The Tim Ferriss Show - #508: Plants of the Gods — Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ayahuasca, Shamanic Knowledge, the Curse and Blessing of Coca, and More

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs, sloths and jaguars. This is Rainforest themed. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to the Tim Ferriss Show, where it is usually my job to deconstruct world class performers, all different types, to tease out their routines, habits, et cetera, that you can apply to your own life. This time around, I am passing the microphone to someone else. We have a very special edition featuring not one, but three short episodes of the Plants of the Gods podcast. It's brand new, hosted by my friend and past podcast guest, Dr. Mark Plotkin. I've listened to all of his episodes and chose a few favorites to share with you all. So who is Mark? Mark Plotkin on Twitter, at DocMarkPlotkin, P-L-O-T-K-I-N, is an ethnobotanist who serves as the president of the Amazon

Starting point is 00:00:47 Conservation Team, which has partnered with roughly 80 tribes in South America to map and improve management and protection of roughly 100 million acres of ancestral rainforests. We've done some work together in the past. He is best known to the general public as the author of the book, Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, highly recommended, one of the most popular books ever written about the Amazon rainforest. His most recent book is the Amazon subtitle, What Everyone Needs to Know. You can find my interview with Mark at tim.blog forward slash Mark Plotkin. I'm excited to share with you these episodes from Plants of the Gods for a million reasons. These specific episodes cover the adventures and skills and belief systems of the legendary ethnobotanist Richard Evan Schultes, an episode on ayahuasca, and another on coca and cocaine.

Starting point is 00:01:38 These episodes cover a lot of fascinating grounds, many facets of plants, botany, history. It goes on and on. If you enjoy them and want more, be sure to check out the Plants of the Gods podcast, wherever podcasts can be found. You can learn about everything from hallucinogenic snuffs to diverse formulations of curare, a plant mixture which relaxes the muscles of the body, including the diaphragm that leads to asphyxiation used for hunting and all sorts of other things. Now in modern anesthesia or anesthesiology, the hexing herbs of medieval Europe and what those were used for, what they are purported to have been used for and how they're depicted in artwork and much, much more. Wine. Did you know that wine, red wine specifically, has particular,

Starting point is 00:02:26 I believe, antimicrobial or antibacterial effects? It goes on and on. So you can learn a lot through this podcast. I ripped through it, just binged through it in a handful of days. Please enjoy this episode of The Tim Ferriss Show featuring Plants of the gods. This episode is brought to you by Tonal. That's T-O-N-A-L. Tonal is the world's most intelligent home gym and personal trainer. That's the tagline from their website, folks. So it gives you the one sentence summary. By eliminating traditional metal weights, Tonal can deliver 200 pounds of resistance in a device smaller than a flat screen TV. It mounts right on your wall with no floor space required. I've had one for a few months now after a number of close friends recommended Tonal to me,

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Starting point is 00:05:15 at checkout. That's www.tonal, T-O-N-A-L.com, promo code TIM21, T-I-M- I M 21 tonal be your strongest. This episode is brought to you by athletic greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably athletic greens. I view it as all in one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in in fact, in the 4-Hour Body. This is more than 10 years ago, and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients, you'd be very hard-pressed to find a more nutrient-dense and comprehensive formula on the market. It has multivitamins, multimineral greens complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, an immunity formula, digestive enzymes, adaptogens, and much more. I usually take it once or twice a day just to make sure I've covered my

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Starting point is 00:07:20 living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. I want to focus this episode on my mentor, Richard Evan Schultes, often known as the father of ethnobotany. And anytime Schultes was addressed that way, he was quick to point out that ethnobotany began with an expedition launched by an Egyptian pharaoh to the land of Punt, Somalia, in search of frankincense trees, and he wasn't quite that old. Nonetheless, he was a towering figure, in fact, the towering figure in 20th century ethnobotany. Now, it was a warm

Starting point is 00:08:06 September night in 1974 when I entered his classroom. The classroom was like an ethnographic museum. One wall was covered with huge green maps of the Amazon. From the rafters hung Amazonian Indian dance costumes with glistening black demon faces. Two long parallel display cases flanked the room, filled to overflowing with botanical booty from around the world, black palm blowguns from Colombia, shiny silver hashish pipes from India, and tiny bows and arrows from the Congo. Presiding over the tableau was Professor Schultes himself, tall, crew-cut, and dressed in an immaculate white lab coat, white dress shirt, crimson tie, and silver wire-rimmed glasses.

Starting point is 00:08:58 As he called the class to order and began to show his slides, one picture in particular changed my life forever. A scene in which three Indians in grass skirts and barcloth masks danced at the edge of a jungle clearing. Quote, here you see three Indians of the Ukuna tribe doing the sacred Kayari dance under the influence of plants to keep away the forces of darkness. The one on the left has a Harvard degree. Next slide, please. From that moment on, I and many, many others were hooked on plants, ethnobotany, indigenous peoples, and the Amazon rainforest. Schultes, without question, was not only an incredible inspiration to his students,

Starting point is 00:09:45 but the greatest botanical explorer of the Amazon in the 20th century. He survived plane crashes, boat sinkings, bandits, hunger, dysentery, and repeated bouts of malaria. But he always insisted he never had any adventures in the Amazon. Schultes lived and traveled with forest peoples for almost 14 years, sometimes amongst tribes that had never seen a white man before. At one point, he was gone for so long that friends in the Colombian capital of Bogota had given him up for dead. They were in the process of arranging memorial services in his honor when he reappeared at the National Herbarium, frightening more than a few of his fellow botanists. Ethnobotanist, taxonomist, writer, and photographer, Schultes is widely regarded as a great

Starting point is 00:10:32 conservationist as well. In December of 41, he entered the Amazon on a mission to study how indigenous peoples use plants for medicinal, ritual, and practical purposes. He went on to spend so much time with these indigenous peoples that he created a relationship or relationships with them equaled by few people in the Western scientific community. His area of focus was the Northwest Amazon, an area that remained largely unknown and uninfluenced by the outside world, isolated by the Andes to the west and dense jungles and impassable rapids on all other sides. In this remote area, Schultes lived

Starting point is 00:11:13 amongst little study tribes, mapped uncharted rivers, and was the first scientist to explore some areas that have not been researched since. His notes and photographs are some of the only existing documentation of indigenous cultures in a region of the Amazon on the cusp of change. And let me refer you to Richard Schulte's storybook map on the Amazon team website, amazonteam.org. This multifaceted, multimedia presentation of his life and adventures has to be seen to be appreciated. This was created by the Amazon Conservation Team under the leadership, in this case, of the cartographer Brian Hetler. So let me talk a

Starting point is 00:11:58 little bit about what Schultes was like to the people around him. And let me start with the students. In the words of Dr. Paul Cox, who was an entering graduate student at Harvard in 1977, he was looking for a thesis advisor, which is what graduate students do, somebody to study under, essentially a mentor. And he received some very disturbing advice. He was told by one professor there, whatever you do, stay away from Richard Evans Schultes. He spent a decade alone in the Amazon. He's a dinosaur, and he's dangerous to otherwise good students. Wade Davis, an undergraduate at the time, said to the undergraduate students that Schultes was a hero in an age without heroes and in the 70s or 80s it was the first ethnobotanical congress in Latin America was held in Mexico and much of the tenor of the discussion was how the Mexicans and other

Starting point is 00:13:02 Latinos resented the fact that all of these gringos were coming down there and doing all these studies, and that the Latinos should study their own plants and their own indigenous peoples. And I had to smile when the proceedings were published. And here's the dedication. Para Richard Evan Schultes, quien abrió el camino. For Richard Schultes, who blazed the trail. So Schultes was beloved by the undergraduate students, by the graduate students, by many, if not most, if not all of his Latin colleagues. But I think most important of all is how he was regarded by the indigenous peoples themselves. Now, I've been to Oklahoma where Schultes studied peyote,

