Hello, folks, it's Chuck here. It's Saturday, and that means it's time for a Saturday Select episode curated this week by What. This one goes all the way back to December eleven, and that's about ayahuasca. We love doing our episodes on various weird drugs and this is no exception. So check out how ayahuasca works right now. Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hold on and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Brian, there's Jerry over there, and this is stuff you should know. The poor attempts at Spanish edition and yet another drug cast mm hmm, covering all the drugs everybody, one by one, and this one is Aaska. We'll have to do one just specifically on d m T sometime too, all right, because there you know it's the d m T is the base of ayahuasca, but it's different. I mean, there's other stuff going on with ayahuasca that d MT doesn't have them. Spoiler alert. DMT is its own thing for sure, from what I can tell. Yeah, okay, so it's agreed then, Chuck, Yeah, but you just ruined this whole episode. Oh sorry, well let's go back to the beginning then. Uh yeah, ayahuasca it has a bunch of different names. And this is something I didn't know because I'm a dummy. I didn't know anything about ayahuasca except to use it as jokes. You know. It's been sort of a running punch line, like, you know, you have to forgive me, I'm on ayahuasca, that kind of thing. I got you. But uh, I thought it was that was the name of like a plant, and it was one planted ayahuasca sort of like what's the what's the other plant? The corn? Yeah, just sort of like corn um No, the one that like, you know, the doors took the meal. Yeah, mescaline, yeah, but that's not the plant. What's the plant is mescal in the plant to what a peyote? That's right, But that's the mescaline buttons on a peyote plant, right, which we haven't covered yet. We should do want a peyote? Bam, another drug cast come and at you. But ayahuasca is not the name of a plant. Uh. It is actually a concoction made from a couple of different plants. Yeah. Yeah, And originally it was just one plant actually known as the vine of death. Yeah, oh, let's see what we can do. Okay, you did the time wasting throat. Clear that move. It's stalling. So if you go and drink ayahuasca today, you're probably getting one that's a combination of a plant called psycho Tria voritas. I think I got that and a vine known as banistereopsis copy C A p I so Psychotria veritas and bareness. Man, there's a lot of letters in that one. Yeah. But if it's it's pronounced like it looks ye banistereopsis, you got it all right? Copy right? And that one, the second one, the copy is the vine. Correct, that's the o g ayahuasca ingredient, the vine of death. And this is I guess we haven't even really said. We've danced around it. It is a a drug concoction that they have been taking, um since who knows when, but since before Europeans arrived in the New World, A long long time in South America. Yeah, and specifically they think it have originated among the Napo Runa tribe in Ecuador, right, but it's spread throughout the Amazon basin and today if you are a well to do tech worker who makes your way down to South America. You're probably going to go to Peru to check out your ayahuasca trip. Yeah, this became a thing, weirdly, uh in Silicon Valley. Uh, if you were a young, rich entrepreneur in Silicon Valley that has a couple of hit apps on your hand, it became a thing to throw on your hoodie and travel to South America to take part in an ayahuasca ceremony. Yep, and I'm not sure. I mean, I guess I know what happens is one one dude does that and then says, bro, you gotta do this right a late night conversation, a burning man opens the Absolutely, that's how it went now and then before you know it, it's a thing. Right. You know, there's some kids in Silicon Valley being like, wait a minute, wait a minute, are they making fun of us right now? And then they feel that that hood that they've never even put over their head itching their neck and they're stupid stereotypes being true. Oh man, At any rate, ayahuasca yes, so, um, it did start out as a traditional thing, but there's like, you know, the whole popularity that grew among Westerners traveling down to South America for whatever reason. I'm sure um for vision quests for fun a drug they hadn't tried yet. Who cares. There's a lot of reasons that people travel down to South America to partake in this UM. Certainly most of them not nefarious or dumb. UM. Probably a lot of the reasons were great. But the the influx of Westerners and Western money has radically altered ayahuasca and in the Sarah premonies and rites and the people who perform ayahuasca ceremonies just over there, like the last ten or so years, dramatically. Yeah, one might even say that the western white man has ruined the whole thing. I think that there's I think it's been commercialized, but that there are still very much um. The the original or the real deal is protected in many ways by by the people who are like, yeah, you guys, go drink it over there. We've got our thing going on over here. And in fact, there's at least two churches in the United States that practice ayahuasca diets UM that that are real deal religions as far as the Supreme Courts concerned, UM, that clearly show that there are there is real, legit ayahuasca ceremonies being practiced throughout the world. I think both of them are are from Brazil. Yeah. In two thousand six, h the Supreme Court said that, uh, the n I Oh Do vegetal U d V was a legit religion and they are in fact from Brazil Christian spiritualists about seventeen thousand UH adherents all over the world. Uh. And the literal translation of that religion is the Union of the Plants, right, So it's like a plant religion and aahuasca is at the center of this. Uh. Yeah. The other one is a Christian syncretism like Santo. Yeah, that one is like, um, they incorporate not just indigenous Brazilian and South American beliefs, but also some African indigenous beliefs, are folk beliefs as well. Like it's it's a whole um, very big inclusive pantheon that that is centered around visions from ayahuasca and like an ayahuasca sacrament. It's pretty interesting. Yeah. Both protected in the United States by law now that this is part of this plant concoction as part of their religion. They cannot be arrested for doing this because the legalities of it. Is is is technically illegal? Um, it's a little great whether or not the actual plant is illegal? Is that right? Yeah? Supposedly the plants themselves are not illegal. It's the combination or the brew made from them that's illegal. That's what I saw. I don't know that that's necessarily true. And I would guess if the plants are still legal now, they won't be in two three years, because you know, why why make it legal? Why let it be legal? Yeah? Something people get enjoyment for it comes from the earth. Let's outlawed. Yeah. I don't know if enjoyment is quite the right word though, from the way that um the Grabster puts it that the an ayahuasca trip is not necessarily fun. It's a harrowing psychological, spiritual journey that you're undertaking. All right, let's take a break, okay, alright, let see you getting excited over there. Uh, And we'll talk a little bit more about d m T and kind of what's going on in