commonality of the experiences, the literal "sameness" that all DMT experimenters both supports and undercuts that. The initial appearance of geometric patterns could be ascribed to a section of our noggin that all of homo sapiens shares, one that generates the same imagery. But the animals? The elves? The aliens?

It could be that DMT is helping the user to access a collective unconscious of stored archetypes. But if you’re willing to ingest that scenario, then why not a dimension beyond our own? Is that still too far of a stretch? There’s actually a precedent for this belief system. It’s called religion, and billions of us ascribe to one form of it or another. Sometimes, out here in Los Angeles, it’s by word of mouth, a donation, and a teacup of la purga.

Edited August 26, 2009 by GingaNinja

[JDanger]

http://media.joerogan.net/gallery/d/992-2/...plains_Life.mp3

TV actor voices his opinions on DMT during a radio interview. Pretty funny.

[mu!]

Police seize lethal new drug DMT in WA

WA POLICE have made what is thought to be WA's first seizure of the hallucinogenic drug DMT, and arrested three men.

Police yesterday seized two grams of the drug, known as dimethyltryptamine, and arrested three men after raiding two properties in Denmark and Walpole, in the South of WA.

Police were called into investigate after a patient was admitted to Denmark Hospital with a suspected drug overdose of the drug.

"We believe this may be the first seizure of DMT by police in WA . . . And we also believe it is the first arrest as a result of this drug," Denmark Sergeant Dave Dench told PerthNow this afternoon.

"This is new (to WA). It's not new to the world. . . it's been used for 300 or 400 years overseas, but it's new to WA. We have never come across this in WA before.

``Even though we've only seized 2 grams, the fact that we've locked up three men, we believe we've put quite a dint in the potential for this drug to hit Denmark in large quantities."

DMT is extracted from the bark of certain trees and is manufactured during a "complex cooking process". Once "cooked", the yellow-coloured drug takes a crystalline or powder form. It is usually smoked, sometimes by lacing cannabis with the drug, police say.

Sgt Dench said intelligence suggested that the drug was being sold in 1 gram packages for $200.

He said chemists believed that each "dose" was 15 to 25 mg.

"Our concern is that if someone who hasn't taken the drug before and doesn't know anything about it and takes 1 gram, which is way over the dosage that chemists recommend is sufficient, then it may potentially have some major health effects for them."

He said police did not have any evidence that the drug, which is believed to have originated in South America, had been manufactured in the South West or from local trees.

"There are about six or seven types of tree that this substance can be extracted from....But we don't have any direct intelligence to suggest it's been cooked locally," he said.

A 25-year-old Walpole man will be charged by summons with supplying a prohibited drug (DMT), possessing a prohibited drug (DMT) and one count of possessing cannabis.

A 22-year-old man from Denmark will be charged by summons with one count of possessing a prohibited drug (DMT) and possessing a smoking implement.

The third man, a 23-year-old from Denmark, will be charged by summons for possessing cannabis and possessing a smoking implement.

The three men will appear in Albany Magistrates Court in January.

By Nicole Cox, police reporter

December 04, 2008 01:00pm

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21...092-948,00.html

Edited August 27, 2009 by mu.

[swarb]

Police seize lethal new drug DMT in WA

...

Police were called into investigate after a patient was admitted to Denmark Hospital with a suspected drug overdose of the drug.

...

woah... all the drug safety info I ever heard talked about how it was always safe to call ambos and that drug admissions were never referred to the cops. Anyone know the general procedure for this? Are things different in WA?

(sorry if this is off topic)

[rahli]

National Geographic online article -

Peru: Hell and Back

Link

Preview -

or centuries, Amazonian shamans have used ayahuasca as a window into the soul. The sacrament, they claim, can cure any illness. The author joins in this ancient ritual and finds the worlds within more terrifying—and enlightening—than ever imagined.

I will never forget what it was like. The overwhelming misery. The certainty of never-ending suffering. No one to help you, no way to escape. Everywhere I looked: darkness so thick that the idea of light seemed inconceivable.

Suddenly, I swirled down a tunnel of fire, wailing figures calling out to me in agony, begging me to save them. Others tried to terrorize me. "You will never leave here," they said. "Never. Never."

I found myself laughing at them. "I'm not scared of you," I said. But the darkness became even thicker; the emotional charge of suffering nearly unbearable. I felt as if I would burst from heartbreak—everywhere, I felt the agony of humankind, its tragedies, its hatreds, its sorrows. I reached the bottom of the tunnel and saw three thrones in a black chamber. Three shadowy figures sat in the chairs; in the middle was what I took to be the devil himself.

"The darkness will never end," he said. "It will never end. You can never escape this place."

"I can," I replied.

All at once, I willed myself to rise. I sailed up through the tunnel of fire, higher and higher until I broke through to a white light. All darkness immediately vanished. My body felt light, at peace. I floated among a beautiful spread of colors and patterns. Slowly my ayahuasca vision faded. I returned to my body, to where I lay in the hut, insects calling from the jungle.

"Welcome back," the shaman said.

The next morning, I discovered the impossible: The severe depression that had ruled my life since childhood had miraculously vanished.

[SunChaser]

woah... all the drug safety info I ever heard talked about how it was always safe to call ambos and that drug admissions were never referred to the cops. Anyone know the general procedure for this? Are things different in WA?

(sorry if this is off topic)

The little rat who had a adverse reaction would have lagged them in.

[Foton]

hehe thanks for posting that mu... wow

[Foton]

oh ill also add that in season 4 or the tv show weeds some characters take ayahuasca.

[gromit]

oh ill also add that in season 4 or the tv show weeds some characters take ayahuasca.

damn I was just going to mention that! Good couple of episodes - the brew is treated with respect. I liked the line " if peyote is a bicycle, then ayahuasca is a

rocketship".

Also liked that after her experience, the main character reassesed her life and priorities in a big way.