Starting point is 00:13:46 and I've lived in Oaxaca where Schultes studied the magic mushrooms. And I have spent decades going back and forth to the Northwest Amazon where Schultes did his most important fieldwork of all, and where he made the scientific discovery of ayahuasca. And so let me tell you what the indigenous peoples told me in Oklahoma, in Mexico, and in the Amazon. Schultes was the first white person we met who not only treated us with respect, but actually wanted to learn from us. By our side, he danced our sacred dances, ate our peyote, chewed our coca, and drank our ayahuasca. We loved him. Schultes began his career in 1933 as a poor kid in East Boston, got a scholarship to attend Harvard, and because he was a scholarship student, he had to do a work study job so at the time he was interested in

Starting point is 00:14:47 medicine and remember at that point in time medicine and botany were very much intricately intertwined so he went to look for a work study job at the botanical museum which stands today on oxford street just north of harvard yard and looks the exact same as the day that Schultes showed up on the doorstep looking for a job. He was actually born in East Boston, and it's a particularly interesting part of his backstory. His father was German, his mother was English, and he was born and raised in East Boston. Now, East Boston at the time was essentially an Italian and Irish ghetto. So Schultes was already an outsider and learning how to live and get along with other communities I think was fundamental to his development and his beginning and his training as an ethnobotanist.

Starting point is 00:15:41 Now when he was about 10 he got very sick. I don't know what exactly he had. I've talked to his son, Neil, who's an esteemed biologist in his own right. Nobody's sure what it was, but he was bedridden for months. And his father, Otto, was anxious that young Richard not lose any time while he was bedridden. So he went four blocks south of the house to the East Boston Public Library, which still stands, and pulled a book off the shelf called Notes of a Botanist on the Amazon and the Andes. And this was essentially the autobiography of Richard Spruce, who became Schultes' hero. And Schultes read about Spruce's 14 years in the Amazon and in the Andes. He was the first scientist to encounter ayahuasca, and I can assure you that Schultes was the only 10-year-old in East Boston

Starting point is 00:16:31 reading about ayahuasca in those times. Now at the Botanical Museum, Schultes quickly fell under the sway of the director, a Boston patrician by the name of Oakes Ames. This being the 30s, the depths of the depression, natural history museums were kept afloat by wealthy men with deep pockets. Ames took a special liking to Schultes and really took him on essentially as an apprentice. Now in Ames' famous class, Bio 1 of 4, Plants and Humans Affairs, that Schultes went on to teach himself, Ames announced that each student would have to do a term paper and they would have to do it based on a book at the back of the classroom. Schultes later told me, as the only work-study kid in the class, I had less free time than the other students. So as soon as class was

Starting point is 00:17:23 over, I raced to the back and pulled the smallest book off the shelf. And that book was called Mescal, the Divine Plant and Its Psychological Effects by Heinrich Kluver. Essentially, it was an account of peyote. Schultes brought the book home to East Boston, read it that night, and he said, decades later, I can still recall the peoples, some of the last of the Plains tribes living a traditional lifestyle in teepees, so that Schultes could experience peyote in its ritual settings. Now Schultes had never been west of the Hudson so this really was Injun country as he referred to it and he made the trek in an old Studebaker, a cross-country, with a graduate student named Weston Labar, who became famous in his own right. He wrote a classic paper called Shamanic Origins of Religion and Medicine, did Labar, and I hardly

Starting point is 00:18:39 recommend it. Anyhow, they spent a night in the teepee, taking peyote in a ritual setting, led by what the Kai will call a roadman, essentially a shaman. And in 1936, Schultes came out of that teepee a changed person. Clearly, the peyote talked to him. Clearly, he realized that he was not going to medical school, that he would be on the healing path, but it would be a different path than other Western scientists interested in a profession which involved bringing medicine to the masses. Schultes finished his degree at Harvard with honors and then applied to study further with Ames, entered a PhD program, and for his thesis, he went down to Oaxaca. At the time, there were accounts of hallucinogenic mushrooms. Now, at the time, nobody believed there were hallucinogenic mushrooms. There was

Starting point is 00:19:42 Amanita muscaria that we'll talk about in another episode from Siberia. But other than that, there were no known hallucinogenic mushrooms in the New World, in Mexico, in Central America, in the Amazon. And a Smithsonian scientist named William Safford said that, no, there were no hallucinogenic mushrooms. It was just peyote. It was the Indians trying to mislead the missionaries but schultes was a better botanist than safford and he knew there would be no peyote which thrives in desert-like conditions there would be no peyote in the tropical forests of oaxaca and southern mexico and he set out to prove safford wrong so here's how schultes described taking peyote with the Kiowa. It began with a

Starting point is 00:20:27 period of contentment and oversensitivity and a period of nervous calm and muscular sluggishness. Then came the colored visual hallucinations and abnormal synesthesia, the mingling of the senses, alterations in tactile sensation, very slight muscular incoordination, disturbances in space and time perception, and auditory hallucinations may accompany severe peyote intoxication. The most striking characteristic, however, is the occasionally induced peyote visions, which are often fantastically colored. There's two things that are particularly noteworthy about this count. One is the striking visions, which he discovered by reading about them. And unlike most people, he pursued it and experienced it himself. The other

Starting point is 00:21:17 is the idea of synesthesia. And this is characteristic of many of these entheogens, the mingling of senses, where you can see music and taste colors. To purchase Dr. Mark Plotkin's new book, The Amazon, What Everyone Needs to Know, or his first book, Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, visit your local bookseller or order from amazon.com. Schultes brought the magic mushrooms back to Harvard. They were later analyzed by Albert Hoffman. Albert Hoffman, of course, is the fellow who synthesized LSD in 1938 and did it in part on compounds extracted from these magic mushrooms.

Starting point is 00:22:03 But there's another aspect to the story which is not very well known. And that is that Hoffman also synthesized the first beta blockers. I think the very first one is called Viskin. This is a multi-billion dollar class of drugs. And Hoffman did it in part inspired by the compounds he extracted from these magic mushrooms. So when we talk about plants of the gods or fungi of the gods, we're not just talking about compounds which may be useful for treating mental or emotional ailments. We're talking about compounds which have revolutionized Western medicine and Western culture. As discussed in the episode on ergot,

Starting point is 00:22:48 these compounds may have played a vital role in the beginnings of Western religions, in addition to many of the Aboriginal ones as well. Now, when you visited Schultes and his lair in his office at the Botanical Museum, you couldn't help but notice two pictures over his shoulders, behind him on the wall of his office. Schultes was a great photographer. If you haven't seen his photographs, I strongly encourage you to pick up a book called Plants of the Gods.

Starting point is 00:23:18 I think he was as great a photographer as Ansel Adams, and he was taking those pictures in much more challenging circumstances. Over his shoulder, to the left, is a picture of two Yukuna boys snuffing, a tobacco snuff, during the sacred Kayari dance to keep away the forces of darkness. On the right was Chidibikete. Chidibikete is, thanks primarily to Schultes, his indigenous colleagues in the Colombian government, with some assistance from the Amazon conservation team, is the largest rainforest protected area in the whole Amazon basin. The reason this is important is that Schultes was showing the importance of culture and the importance of nature.

Starting point is 00:24:02 This led to the creation of an entire field known as biocultural conservation. It's not about protecting indigenous cultures or just about protecting healing plants. It's the combination of the two, which is the most holistic, the most shamanic, and the most effective. Schultes did his training at the Botanical Museum. The Botanical Museum is actually part of a complex. It is the Peabody Museum, which is anthropology, the Mineralogical Museum, which is geology, the Botanical Museum, and the Zoology Museum. Now these are all grouped together and known as the Harvard Museums of Natural History.