your body physiologically right after this. Alright, So d m T, which you mentioned at the onset, the the one part of this concoction, the p veritas contains d M t. You're gonna pronounce that. Oh, yes, it's methyl trip to me. Oh look at you just rolls off the tongue now, doesn't it. Uh. So this is something not exclusive to p verritas. It's found in a bunch of psychedelic substances, and this is something that can cause hallucinations, perhaps changes in your perception, your state of consciousness, your sense of self, which will really get into it has a lot to do with the ayahuasca journey. Um. However, if you just eat the d M t UM, it's not gonna have this this kind of effect on you because, Uh, there's an enzyme called uh monoamine oxidase, and that's gonna break it down your in your digestive system before it gets absorbed. So you have to combine it with this copy vine which prevents the uptake of it. Yeah, the copy vine has an alkaloid called harmala alkaloid, and harmalines are psychotropic and of themselves, which is why the the copy vine alone used to just be ayahuasca. But the fact that it prevents um your your the monoamine oxidase to break down the d M t it allows your body to absorb it all of a sudden you're tripping balls, although I hear it's not all of a sudden. I think it's it takes a good thirty minutes to come on, and then it takes like a supplementary boost um an hour or so later to to really bring on like the kind of transcendent experience that people are looking for when they take ayahuasca. So you've got the you've got the d m T being absorbed. That's the one to punch right. You've got the d MT itself, and then you've got the plant that allows the d m T to be absorbed. And when you put those two things together, the p veritas and the B copy, that's what the that's the ayahuasca that you read about and vice that's what they're talking about. Yeah, and these you know, this is administered by a shaman um someone who ideally as a shaman that knows what they're doing. And there's sometimes there are other plants that are brewed in there as well, but uh not always, And sometimes it's brewed separately and then combined later. Sometimes times it all depends on which shaman you go to, of what the ritual is like. Sometimes you're included as part of it. Um. Sometimes it's like a thick liquid t sometimes it's a paste. It's been described. No matter what it is, it seems like around the horn. Everybody says it tastes awful, so awful that that you can very easily throw up, which is something that's pretty common with the um. With an ayahuasca experiences. I didn't get that from the From the taste, though, I got that that that was like, once it's in your body, it makes you nauseous and you throw up, right, But like, oh, this taste so bad, I'm gonna puke it up. No, No, because then it wouldn't be in your body long enough to be absorbed. Right. Yeah, But I think the taste and the memory of the taste, combined with the nausea is enough to throw up. But the whether whether you do throw up or not, it's not necessarily like you're going to throw up there the the point, one of the points of an eye ahuasca ceremony is to throw up. You're meant to throw up um, and you're you will actually be forced into this either if you don't do it from the ayahuasca. You may also be given something like tobacco juice like a water with tobacco that's soaked in it for a while, and you'll be told to drink that so that you will throw up. Because this idea of purging, whether it's throwing up or diarrhea, is a very frequent side effective iahuaca, very frequent. Um. You are you are meant to be purging your your body, and it's meant to be this kind of symbolic spiritual purge of your ego, of all the nastiness, of all the horrible nous that's a part of you. You're getting it out as part of the trip and as the trip sets in. Yeah, and the taste has been described. The New York Times has said it's like a um muddy herbal taste. Uh. Someone from vox dot com took it a gun named Shaun Illing. He described it as a cup of motor oil diluted with a splash of water. So I read, I read it's almost as gross as a Neco wafer. I don't think i've ever had anco wafer? Good on you have? You know what? Am I crazy? What are they not? Go wafers like old timey kind of like chalky candy that comes in a role you've seen them. Probably you've seen them in my old timey candy days exactly. I'm sure I did. Uh So all right, I guess we should talk a little bit about uh, Like you said, um, it's orange. It's origins in the Napo River basin by this Runa tribe like you said, Uh, And it's called the Vine of Death or the mother Vine. This copy and they think that early on they may have just taken this copy by itself, right, because the brew it's got the harmlins in it that's not only an m A o I but also has like its own kind of psychoactive stuff going on. So that was the original Iowa. Yeah, and we have written accounts from like the seventeen hundreds when Jesuits would go to the Amazon to try and you know, christianize folks and trip balls. Yeah, because I'm sure the entry was like whoa, and that's it. Did you hear about the guy that was just killed the missionary? Yes? On setting Ali's sent in All Island. Yeah, he it's like something from a movie. He went at first and a child shot an arrow through a bible that he was holding. Apparently I hadn't heard about that. Yeah, because he had. He went back a few times and was like journaling about it and said he basically like held up his Bible. It's like something from a movie and an arrow was shot through it. And I'm like, dude, if that is not like, if you believe in God, that's a sign from God. Well you you remember the turnaround the man in the whole episode we talked about them. Yeah, they were the ones that like you, like everyone knew you just don't go anywhere near him and did some fishermen and killed like years a few years back, and this guy I guess had tried um. He decided he was going to be the one. Yeah. I don't actually know enough about the story, but he clearly was trying to jane access to them. Yeah. Yeah, he was trying to spread the word of Jesus and paid like you're not supposed it's illegal, I think, to even trespass there. But he paid people sort of under the table to take him there, and they did so, and those people were arrested and his family is saying, you need to let these people go because he like really wanted to do this. I see. It's very interesting. Yeah it is. It's crazy, but I just like that sounds like something you would make up from a movie, like shooting an arrow through the Bible they're holding up, you know. Uh So we got a little sidetrack, but we were talking about the Jesuits like having this on record in the seventeen hundreds when they went and they were like, hey, there's something going down down here. That's very interesting. Yeah. And even William S. Burrows wrote the Yahee Letters in three and it was about his experience with the Aahuascar vine. And apparently they the practitioners at the time knew, um well into the to the the twentieth century, that you could combine it with the p veritis fine and and have a completely different experience. But that wasn't necessarily the point. That was like an optional ceremony you could perform. But the most, the most widespread and