The Science of Waking Up
I’ve been back in Brazil for a few months now and had wanted to send this out earlier but managed to leave my laptop in the Guarulhos Airport in São Paolo on my way back and was without it for about a month. I had stopped at a Casa de Pão de Queijo for a snack and to write in my journal, venting about how hard it always is for me to come back to Brazil, always traveling alone these days because I go back and forth so much, and never traversing between the worlds with a whole lot of grace. Then I somehow left the computer on the table and walked off. Thank God the lost and found actually functions! And thanks to my friend Dado and his brother for helping me get it back! My main reason for going to California this time was to volunteer in the Psychedelic Science 2017 conference hosted by MAPS at the Oakland Marriott, which was attended by upwards of 3,000 people. I worked as an assistant to Bia Labate, a well known Brazilian ayahuasca researcher who was facilitating the plant medicine track. I am planning to go back to school and pursue a doctorate focused on Santo Daime, so this was an ideal position as I got to know many of the researchers, especially a group of Brazilian scientists doing groundbreaking work who are also great fun to hang out with.
I am particularly interested in studying Santo Daime as Brazilian cultural patrimony, and so when I saw the Psychedelic Science conference advertised last year at the ayahuasca conference in Rio Branco, I was not particularly interested in attending as I figured that it would be primarily focused on clinical, therapeutic research and not have much in the way of anthropological studies of religious and ceremonial use of plant medicines. However, I am seeing an opening in psychedelics research through which more socially and culturally focused studies become more relevant as it becomes clearer that pharmaceuticals, though they have been helpful, are not fixing the growing problems associated with addictions, stress, anxiety and depression in our society. The very act of going to see a therapist and being given a prescription for pharmaceuticals is culturally bound, and not surprisingly the US is in first place world wide for use of pharmaceutical anti-depressants. The richest and most powerful country on the planet is also the most depressed. Maybe because the predominant, capitalist culture representing the US has at its very core the seeds of colonialism and racism and ultimately the depression and anxiety in need of healing comes from a sense of disempowerment by the social blood on our very own hands.
There is a lot of excitement about medicines like ayahuasca and ibogaine being used now to treat depression, and although therapists are concerned with dosage and pharmacological potency the same they would be with any drug, the very origins of many of these plant medicines escort them with a wide range of cultural, environmental, and spiritual concerns, which can be categorized as “set and setting” from the clinical perspective, but which also remind us that the ritual is a human action which enables us to grow into our infinite capacity as conscious beings, aware of what we are doing and why. Without taking these steps towards consciousness, it is more likely that we will remain in the dark repeating useless patterns of addiction and consumerism which are what make us sick in the first place, even though we may be ingesting the most brilliant, powerful “drug.” The process of distilling the active components of these substances and getting the dosage right is only a part of the healing, because the sicknesses being healed are symptoms of much bigger cultural, environmental and spiritual problems. Though we clearly don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, we need to be looking more at why the baby and the bathwater indeed go so well together.
At the PS2017 conference I was impressed to find that many accomplished and well respected scientists from all over the world are in fact coming to this very conclusion. I had the opportunity to hear a couple of researchers present their findings several times as Bia had arranged pre and post conference workshops and events and I stayed by her side as long as I was able to keep up with her. Sidarta Ribeiro, PhD, a professor and researcher from Natal in the Northeast of Brazil, spoke about the “entourage effect,” arguing that what is being found through breaking plants down into pure compounds for the purpose of research and treatment is that they actually serve us humans better in combination with each other than as separate components. In other words, rather than taking them apart and then putting them back together again, why not leave the plants intact? This tendency to break things apart and define them, though of course useful, reminds me of a child pulling the wings off of a butterfly to see what will happen. Maybe it’s a necessary stage of research and development, but clearly limiting if healing is the goal, as the root of the word “heal” comes from “whole.” Draulio Barros de Araujo, PhD., also from Natal, talked about his experience with what he and his colleagues refer to as the “carinho effect.” At his therapy clinic they have conducted research with ayahuasca and many participants in the trials live in the favelas and have few resources available to them. They would sometimes ask if they could stay and sleep at the clinic because it was a more pleasant environment than their own homes. In this case the setting and the thoughtful treatment they received were obviously an important part of the experience for them that could not be separated from the efficacy of a psychedelic drug.
I was pleased by the number of women presenters at the conference, almost matching the number of men, and although a lot of progress has been made to identify and demystify sexist constructs and expectations, I was aware that I was looking for differences as I attended the presentations. When Dawn Davis, M.A. and a doctoral candidate, gave her presentation on conservation strategies for peyote harvesting, the first thing she talked about was her family, a loving, supportive husband and beautiful daughter. She is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock tribe and spoke about how her grandfather had initiated her with peyote as a child and took her out on her first peyote harvest. I appreciated that she put family and community first before reporting research results, strategies for data collection, charts or graphs. She is pursuing her doctorate in the Water Resources Program at the University of Idaho, with an emphasis in sustainability of ethno-significant plants, and emphasized in her speech that concern for peyote is directly linked to concern for the environment, as she was taught from a young age that the ritual harvesting of the peyote cactus, involving extensive walks into the desert, is an integral part of their consumption and ceremonial use which must be protected. In this way, the plants themselves teach us about respect for the natural environment, for people, and for culture. There is debate about the benefits and dangers of cultivating these plants as demand for them increases, especially among therapeutic practitioners and doctors, but Dawn’s presentation made it clear that although it may be cultivated for non traditional use, that cannot be considered a solution for peyote’s sustainability problem, and traditional harvesting and the rights of the native people who keep these traditions alive must take precedence over consumer demands or the consequences will be irreversible for everyone.