Starting point is 00:24:42 But the museum got its start under the leadership of Louis Agassiz. Louis Agassiz was a very famous Swiss biologist. He came to Boston to give some lectures, and they were so well received that he was offered a job at Harvard. And he worked with Harvard and some of their donors to create the Museum of Comparative Zoology. At the time, this was one of, if not the finest natural history museums in the world, certainly in North America. Now, Agassiz, in 1865, decided to launch an expedition to the Amazon. This became the biggest natural history expedition in the Amazon in the 19th century. And he was accompanied by several museum people and several of his students, the most famous of which was William James. William James is known today as the father of

Starting point is 00:25:32 American psychology. But I believe that it was James' experience in the Amazon with Louis Agassiz that led to his understanding of the human mind. Keep in mind that William James was a rich Bostonian white kid who hung out with other rich white kids, whose idea of cultural diversity was going to Europe and hanging out with rich white kids. In the Amazon, he was living and working and collecting with indigenous peoples, with Afro-Brazilians, with Brazilian military, with Afro-Brazilians, with Brazilian military,

Starting point is 00:26:13 with Portuguese royalty. And I believe that this is what led James to understand that we are all one and learn to understand different aspects of the human mind, a part of the Amazon story, a part of the history of psychology, underreported in the technical literature. And I recommend a classic paper called The Biology of Consciousness, written by my pal Brian Farrell, who is the number two director at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. It's The Biology of Consciousness from William James to Richard Schultes. This is easily findable on my personal website, markplotkin.com. Schultes' most enduring work in terms of publications was the book Plants of the Gods, which in many ways was the inspiration for this podcast. And he co-authored it with Albert Hoffman, the creator of LSD. And their basic thesis was that these plants played a fundamental role in our history,

Starting point is 00:27:08 our culture, and our religion, and that we're still not only understanding their role in the past, but we're charting a course for the future with the understanding of the power and the healing potential of these plants. From Central America, from Oaxaca, Schultes, having graduated with a PhD from Harvard, went to the Amazon in 1941, and he was in search of arrow poisons, which were then becoming important in Western medicine. Arrow poisons are the embodiment of Paracelsus' dictum

Starting point is 00:27:44 that the dose makes the poison. In other words, a poison in one dose is a medicine in a smaller dose and vice versa. Schultes got to Columbia, started poking about, doing some collecting. On his first day in Bogota, he took the subway to the end of the line and started looking at plants in the rainforest there, growing in some hills at the end of the line, and saw an orchid that he'd never seen before. Now Schultes was, at the time, an expert on orchids. And he saw this tiny orchid, which he thought must be new to science, but he didn't have his plant press. So the only way he could preserve it was to take out his passport,

Starting point is 00:28:27 gently press this little tiny orchid between the pages of this passport, brought it back and found that it was indeed a species new to science. I think you'll agree this is a very auspicious beginning to his long career with Columbia and the Colombian Amazon. Shortly thereafter, Pearl Harbor was bombed, and Schultes, as a patriotic American, went back to Bogota and reported for duty at the American embassy and said, I'm here to enlist. The ambassador said, forget about that. We have other plans for you. The Japanese have overrun the rubber plantations in Southeast Asia. The rubber is native to the Amazon, but it grows in plantation where there's no natural pests in Southeast Asia.

Starting point is 00:29:14 It was planted there by the British. Rubber is fundamental to any war effort back then, even today, natural rubber. It cannot be replaced by synthetic rubber. So they said, instead of going off to fight in Europe or the Pacific, go back to the Amazon, find out how much rubber there is, figure out how to cut it to supply rubber for the war effort. The American mainstay of the infantry was the Sherman tank. A Sherman tank could take up to a ton of rubber between wires and brakes and all that other stuff. So it was a bit like throw me in the briar patch because they sent Schultes back to the Amazon to study the forest, work with the indigenous peoples, and collect rubber. One of the first tribes he worked with were the Kofan, who were master curare makers. He was able to collect many different forms of curare. In fact,

Starting point is 00:30:07 in later years, Schultes sent a student, a graduate student, to continue studying with the Kofans, and he actually found a curare, an arrow poison made from a nutmeg, I mean a cinnamon tree. This is totally unreported prior to Pinkley's groundbreaking work. Another important finding amongst the Kofan, which was made by Schultes himself, was that of Yoko. Yoko is a forest liana. Now I've taken this with the Kofan. They collect the liana in the forest. They scrape the bark into cold water. You drink it first thing in the morning. It's such a powerful stimulant that your fingertips tingle and you don't get hungry or thirsty all day.

Starting point is 00:30:47 But Kofan insists that if you take Yoko, you don't get malaria either. Remember that the first and most effective malaria drug ever discovered is quinine, which comes just west of there from the Andes. So this is something whose research needs to be followed up. I'm very proud of the fact that the Amazon Conservation Team, my organization, partnered with the Kofan people about 10 years to set up the Orito Andes Medicinal Plant Sanctuary, an entirely new category of protected area established at the behest of the indigenous peoples themselves in partnership with the Colombian government to protect Yoko and other medicinal plants. Schulte's most important finding in terms of biodiversity was the landscapes of Chiribiquete. Chiribiquete was an extraordinary region right in the middle of the Colombian Amazon.

Starting point is 00:31:41 You have to keep in mind the Colombian Amazon, we Americans tend to think of the Amazon as basically Brazil with a couple of suburbs and these other eight countries. But the Colombian Amazon is bigger than New England. It's a huge base. And right in the middle of the Colombian Amazon is a region known as Chitibiquete. It is a region full of unexplored

Starting point is 00:32:03 and unclimbed mountains. It is a region home to, we think, three uncontacted tribes. It is a region which is the richest repository of pre-Columbian paintings. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of these paintings, which have been very poorly documented to date. And Schultes went there and was bewitched and he kept a picture of Chittibikete over his desk his entire time at Harvard. Interestingly enough Schultes was not the discoverer of Chittibikete and of course as an

Starting point is 00:32:40 ethnobotanist we always have to point out that we don't discover anything the indigenous peoples got there first. But when I say Schultes was a discoverer of ayahuasca, I mean that the indigenous peoples showed it to him and gave it to him and led the ceremony with him. When I say that Schultes discovered Chitibiquete from a Western perspective, further research has revealed that it was another Harvard fellow who got there first, an extraordinary character named Alexander Hamilton Rice. Alexander Hamilton Rice was a patrician. He was one of Boston's first families, born into wealth. He went to Harvard College. An extraordinary character. At one point, he was a professional boxer. He loved one thing more than anything, and that was travel. He decided to recreate the journeys of the voyageurs in eastern Canada and made an incredible

Starting point is 00:33:40 trek overland, paddling and dragging his canoe, and that is where his wanderlust was born. He went back to Harvard, finished his undergraduate degree, and entered medical school. However, once again, nature called. And his first great expedition was to recreate the trip of Oriana, which I think was 1521. It was the first European crossing of the Amazon. He landed in coastal Ecuador, crossed the Andes, and sailed all the way down the Amazon. His second trip to South America was to recreate Bolivar's famous trek from Caracas to Bogota overland. And he was accompanied by a fellow who wanted to learn how to be a South American explorer, and his name was Hiram Bingham.

Starting point is 00:34:33 Bingham later went on to discover Machu Picchu and became much more famous than Alexander Hamilton Rice ever was. But I don't think he ever would have got there if he hadn't been trained in the field by Rice himself. Rice made the first map of Chittibocketti in 1907, went back to Harvard, and created the Harvard Geographic Institute, and married Mrs. Widener, one of the wealthiest women in the world, who built Widener Library and Harvard Yard, named it after her son who drowned on the Titanic. And her money turbocharged his career because he realized that if you wanted to map the Amazon, it's easiest to do it from the air and began using her wealth to custom build planes and map the Amazon from the air. That was the first mapping of Chiribiquete and ironically preceded Schultes' explorations and exploit by several decades.

