HALLUCINOGENIC ’SACRAMENT’ SPARKS DEBATE

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<TD vAlign=top height=18>COVER STORY ARCHIVE - January 8, 2003</TD></TR>
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<TD class=smallP vAlign=top height=20>By Peter Gorman</TD></TR>
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Overhead the night sky is pitch. No sound comes from the nearby river. On the balsa-bark floor of the raised-platform hut five people sit in a circle in the darkness, lit only by the glow of a small kerosene lamp. One of them, an old man named Julio Jerena, blows smoke from his mapacho, a cigarette made with black jungle tobacco, into a cup and then pours a small amount of thick brown liquid into it. He mutters a few prayers in Spanish, blessing the cup before passing it to the woman at his immediate left. She drinks, struggles to keep the dank, acrid liquid down, then hands the cup back. Julio blows smoke into the cup again, pours more of the liquid into it while blessing it with prayers, and then passes it to the young man on the woman's left. He, too, fights to keep the brew down.
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<TD class=cutline vAlign=top width=197 height=28>Peruvian ayahuasquero Julio Jerena</TD>
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Julio repeats the ritual until everyone in the circle has been served with ayahuasca, the visionary healing tea of the Amazon, then puts out the kerosene lamp. Before long, the participants in the ceremony will begin the ayahuasca purge, a physical cleansing that frequently involves bouts of violent vomiting and diarrhea. Shortly after they have purged themselves they will fall into what is called the ayahuasca dream, an altered state of consciousness in which they will lose awareness of themselves and be open to the brew's spiritual curative powers and visionary properties. During the course of their dreams, some of the participants might associate with animals or spirits, or visit fantastic ethereal places; others might cope with deep-seated personal issues.


Some of what they see will be hallucinations; some of it will be genuinely visionary—in either case, their dreams will probably be demanding and difficult, pushing them to explore their deepest wishes and darkest fears. Jerena, the curandero, or doctor, on the river, will share their altered states to try to "see" the causes of his patients' physical, emotional or spiritual maladies and what is needed to effect their cures on the physical plane.


The use of ayahuasca—which means "vine of the soul" in the Quechua language and is also called yage and hoasca, among other names—in Amazonia is probably thousands of years old. It is still utilized by most of the region's inhabitants, but it took centuries to gain a foothold into the consciousness of Westerners and did not begin to gain popularity until the early 1990s, when spiritual seekers made their way to the Amazon to try first hand the mystical curative.


In the US the use of ayahuasca for spiritual or religious reasons is currently in a legal limbo. But two ongoing federal cases—one in Atlanta involving the plants used to make ayahuasca and the other here in Santa Fe, involving the use of the tea itself by the Uniao de Vegetal church—are likely to decide its legal status.


It was the increased popularity of ayahuasca, albeit among a small group of spiritual seekers, that first attracted the attention of authorities.
Two Brazilian religions that were born in the 1920s, the Uniao de Vegetal and the Santo Daime, both mixes of Catholicism and ayahuasca use, gained popularity in Brazil's larger cities in the early 1990s, eventually opening branches in the US and Europe. In the late '90s, the Santo Daime church in Amsterdam was raided by Dutch authorities—which resulted in a January 2000 ruling permitting the church to use ayahuasca.


The legal problems for the UDV began May 21, 1999 at the Santa Fe offices of Jeffrey Bronfman, a member of the Canadian family that founded Seagrams and president of the Uniao de Vegetal in the United States. Federal agents, including the US Customs Bureau, seized 30 gallons of ayahuasca that had been shipped from Brazil for sacramental use in UDV ceremonies. There were no arrests.
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<TD class=cutline vAlign=top width=197 height=28>Peter Gorman receives a cup of ayahuasca from Julio Jerena.</TD>
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Shortly after the seizure Bronfman filed suit against the US Department of Justice for the return of the confiscated ayahuasca. His attorney, Nancy Hollander, also asked for a ruling permitting the UDV to legally use hoasca—as it's known among members of the UDV—as its sacrament because it is integral to the church's beliefs. The suit essentially asked for a similar exemption as the one earlier granted to the Native American Church permitting their use of peyote, also a Schedule 1 controlled substance.


The hearing was held before Judge James Parker of the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico, who handed down a 61-page ruling on the case on Aug. 12, 2002. In it, Parker dismissed several UDV motions but found for the church on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Based on that act, he defended the UDV's right to use hoasca, and ordered a temporary injunction against further government interference with the UDV. In his ruling, Parker noted that the government had failed to show "a compelling…interest in protecting the health of UDV members using hoasca or in preventing the diversion of hoasca to illicit use" [by prohibiting it].


He additionally noted that the United Nations' 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances "does not apply to the hoasca tea used by the UDV."


The government almost immediately appealed, and was granted a stay of Judge Parker's injunction pending the outcome of that appeal. The initial briefs in the appeal are being filed by the government this month.
Neither Hollander nor Bronfman would comment due to "the sensitive nature of the ongoing case."


