Ayahuasca: What Jennifer Aniston May Not Know About the 'Spirit Vine'

[chnt]

Ayahuasca: What Jennifer Aniston May Not Know About the 'Spirit Vine'

It's the evening of Jan. 25, 2007, and I'm hosting my first "Ayahuasca Monologues" storytelling event to a packed room at Eyebeam Atelier in New York City. On stage, "Breaking Open the Head" author Daniel Pinchbeck, who semi-popularized the hallucinogenic tea ayahuasca within the spiritual counterculture, brushes aside his disheveled hipster hair, asking in a voice barely audible from laryngitis, "How many of you here have tried ayahuasca?" Out of 220 people, only nine hands lift in the air, and they are mostly the featured storytellers (including myself) that I've directed for the show that night.

Cut to February 2012, and the mega-celebrity, Jennifer Aniston, best known for playing perky girl-next-door Rachel in "Friends," is tipping a bowl of ayahuasca to her lips in Universal's newest romantic comedy "Wanderlust." In just a few years, the once secret "shamans brew" of the Amazon has snaked its way into the popular consciousness, including the entertainment industry with cameos in the TV shows "Weeds" and "Nip/Tuck" and now the movie "Wanderlust." But the question remains: Can Hollywood portray this ancient medicinal, psychonautic elixir with the maturity and complexity necessary to address its multifaceted experiences?

The movie itself spins a bubbly tale of a New York couple (Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd) who -- jobless and unable to afford their high-priced West Village apartment -- flee to an intentional community (not commune) in rural Georgia. As Seth, the smarmy neo-shaman community leader states, "We use 'intentional community' because when you hear the word 'commune,' you think of a bunch of hippies smoking pot and playing guitar." The movie then trots out a series of '60s commune clichés -- prancing nudists, tie-dye shirts, free love and, yes, hippies smoking pot and playing guitar.

This sets up a number of enjoyable, easy jokes, but the clichés become more trite, and somewhat worrisome, when Aniston ingests ayahuasca. The experience starts out plausibly enough when Paul Rudd complains that the strange dark brown tea handed to him "reeks like cat butt." Ayahuasca's bitter, rotten-coffee taste is something you never forget. But the "Wanderlust" gathering looks more like a backyard party than a traditional ceremony.

In the Amazon, shamans usually sing healing songs called icaros while cooking what they consider to be a sacred mixture. They believe ayahuasca to be a spirit or divine being, composed of two different plants -- one containing the psychoactive chemical DMT (dimethyltryptomine) and the other, the double-helix shaped vine Banisteriopsis caapi.

Ceremonial participants normally prepare days (sometimes weeks) in advance by abstaining from pork, red meat, sugar, chocolate, cheese, alcohol and sex as a way to clean out their system beforehand. Shamans hold opening prayers and ask that everyone stay inside a circle or the maloca (ceremonial center), so they can maintain a container for "the healing energies" of the ceremony to flow and to protect from interference from what they consider negative energies or entities. They sing icaros through most of the ceremony, and will often help journeyers through difficult passages by chanting the songs, blowing cleansing tobacco smoke on them (it's different than tobacco sold at 7-Elevens in the U.S.) or waving feathers to clear out unwanted energies.

In "Wanderlust," members of the intentional community don't follow any dietary restrictions; there is no trustworthy shaman or guide (just Seth with his dubious motives), no singing, no healings and, probably worst of all, no set container for participants to find support when difficulties arise. This is, by far, the sloppiest group ayahuasca ceremony I've ever heard of.

In record timing (just a few minutes), the ayahuasca kicks in for Aniston (ayahuasca usually takes between 30-45 minutes). She embarks on a chaotic trip full of flashy, confusing images. In one quick-edit sequence, she is suddenly perched on top of a tree, singing R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly." I soon realize the filmmakers are treating ayahuasca like the stereotypical acid trip.

In fact, Aniston herself conflated LSD and ayahuasca in a "Chelsea Lately" interview. When Chelsea Handler asked Aniston how she prepared for her LSD scene, Aniston answered, "I've never done LSD so I just kind of imagined every greatest fear that I could have." She never mentioned that it wasn't acid she takes in the film but rather a medicine that Amazonian healers and shamans have used for centuries to treat illness and disease.

Those who have tried ayahuasca know very well that it is no tune-in, turn-on, drop-out-of-trees kind of drug. I've never met anyone who ever wanted (or probably was able) to climb anything taller than a chair on this powerful, consciousness altering substance. Often, with the intensity of the journey, it's a titanic struggle just to sit up.

But Aniston is right about the fear. Often anxieties, sickness or dark energies (as shamans might call them), seem to rise to the surface to be released during ceremonies. This often comes in the form of purging, whether from throwing up or defecating, or in some more "volcanic" cases, both at the same time.

