from the Newsletter of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic
Studies
MAPS - Volume 6 Number 3 Summer 1996
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A Report
From the International Conference of Hoasca Studies, 11/2-4/95 A
Report
From the International Conference of Hoasca Studies, 11/2-4/95
J.C.
Callaway, Ph.D.
J.C. Callaway,
Ph.D.
Dept. of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
University of Kuopio, Finland
callaway@jolla.uku.fi
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"The
encounter between scientific
knowledge and coboclo wisdom..."
(Coboclo
is the Brazilian word for mestizo, the resulting mix from Indians
and Europeans.)
The
Uniao Do Vegetal (UDV) had its world debut in Rio de Janeiro by
organizing
and hosting the International Conference of Hoasca Studies,
November
2-4, 1995. The UDV, literally "the Union of Vegetal," was founded
by
Jose Gabriel Costa in a remote area of Brazil on July 22, 1961. The
Vegetal
is better known as Ayahuasca in North America, and in Brazil this
beverage
goes by the name Hoasca. The UDV is the largest single organization
that
uses Ayahuasca as a religious sacrament, and its membership presently
exceeds
5,000 individuals who are distributed among 60 nucleos throughout
Brazil.
(The Santo Daime is the largest "group" using Ayahuasca but members
are
split into about seven different directions and all follow different
doctrines.
At last count, the Santo Daime numbered about 7,500.)
The
UDV is a civic-minded organization that makes a significant contribution
in
volunteer energy towards caring for the sick and elderly and providing
food
and shelter for women and children. It is actively involved in several
ecological
projects. In addition, their high regard for family, and
especially
the future of children, offer a fine example of how a
psychoactive
sacrament can affect productive interpersonal relationships.
One
of the UDV's long-term missions is to promote world peace through the
wisdom
obtained by regular use of the Vegetal. In the summer of 1993 an
international
team of scientists initiated a study of this beverage, its
plant
components and 15 volunteers who had used it on a regular basis for
ten
years or more. This was the Hoasca Project, and many of the
presentations
at this conference were directly related to this prospective
study
(see MAPS Research Update Vol. 5 No. 4, pp. 4 & 5).
Unlike
more well known Ayahuasca religions in Brazil, the UDV have
maintained
a very low profile over the years and have worked carefully with
bureaucratic
agencies to preserve their religious liberties. In fact,
several
of the reporters covering the conference had never even heard of
this
organization. This event received wide media coverage on both local and
national
levels.
Set
Just
over 800 persons attended the Conference of Hoasca Studies including
about
50 people from outside Brazil. About 60-70% of the 800 attendees were
UDV
members. This event was not only informative but experiential. All
participants
had the opportunity to participate in formal sessions before
and
after the conference, where significant amounts of the bitter brew were
distributed
within a ritual context (not all 800 chose to accept this
invitation,
however). To say the least, these experiences established
important
transpersonal and cross-cultural bonds, which heightened trust and
openness
throughout the crowd.
Setting
Our
conference site was The Hotel Gloria, a grand old structure which has
been
renovated over the years to keep pace with international expectations.
Besides
the Conference of Hoasca Studies, the UDV sponsored two other
parallel
conferences at the same site; one on health and the other on
ecology.
The conference facilities were exceptional, as audio visual
equipment
worth about $40,000 had been acquired to enhance the
presentations.
In addition to the lectures, a visual art exhibition was on
display
to convey images of another world, where no words do justice.
Thursday
November 2, 1995
The
Conference opened with a review course on Ayahuasca, where Gabriel
Travini,
M.D. from Sao Paulo, described the botany of the plants that are
typically
used to prepare this tea; the liana Banisteriopsis caapi which
contains
harmala alkaloids and the leaves of Psychotria viridis which
provide
N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT). The Colombian anthropologist Luis
Eduardo
Luna, Ph.D. reminded us that indigenous peoples of South American
used
a much wider variety of plant-teachers in their preparations, long
before
Portuguese rubber tappers began to bring this mystery to the
attention
of urban Brazilians. Luna spoke from several years of
anthropological
experience with Peruvian shamans who also use Ayahuasca
(Luna
and Amaringo 1991). Guilherme Oberlander, M.D. from Rio de Janeiro,
gave
a fine overview of Ayahuasca-related neuropharmacology, stressing the
actions
of plant alkaloids on the serotonergic system and how harmala
alkaloids
inhibit monoamine oxidase type A (MAO-A) to facilitate the oral
activity
of DMT in this unusual binary preparation. American ethnobotanist
Dennis
McKenna, Ph.D. concluded this session by providing an overview of
modern
Ayahuasca research; from the early encounters of Richard Spruce
almost
150 years ago, on to the pioneering works of Richard Schultes and Bo
Holmstedt
in botanical and phytochemical analyses, respectively, and up to
the
present revival of ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology.