traditional ceremony was just the vine of death, right. Yeah. And then at some point somebody started putting him together and word about this got out, and the mid two thousand's is when it just ayahuasca like kind of hit the public consciousness in the West. Yeah. I mean in the sixties, of course, uh in in certain uh you know, subcultures in America. They knew about it because of william S Burrows and people seeking out you know, things like peyote and all kinds of psychedelic experiences, but it definitely was not sort of in the stream until you know, not not too long ago. And even still I think even at the time it was strictly the harm alines and and just the the vine that was being used, the copy vine. It wasn't. It wasn't. Somebody started putting it together frequently with the the veritas plant, and that's when it became hugely popular. Yeah, so popular now that there is ayahuasca tourism big time like going on in South America. And uh said the central part is Peru's uh a room bomba valley. And if you, I mean, if you were going down for an ayahuasca experience like a spiritual quest, is is the reason you're going down there? I don't fault you for that at all, um, But you have to understand the the You have to do your research. You can't just show up in South America and be like, all right, somebody give me some ayahuasca. Because there are a lot of um in scrupulous and nefarious outfits that have come up to to take advantage explicitly of that kind of Western tourist, the ill informed Western tourist who is going to have a horrible, terrible trip and not going to get the spiritual experience you're looking for. Um So, you have to do your research because there are some legitimate ayahuasca outfits in South America, but you, um, they're they're not going to take you if you just show up down there, and you're gonna end up in some some in a bad situation. Yeah for sure. Um So, taking part in one of these ceremonies, let's say you do find like a legit shaman who's willing to take your American dollars or whatever, however you're paying your gold en gets and drink its. Uh, it's still it's sort of funny. It all goes back to Burrows with the set and setting thing, which is what he famously preached about any psychic dellic experience is to really put a lot of thought into the set in the setting where you're gonna do this, so it goes well for you. Um So, as this uh concoction is being brewed, like I said before, sometimes you're taking part in this and helping to mash it up and brew the t um. But what they're really trying to do is, um, the whole ceremony isn't just like for show. It's it's all part of the thing to get you settled in and focused on kind of the right things going in, Like what do you want to accomplish here, what do you want to find out about yourself? What questions do you have about yourself? And really get into that that frame of mind as they hand you your puke bucket. Although I would recommend bringing your own, Oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that. I would not want to reused puke bucket. Good lord. I hadn't even considered that it would be by O B for me, So um yeah, I can just totally see how as a as a Westerner, you would just be like, come on, we don't need the ceremony stuff. Let's just give me the good stuff. But that, like you said, that's the point is to ease you into it, to get your mind and body prepared for this, this enormous trip you're about to go on, because if you just get dropped right in the middle of it without any kind of preparation or without any kind of assistance, you're going to lose your marbles pretty pretty well. UM. So that that is a big part of going on an ayahuasca journey is is having somebody who's competent, trained and UM, empathetic and willing to stay there with you, to prepare you, to stay with you, to keep an eye on you. You need to be monitored. You can't be up and like just running off into the jungle by yourself, because terrible things are going to happen to you in that situation. UM. And then to help you afterward as well, and from from some of the preliminary research that's starting to come in, if you undertake an ayahuasca journey, I guess is that it's the best word I can come up with. UM. Under the right setting, under the right guidance, with the right support, both pre during and after, it can have profound effects on your spirituality and your sense of connectedness to the universe. It can also possibly help you with UM with diagnosed mental illness as well. Yeah, well we'll get to the illness part mental illness part at the end, but UM, just your standard sort of truth seeker, let's say, okay, UM, it's very much tight into like what the and ideal conditions and like the sixties and seventies with Ellis and Guess beyond, but the LSD experience and that. Uh, there was a lot of talk in the sixties about the ego and every you know, hip musician and in the United States talked about stripping away the ego, from Brian Wilson to the Mamas and the Papa's too, you know Neil Young. Uh is stripping away that ego of self basically, which which means kind of getting outside yourself to the point where, uh, you're not looking at the world around you and how it affects you, but there there is no you. There is no It's a loss of self such that's so profound that you can only see the world and people around you as they exist in reality. Uh. It's it's a pretty sort of deep, trippy thing to try and describe in words on a podcast, But I think that's sort of the general thing is is uh washing that ego down to where it's not around anymore and you get like a true sense of the world around you, like for the maybe for the first time. Yeah, yeah, and the the ego in and of itself isn't a bad thing like it's it's they think that it developed among animals. Is a like, that's your sense of self awareness. That's the thing that leads you to want to preserve your own life, to get away from danger, to realize that, like, you can die because there is a you, right, It's a very basic thing. Um. The problem is is in humans, as we've evolved, our ego has also evolved, and it can get to a point where it's unhealthy. It's kind of toxic. It can help you develop bad, bad relationships, people don't want to be around you. It can also affect your self esteem if your egos underdeveloped. There's a lot of problems that can go wrong with the ego, and so a lot of people who prescribe psychedelics to deal with that kind of thing say, psychedelics strip away the ego. And now that we've gotten to the point where where we are advanced enough as a civilization that we can give people acid and put them in the an MRI machine, the Wonder machine and watch what happens, we've shown that, Yes, it seems like the the areas that are responsible for generating the ego, don't they get kind of turned off while you're under the influence of psychedelics, and it allows you to connect, to see outside of yourself, to see that you are connected with all of this other stuff. So this whole ego depletion or ego stripping, UM, it's a major component of not just ayahuasca but all psychedelics. But it is a big it's a big reason why people undertake ayahuasca UM journeys. Again. But get this, Siss, there was something I hadn't realized before, Chuck, So that from those m r I studies, they