Surprisingly, this ancient ayahuasca healing modality has proven effective in cases where Western medicine failed. In "Black Smoke," author Margaret DeWys describes how "the spirit vine" cured her of terminal breast cancer. Reality Sandwich web-magazine contributor April Blake writes about Shipibo ayahuasqueros curing her brain tumor, and National Geographic adventurer Kira Salak wrote about how overcoming a "devil" in an ayahuasca vision vanquished her life-long struggle with depression in what has become "the most popular article the magazine has ever published, bringing in 20 times more reader response mail than any previous article."

These tales may seem strange, or like mere hallucinations, until, well, you've tried it. A common joke I tell at talks and book readings is that skeptics and atheists are just "one cup of aya away from a religious experience." I'm often asked if drinking the tea is taking the easy way out. To be honest, I don't think there's anything easy about battling your fears on ayahuasca. I have also only been asked that question from those who have yet to try it. Perhaps that's why so many journeyers compare the vine to the red pill in "The Matrix." It opens your reality to things you never thought possible. It certainly did for me, including curing the severe panic attacks that had plagued me since childhood.

Of course, since that first Ayahuasca Monologues in 2007, awareness of the spirit vine has spread across the Northern Hemisphere. At our most recent Monologue event in NYC, when author Daniel Pinchbeck asked the same question, "Who here has tried ayahuasca?" more than half of the 300 attendees in Webster Hall's Grand Ballroom raised their hands.

I find it unfortunate that the U.S. government still considers the most powerful healing medicine I've encountered as a Schedule 1 banned substance. But as more people have their minds opened and bodies healed from the medicine, we'll continue to witness it more and more in the mainstream.

Perhaps Aniston's "Wanderlust" adventure will turn people on to seek the medicine in the Amazon or elsewhere where it is legally available. However, there is a danger in portraying ayahuasca in a completely flippant manner. My hope is that nobody encounters a ceremony as reckless as the one portrayed in the movie. Whether or not you believe in energy, sacred healings or intervening spirits, one thing is for sure: If you enter an ayahuasca experience without the proper care, the joke will likely be on you.

 

fucking hollywood...

[Marcel]

Yeah, fucking Hollywood, but "fucking psychedelic culture" too. The terror and uproar that this movie has created in the psychedelic community is ridiculous. The tone is always this self-righteous "how dare they desecrate the Holy Brew" sort of thing. When Andre Serrano or Bunuel or Salman Rushdie or others fuck with the Sacred of other cultures and they incite conservative outrage, we roll our eyes and tell them to loosen up. But when pop culture uses ayahuasca as a prop for a throw away joke in a movie no one will remember in 6 months, we collapse to the floor in convulsions of outrage, crying "Sacrilege! Sacrilege!"

Where's the strength and Universality that the entheogenic experience teaches us? Are we not a little too eager to create Saints and Relics and Taboos? (And in the case of aya, it's not even the Western anglophone culture's sacrament that's been desecrated! We've stolen it and repackaged it and arguably cheapened it for ourselves anyway!)

So what that TV shows are talking about entheogens? That's what Pinchbeck and McKenna and countless conferences and "Ayahuasca Monologues" are hoping for: public discourse. You can't push for discussion, and then demand that it be pursued only on your terms. If you talk, everyone will talk, and that includes Hollywood dim-wits and stand-up comedians. Either we stay silent (which isn't my stance) or we let the cat out of the bag and accept that now that it's free, the cat may want to go to the neighbour's house and return only for meal time. That's what freedom is. Trying to control its freedom isn't really freedom. It's the paranoid self-delusion of the scared.

(Sorry chnt. This isn't a jab at you. It's been a big month for the psychedelic community pointing its hypocritical finger at everything and anything, and I finally reached my tipping point.)

[chnt]

yeah i can agree with that, my main problem is that (although it is good that entheogens are entering popular culture)

with such a misrepresentation of what ayahuasca is, many people might get the wrong idea about it and think it's some party drug, and there could potentially be very dire consequences...

i mean how hard is it really to do a tiny bit of research into these things and present them in at least a semi-accurate way?

can you see where i'm coming from?

there could potentially be a bad backlash from this.

(and it's all good bro, you're my hombre, even though i'm not of spanish descent...)

can you please tell me more about why it's been a big month? i'm very curious

Edited March 7, 2012 by chnt

[incognito]

Word Marcel. Word. Ur one dude on the money.

[TommyChesnutt]

Marcel, probably because so many people use the 'entheogen world' to escape reality.