Starting point is 00:35:30 The next formative experience Schultes had in the Amazon was the Baile de Muñeco. This is the dance of the dolls, the dance of the spirits, where the Yukuna peoples dance for three days to propitiate forest spirits and to give thanks to nature for the bounty, particularly of the rivers, the forest fish. When I asked Schultes the details of the dance, and he said it's three days, I thought, okay, that's like nine to five, nine to five, nine to five. He said, no, three days without stopping. When I asked him how they dance for

Starting point is 00:36:05 three days without stopping, he said, each dance honors a particular spirit or particular animal. And then at the end of that dance, which can be 20 minutes to an hour, more or less, they stop, take off their masks and snort tobacco and chew coca. Schultes' most extraordinary ethnobotanical find in the Amazon took place in the Sibandoy Valley in 1942. The Sibandoy Valley is the headwaters of the Putumayo. There are four great rivers in the Colombian Amazon, the Putumayo, the Caquetá, the Apapuras, and the Valpaz. The headwaters of the Putumayo are the Sibandoy Valley, which is known as the Valley of the Hallucinogens. For that is where Schultes met a shaman of the Kamsa tribe called Salvador Chindoy. And Schultes took ayahuasca in a ritual setting with Salvador Chindoy.

Starting point is 00:37:02 Now Schultes was famous for saying and for writing writing he never felt anything from ayahuasca, a couple of flashes of color. If you read the Yahe Papers, which I'm not a great fan of, but it has a huge following, this is William Burroughs' account, Schultes says to Burroughs, who was a Harvard classmate, sorry, Bill, I just saw some flashes of color, no big deal. So ethnobotanists always worried how this father of ethnobotany, this so-called discoverer, scientific discoverer of ayahuasca,

Starting point is 00:37:30 never felt the effects. And about 10 years ago, I was in Bogota, and I was visiting Jesusi Drobo. Schultes passed away, I think, in the year 2000. I was visiting Jesusi Drobo, one of schulte's old botanical colleagues and i said why did schulte's never feel the effects of ayahuasca and he smiled and said he did and i can prove it he looked me in the eye and said one week ago right on that chair you're sitting was pedro ahibio and pedro ahibio was schulte's guide in the Sibandoy, and his uncle

Starting point is 00:38:07 was Salvador Chindoy. And I asked Pedro this same question, how come Ricardo never felt the effects of ayahuasca? And he said, Pedro replied, I was there the night my uncle Salvador gave Ricardo ayahuasca for the first time. And I watched as Schultes sat in the hammock and laughed and sang and told stories the entire time. And Idrobo said, what did he say? What did he say? And Pedro shook his head and said, I don't know. It was all in English. Schultes' legacy lives on in many ways. First and foremost, his respect for Indigenous colleagues. Time and time again, I talked to elderly Indigenous healers who said, Schultes was the first white man who came to us wanting to learn from us. Schultes danced our dances. Schultes took our peyote. Schultes chewed our coca. Schultes took our ayahuasca. Schultes took

Starting point is 00:39:15 our snuff. This was unheard of at the time. The only outsiders we saw for the most part were missionaries who told us that all of those things were bad and we should stop doing it. Schultes was quite the opposite. Instead of telling us what to do, he wanted to learn from us. Secondly, Schultes' legacy is that nature is the ultimate medicine chest. There are medicines to be learned from nature which can heal our ills. Even ills which physicians cannot cure can sometimes be treated and sometimes be cured by indigenous shamans, whether it's with peyote, whether it's with mushrooms, whether it's with ayahuasca, or whether it's with ayahuasca or whether it's just by chanting. To the shaman, the hallucinogen, the entheogen, is a vegetal or fungal or biological scalpel which allows him or her to analyze, to diagnose, to treat,

Starting point is 00:40:18 and sometimes to cure the human mind in ways that our own physicians cannot. Schulte's other lesson to academics in particular, and Westerners dealing with other cultures, is humility. These people are different than us, that these people may not have had the advantages we have, But oft times, particularly in the rainforest, these people know far more than we do. So in that sense, in an age where the outside world is discovering the value and the potential of the plants of the gods, Richard Evans Schultes got there before we did, and the indigenous peoples got there before he did. podcast know, my first position was in sales. After college, I thought it was important to become a dealmaker, and it proved very important. I was at TruSan Networks long, long ago, which was based in San Jose, California, and I wish, I wish I had something like LinkedIn Sales Navigator when

Starting point is 00:41:36 I worked there. LinkedIn Sales Navigator on LinkedIn is really LinkedIn on steroids, or as the official copy puts it, the best version of LinkedIn for sales professionals. Tap into the power of LinkedIn's 700 million plus member network. LinkedIn Sales Navigator gives you 20 monthly in-mail messages, lead recommendations, unlimited searches, actionable insights and news, and access to free courses on LinkedIn learning. In my case, I was targeting CEOs and CTOs of other companies. I wanted to know who they knew. I wanted to know what they were reading, what they were writing, et cetera. You get all of this in LinkedIn Sales Navigator. All of that is at your fingertips.

Starting point is 00:42:15 Target the right prospects and decision makers, unlocking 15% more pipeline from sourced opportunities, a 17% lift when saving leads on Sales Navigator, and 42% larger deal sizes. Start your 60-day free trial. That's a two-month free trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator today by going to linkedin.com slash navigator. That's linkedin.com slash navigator to start your 60-day free trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Check it out, linkedin.com slash navigator. Hi, everyone. I'm Mark Plotkin, Dr. Mark Plotkin of the Amazon Conservation Team. I'm an ethnobotanist, a scientist who studies the uses of plants, fungi, and even animals for medicinal purposes in the rainforests of Central and South America. I've been doing this for almost 40 years.

Starting point is 00:43:06 I am, or I was, a student of the great Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evan Schultes, often called the father of ethnobotany. I dropped out of college after my freshman year and started working in a museum at Harvard, essentially as a gopher, enrolled in a night school course on the botany and chemistry of hallucinogenic plants taught by Professor Schultes himself, and I've been hooked ever since. The point of this podcast is to teach and to learn about the hallucinogenic, entheogenic, mind-altering substances used by shamans and other healers around the world with a heavy emphasis on the rainforest, and to be able to share some of what I've learned and some of what I've seen, both answers and questions, with people who have an interest in this topic. Now, I learned from Professor Schultes that if you want to save the rainforest,

Starting point is 00:43:54 you have to save the indigenous peoples of the rainforest. And if you want to save the indigenous peoples of the rainforest, you not only have to work in partnership with all of them, you particularly have to partner with the shamans themselves. This is what we call biocultural conservation. It's not about saving rainforests or saving shamans. They are intricately linked. And if you look at the best rainforest left in the Amazon, it tends to be not in national parks, but indigenous reserves. So indigenous peoples, from the view

Starting point is 00:44:25 of the Amazon conservation team, are the glue that holds the forest intact. And the shamans are the glue that hold the indigenous cultures intact. When missionaries go in, the first person they attack and typically try to undercut is the shaman, the medicine man or medicine woman, who, as I said, is the cultural glue that holds the tribe and the tribal culture together. And it's the tribal culture that holds the rainforest in place. And we'll be talking more about that through the course of this podcast. Now, as I said, I followed in the footsteps of Professor Schultes, who was a pioneer in many aspects of Plants of the Gods, partnering with Albert Hoffman, the chemist who invented LSD, to write the classic book,

Starting point is 00:45:12 Plants of the Gods, which I highly recommend. Schultes was the first scientist to study ayahuasca, to take ayahuasca in situ, in place, in a tribal setting, and go through many ceremonies, many ayahuasca ceremonies with the indigenous peoples themselves. And let me read for you my favorite quote of Schultes on ayahuasca. There's a magic intoxicant in the northwest Amazon in which the Indians believe can free the soul from corporal confinement and allow it to wander free and return to the body at will. The soul, thus untrammeled, liberates its owner from the everyday life