By the time Parker ruled on the UN's 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, the UN had already clarified the issue in relation to the case against the use of ayahuasca by the Santo Daime religion in Amsterdam.


In connection with that case, on Jan. 17, 2001, Herbert Schaepe, Secretary of the UN International Narcotics Control Board in Vienna, Austria, wrote to the chief of the Inspectorate for Health Care of the Dutch Ministry of Public Health. The letter notes, in part, that "no plants (natural materials) containing DMT are at present controlled under the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances. Consequently, preparations (eg decoctions) made of these plants, including ayahuasca are not under international control and, therefore, not subject to any of the articles of the 1971 Convention."


Nonetheless, another seizure was soon to take place.


Twelve days after Schaepe's letter, another seizure was made, this one of the plant material used to make ayahuasca. The case involves Alan Shoemaker, a US citizen who has been living in the jungle city of Iquitos, Peru, since 1993. Prior to moving to Peru, Shoemaker spent nearly a year studying San Pedro and ayahuasca curing in Ecuador, and his study of ayahuasca continued when he moved to Iquitos. There he met and married Mariella Noriega, a Peruvian national who in 1998 started Chinchilejo (Dragonfly), a plant material export company. Among the plants Chinchilejo shipped were banisteriopsis caapi (ayahuasca vine), diplopterys cabrerana leaves (huambisa) and psychotria viridis leaves (chacruna).


Chinchilejo was not the first company to secure a plant-export license from Peru, and not the only one which shipped the plants necessary to make ayahuasca. Nonetheless, on Jan. 29, 2001, it became the first and only Peruvian plant exporter to have a shipment seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration. The seizure was made after delivery was completed to Alan's son, Jesse Brock, who was starting a plant wholesale business just outside of Atlanta. The plants, 660 pounds of ayahuasca vine and 220 pounds of huambisa leaves were seized on the grounds that the leaves contained DMT.
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<TD class=cutline vAlign=top width=197 height=28>Alan Shoemaker faces 15 years in prison.</TD>
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The seizure was extremely unusual as the plants themselves were legal and the shipment had been exported with all the necessary Peruvian and international paperwork completed.


When asked why the seizure had been made, since the plants were legal, Mike McCracken, the DEA agent who made the seizure, responded: "I know they're legal, but I don't care. I think ayahuasca should be illegal and I seized the plants. It will cost 50 grand for a lawyer to fight the seizure and that's more than anyone will make selling them. So either way I win."


Because of the way forfeiture law works, with the seized items guilty until proven innocent, McCracken should have been right. And everyone involved, perhaps even McCracken himself, thought that was the end of it.


Instead, this past April 1, when Shoemaker flew from Iquitos to Miami to see his dying mother, he was picked up at Miami International Airport and told a sealed indictment had been handed down on Jan. 24, 2002. He was charged with intent to distribute a Schedule 1 substance, DMT, along with a number of lesser charges. The charge carries 15 years in federal prison. His son Jesse also was arrested at that time with a lesser charge.
Shoemaker was released on a $50,000 cash bond with the stipulation that he wear an ankle bracelet and remain at his late mother's home in Tennessee until the case is concluded. He cannot bring his wife and children to the US for fear that she will be arrested as well.


A motion to dismiss the case on several grounds will be delivered to the court in late January.


A spokesperson for the prosecutor's office in Atlanta refused to comment except to note that "DMT is illegal and we will prosecute those who attempt to distribute it."


When reminded that virtually all DMT found on the streets is synthetic and that even the controlled substances list makes exclusive reference to synthetic DMT, the spokesperson commented that "it is the government's contention that all forms of DMT are illegal."


But while the prosecutor's office was close to mum, Shoemaker's attorney, Mark Sallee of Atlanta, was more than willing to comment. "Both the Santa Fe UDV case and Alan Shoemaker's case are closely related, because both are examples of the government's unwillingness to admit any loss of ground in its war on drugs," Sallee says. "The government simply doesn't want their people making critical decisions about what's medicine, what's a religious sacrament and what is illegal street use. They want their people to be able to make arrests, not have to make distinctions."


Sallee believes the Chinchilejo shipment was singled out because "they were looking for a test case, and because of its size, and perhaps because my client is well known for having written about ayahuasca use, this one was chosen as that test case."


DMT, or dimethyl tryptamine, is a Schedule 1 controlled substance that is prohibited for use. But extracting DMT from the leaves, says Sallee, involves sophisticated chemistry and dangerous chemicals.


Dennis McKenna, a botanist and senior lecturer at the University of Minnesota—who worked extensively with psychotropics with his late brother Terence—concurred with Sallee on the difficulty of extraction. "No one in their right mind who wanted to produce commercial quantities of the substance would extract it from a plant, when chemical synthesis is so much easier," he says.


Moreover, adds McKenna, even if the government wins its case against Shoemaker, it would be a hollow victory. "There are at least 150 species of plants that are known to contain DMT. Many of them are freely available in nurseries, or simply growing in fields and by the roadsides."