...and when this stuff happens, their personal fantasy land gets blown wide open. And everybody gets defensive... because they thought they were 'gifted', with, 'secret knowledge' - only to realise that, in the real world, it's just a plant or two, with some chemicals, that trigger receptors in our brains.

I mean sure, we could welcome this publicity. After all, it's what we want, right? Acceptance of drugs, in mainstream society... correct?

...But that would then mean facing reality, wouldn't it? That scary place, where bad things happen.

tsk tsk.

In my organic opinion, there are ethno-hobbiests, and ethno-fantasists. The latter are the ones complaining.

[Distracted]

It's just like any other movie where a character eats dope brownies or takes a trip and starts tripping the instant it's in their mouth.

It's hard for an actor to portray emotions or states of mind that they have NFI about as the only times they've been experienced to it is from other films/medias.

It also should be noted anyone getting offended over this i'd consider rather sensitive.

edit: spelling and grammar

Edited March 7, 2012 by Distracted

[∂an]

In the Amazon, shamans usually sing healing songs called icaros while cooking what they consider to be a sacred mixture. They believe ayahuasca to be a spirit or divine being, composed of two different plants -- one containing the psychoactive chemical DMT (dimethyltryptomine) and the other, the double-helix shaped vine Banisteriopsis caapi.

Ceremonial participants normally prepare days (sometimes weeks) in advance by abstaining from pork, red meat, sugar, chocolate, cheese, alcohol and sex as a way to clean out their system beforehand. Shamans hold opening prayers and ask that everyone stay inside a circle or the maloca (ceremonial center), so they can maintain a container for "the healing energies" of the ceremony to flow and to protect from interference from what they consider negative energies or entities. They sing icaros through most of the ceremony, and will often help journeyers through difficult passages by chanting the songs, blowing cleansing tobacco smoke on them (it's different than tobacco sold at 7-Elevens in the U.S.) or waving feathers to clear out unwanted energies.

 

unfortunately, I doubt too many people (even in the ethnobotanical community) take this traditional approach to ayahuasca. in a way hollywood is just reflecting the tendency of the west to trivialise spiritual matters, and it has served its purpose by bringing this issue to the surface.

perhaps its not for us to be offended over this. I would have no problem with hollywood trivialising an acid trip as that is a product of the west, but ayahuasca is the core of amazonian indian spirituality. a little cultural respect wouldn't go astray.

[chnt]

Just like any other movie where a character eats dope brownies and takes a trip and starts tripping the instant it's in their mouth.

It's hard for an actor to protray emotions or states of mind that they have NFI about and the only time they've been experienced to it is from other films/medias.

It also should be noted anyone getting offended over this i'd consider rather sensitive.

 

this is what i meant with my "fucking hollywood" statement.

like, here we go again, hollywood getting shit wrong, as in they're so fucking stupid and they perpetuate lies and people believe them as truths ie hyper-reality.

they just fuck so many things up... hyper-reality is a huge problem.

i dont find this any more offensive then any other mindless hollywood piece of shit, i just thought it was relevant to an ethnobotany forum and people here might be interested.

definitely was not expecting this backlash...

[Distracted]

my first reaction was 'wtf is jennifer aniston being mentioned here?'

at least they didn't smoke it and go pick fights

[Marcel]

Fuck, sorry, chnt. That's exactly how I took your reaction to this article. I know you weren't upset. I mean no backlash against you. You iz cool, yo. For what it's worth, it doesn't seem like the above posters are attacking you either. They're scratching their heads about the philosophy that informs the article that you posted. No one seems to be shooting the messenger.

Let me give a little background to my rant above. I've read about this Jennifer Aya-ston-gate affair in numerous places, and the tone is often like the one in the Huff Post article you provided. I also read Reality Sandwiches every now and again (there's lots of good stuff there too; like the pieces by Nese Senol, for example), and I flick through other ethnobot/psy head forums and there seems to be some sort of building Us versus Them mentality. Yeah, it has always been there, but it seems to be reaching some sort of new fever pitch in "Our community". And the worst part is that there's a combative element that suggests that if you don't follow the Psychedelic Party line to the letter, then you're probably just as bad as the head of the Narc Squad or some media-hungry conservative minister in Alabama. Don't debate! Follow!

One example from a few days ago: There was an article that someone linked to on the facebook EGA group that read: "Louisiana Legislator Seeks to Ban Herbal Tea". Intrigued, I clicked on it and after the usual The Man Wants Us Dumb So That We Don't Rise Up and Buy The Man's Big Pharma Medicines rhetoric, it turns out that this isn't about "herbal tea" and all that that term implies in popular culture, it's specifically about Kratom tea. The article then goes on to say that it's harmless and mild and has been used with little problem in SE Asia for ever. Well, while I don't think the US should necessarily ban Kratom, I do think that bullshitting isn't doing us any favours. Nor is sensationalism, for that matter. And what more is a headline like "Legislator Seeks to Ban Herbal Tea" than sensationalism? When Joe Average reads a headline like that do you think they think of chamomile tea and rosehip infusions, or do they think of a potentially addictive quasi-opiate? The journalist (or sub-editor) is being manipulative. And we don't tolerate that sort of media propaganda when it's used against us, yet it's ok for us to use it?