Starting point is 00:45:56 and introduces him or her to wondrous realms of what he considers reality and permits him or her to communicate with his ancestors. The Kichwa term for this inebriating drink, ayahuasca, is the vine of the soul, and it refers to this freeing of the spirit. Now, ayahuasca and many other hallucinogens and entheogens are coming to the fore. Studies, and we'll get into this in the course of the podcast, are now indicating that the birth of many, if not most, religions are rooted in these types of magical plants or other hallucinogenic properties found in fungi and, in some cases, even animals. There's a new book coming out called The Immortality Key that I recommend

Starting point is 00:46:42 by a fellow named Brian Rorescu, which talks about the origins of Christianity and entheogenic fungi. There are indications some of the beginnings of Judaism may be rooted in these mind-altering substances as well. But, as I said, there's fodder for more discussions of this. The most significant medical development in terms of Western medicine recently has been the mainstreaming of hallucinogens into our own Western medicine. Hallucinogens are the shamanic medicine par excellence, but now they're finding their way almost magically, almost shically, into very traditional halls of Western medicine. These hallucinogens in the tropical forest permit medicine men and women to investigate, diagnose, treat, and sometimes cure ailments that have a partial emotional or spiritual basis, which is why they can sometimes alleviate a medical issue unresponsive to the therapies

Starting point is 00:47:46 of Western physician. In a sense, hallucinogens are vegetal or fungal scalpels which allow the shaman to find, analyze, treat, and sometimes cure emotional issues which our own physicians cannot. The recent creation of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University, supported in part by my buddy Tim Ferris, as well as similar efforts underway at other prominent universities like Yale and NYU, shamanic medicine is rapidly shifting from being considered unconventional, non-effective, primitive, to conventional. It is becoming part of conventional medicine.

Starting point is 00:48:30 Many of the initial evaluations from the Western medical perspective have focused on mescaline, which is, of course, from Mexican peyote, we'll be talking about in a later podcast, psilocybin from magic mushrooms, and ayahuasca itself. These mind-altering remedies have been clinically shown, clinically proven, to produce promising therapeutic effects in some cases of addiction, depression, and even OCD. Clinicians are equally enthused about the possibilities of experimenting with these therapies to treat ailments as diverse as anorexia, early-stage Alzheimer's, insomnia, and even PTSD, one of the most terrible afflictions of our troops.

Starting point is 00:49:18 The late Stanislav Grof, a pioneer in the field of psychotherapy, I love this quote, was fond of saying that psychedelics are to psychology the same way that telescopes are to astronomy and microscopes are to the study of bacteria. This newfound interest in hallucinogenic therapies is not only improving our understanding of the human mind, it also driving an enhanced appreciation of the effectiveness of shamanic healing. Now, my organization, the Amazon Conservation Team, was founded on many of these precepts. We believe that shamans are some of the most accomplished healers in the world. We don't believe it.

Starting point is 00:49:57 We know it. And they can sometimes treat and even cure ailments which Western medicine cannot. This was taught to me. This was taught to me. This was taught to us by the late Professor Schultes. And we were specifically set up to partner with indigenous cultures, particularly shamanic cultures, to protect indigenous culture and indigenous rainforest. And we at ACT, find more about us on the web at amazonteam.org,

Starting point is 00:50:24 have been able to partner with many of the original Ayahuasca tribes, like the Kamsa, which is a tribe that first taught Ayahuasca to Xultis, the Sionas, the Coraguaje, the Kofans, and the Inga. And the Amazon conservation team works with them to this day. And the importance of this type of conservation based on these shamanic precepts has already been manifested in two concrete examples. We have partnered with our indigenous colleagues in the Northwest Amazon, as well as the Colombian government, to establish the Orito-Indiwasi Floral Sanctuary with the Kofan tribe in the Colombian Amazon, as well as the establishment of the Indiwasi protected area with the Ngano tribe. This was perhaps the first co-managed

Starting point is 00:51:14 area in the Northwest Amazon between indigenous peoples in the outside world, just like the Indiwasi reserve was the first sanctuary set up to protect sacred plants like ayahuasca and yoko, which is a tribal stimulant. We have worked with these tribes, with our Colombian colleagues in academia and the government, to map, manage, and enhance protection of over 500 square miles of indigenous ancestral rainforest. To purchase Dr. Mark Plotkin's new book, The Amazon, What Everyone Needs to Know, or his first book, Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, visit your local bookseller or order from amazon.com. So I want to talk a bit more about what is ayahuasca and its importance and increasing importance in the world today and what it teaches us about healing, what it teaches us about entheogenic plants and fungi,

Starting point is 00:52:18 what it teaches us about tribal knowledge. This was a plant, this was a liana, first discovered, and of course, as Schulte said, ethnobotanists don't discover anything. We just write with our indigenous colleagues, teach us. We write it down. It's now become global in its reach. From Argentina to Australia, from Israel to Istanbul, this once obscure Amazonian liana, admixed with a few other species, is now celebrated, even venerated, as a plant of power, knowledge, and healing, which has already spawned two state recognized religions in Brazil. It's first and foremost a liana called ayahuasca in the northwest Amazon. Its scientific name is Banisteriopsis copy, and that honors the

Starting point is 00:53:07 indigenous name. In the northwest corner of Brazil, the indigenous tribes and adjacent tribes across the border into Colombia call it copy. When a scientist works and respects indigenous culture and wisdom, she or he typically develops a scientific name based on the indigenous name to honor their knowledge, and that's why it's called Banisteriopsis copy. The vine is also known as Yahé, Y-A-G-E. It is predominantly known by this name in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, and it's also known in Huasca and other parts of Brazil, where it's become a staple of these new religions. Any of these names may refer to the liana itself or to the potions which feature this liana,

Starting point is 00:53:57 as well as the admixtures. Now, the origins of ayahuasca are impossible to determine because very few things fossilize in the rainforest for complex ecological reasons. However, there are abundant archaeological finds of figure snuff trays, snuff tubes, and snuff residue that prove that hallucinogenic plant use in the western Amazon, in western South America, goes back at least as far as 2000 BCE. Schultes wrote, The drink employed for prophecy, divination, sorcery, and medical purposes is so deeply rooted in Native mythology that can be no doubt of its great age as part of Aboriginal life. The ethnobotanist Constantino Torres, who was an authority not only on ayahuasca but also hallucinogenic snuffs, recorded some of theiner, that is the shaman, hangs his hammock in the middle of the roundhouse, the maloka, and takes a bench or small platform and next to it places a hellish

Starting point is 00:55:16 brew called ayahuasca, remarkably effective in depriving of the senses. He makes a tea of the vine, after which much boiling will become very thick and bitter. It is so strong it disrupts judgment even in small quantities. Typically, this missionary's reaction to his experience is in keeping with the response of most ecclesiastic chroniclers when they encountered mind-altering plants and fungi employed by indigenous peoples of the New World. The clergy quickly demonized and condemned these substances and mixtures, whether it was peyote in the north, magic mushrooms in Central America, or ayahuasca,

Starting point is 00:55:57 yopo, and a pain of hallucinogenic snuffs in Amazonia. Equally characteristic to the missionary reaction is what transpired when the very first botanist stumbled upon an ayahuasca ceremony among the Tucanoan peoples on the upper Valpez River in the northwest of Brazil near the Colombian border. This was Richard Spruce, one of the great botanists in the history of Amazonia. Spruce took a small drink of the coffee mixture and did not have the same deep spiritual experience that Schultes later did, who did it many times. But after the ceremony, Spruce ventured into the forest

Starting point is 00:56:42 to collect the vine and flower, which was necessary for making a precise identification. Botanists cannot take a piece of a vine and typically identify it. Indigenous peoples can take a piece of the vine and not only identify the name of the vine, they'll tell you the use of the vine, they'll tell you where it grows, they tell you what soil type it likes, it tells you when it flowers, what pollinates it, and what the seeds look like. Spruce realized this represented a species unknown to science, and he named it Banisteri copy, honoring the Tucanoan name, which as I said was copy. Now one of the great and understudied