Plants as teachers was a popular theme at the conference and Laura Dev, whom I met on a bus in Rio Branco last October at the AYA conference, is focusing her research on the role of plants in knowledge production, and examining the differences between seeing them as collaborators or objects of study. She primarily works with people from the Shipibo nation in Peru and is bringing her multi-species ethnographic approach to help them receive greater benefits from the commoditization of their plants and rituals, especially as ayahuasca tourism is growing in popularity among northerners willing to pay great sums of money traveling to South America in search of “authentic” shamanic experience. Kathleen Harrison, ethnobotanist and somewhat of a living legend, shared about her extensive experience with cannabis as a spiritual ally. Her warm presence and obvious deep personal relationship with marijuana and many other plants resonated through the large, synthetic Marriott ballroom. Diana Negrin, another peyote researcher, grew up around Huichol or Wixáritari people as her parents lived and worked with them. She now works as a geographer focusing on indigenous territorial and cultural rights, another example of a young professional, and in this case another woman, working to extend psychedelics research into more social, humanitarian territory.
Sandor Iron Rope, a representative of the Oglala Lakota Oyate people, also brought a very welcome indigenous perspective to the conference. He started his presentation by telling the story of the Lakota Nation, and going on to give voice to the conservation challenges they face, and finishing with a humble, simple request for respect for his people and what they continue to face living on reservations inside of an unquenchable neo-colonial empire. It was the first time that peyote was being included in the plant medicine track at one of these conferences, and it seemed to usher in more indigenous voices in general. In fact, these voices, and the brave action of an indigenous woman shedding light on a particular incident during the conference which clearly exemplified white male privilege, left me inspired and motivated.
Although she was not a presenter on the plant medicine track, LisaNa Macias Red Bear made a strong impression when she confronted Gabor Maté, a very well known doctor and author, for saying that there was nothing more that he could do about problems associated with the cultural rift between indigenous tribes in which plant medicines are commonly used, and therapists, researchers and intellectuals who also work with them. When she went up to the microphone to confront him about his statement during the Q & A at the end of Dr. Maté’s presentation “Ayahuasca: From Science to Ceremony,” he started to psychoanalyse her and talk about her own, personal trauma, which was upsetting to witness and caused her to walk off, clearly offended. It was unprofessional on his part, but in the larger scheme of things, I believe it was a very valuable revelation of the underlying, crippling paradigm of white, western doctor as all knowing, and indigenous female as incapable of taking care of herself or expressing her ideas, or even desperate for affirmation or attention from the very same doctor. This was not the case at all, but Dr. Maté was acting directly from this paradigm, whether conscious of it or not. At the end of the conference Bia invited five people representing diverse voices who had presented over the weekend to give five minute presentations during the closing plenary. One of the five speakers was LisaNa, who hit the nail on the head by using her five minutes to enlighten the thousands of listeners in the room and around the world that this is the reality and it is here in the room with us. For sure many people were uncomfortable with the fact that she was using the name of an esteemed doctor who was not present in the room to defend himself, but the more important, underlying issues of racism and inequality were addressed, and we need more people capable of acting with this much bravery if anything is going to change.
I couldn’t help but also look around at the reality in the Marriott Hotel in which the conference was taking place. The employees were mostly dark skinned people, although a large spectrum of cultures were represented among them. The participants in the conference were mostly white, although internationally diverse, and from a wide age range. The benefits of working with psychedelics, or what I will now refer to as entheogens, is that they help “wake us up,” and part of waking up is becoming aware of what is actually going on around us and not just the dreams in our head. For me, this was a fat elephant under the rug at the conference. Culture is the water we swim in, and cannot be separated from all of the ideas, the expensive and cutting edge art, the convenience of staying in a luxury hotel, the environmentally conscious products for sale, and the delicious, organic, locally grown food available. I was encouraged the other day when Bia shared an article posted on chacruna.net by Jae Sevellius, "How Psychedelic Science Privileges Some, Neglects Others, and Limits Us All.” Dr. Sevellius begins by recognizing that “In Western psychedelic science and culture, there is a tendency to believe we are on the precipice of healing the world, transcending our traumas and our harmful conditioning, about to discover and unleash the answer to suffering itself. However, current psychedelic science is driven by a Western medicalized framework, and thus reflects all of the same limitations.”
Along with reaffirming for me the validity of the study that I am embarking on, I also was pleased to learn about some of the progress made in psychedelics research in general, especially recognition of the culturally bound myths, stigmas and identities around psychedelics. Cannabis, LSD and other “psychedelics” were not always associated with thugs and criminals, and when LSD was first discovered it was researched for its therapeutic potential and considered a promising discovery. It was the mass production and its context within the social and political upheaval of the 60s that gave it the bad rap, but not the drug itself. We are seeing in so many ways how much culture has to do with our conclusions and ideas about our world, and culture is permeable, malleable, and always living and changing with us. Now that we’ve busied ourselves unpacking everything and disentangling ourselves from ancestral obligations, we now yearn for a sense of ancestral continuity that leaves many people scrambling around the globe in search of authentic experience. I believe that this is where Santo Daime, as a new religious doctrine, alive and breathing, rooted in a strong cultural, environmental, and socially conscious international web, carries enormous potential for shaping the world in which we want to live. Santo Daime is quintessentially Brazilian, but Brazil, like all nations, is a culturally bound construct set in time and space. What Brazilian culture brings so clearly is the 100% natural phenomenon of beautiful new things sprouting up out of so much merde, waste, commingling, and decomposition. Brazilian culture is an international export of great value, and Santo Daime is a cultural treasure with a miraculous, entheogenic plant medicine pulsing in its chest.