There's more to it than this, and the issue runs deeper, but this isn't the place for it. I'm sketching out a little article. I'll post it when I finish.

In conclusion, thanks for the link! I hold my rants back pretty well these days, so it means something when an article lets it all out!

[etherealdrifter]

my first reaction was 'wtf is jennifer aniston being mentioned here?'

at least they didn't smoke it and go pick fights

 

if this was in the bitches and.....forum" thread i'd say

>"And Yeah man, why the fuck did brad cheat on a hot,frigid,stoner wife with a succubus like angeeleenjohonnie

anyway?" anyway

[qualia]

people are getting upset about a jennifer aniston movie?

it's fucking jennifer anuston ffs.

[qualia]

so were people up in arms about disrespecting rastafarian religion when "harold and kumar eat shit" came out?

[chnt]

wow marcel, i totally didnt think you were attacking me at all, so thanks for the apology but it totally wasn't needed, s'all good man.

i guess my comment on the end of my last post was a little silly.

cant wait for this article of yours marcel.

feel free to rant more on the forums also, i love a good rant

and eth, it's because brangelina is way more catchy than brannifer

[space cadet swami]

Shouldn't the issue really be about inciting more people to maybe explore the avenues of consciousness expansion...people that may have known nothing at all about ethno's prior to watching a mainstream movie as such, might now feel the urge to look into such plants & their endless possibilities...

Just an opinion

[CβL]

Shouldn't the issue really be about inciting more people to maybe explore the avenues of consciousness expansion...people that may have known nothing at all about ethno's prior to watching a mainstream movie as such, might now feel the urge to look into such plants & their endless possibilities...

Just an opinion

From the description of the portrayal in this movie, it seems that few (but probably none) people will gain even a basic understanding that these entheogens can be used for serious or useful purposes (as opposed to it being a "wacky party drug"). It's up for debate whether or not this is irrelevent, as many (but how many?) people didn't knowingly enter the world of entheogens - they just stumbled into it and found that it was "home".

Also - in case anyone was wondering, I did knowingly enter the world of entheogens.

[Psylo]

The journalist (or sub-editor) is being manipulative. And we don't tolerate that sort of media propaganda when it's used against us, yet it's ok for us to use it?

 

While I don't despise him, or his ultimate intentions, Michael Moore is another example of an over-the-top propagandist manipulator using the tools & triggers of mainstream video journalism. The Green-Left/Socialist/Resistance crew have ignored this fact when celebrating MM's presentations.

I'm sure the aya scene in this dumb movie (an assumption) with do nothing good or bad for the sacrament. Ask 95% of the people walking out of the cinema what "that drug" was, and I'll bet they couldn't tell you.

[botanika]

Yeah, fucking Hollywood, but "fucking psychedelic culture" too. The terror and uproar that this movie has created in the psychedelic community is ridiculous. The tone is always this self-righteous "how dare they desecrate the Holy Brew" sort of thing. When Andre Serrano or Bunuel or Salman Rushdie or others fuck with the Sacred of other cultures and they incite conservative outrage, we roll our eyes and tell them to loosen up. But when pop culture uses ayahuasca as a prop for a throw away joke in a movie no one will remember in 6 months, we collapse to the floor in convulsions of outrage, crying "Sacrilege! Sacrilege!"

Where's the strength and Universality that the entheogenic experience teaches us? Are we not a little too eager to create Saints and Relics and Taboos? (And in the case of aya, it's not even the Western anglophone culture's sacrament that's been desecrated! We've stolen it and repackaged it and arguably cheapened it for ourselves anyway!)

So what that TV shows are talking about entheogens? That's what Pinchbeck and McKenna and countless conferences and "Ayahuasca Monologues" are hoping for: public discourse. You can't push for discussion, and then demand that it be pursued only on your terms. If you talk, everyone will talk, and that includes Hollywood dim-wits and stand-up comedians. That's what freedom is. Trying to control its freedom isn't really freedom. It's the paranoid self-delusion of the scared.

 

This ^

 Ask 95% of the people walking out of the cinema what "that drug" was, and I'll bet they couldn't tell you.

 

Exactly and many people leaving a Jennifer Aniston film probably wouldn't care or ever have the opportunity or desire to take it anyway!

Edited March 9, 2012 by botanika