found that, UM, there's something called the default mode network, which is the thing that keeps your body humming and keeps your It's the part of your brain that's going while you're not thinking right, And they found that when the default mode network is suppressed and your frontal cortex is activated, that's when it seems that your um, your ego is at the least, it's when your egos turned off and you're free to connect with the universe or whatever. Right. Well, that default mode network is a very primitive part of our brain. It's a very primitive system of our brain, and it kind of suggests in a way that the loss of ego is something that we may eventually evolve to. Isn't that cool? Because if your frontal cortex is what's being activated in your default mode network is inactivated, that's like your ancient brain and your evolved brain. One's activated and one's one's suppressed and your egos gone. That that says to me like, well, yeah, if we keep evolving a frontal cortex, I wonder if we'll lose our ego at some point, or at least it will be radically altered. Interesting, I thought so too. Yeah, so what can happen? Uh? You know, like like any sort of psychedelic trip, it's going to be completely um singular to the person that's doing it. There is no across the board sort of sweeping statements you can make. But um, you strip away that ego and anything can happen. From feeling connected to the more connected to the universe or the earth or the tree, or leaning against or maybe the father that passed away when you were a child that you didn't have a relationship with, or the loved one that you currently have a toxic relationship with. You can feel sort of a not imaginary but it is in your mind, but a bond and that they're not like right there in front of you, Um, just new understandings of relationships that may be complicated or toxic in your life, right exactly, like you're you're you're seeing them in a different way because of the ego loss. Yeah, yeah, I think that's fascinating. Um. And like you said, it is symbolic death of the ego, which is why that vomiting is important. Like in theory, I guess you're you're vomiting up that ego and then it's go time. Um. Apparently you can hallucinate your death. Uh. And like you said before, it's not often looked at it's like, hey man, this is this is gonna be a great time. Um. But at the same time, I think it's also typically not like looked at as like some horror show that you're about to undergo. Um, although it can be. But it's just a profound emotional and psychological experience exactly. I've never done it, I mean either, but this is from researching it, right exactly, which is like we've never been to the sun either. But we talked about that. Yeah, that went great. Actually, now that you mentioned it, should use a different example. Uh, let's take another break, and then we'll talk about what you kind of teased earlier with um uh ahuashka and how it could be used to treat addiction or PTSD or other mental illnesses. Right after this, Okay, Chuck, So we're back and we're talking about using ayahuasca as a tool like taking that experience of being outside of yourself have connected to the rest of the universe of reevaluating your life in a lot of ways to cure mental illness UM. And one of the things that it's been I guess some studies have actually shown like now this this actually works is to treat addiction um, whether it's cigarettes or booze or drugs or whatever, that that you can undergo an ayahuasca ceremony. People have and have come out on the other side like I'm good, I don't need that the cigarettes or booze or drugs or whatever. Yeah. And one of the one of the suggestions for what's going on with this that I saw is that you are actually healing the psychic damage that's causing you to self medicate in the first place, something probably from your past, and then so you with with that need to self medicate you don't have necessarily the desire to drink or smoke cigarettes or whatever that you used to, which is a different model of addiction that's kind of starting to gain a little bit of traction, but is also very controversial because it makes it sound like addiction is a choice, but you're self medicating, You're choosing to do all those drugs and like throw your life away because of some psychic trauma. But there there does seem to be a camp in in medicine that is saying like this actually might have legs. It kind of makes a lot of sense, and from what I can tell, those ayahuasca studies kind of are a checkmark in that view's favor. Yeah, and I think that can work in conjunction with the other piece, which is removing that ego. Even if it's for whatever how many hours that you're undergoing this trip um could just simply disrupt that. You know, you often hear about addiction being like this sort of cycle, like a cyclical thing um, and even just disrupting that sick coal path of that circular path um can be enough to sort of get you on the off ramp, uh from using Yeah, get you on the off ramp gets you yeah, on the off ramp. Yes, that's how you said, right, yeah, and then eventually off that off ramp onto a nice chill side street. Yeah, and maybe a nice drive into the country past a few cows and then sleep. Yeah. I had a at a therapist one time that talked about getting off of the highway. It was a metaphor that actually worked for me. But like choosing to get off the highway when certain things were happening, and sometimes something that simple is just kind of clicks in, like, oh, if I notice something's going on, I'm speeding down the highway towards the badness, and just get on that exit ramp and now I'm in my neighborhood. I'm hanging out with cows in a nice pasture. PTSD is another specifically, I think a lot of times with military PTSD UM they've been, you know, using psychedelics more and more in Ayahuasca is no stranger to this treatment, and UM, while it is not a magic pill, they are doing some studies on this and it seems like, uh, and like with all these is tough to get funding for these kind of studies sometimes, but it does seem like it's gaining more ground in the medical community to try out these kind of experiments. Well, they're trying, like how to get some of these studies underway in the United States, but because ayahuasca is considered a Schedule one drug, which is the the worst, most nefarious drugs of all, UM, they can't. They just I don't think there's been a single study in the US. But fortunately they can just go down to South America and do the best they can with some of the Ayahuascar centers that are down there, and they're like, again, there are some legitimate Ayahuascar centers that take Western tourists for ayahuasca journeys. UM, and some groups are are going down their departner with those centers to study people, and some of the people they're trying to study our PTSD patients, and they think that if ayahuasca is helping people with PTSD, which it seems to be, it's it's basically negative exposure therapy where you're dredging up all of those worst, your worst memories that are causing your PTSD, which is bringing them to the surface and allowing your awareness to kind of shine a light on them and say, okay, I'm going to recategorize these now and they're not being categorized as bad and and frightening as