Later
on that evening, writer and explorer Jonathan Ott transmitted his
exceptional
version of history and reminded us that it was almost 1,600
years
to the day when the "Pharmacratic Inquisition" began with the
destruction
of the temple at Eleusis, marking the end of the "Age of
Entheogens",
and that we are presently experiencing the "Entheogenic
Reformation".
The curious reader is directed towards further reading of
these
and other matters in the most comprehensive treatment of Ayahuasca
botany
and pharmacology ever written (Ayahuasca Analogues: Pangaen
Entheogens,
Ott 1994). Luis Luna concluded the first day of lectures with
another
talk, entitled "History of the Tea Use in the Americas and its
Significance
in Modern Society", and received a hearty round of applause and
standing
ovation as he suggested that women take a stronger role in this
(presently)
male dominated religion. The evening of the first day concluded
with
a musical show of Andean folk music by the Chaski Group.
Friday
3 November 1995
Several
excellent talks continued on the following day, along with a video
of
the Hoasca Project as it was documented in Manaus, during June and July
of
1993. This work was initially funded by private donations to Botanical
Dimensions,
a nonprofit research organization supporting the investigation
of
ethnomedicinally significant plants. From that prospective study, we
collected
a wide variety of samples which are still in the process of
analysis.
In my first of three lectures for this conference, I presented the
results
from phytochemical analyses of several plant and tea samples and
reported
on their concentrations of DMT and harmala alkaloids. Private
funding
has been provided for a more extensive phytochemical survey that
began
by the collection of well documented plant samples throughout Brazil,
on
the same day, at the end of the dry season (October). In an attempt to
determine
variations in alkaloid profiles, another collection from the exact
same
plants will be made in April of 1996 (the end of the subsequent wet
season).
Deborah
Mash, Ph.D. from the University of Miami, presented her preliminary
findings
on a pharmacokinetic study of DMT levels in plasma samples that
were
collected over time from the 15 experienced volunteers who had consumed
2 ml/kg
of the tea as part of the Hoasca Project. Some of this work was
supported
by a $5,000 grant from MAPS. American psychiatrist Charles Grob,
M.D.,
UCLA-Harbor Medical School, presented the results from a
neuroendocrine
challenge assay with these same volunteers, and in another
lecture
provided results from personality and neurophysiological evaluations
among
the Hoasca users and a group of matched controls (Grob et al. 1996). A
Brazilian
psychiatrist, Osvaldo Luiz Saide of Rio de Janeiro, presented
results
from additional psychological evaluations obtained from this same
group,
concerning the acute effects from Hoasca.
Some
of the samples collected during the Hoasca Project were blood platelets
(thrombocytes)
for receptor binding studies with serotonergic ligands, and
initial
results concerning platelet serotonin uptake sites have already been
published
(Callaway et al. 1994). I spoke about these results in my second
lecture,
and presented new information suggesting a role for Hoasca
alkaloids
in the treatment of depression and substance misuse, particularly
alcoholism.
We are already planning additional receptor binding studies in a
larger
population of regular Hoasca users, which also includes women, to
identify
the nature of the unique change that was observed in the platelets
of
the hoasceros. Furthermore, pilot sessions with cocaine addicts using
Hoasca
in a ritual context have been approved in Brazil. These sessions will
be
run by medical doctors who are also UDV members.
Mirtes
Costa, from the University of Campinas in Brazil, presented her
toxicity
data on the oral dose of Ayahuasca that is lethal for 50% of the
experimental
rats (LD50). She estimated that approximately 7.8 liters of the
tea
would be a lethal dose for a 75 kg human. She seemed surprised when the
audience
of experienced hoasceros and hoasceras laughed in delight at this
outrageous
amount. In a subsequent panel discussion it was brought out that
this
amount would be approximately 50 times a normal human dose and, perhaps
more
to the point, rats do not vomit!
Elizabeth
Andrade, M.D. a cardiologist from the Federal University in Manaus
and
Glacus de Souza Brito, M.D., president of the UDV Center for Medical
Studies,
discussed acute physiological effects from the tea using EKG data
obtained
from the Hoasca Project. The observation of bradycardia (slowed
heart
rate, < 60 beats/min.) as an acute side effect in some of the
individuals
has generated considerable discussion over the past two years.
Although
bradycardia is sometimes seen during sleep and other stages of deep
relaxation,
it seems of little consequence in healthy individuals. However,
it
was suggested that in some individuals having weak cardiac function that
induced
bradycardia could lead to more serious conditions. This matter will
be
the focus of future studies. The second day concluded with a short panel
discussion.
Saturday
November 4, 1995
The
final day of the conference opened with an institutional profile of the
UDV,
by Edison Saraiva Neves, M.D., president and general director of the
UDV.