Starting point is 00:57:20 aspects of the plants of the gods, of the hallucinogenic substances, is admixtures, which are plants, typically plants, sometimes insects, added to the potion with the intention of altering the type, intensity, and duration of the experience. They represent a complex and fascinating aspects of the story. In fact, we've been able to document over 100 different plants from 40 different families added to the ayahuasca brew. Most of these, as I said, are flowering plants, although one is a gymnosperm, a conifer essentially, and another is a fern. There's also records of snake fangs, snake poison, frogs being added. It is a rich field for further research. The two most important admixtures to ayahuasca are either the shrub chacruna,

Starting point is 00:58:12 which is a vine of the coffee family, Psychotria viridis, or the Liana okoyahe diploptomers cabrarana of the Malpighiaceae, which is actually the same family as ayahuasca itself. What's interesting about these two is that chacruna is found throughout the Amazon, whereas okoyahe is not. So one of these admixtures is really found predominantly in the northwest Amazon, the other is found throughout Amazonia. As I said, ayahuasca itself traditionally is native to certainly the Northwest Amazon and quite possibly the Western Amazon. I spoke to Bronwyn Gates, the botanical expert on the Malpighiaceae family, who herself worked with Schultes. And she said, at this point,

Starting point is 00:58:59 we're still not sure of the original distribution of the ayahuasca liana, and now that it's being grown throughout the world, it makes it even more difficult. Now, what's intriguing about these admixtures is that they contain hallucinogenic tryptamines, which is another type of alkaloid, a chemical substance common in many plants. Caffeine is an alkaloid. Strychnine is an alkaloid. Now, these tryptamines prove inert when consumed orally unless they are activated by the presence of compounds which are known as monoamine oxidase inhibitors, MAO inhibitors. Ayahuasca contains

Starting point is 00:59:41 psychotropic alkaloids of this type, meaning the combination of these plants produce strikingly more potent and profound effects than a potion prepared from either species. How shamans living in a rainforest comprising 40,000 species of plants discovered the appropriate blend to induce otherworldly visions and insights remains a shamanic riddle. Imagine being in a rainforest of tens of thousands of plant species and figuring out which two go best together. This is an incredibly impressive shamanic achievement, medical achievement, wherever you want to look at it. scientists simply cannot come up with an adequate explanation

Starting point is 01:00:26 through the prism of Western science and knowledge. In the Amazon, the brew is typically prepared by boiling the stem of the ayahuasca vine with the admixtures for several hours, producing a thick and highly bitter concoction, which is then consumed in small doses. Approximately 20 minutes after the initial dose, the subject usually experiences the onset of dizziness and nausea, often preceding a purge, either vomiting or defecation, which the shamans insist is part of the process, that you must clean your body of toxic substances. And shamans insist that many of the ills that afflict Western society

Starting point is 01:01:13 are because we do not expel toxic substances like they do, using a variety of plants, often ayahuasca, but not only ayahuasca. And there's many shamanic cultures that don't use ayahuasca, but not only ayahuasca, and there's many shamanic cultures that don't use ayahuasca, purge themselves intentionally to cleanse themselves of toxins that the body accumulates over time. Within the next hour, visions commence, often inducing fear, stress, and even terror, and frequently followed by scenes of unsurpassed loveliness and spiritual illumination. Participants in traditional ayahuasca sessions sometimes report the ability to communicate telepathically with the shamans guiding the ceremony, so much so that the first alkaloid

Starting point is 01:01:59 isolated from ayahuasca wine was named telepath. Now, Schultes often said that the difference between an ethnobotanist and an anthropologist is when the shaman leans forward and she or he offers you the brew containing ayahuasca or the snuff tubes containing Yopo, the hallucinogenic snuff, or the magic mushrooms, that the anthropologist typically says, oh no, I can't do that, I would lose my objectivity. How would I take notes? Whereas when the shaman passes it to the ethnobotanist, she or he looks at the shaman and says, yee-haw.

Starting point is 01:02:41 If you want to truly begin to understand shamanic cultures and shamanic healing and the plants of the gods and the fungi of the gods and the magic frogs of the gods, you need to experience the ceremony as the shaman, as the indigenous people see it. Now, as an ethno-botanist, I've been through probably 80 or 90 ayahuasca ceremonies, always in a ritual context, always led by a shaman, because these are plants of power and knowledge and danger as well. These are not plants or compounds to be trifled with. And let me tell you about my worst ayahuasca experience of all. I was in the middle of a ceremony with a Kamsa shaman, actually an Ingano shaman from Colombia, and I soon was able to realize that this was going to be a very, very, very bad trip. And I then found myself vomiting purple phosphorescent scorpions. So anyone who thinks that this is going to be a fun ride,

Starting point is 01:03:52 anyone who thinks this is always going to be a world of wonder and magic and lots of fun is underestimating what these types of journeys can consist of and which is all the more reason why you need a guide. And when I finished with the most terrible night of my life, going through this terrible, terrible ceremony, I asked the shaman, who was a friend and teacher, why he had subjected me to this. And he said, as a conservationist, as a friend of the indigenous peoples,

Starting point is 01:04:24 you confront many challenges. He said, by experiencing your death in a ritual fashion, you will never fear death and travail ever again. I have prepared you for the path of the warrior. And these are the depths of the emotions and the challenges, mental and spiritual, which all of us who have an interest in trying, taking, consuming the plants of the gods, must be ready to face. So let me conclude this podcast with perhaps the most germane comment in terms of the history and the power of ayahuasca in particular and the plants of the gods in general. Amazonian shamans imbibe ayahuasca to diagnose, treat, and cure illnesses and claim that the potion empowers them to see into the future, ward off misfortune, and provide protection against

Starting point is 01:05:34 jealousy and negativity. In the words of Professor Schultes, ayahuasca can free the soul from confinement, allow it to wander free, and return to the body at will. Ayahuasca, free the soul from confinement, allow it to wander free, and return to the body at will. Ayahuasca, the vine of the soul, refers to this freeing of the spirit. The plants involved are truly the plants of the gods. Today we want to talk about coca, truly a plant of the gods. It's often confused with coconuts or cacao, but coca is a family unique to South America, typically about a meter or two high, and has been in use by indigenous peoples for thousands of years. The latest finds, I think, indicate use of coca, coca quids, coca that's been chewed about 8,000 years ago.

Starting point is 01:06:35 Of all the plants of the gods, coca is a masticatory. That is a plant which is chewed by people. There are two types of masticatories. There is the mechanical, that is, plants or plant products which are chewed purely for mechanical reasons essentially. It's just something enjoyable. It doesn't produce a physiological response. A good example of that would be the resin of the red spruce tree which is traditionally chewed by indigenous peoples in New England. larch resin, which was popular amongst the indigenous peoples of Siberia, and the best known of all, which is chicle, which is the source of chewing gum. Now, chicle is a resin of the sapodilla tree, which also produces a very tasty indigenous

Starting point is 01:07:19 edible fruit. And it is best known to the Western world. It has had a major impact on our history in a very unique and interesting way. Chicle, as I said, was native to Central America. It was long chewed by indigenous peoples there, and the commercialization of chicle and chewing gum got its start with General Santa Anna, the Mexican hero of the Alamo. By the 1860s, he was actually living in exile in Brooklyn. He was planning his return to his native country. To relieve his tensions, he chewed chicle, a pile of which he brought from home. When at last he left Staten Island for Mexico, he left a bunch of chicle behind with his host, Thomas Adams, who was an amateur inventor. Adams initially tried to vulcanize the chicle, like you do with rubber,

Starting point is 01:08:11 to produce waterproof shoes. This failed. Hot weather caused the soles of the galoshes to stick to the pavement. His next brainstorm was to market the chicle to the dental community as a denture adhesive. This also failed. Finally, Adams flattened the chicle to the dental community as a denture adhesive. This also failed. Finally, Adams flattened the chicle with his wife's rolling pin, added sugar, cut it into little pieces, and put it into a Brooklyn candy store for sale. The results were immediately snapped up, as they say, leading to the birth of a multimillion, if not billion-dollar chewing gum industry.