they were before. It's not as traumatic as as they were originally categorized. Yeah, and and specifically in this study that you're thinking about, is uh Or talking about his combat veterans suffering from PTSD and it's the Temple of the Way of Light uh And the Amazon has partnered with a group in Spain and the UK, the International Center for Ethnobotanical Research and Service and PANE and then the Beckley Foundation in the UK, and they're treating close to six combat veterans a year and it says it's the largest psychedelic study um ever undertaken. So yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah, I know that they're using um M d M A to treat PTSD as well. And then I can't remember the name of that one treatment. But remember you like follow a pen with your eyes while you're going over your worst memory, and it it recategorizes the memories, is less scary. I want to remember that one. Yeah, I can't remember what we talked about it And but that apparently works really well too, so without the vomiting, that's a big part of it though, my friend just bring your own bucket. Uh. Problems with ayahuasca. Um, it is not generally toxic and you would have to take so much ayahuasca sort of like when we were talking about marijuana, Like is there even a lethal dose? Can you even say that? Because the lethal dose apparently for aguasca is twenty times what you had normally taken a typical ceremony. Uh as the grabster put it, or uh he might have been quoting someone, but it's uh, could could anyone even choke this much of that down? Right? Probably? Not? Is that even possible? But there have been I mean, there have been some deaths that have been related to ayahuasca, and and when you dig a little deeper you find like, oh, it wasn't actually the ayahuasca directly that caused this, but the people would not have died had they not been in South America on the ayahuasca journey, right. Yeah, There's this one guy who, um who died in I believe two thousand fourteen. He was an American, you know, he's British, I'm sorry, and his name was Henry Miller. And he died on the way to the hospital because he gone kind of non responsive and the Iowa squeros Ia Iowa square. Yeah, I said, um that took him to the hospital, had him on a motorcycle. He fell off the motorcycle and died of a head injury on the way to the hospital. So it wasn't the ayahuasca that killed him. But he wouldn't have been on the motorcycle in the first place had he not been on this aahuasca trip. So the shorthand and the headlines is a man dies from ayahuasca. Yeah. There have been some other cases where like people would be having a bad trip and maybe attack someone else and that would lead to like violence or death or just this year in two thousand eighteen in Peru, um an eighty one year old shaman woman was shot and killed. Uh, and then a Canadian man was murdered for revenge for that killing. But supposedly this had nothing to do with like being under the influence, but it was some sort of dispute that happened during this this whole conflict. Yeah. The woman was named Olivia are Avalo and she was the spiritual mother of Peru's second largest indigenous tribe, the Shapebo Canibo. And this guy, this Canadian guy named Sebastian Woodruff shot and killed her, allegedly because um her son owed him money. He was there to learn ayahuasca and I guess he didn't feel like he'd gotten his money's worth, so he killed her. He killed this this woman, the shaman, the spiritual leader of the second largest tribe in in Peru, and he was Canadian. Yes, yeah, I know it was surprising, not a very Canadian thing to do. No, it really wasn't. But the the whole thing really revealed the problems that that have been developing from this ayahuasca tourism. First, this guy was down there and wanted to learn about ayahuasca so he could take it back to Canada and appropriate this culture. There's problem one. Two, he didn't get his money's worth, so he shot and killed the woman who was supposed to be teaching him. It's a big problem as well. But then also between the Iowa squeros and the practitioners who are are hosting these tourists, and then the governments of the countries that they're hosting them in. There's tensions there as well. Because this village said there's police everywhere. The police never come here, but then a Canadian man goes missing and now our village is overrun with with police, like, what's the what's going on here? Um, So there's there's a lot of tension that's being there's a lot of simmering tension that's being heated by this this Western ayahuasca tourism, and um, it's kind of largely in part because it's unregulated, but also because a lot of people going down there don't have respect for what they're doing. And then also a lot of the people who are popping up as Iowa squaros don't have any respect for what they're doing either. So the the respect that's been given to this this tradition for so many hundreds or thousands of years being lost, and then on top of that, the ayahuasca that they're they're drinking is so wildly more potent than what traditionally is all those hundreds of thousands of years, you know, the Jesuits version of ayahuasca. Um. That's really kind of I think fueling this kind of recklessness that's that's becoming part and parcel with ayahuasca used down in South America. Yeah, because some of these areas are are poor and so all of a sudden, it becomes a hip thing for uh, Westerners with money to come down there with cold hard cash. And then, like you said, they're appropriating their culture. So that's one strike. But then to appeal to these people all of a sudden, they're not as like, you know, we don't want to freak people out maybe by being too traditional, so we're gonna westernize our own methods a bit. So and let's say, let's get a website going uh and then we'll be the go to for when they come down here. So then they're undermining their own culture. Um. And it's just sort of becoming a big mess. It sounds like yeah. And again I think like if you're going down there, like whether you're Western or um Asian or whoever you are, if you're going down for a vision quest, that's not that's not what's being you know, brought out as as the fault. The fault is if you're if you're going down there because it's hip or because you just want to party, or because a friend did it, um, and you're not you're not being respectful of it. Then that's where the the issue seems to be arising from ayahuasca anything else you know. Oh yeah, there is one thing that we didn't cover, um, that that can happen because the copy vine is a m AO inhibitor. There's a lot of other things, um that can actually kill you that are pretty normal, like interactions. You can have drug interactions with things as normal as chocolate because the um monoamine oxidase typically breaks these things down. Uh. And if it's being inhibited so that the ayahuasca can work, it's effects you if you eat chocolate, your toast. And one of the other things that that it can do is so the motto the m A O ies prevent your serotonin from being taken up. And that's how d m T acts on the brain. It goes into where serotonin receptors normally fit and just says, let's party, right. Um. So with all this extra serotonin floating around, if you also happen to be on an s s r I as serotonin