I heard it through the grapevine

[pjthompson]

I was recently reading about the hallucinogenic vine called ayahuasca. The name means "Vine of the Soul" or "Vine of the Dead," and shamans in Amazonia have been using it since way the hell back in order to make contact with the ancestors. The drug derived from this plant is illegal in the U.S. and Britain, but in Amazonian countries it is protected under the laws of religious freedom as it is integral to the religious practice in many indigenous cultures.

Hallucinogenic plants are used for similar purposes in all cultures around the world, but what I found so fascinating about ayahuasca is that the leaves of the plant are rich in a chemical—Dimethyltryptamine (DMT)—that the human brain secretes naturally in minute quantities. Normally, substances which contain DMT are blocked from absorption into the body by a naturally-occurring enzyme in the human stomach. The vine part of the ayahuasca contains a chemical inhibitor for this enzyme, thus the shamans must cook both leaves and vine together in order for the hallucinogenic effect to happen. This is a fairly arduous process of cooking and layering and recooking that goes on for hours. Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations episode on Peru features a segment on this process, if you happen to catch it some time. (Good episode—well, except for the guinea pig segment.)

I'm left wondering, first, how the shamans discovered the particular chemical interaction going on here; and, second—as I always wonder in the cases of non-technical societies discovering complex processes for making Thing A become Thing B—how the hell they figured it out in the first place. The shamans say that the plants themselves told them how to do this and what effects would happen. Similar explanations occur in other parts of the world: the gods told us how to do this; the plants did; the spirits whispered in our ear.

Take, for instance, the olive. It takes an ungodly amount of complex processing to take the hard, bitter, inedible nut of the olive tree and soften it so that it is not only deliciously digestible but, more importantly, pliable enough to crush and extract the olive oil. Greek legend maintains that Athena came down from Olympus to clue mortals into this process. Western scientists prefer to say that it must have come about through trial and error.

Even so, that's pretty mind-boggling. Who was the first person who said, "Gee, I bet this thing that looks, feels, and tastes like a rock would yield a delicious condiment and extremely useful cooking oil if only we put it through a series of brine baths for days on end to soften it up"? Who was the first shaman who said, "Wow, I bet if we take this incredibly foul-tasting vine and pound it for hours until it's fibrous, then boil it with its leaves and layers of other stuff for hours more that at the end we'll get one of the foulest-tasting liquids known to human taste buds but a kickass vision of the Otherworld"?

The skeptics would say it occurred because of a series of accidents and was more cause-and-effect than messages from the spirit world. But human ingenuity is still a wondrous thing, is it not, whether or not you prefer the mundane explanation or the talking plant explanation?

Comments

[kmkibble75.livejournal.com]

It's sort of along the lines of the creativity shown in bong craftsmanship... Sometimes, when a person wants to get highs, it's amazing what they'll try. (And that's not meant as a judgment call on getting high, mind you. To each their own.)

But yeah, as far as the nut of your passage goes, I do agree that it's really, really amazing how some things come about being discovered. I'd give half credit to ingenuity, and half credit to lots of luck and coincidence.

[purdypiedad.livejournal.com]

What an interesting post! I have often wondered about similar things, actually.

The Incas and the Quechuas and Quichuas are, to me, some of the most fascinating people that ever walked the earth, in spite of their preference for guinea pig consumption. I've always wanted to hike up Machu Picchu and explore the surrounding peaks.

[purdypiedad.livejournal.com]

--It's sort of along the lines of the creativity shown in bong craftsmanship--

lol... The feel of this statement seems so inappropriate for the content of this post, and yet... it really is the same thing, isn't it?

[kmkibble75.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it does seem a lot... well, snarkier than the thoughtfulness of the post deserves. I didn't intend for it to come off like that, but like you suggest, the idea behind it just kind of felt right.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

This is an issue that fascinated us when I was studying Human Skeletal Remains in Archaeology. We were most interested in lifestyles and particularly the introduction of farming, and what came as a shock to us was to learn how many carbohydrate plants have to be processed in a complicated way, and often had to undergo a lot of selective breeding. The list seemed to go on for ever; off the top of my head, the only widely used one that didn't was rice.

