Part Two: Cyber-Shamanism: The Fusion of Modern Technology with Ancient, Plant-Based Shamanism
By Zoe Seven
Ayahuasca’s content and preparation, much like shamanic practices, varies according to locale as well as shaman, as some shamans oftentimes add extra plants – native to the shaman’s region and culture – to their ayahuasca brews that others don’t. Some of these additives being a number of different plants including tobacco, datura and others. But for the most part, ayahuasca is made up of two components, Banisteriopsis cappi and Psychotria viridis.
Now from a pharmacological standpoint this particular combination is impresive to say the least. You see, the brew’s potent psychoactive active ingredient which is dimethyltryptamine (DMT) – one of the most potent psychoactives known to man – gets destroyed in the gut because of MAO. Breifly, MAO stands for Mono-Amine-Oxidase and it is an enzyme in the human body that breaks down a number of chemicals and foods. Therefore, the MAO enzymes destroy the DMT molecules before they have a chance to cross the blood/brain barrier and elecit their powerful and life-changing effects on the user. However, if an MAO inhibitor (MAOI) is added into this psycho-chemical equation, it will prevent the stomach enzymes from destroying the DMT.
This is impresive and defies a logical explaination, as shamans in the jungle, with no laboratory equipment to speak of, somehow resolved the problem around MAO inhibition with no formal pharmacological or biological training! Again, they figured that in order for DMT to be orally active, it had to be combined with an MAOI so that it could reach the brain. But this is almost impossible to figure out empirically as there are literaly hundreds of thousands of plant species in the jungle not to mention the almost limitless number of potential combinations. Therefore this had to be more than simply a lucky guess. Not only that, but even more unbelivable is the fact that this type of biological mechanism (MAO inhibition) has only come to be discovered and understood in modern medicine in the past seventy years or so, while shamans have been preparing ayahuasca for several hundreds of years if not longer…!
Curiously, when scientists and anthropologists first encountered this brew and studied its effects and how it worked in the body, they asked the jungle shamans how they figgured out the way to get around the MAO problem lacking modern pharmacological training, they simply replyed: “The plants told us how to and which ones to mix.”…. One may not know what to make of a statement like that, but, nonetheless, a solution was found by very unconventional means to say the least.
As far as the effects of ayahuasca are concerned they can be extremely strong, as this brew is easily one of the most if not the most potent psychoactives on the planet. Hence, ayahuasca generally caters to experienced psychonauts. Oddly enough, DMT is also an endogenous neurochemical secreted by the pineal gland and is part of the human brain’s natural metabolisim. Many researchers believe that DMT is what enables humans to dream at night, hence its highly visual characteristics.
End of Part Two
Copyright: Zoe Seven, Author and AVS Journal, Michael Landgraf, Publisher (2006) Granada Hills, CA. All rights reserved.