reuptake inhibitor, uh, you've got too much serotonin. You can go into what's called serotonin shock. This is where the diarrhea comes in. That's one of the um the symptoms of serotonin shock. But that's one of the mild symptoms. You can also have seizures. You your heart can also stop, and you can die from having too much serotonin flooding your brain. So that's that is a direct way you can die from ayahuasca. But it's not from the hallucinogen, uh the aspect of it. It's from the M A O I. So when they're when they show up from uh the Silicon Valley and they say they're translating in there, like, hey, bro, he wants to know if you've got anything, if you've had anything in your body. And then you're like, no, just mine my Selexa and a wolf down at Toblaron on the way up, way over. I'm good, let's do this. Let's skip the ceremony. Just let me drink that stuff, right you just yeah, you mash the shaman's face out of your way, like get out of here. Just give me that. I know. I know why we haven't been selling tickets in Seattle so much. Oh no, we love that's not Silicon Valley. Oh that's right. I mean well San Francisco to we love. We love all people. We love all of you, everybody. We love all potential ticket buyers are egos are are down in the pits. Uh. If you want to know more about ayahuasca, man, do some research. Uh. There's a lot of it out there, so do it. Um. And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail, Yeah, I'm gonna call this short and sweet. But we did get an answer to something ing. Uh remember in the fire Trucks episode, you could not remember that game and we got everything from sim City to uh civilization. Yeah, none of them were right. But our friend, our new pal, Mike man Goba, Mike says this, guys that just listened to the fire Twuks episode and also shout out to two things. All the people who wrote in and spelled at fire Twucks. Yeah, and then all the firefighters. We heard from a lot of firefighters and they all, every single one of them said, yep, it's chili. Josh did not overstate the chili thing. Yeah, And they're all very nice and said, you guys got most of this right. Um. Anytime it's something really specific like that, we're gonna get some stuff wrong. But they're like, you guys did a good job. And one of them even had a joke that said, if you're at a party, how do you know if there's a firefighter there, and the answer is, Oh, don't worry, they'll tell you that was from a firefighter. So I guess they have a sting game about it. Uh So, anyway, guys listening to the fire TALKX episode, and he talked about the old game that burns buildings to the ground if you don't have the fire station, and that game is called Pharaoh. Yes, Pharaoh yep e h a r a o h yep, you're building an Egyptian civilization camp. And he said it's an expansion game, the expansion games called Cleopatra, and it was one of my favorite games, which I still play today. Keep up the chatter, Mike Man, go thanks a lot, Mike, That's exactly what it was, and never in a million years would have remembered that, but it was. Indeed, Goes uh oh is that what we're calling him? Yeah, all right, thanks a lot, Goes. Well, if you want to be like Gobs and rescue us by reminding me of something I can't remember what it was, or just correcting my syntax, you can get in touch with us. We're all over social You can find those links at stuff you should Know dot com and you can just send us an email, wrap it ups to get on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff Podcast superbs dot com. H Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H

Hello, folks, it's Chuck here. It's Saturday, and that means it's time for a Saturday Select episode curated this week by What. This one goes all the way back to December eleven, and that's about ayahuasca. We love doing our episodes on various weird drugs and this is no exception. So check out how ayahuasca works right now. Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hold on and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Brian, there's Jerry over there, and this is stuff you should know. The poor attempts at Spanish edition and yet another drug cast mm hmm, covering all the drugs everybody, one by one, and this one is Aaska. We'll have to do one just specifically on d m T sometime too, all right, because there you know it's the d m T is the base of ayahuasca, but it's different. I mean, there's other stuff going on with ayahuasca that d MT doesn't have them. Spoiler alert. DMT is its own thing for sure, from what I can tell. Yeah, okay, so it's agreed then, Chuck, Yeah, but you just ruined this whole episode. Oh sorry, well let's go back to the beginning then. Uh yeah, ayahuasca it has a bunch of different names. And this is something I didn't know because I'm a dummy. I didn't know anything about ayahuasca except to use it as jokes. You know. It's been sort of a running punch line, like, you know, you have to forgive me, I'm on ayahuasca, that kind of thing. I got you. But uh, I thought it was that was the name of like a plant, and it was one planted ayahuasca sort of like what's the what's the other plant? The corn? Yeah, just sort of like corn um No, the one that like, you know, the doors took the meal. Yeah, mescaline, yeah, but that's not the plant. What's the plant is mescal in the plant to what a peyote? That's right, But that's the mescaline buttons on a peyote plant, right, which we haven't covered yet. We should do want a peyote? Bam, another drug cast come and at you. But ayahuasca is not the name of a plant. Uh. It is actually a concoction made from a couple of different plants. Yeah. Yeah, And originally it was just one plant actually known as the vine of death. Yeah, oh, let's see what we can do. Okay, you did the time wasting throat. Clear that move. It's stalling. So if you go and drink ayahuasca today, you're probably getting one that's a combination of a plant called psycho Tria voritas. I think I got that and a vine known as banistereopsis copy C A p I so Psychotria veritas and bareness. Man, there's a lot of letters in that one. Yeah. But if it's it's pronounced like it looks ye banistereopsis, you got it all right? Copy right? And that one, the second one, the copy is the vine. Correct, that's the o g ayahuasca ingredient, the vine of death. And this is I guess we haven't even really said. We've danced around it. It is a a drug concoction that they have been taking, um since who knows when, but since before Europeans arrived in the New World, A long long time in South America. Yeah, and specifically they think it have originated among the Napo Runa tribe in Ecuador, right, but it's spread throughout the Amazon basin and today if you are a well to do tech worker who makes your way down to South America. You're probably going to go to Peru to check out your ayahuasca trip. Yeah, this became a thing, weirdly, uh in Silicon Valley. Uh, if you were a young, rich entrepreneur in Silicon Valley that has a couple of hit apps on your hand, it became a thing to throw on your hoodie and travel to South America to take part in an ayahuasca ceremony. Yep, and I'm not sure. I mean, I guess I know what happens is one one dude does that and then says, bro, you gotta do this right a late night conversation, a burning man opens the Absolutely, that's