But the fact that ayahuasca has never been a street drug, and there is little chance it will ever be one in the future (public purging is unlikely to impress a date) is evidently not a factor in the government's thinking on the issue. Neither is the concept that extracting DMT from plant material is so much more expensive than simply making synthetic DMT that it wouldn't be commercially viable. In the government's opinion, and for their purposes, all drugs are dangerous, period. But, says Sallee, "the government is going to find it is its own worst enemy in this case. Here is something that is used by a very small segment of the public strictly for religious and sacramental purposes. By bringing this case they are making a much larger segment of the population aware that certain plants could, in other forms, be used to produce something that could be used recreationally."


Nonetheless, the government is proceeding with both the UDV appeal and the Shoemaker prosecution. And if they lose one or both, there are several other cases around the country where seizures were made but no arrest warrants issued as yet that they might decide to prosecute.


As tragic as it would be, the issue is larger than whether Alan Shoemaker's life is ruined by spending 15 pointless years in a federal lockup, or whether the Uniao de Vegetal is given the right to drink hoasca without fear of government agents bursting down their church doors. Regardless of the outcome of these and any future cases, the government's war on drugs has already tainted the sacramental use of the tea made from plants considered sacred for hundreds, possibly thousands of years.</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

[Alfa]

HALLUCINOGENIC 'SACRAMENT' SPARKS DEBATE ON RELIGION


Followers Of Amazonian Faith Believe Potion-Induced Visions Are Divine


An Irish filmmaker's investigation into an Amazonian religion that treats consuming a hallucinogenic potion as a "sacrament" has focused attention on how an obscure religion has slowly moved from the jungles of Brazil to Europe and North America.


For Empire of Juramidam, Colum Stapleton was initiated into Santo Daime and imbibed the religion's sacred tea, concocted by boiling a vine and leaf native to the Amazon rain jungles. Called ayahuasca or daime, the potion causes hallucinations and visions that the faithful believe can connect them to the divine.


Mr. Stapleton spent two and a half years tracking the religion in Europe -- where it is now estimated it has 30 churches -- to its "holy city" of Ceu Do Mapia in the rainforest of Brazil. He took part in six-hour rituals that featured worshippers dressed all in white and chanting in Portuguese. In Ceu Do Mapia, he had a terrifying ayahuasca experience.


"I felt I was dying. I had this huge paranoid crisis. It was pure, sheer terror," he told the Sunday Telegraph.


There are several ayahuasca religions, including Santo Daime, Eclectic Universal Light, Uniao do Vegetal and the Barquinha. They are all different in their rituals and doctrines, but what most have in common is that they borrow from the beliefs, traditions and rituals of Catholicism, Spiritism, African religions, and shamanism.


The religion traces back about 90 years to founder Raimundo Irineu Serra, who worked in the Amazonian forest as a rubber tapper and had his first ayahuasca experience with a rainforest shaman. In his visions, he saw a woman he first believed be a forest spirit, but later called the Virgin of the Conception.


Anthropologists have called the religion "syncretistic" -- which means that it reconciles conflicting religious beliefs. And ayahuasca religions have proved to be a fertile ground for academics studying the growth of a relatively new religion.


In Europe and North America, those who want to use ayahuasca for religious purposes have pitted the issue of religious freedom against the fear that the potion might be diverted to recreational drug users. Ayahuasca has been banned in France and Germany, but is permitted for religious use in the Netherlands and Spain.


In 1999, a group led by Jeffrey Bronfman, a distant relative of Canada's Seagram whisky dynasty, went to court in New Mexico after U.S. Customs seized a barrel of ayahuasca tea from the group's offices.


In 2002, a judge agreed that the church had met the requirements under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which limits government intrusion on legitimate religious practices and issued a preliminary injunction that required authorities to let the group import the tea.


The group, which calls itself O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal or UDV, is still battling the courts. The U.S. government, which argues that ayahuasca is a dangerous mind-altering substance, appealed the previous decision to the U.S. Supreme Court and the case was heard Nov. 1. A decision is expected early in the new year.


Yesterday, Mr. Bronfman said UDV has about 145 members in North America, including a handful in Canada, who take part in ceremonies in the U.S. There are about 50 more members in Spain.


Ayahuasca has hit the news in Canada as well. A 71-year-old diabetic woman died in October 2001 when two Ecuadoran shamans, Juan Uyunkar and his son Edgar, were demonstrating healing ceremonies in Wikwemikong in northern Ontario. In 2003, they pleaded guilty to administering a noxious substance and trafficking in an illegal drug.

[searcher]

Swims son said a mexican dude he knows "turned him on" to some. He says you experience an "out of body" experience and it lasts 2-3 hours. "Totally different than 'shrooms."
He says "it's really cool" and "it fucks you up pretty good"
He says you sniff it, its like ground up seeds.

Yopo, Yopo...mmmmm

I asked him to get swim some