Starting point is 01:08:44 Now, there are two species of coca. As I said, there's 200 species in the genus Erythroxylan, but there's two species that are chewed as what we know as coca leaves or coca powder. And this work was originally done by Tim Plowman, who was a student of Schultes, who spent about 10 years in South America trying to figure out the coca story. So Plowman broke coca down into four varieties of coca. Erythroxylon coca, which is Bolivian coca, which is typical of the highland of the central and southern Andes. The second variety is Erythroxylon coca, the variety Ipadu, which is the coca powder

Starting point is 01:09:27 that I'll be talking quite a bit about. The other species was E. novogranitensi, which Plowman broke into two varieties. There was novogranitensi, novogranitensi, which is Colombian coca, which is what the Kogi Indians of northern Colombia chew. And the final variety was Novogranitense Trujilloense, which is what's grown around Trujillo in Peru, which figures into Coca-Cola, which I'll be getting into. Now, coca is known best as a powerful stimulant, but it has many other benefits as well. It suppresses hunger, prevents altitude sickness and pain relief, and is very rich in minerals, vitamins and proteins. So it means that people that are chewing this are chewing this for the stimulating effects, but also it's an important part of their diet, especially amongst very poor societies like the miners in the highest parts of the Andes.

Starting point is 01:10:21 The Kogis, the extraordinary people from northern Colombia, this is not in the Amazon, these are living in the Sierra Nevada. It is a snow-capped mountain overlooking the Caribbean, the only snow-capped mountain overlooking the ocean as far as I know. They are prodigious chewers of coca. In fact, coca is so central to their way of life that when one Kogi meets another, the typical offering is to open his koka bag which they're never without which is a hand woven fiber sack and his friend takes leaves out of there and chews them and vice versa so it's the ultimate bonding exercise as i said koka has been found as far back as 8 000 years ago and remember that when you make a

Starting point is 01:11:05 find it doesn't mean that's exactly when it began so what it means is it's older than 8,000 years ago and one of the most famous cultures in terms of coca chewing or the Moche from coastal Peru northern coastal Peru that's Moche M-O-C-H-E and they were famous for many things perhaps the most extraordinary is the tomb the moche tomb the lord of sepon which has been called the king tut of the new world it is an extraordinary temple complex with the king the lord of sepon with several of his attendants i think they found coca in the tomb as well but it's really worth having a look at some of the pictures. They've done facial reconstructions. They've done DNA analysis.

Starting point is 01:11:48 It's an extraordinary story and something which really needs to be seen to be appreciated. Also, another spectacular find was the Lady of Cao, C-A-O, which is a similar story. And in terms of Moche pottery, it is a depiction of many aspects of daily life, many of which involve coca chewing. When you see the heads of the Moche people in the Larco Herrera Museum in Lima, many of them have a big quid of coca stuffed under their left cheek. The other thing that's famous about their pottery is it's incredibly pornographic. They depict all sorts of extraordinary sexual acts, and Professor Schultes remarked on this by saying if they spent as much time performing these acts as they did portraying them in pottery, perhaps they wouldn't have died

Starting point is 01:12:37 out. Now, cocoa was brought to Europe in the 1500s from South America, and it became extremely popular all the way up to the 19th century. Sigmund Freud was an early proponent, promoting its use as a stimulant and a potential treatment for morphine addiction. Others who were big fans of coca included Thomas Edison, Ulysses S. Grant, the playwright Henry Gibson, and even Jules Byrne. They were primarily fond of what was known as coca wine, Vin Mariani. This was a wine that was produced in 1844 for about 50 years, and it had coca in it. So you not only had all the benefits of drinking wine, you had the powerful kick of the stimulant, that is the extract of the coca leaf that was put in it. Another reason the coca leaf became popular is in 1886, an Atlantan druggist named John

Starting point is 01:13:33 Pemberton came up with a concoction of coca leaves and cola nuts from Africa, which he called Coca Cola. And it really is the pause that refreshes, although it doesn't refresh as much as it used to because the cocaine has been taken out of it. But a drink which had cocaine and kola nuts, which are very rich in caffeine, would definitely give you a powerful kick. However, as it became obvious that cocaine was highly addictive and therefore very dangerous, cocaine was removed from many of the tonics in which it was added. In Storyville, in my native New Orleans, the old red light district in the 1900s, it was very common to use cocaine extracts as pain reliever and for a variety of other ailments.

Starting point is 01:14:19 But these are the kinds of things which once people understood better the chemistry of what was going on, that cocaine was removed from many of these products. Interestingly enough, coca and cocaine is still produced in enormous quantities around Trujillo in northern Peru. And they take the cocaine out of it and use the rest leaf as a flavoring for Coca-Cola still. However, the drug, which is widely used in ophthalmologic surgery and in treating inoperable cancer as a painkiller, is then sold to pharmaceutical companies, which distribute it with a license with a prescription. Now, the most interesting use of coca, to my mind,

Starting point is 01:15:06 is that of coca powder, the so-called Ipadu or Mambe, which you find only in the Colombian Amazon and the adjacent Peruvian Amazon. The Indians cultivate a variety of the plant, which is E. coca variety Ipadu, as I mentioned earlier, of the four varieties that are used to produce cocaine. And since most of their agriculture is carried out solely by women, proof of the extraordinary role of coca in the society of tribes like the Yakunas and Tanimokas is that this is only propagated and cultivated by men. It is exclusively grown and processed by the men of the tribe. When the leaves are ready to be harvested,

Starting point is 01:15:54 which is usually after a year it was planted, the men trek to the gardens and fill these wonderful handmade baskets with the leaves amid much joking and good cheer and enormous consumption of prepared cocoa powder. That is what they call Ipadu or Mambé. They then haul back to the roundhouse, what they call the maloca, the leaves of the plant, which are then toasted on a large flat clay pan or iron plate, which is also used to bake cassava bread during the day. The dried leaves are then placed in a hollowed-out tree trunk, which serves as a mortar, and pulverized with a sizable wooden club, which serves as a pestle. The rhythmic thumping of the coca being

Starting point is 01:16:38 ground to a fine powder echoes through the maloca for hours every night. Meanwhile, other men burn leaves of the cecropia tree, which is added to the coca powder to provide the alkaline substance that facilitates the release of the alkalides. Now, we talked earlier about the importance of admixture. These are plants or other compounds which are added to an arrow poison or ayahuasca or hallucinogenic snuffs, which may not be toxic or hallucinogenic in and of themselves, but they enhance the potency of the other compound, be it hallucinogenic or otherwise. Such is truly the case with coca.