how it went now and then before you know it, it's a thing. Right. You know, there's some kids in Silicon Valley being like, wait a minute, wait a minute, are they making fun of us right now? And then they feel that that hood that they've never even put over their head itching their neck and they're stupid stereotypes being true. Oh man, At any rate, ayahuasca yes, so, um, it did start out as a traditional thing, but there's like, you know, the whole popularity that grew among Westerners traveling down to South America for whatever reason. I'm sure um for vision quests for fun a drug they hadn't tried yet. Who cares. There's a lot of reasons that people travel down to South America to partake in this UM. Certainly most of them not nefarious or dumb. UM. Probably a lot of the reasons were great. But the the influx of Westerners and Western money has radically altered ayahuasca and in the Sarah premonies and rites and the people who perform ayahuasca ceremonies just over there, like the last ten or so years, dramatically. Yeah, one might even say that the western white man has ruined the whole thing. I think that there's I think it's been commercialized, but that there are still very much um. The the original or the real deal is protected in many ways by by the people who are like, yeah, you guys, go drink it over there. We've got our thing going on over here. And in fact, there's at least two churches in the United States that practice ayahuasca diets UM that that are real deal religions as far as the Supreme Courts concerned, UM, that clearly show that there are there is real, legit ayahuasca ceremonies being practiced throughout the world. I think both of them are are from Brazil. Yeah. In two thousand six, h the Supreme Court said that, uh, the n I Oh Do vegetal U d V was a legit religion and they are in fact from Brazil Christian spiritualists about seventeen thousand UH adherents all over the world. Uh. And the literal translation of that religion is the Union of the Plants, right, So it's like a plant religion and aahuasca is at the center of this. Uh. Yeah. The other one is a Christian syncretism like Santo. Yeah, that one is like, um, they incorporate not just indigenous Brazilian and South American beliefs, but also some African indigenous beliefs, are folk beliefs as well. Like it's it's a whole um, very big inclusive pantheon that that is centered around visions from ayahuasca and like an ayahuasca sacrament. It's pretty interesting. Yeah. Both protected in the United States by law now that this is part of this plant concoction as part of their religion. They cannot be arrested for doing this because the legalities of it. Is is is technically illegal? Um, it's a little great whether or not the actual plant is illegal? Is that right? Yeah? Supposedly the plants themselves are not illegal. It's the combination or the brew made from them that's illegal. That's what I saw. I don't know that that's necessarily true. And I would guess if the plants are still legal now, they won't be in two three years, because you know, why why make it legal? Why let it be legal? Yeah? Something people get enjoyment for it comes from the earth. Let's outlawed. Yeah. I don't know if enjoyment is quite the right word though, from the way that um the Grabster puts it that the an ayahuasca trip is not necessarily fun. It's a harrowing psychological, spiritual journey that you're undertaking. All right, let's take a break, okay, alright, let see you getting excited over there. Uh, And we'll talk a little bit more about d m T and kind of what's going on in your body physiologically right after this. Alright, So d m T, which you mentioned at the onset, the the one part of this concoction, the p veritas contains d M t. You're gonna pronounce that. Oh, yes, it's methyl trip to me. Oh look at you just rolls off the tongue now, doesn't it. Uh. So this is something not exclusive to p verritas. It's found in a bunch of psychedelic substances, and this is something that can cause hallucinations, perhaps changes in your perception, your state of consciousness, your sense of self, which will really get into it has a lot to do with the ayahuasca journey. Um. However, if you just eat the d M t UM, it's not gonna have this this kind of effect on you because, Uh, there's an enzyme called uh monoamine oxidase, and that's gonna break it down your in your digestive system before it gets absorbed. So you have to combine it with this copy vine which prevents the uptake of it. Yeah, the copy vine has an alkaloid called harmala alkaloid, and harmalines are psychotropic and of themselves, which is why the the copy vine alone used to just be ayahuasca. But the fact that it prevents um your your the monoamine oxidase to break down the d M t it allows your body to absorb it all of a sudden you're tripping balls, although I hear it's not all of a sudden. I think it's it takes a good thirty minutes to come on, and then it takes like a supplementary boost um an hour or so later to to really bring on like the kind of transcendent experience that people are looking for when they take ayahuasca. So you've got the you've got the d m T being absorbed. That's the one to punch right. You've got the d MT itself, and then you've got the plant that allows the d m T to be absorbed. And when you put those two things together, the p veritas and the B copy, that's what the that's the ayahuasca that you read about and vice that's what they're talking about. Yeah, and these you know, this is administered by a shaman um someone who ideally as a shaman that knows what they're doing. And there's sometimes there are other plants that are brewed in there as well, but uh not always, And sometimes it's brewed separately and then combined later. Sometimes times it all depends on which shaman you go to, of what the ritual is like. Sometimes you're included as part of it. Um. Sometimes it's like a thick liquid t sometimes it's a paste. It's been described. No matter what it is, it seems like around the horn. Everybody says it tastes awful, so awful that that you can very easily throw up, which is something that's pretty common with the um. With an ayahuasca experiences. I didn't get that from the From the taste, though, I got that that that was like, once it's in your body, it makes you nauseous and you throw up, right, But like, oh, this taste so bad, I'm gonna puke it up. No, No, because then it wouldn't be in your body long enough to be absorbed. Right. Yeah, But I think the taste and the memory of the taste, combined with the nausea is enough to throw up. But the whether whether you do throw up or not, it's not necessarily like you're going to throw up there the the point, one of the points of an eye ahuasca ceremony is to throw up. You're meant to throw up um, and you're you will actually be forced into this either if you don't do it from the ayahuasca. You may also be given something like tobacco juice like a water with tobacco that's soaked in it for a while, and you'll be told to drink that so that you will throw up. Because this idea of purging, whether it's throwing up or diarrhea, is a very frequent side effective iahuaca, very frequent. Um. You are you are meant to be purging your your body, and it's meant to be this kind of symbolic spiritual purge of your