A round table discussion followed concerning legal aspects of Hoasca in
both
Brazil and the United States. Domingos Bernado, a civil lawyer and high
official
within the Brazilian National Counsel on Drugs (CONFEN), described
his
earliest recollections of the tea as a potential drug problem that came
to
his attention through dubious sources over 10 years ago. He told of his
past
mistakes in attempting to orchestrate a prohibition of its use under
any
circumstance. After a lengthy and thorough investigation of the matter,
however,
he was absolutely convinced of the benefits associated with regular
Hoasca
use, and since then he has passionately defended the right of
individuals
to celebrate their religion with this beverage. He went on to
state
that "the law provides a service to human kind when it does not get in
the
way," and this proclamation was followed by a solid round of applause.
This
public official's rapid recovery from ignorance is a unique case
history,
worthy of serious and careful consideration.
The
middle part of the day opened with a talk on dimethyl tryptamines
(DMTs),
by the Argentinean researcher Ciprian Olivier, M.D., a student of
the
early psychedelic pioneers Fischer, Hoffer and Osmond, who had
researched
these endogenous compounds as possible "schizotoxicins" a few
decades
ago. I followed with a talk on a previously published hypothesis
stating
a useful role for endogenous DMTs, i.e. normal dreaming, since these
and
other neuroactive indoles are found in normal humans and laboratory
animals
in addition to psychotic individuals (Callaway 1988). Jonathan Ott
adroitly
summed up this idea up with the term "endohuasca" (Ott 1994).
Chemical
and mechanistic similarities were illustrated to highlight the
similarities
between endohuasca and Ayahuasca neuropharmacology.
Charles
Grob continued the session with a talk on the implications of Hoasca
studies
to modern psychiatry, and stressed the need for more studies (and
more
funding) to establish the safety and inherent value to the individual
and
community from regular Hoasca use in a religious context. Juan
Sanchez-Ramos,
M.D., Ph.D. from the University of Miami followed with an
excellent
presentation of his paper on banisterene (harmaline/harmine) in
the
treatment of Parkinson's disease during the earlier half of this century
(Sanchez-Ramos
1990). This stimulated much discussion and the call for an
epidemiological
study of UDV members to determine the frequency of this
disease
in relation to the overall Brazilian population.
After
a break, Benny Shanon discussed the phenomenon of cognitive
development
during Hoasca use, and particularly its impact on language
acquisition.
Rarely, if ever, have so many Americans successfully managed to
become
conversant in a single foreign language (Portuguese) for a single
purpose
(gnosis). Ralph Metzner, Ph.D. professor of psychology, gave the
closing
lecture for the conference and remarked on how this event
represented
a remarriage of science and religion, after its formal divorce
in
the 17th century, and stressed our responsibilities as individuals to
cultivate
community connections, respect and listen to both women and
children,
resist oppression wherever it exists and to support indigenous
peoples
along with other forms of cultural and bio-diversity. I was
particularly
gratified to see some of the UVD elders, with their
simultaneous
translation head phones on, quietly nodding with Ralph's
message.
In
Summary
For
the reader who was not present at this event, I realize this report may
seem
overly positive. However, in my personal opinion, I found this to be
the
most interesting and well organized conference I have ever attended.
Through
the UDV, we find an excellent example of how a sacred psychoactive
substance
may be incorporated into everyday reality, and within the existing
structures
of a modern society. This is certainly not the only way, though
the
signal comes clear from this southern direction. Let us keep an open eye
on
this situation, and an open mind to the ways of others. While the
legendary
telepathic effects of this brew are significant at sufficient
doses,
I might also suggest a crash course in Portuguese to enhance the
experience.
Tem burracheira?
References
* Callaway JC (1988). A proposed mechanism for the visions of dream
sleep. Medical Hypotheses 26:119-124.
* Callaway JC, Airaksinen MM, McKenna DJ, Brito GC, Grob CS (1994).
Platelet serotonin increased in drinkers of Ayahuasca.
Psychopharmacology 16:385-357.
* Grob CS, McKenna DJ, Callaway JC, Brito CS, Neves ES, Oberlander
G,
Saide OL, Labigalini E, Tacla C, Miranda CT, Strassman RJ, Boone KB
(1996). Human pharmacology on Hoasca, a plant hallucinogen used in
ritual context in Brazil. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. Feb.
(in press).
* Luna LE and Amaringo PC (1991). Ayahuasca Visions. North Atlantic
Books: Berkeley, CA.
* Ott J (1994). Ayahuasca Analogues: Pang*n Entheogens. Natural Products
Co.: Kennewick, WA.
* Sanchez-Ramos JR (1990). Review: Banisterine and ParkinsonÍs disease.
Clinical Neuropharmacology. 14:391-402.
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