We found one stage in Anatolia before grains were ground and cooked, when they were just crunched up raw, and the proportion of broken teeth was horrendous. We never did get a clear picture of how anybody ever thought of doing anything with the grains before eating them, but felt that it was a great deal more dramatic, and important to cultural developments, than simply growing the grains.

[pjthompson]

It's okay. I didn't take it as snarky, but it did make me laugh.

[pjthompson]

It is the same, basically! Except I'm not sure how much "religious purpose" is going on. Then again, who can say everyone at the ayahuasca ceremony was there for the spiritual values. Tony Bourdain sure wasn't.

[pjthompson]

Never underestimate the human drive to get high...Remind me to tell you the story of my friend who smoked jimsonweed one time and went temporarily blind...Then again, maybe not. :-)

[kmkibble75.livejournal.com]

Whew!
(and hey, I have Chapter 9 read and ready to be critted, I just have to figure out a way to get it to my desktop, and then to the laptop so I can send it to you. It may just take until after my DSL is back up, though)

[kmkibble75.livejournal.com]

no no... please do!

[pjthompson]

And, you know, their eating guinea pigs isn't any worse, really, than our culture eating rabbit and baby sheep and baby pigs and baby cows, etc. It's just a matter of our weird concepts about pets/food. Our habits are equally indefensible. It's basically "you like what you like" and I make a practice of not judging people for their food choices. (Not that you were, I'm just stating my ideas here.)

I've always wanted to hike up Machu Picchu and explore the surrounding peaks.

Oh, me too! It's one of my top "wannagos".

[pjthompson]

It is pretty amazing how much "processing" has gone on in human prehistory. I can understand much better how the cooking of grains came about than I can understand the olive, though. You can easily see someone accidentally dropping grain in water, or it getting rained on or something, and someone getting the lightbulb over their head. But those brine baths...what a series of "accidents" that must have been.

[pjthompson]

Don't worry. Whenever it's easy. I'm taking a mini-hiatus from the novel right now while I work on the story and do some more research reading.

Do you ever watch a show called Monster Quest? I think it's on either Discovery or History Channel on Wednesday nights. I almost never watch it because shows on Bigfoot, et al., just aren't that interesting to me, but this show is slightly more interesting then most of the shows of that type because they do make an attempt to introduce actual science into the program. Anyway, while channel surfing the other night I noticed they had a show on chupacabra! I DVRed it but haven't watched it yet.

[pjthompson]

A friend--who for obvious reasons I won't name--had read a little too much on indigenous California's loadie culture as a teen and, since he lived in the high desert where jimsonweed was in abundance, he and his loadie buddy decided to gather up some, dry it as he'd read about, and try smoking it. So they drove out into the desert where they wouldn't be disturbed, stuffed some dried weed into a pipe and starting puffing greedily away. Next thing you know, they were mildly high and totally blind. Both of them! In total panic because they were way the hell out in the boonies for "privacy" and who the hell was going to find them out there??? Fortunately, about a half hour later their vision started to come back, but it was a horrendous half hour. They were lucky not to die because the stuff is poisonous, but one thing their experience did was cure my friend of further experimentation along that line.

[purdypiedad.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with you. Though, you'll see me mighty hungry before I eat a rabbit. Something about rescuing 4 of them and getting to know about 75 others that have been rescued complete with their little individual personalities has kinda turned me off to rabbit meat.

Ironically, though, I'm considered a BAAAAAD rescuer by some because I won't take the stance that raising meat rabbits is evil. And until I'm convicted that eating beef and chicken is evil, I'm not likely to.

[purdypiedad.livejournal.com]

Hey, I've known plenty of bong suckers to claim it's a religious experience! :-p

[pjthompson]

Ha! I never thought I'd see you eat a rabbit. I won't, either, because I've had pet rabbits. But that's kind of the point. We see some animal as pets, some as food. I'm not saying any of it is wrong or right, just a curious sideline of human psychology.

Ironically, though, I'm considered a BAAAAAD rescuer by some because I won't take the stance that raising meat rabbits is evil.

And there are some people who think that buying any animal from a pet store is evil because so many animals in shelters need homes. You can't worry about extremist. Although I myself would prefer rescuing an animal to buying one, it's just daft to say it's evil.

Puppy mills--that's a whole other story. Those *are* evil.

[pjthompson]

Same here! :-)

[kmkibble75.livejournal.com]

Okay, that would definitely scare me out of that little habit....