Starting point is 01:17:18 You need to add something to extract the alkaloid and make it more effective, more stimulating. So in the case of the cogees in northern Colombia, they add seashells, because this is essentially calcium carbonate, which helps extract the cocaine and other compounds and makes the coca more effective. In the case of Ipadu, the coca powder of the Amazon, which is my favorite masticatory of all time, they add the ash of certain plants. Usually this is a cecropia member of the fig family, where they

Starting point is 01:17:52 add the ash and it helps extract the compound and make it more potent. How these people discovered this complex chemistry is really beyond me, but this is yet another mystery of these plants of the gods. In these coca-chewing tribes, people use an alkaline substance to extract the alkaloid. In the case of the Kogis, since they live on the edge of the Caribbean Sea, it's seashells. In fact, seashells are sacred to the Kogis, and they're always trekking down the mountain to the sea to collect these seashells. Amongst the Kogis, seashells are a form of commerce, or a form of money almost, or a very important part of their sacred offerings. Whereas in the Amazon, where they're chewing Iqbaidu, where there are no seashells, they're using the leaves of the sucropia tree, which not only facilitates the release of the alkaloids, it also gives it a particular flavor. There are several

Starting point is 01:18:53 other plants they add to fortify the effects of the epidu or imbue a certain flavor. The most important of these is peruma, which is a tree of the maresi, the fig family, and it's said to amplify the strength and improve the flavor of the cocoa powder is the best, which additives are the best, which flavors are the best, which varieties produce the best buzz, essentially. And it is stored in a hollowed-out calabash, or more commonly these days, a plastic container with a tight-fitting lid. Throughout the day, the container is seldom outside the reach of its owner. When you see Yukuna men hunting or you see them in the gardens helping their wives, they always have that container with them. And every time they feel the need, they use the spoon, or in really traditional communities, they use a leg bone of a taper, this is a big forest mammal, as a spatula to scoop out the

Starting point is 01:20:07 powder and place it between the cheek and the gum. Unlike the coca leaf, which is prized by the Andean cultures and the cogees in northern Colombia, the ipiduquid is not chewed, but it's gradually allowed to dissolve and be swallowed, at which point the user takes the scoop. Now, it's a real art to learn how to do this, because when you put the Ipadu in your mouth, it's a very fine powder. So people inhale, suck it down into their lobes, choke, spit it out, pour this nasty stuff all over the front of their shirt. The stain is very difficult to get out, and I speak from experience. But when you learn how to do it, it truly is a front of their shirt. The stain is very difficult to get out, and I speak from experience. But when you learn how to do it, it truly is a plant of the gods,

Starting point is 01:20:50 which gives you a lovely feeling, which allows you to talk through the night, which suppresses your hunger, which is just, in my mind, the greatest stimulant in the world. To purchase Dr. Mark Plotkin's new book, The Amazon, What Everyone Needs to Know, or his first book, Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, visit your local bookseller or order from amazon.com. From a botanical perspective, coca is a member of the family Erythroxylaceae, which has four genera. One of those genera is Erythroxylum. Erythroxylum has about 200 species, two of which, four varieties of these two species, produce what we think of as coca or coca powder or coca leaves.

Starting point is 01:21:40 Now in the market, when you're in the Andes and want to buy and try some coca, you want to make sure they're selling you the real thing. And here's a botanical trick. Coca leaves have an almost unique characteristic. They have what are called vernal lines. Vernal lines are lines that run through the leaf parallel to the central vein. This is very unusual in the plant world. If you pick up a leaf and there are lines that run parallel to the central vein,

Starting point is 01:22:03 instead of running out from the central vein to the edge of the leaf, you know you've got the real thing. Cocoa, which most foreigners encounter in the Andes, is the number one drug, the effective treatment and cure for what is known as soroche. Soroche is altitude sickness. It's really a dreadful thing. If you've suffered it, you know how miserable it is. You can feel like you're having a heart attack.

Starting point is 01:22:28 You're short of breath. You have a pounding headache. It's really quite terrible. I remember once I was collecting in the Peruvian Andes, and I got to the town of Huaraz, way up in the mountains, and I just felt I was terrible. I stumbled into a cafe, and I heard Dark Side of the Moon that was playing at about half speed. I thought I was having a heart attack. And they saw the look on my face

Starting point is 01:22:52 and they knew immediately this gringo had Seroche. And they quickly brought me a glass of coca tea, which is ubiquitous in the Andes. And I drank it and I quickly felt better. And I then found out the reason that Dark Side of the moon sounded so weird was that the record player was running out of juice. So it wasn't the soroche, it was indeed the batteries in the record player. But the feeling that I had, which was so terrible, was immediately cured by this coca tea, which is why I think it has such a bright future in Western medicine. The Yukuna tribe

Starting point is 01:23:26 lives along the Miriti Parana River, one of the most remote rivers in the world that flows into the Kakita in the Colombian Amazon. They are a tribe of several hundred people. They are members of the Arawakan family. As I explained in an earlier podcast, there are about four language families in South America. Carib and Arawak are the two biggest. So they speak a language which is related to other Arawak tribes. But they are a very proud group of people, proud of their traditions, proud of their knowledge. They keep their language. They tend to keep foreigners and missionaries out, and they are the most prodigious chewers of coca or consumers of coca powder that I've ever seen. Now, among the prodigious consumers, a person may consume over a pound of the powder daily, which is why every

Starting point is 01:24:20 night in the Moloka, you hear thud, thud, thud, which is the creation of the Ipadu powder to be used the next day. And I might add that the Yukunas were Shulte's most favorite tribe. He referred to them as the most valiant and reliable of all the peoples he worked with. And I think a lot of Ipadu went into that judgment. Now, unlike purified cocaine, Ipadu is not addictive, and it offers many positive attributes, slight and pleasant mood elevation, staving off hunger, thirst, and fatigue. In my opinion, coca leaves, coca tea, coca chewing gum, and even Ipadu powder one day could become an internationally safe and effective stimulant and diet drug. When I was growing up in the 70s, it was the age of reformatless,

Starting point is 01:25:11 where everybody was convinced that marijuana was a dangerously addictive drug and people would go crazy. That's not true, and we'll cover that in another podcast. But I see the same potential for coca and coca products. However, I have to say that cocaine is addictive in a way, which in my opinion, marijuana is not. So some safeguards need to be built in there. It's a wonderful crop. These people grow it for their own uses. And I think encouraging them to expand the cultivation of coca, if it's done in a sustainable way and doesn't involve

Starting point is 01:25:46 processing, which involves dumping all sorts of nasty chemicals into the rivers, is a potential crop of the future. But only if it can be carefully controlled, only if the indigenous peoples and the peasants, the campesinos, the caboclos, can benefit first and foremost only if it doesn't involve destruction of further forests and with the understanding that cocaine is a dangerous and addictive drug. To the Indians living a traditional lifestyle, coca is employed to facilitate conservation, conversation, and bind the community together, both to protect the culture and the forest, to cure, and to give offerings to the nature spirits. For much of the past half century, because of its ready conversion to cocaine,

Starting point is 01:26:33 coca has been much more of a curse than a blessing outside of its ritual context. Violence, death, deforestation, pollution, and corruption have all flowed from the murderous cocaine trade. Perhaps some of the lessons learned from the increasingly widespread legalization of marijuana in many countries might help us one day pursue a similar positive path with coca in its native form. In the meantime, the traditional use of coca by its traditional uses should be celebrated and protected. The bottom line here is that coca used in its traditional cultural setting is a plant of the gods, which only benefits humanity. But it's when we take these things out of the ritual setting, the ritual context, the ritual preparation, and abuse them, we once again

Starting point is 01:27:26 pay a real price. So coca, like ayahuasca, can heal and it can hurt. It can be good for the indigenous peoples, be good for the rainforest, it'd be good for all of us with the proper respect and utilization. Once more, we have to look to our indigenous colleagues to find out how to properly use this plant of the God, how to properly process this plant of the God, to make sure that this sacred plant can benefit them and us. If we don't listen to our indigenous colleagues, we pay a real price. This has been Plants of the Gods, Healing, Culture, and Conservation with Dr. Mark Plotkin. To learn more about the mystery and splendor of the Amazon rainforest, find Dr. Plotkin's latest book, The Amazon, What Everyone Needs to Know, on Amazon.com or your local bookstore.

Starting point is 01:28:29 Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little

Starting point is 01:29:13 tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement.

Starting point is 01:29:38 The answer is invariably Athletic Greens. I view it as all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it, in fact, in the 4-Hour Body. This is more than 10 years ago, and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients, you'd be very hard-pressed to find a more nutrient-dense and comprehensive formula on the market. It has multivitamins, multimineral greens complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, an immunity formula, digestive enzymes, adaptogens, and much more. I usually take it once or twice a day just to make sure I've covered my bases if I miss anything I'm not aware of. Of course, I focus on nutrient

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #508: Plants of the Gods — Dr. Mark Plotkin on Ayahuasca, Shamanic Knowledge, the Curse and Blessing of Coca, and More

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