ego, of all the nastiness, of all the horrible nous that's a part of you. You're getting it out as part of the trip and as the trip sets in. Yeah, and the taste has been described. The New York Times has said it's like a um muddy herbal taste. Uh. Someone from vox dot com took it a gun named Shaun Illing. He described it as a cup of motor oil diluted with a splash of water. So I read, I read it's almost as gross as a Neco wafer. I don't think i've ever had anco wafer? Good on you have? You know what? Am I crazy? What are they not? Go wafers like old timey kind of like chalky candy that comes in a role you've seen them. Probably you've seen them in my old timey candy days exactly. I'm sure I did. Uh So all right, I guess we should talk a little bit about uh, Like you said, um, it's orange. It's origins in the Napo River basin by this Runa tribe like you said, Uh, And it's called the Vine of Death or the mother Vine. This copy and they think that early on they may have just taken this copy by itself, right, because the brew it's got the harmlins in it that's not only an m A o I but also has like its own kind of psychoactive stuff going on. So that was the original Iowa. Yeah, and we have written accounts from like the seventeen hundreds when Jesuits would go to the Amazon to try and you know, christianize folks and trip balls. Yeah, because I'm sure the entry was like whoa, and that's it. Did you hear about the guy that was just killed the missionary? Yes? On setting Ali's sent in All Island. Yeah, he it's like something from a movie. He went at first and a child shot an arrow through a bible that he was holding. Apparently I hadn't heard about that. Yeah, because he had. He went back a few times and was like journaling about it and said he basically like held up his Bible. It's like something from a movie and an arrow was shot through it. And I'm like, dude, if that is not like, if you believe in God, that's a sign from God. Well you you remember the turnaround the man in the whole episode we talked about them. Yeah, they were the ones that like you, like everyone knew you just don't go anywhere near him and did some fishermen and killed like years a few years back, and this guy I guess had tried um. He decided he was going to be the one. Yeah. I don't actually know enough about the story, but he clearly was trying to jane access to them. Yeah. Yeah, he was trying to spread the word of Jesus and paid like you're not supposed it's illegal, I think, to even trespass there. But he paid people sort of under the table to take him there, and they did so, and those people were arrested and his family is saying, you need to let these people go because he like really wanted to do this. I see. It's very interesting. Yeah it is. It's crazy, but I just like that sounds like something you would make up from a movie, like shooting an arrow through the Bible they're holding up, you know. Uh So we got a little sidetrack, but we were talking about the Jesuits like having this on record in the seventeen hundreds when they went and they were like, hey, there's something going down down here. That's very interesting. Yeah. And even William S. Burrows wrote the Yahee Letters in three and it was about his experience with the Aahuascar vine. And apparently they the practitioners at the time knew, um well into the to the the twentieth century, that you could combine it with the p veritis fine and and have a completely different experience. But that wasn't necessarily the point. That was like an optional ceremony you could perform. But the most, the most widespread and traditional ceremony was just the vine of death, right. Yeah. And then at some point somebody started putting him together and word about this got out, and the mid two thousand's is when it just ayahuasca like kind of hit the public consciousness in the West. Yeah. I mean in the sixties, of course, uh in in certain uh you know, subcultures in America. They knew about it because of william S Burrows and people seeking out you know, things like peyote and all kinds of psychedelic experiences, but it definitely was not sort of in the stream until you know, not not too long ago. And even still I think even at the time it was strictly the harm alines and and just the the vine that was being used, the copy vine. It wasn't. It wasn't. Somebody started putting it together frequently with the the veritas plant, and that's when it became hugely popular. Yeah, so popular now that there is ayahuasca tourism big time like going on in South America. And uh said the central part is Peru's uh a room bomba valley. And if you, I mean, if you were going down for an ayahuasca experience like a spiritual quest, is is the reason you're going down there? I don't fault you for that at all, um, But you have to understand the the You have to do your research. You can't just show up in South America and be like, all right, somebody give me some ayahuasca. Because there are a lot of um in scrupulous and nefarious outfits that have come up to to take advantage explicitly of that kind of Western tourist, the ill informed Western tourist who is going to have a horrible, terrible trip and not going to get the spiritual experience you're looking for. Um So, you have to do your research because there are some legitimate ayahuasca outfits in South America, but you, um, they're they're not going to take you if you just show up down there, and you're gonna end up in some some in a bad situation. Yeah for sure. Um So, taking part in one of these ceremonies, let's say you do find like a legit shaman who's willing to take your American dollars or whatever, however you're paying your gold en gets and drink its. Uh, it's still it's sort of funny. It all goes back to Burrows with the set and setting thing, which is what he famously preached about any psychic dellic experience is to really put a lot of thought into the set in the setting where you're gonna do this, so it goes well for you. Um So, as this uh concoction is being brewed, like I said before, sometimes you're taking part in this and helping to mash it up and brew the t um. But what they're really trying to do is, um, the whole ceremony isn't just like for show. It's it's all part of the thing to get you settled in and focused on kind of the right things going in, Like what do you want to accomplish here, what do you want to find out about yourself? What questions do you have about yourself? And really get into that that frame of mind as they hand you your puke bucket. Although I would recommend bringing your own, Oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that. I would not want to reused puke bucket. Good lord. I hadn't even considered that it would be by O B for me, So um yeah, I can just totally see how as a as a Westerner, you would just be like, come on, we don't need the ceremony stuff. Let's just give me the good stuff. But that, like you said, that's the point is to ease you into it, to get your mind and body prepared for this, this enormous trip you're about to go on, because if you just get dropped right in the middle of it without any kind of preparation or without any kind of assistance, you're going to lose your marbles pretty pretty well. UM. So that that is a big part of going on an ayahuasca journey is is having somebody who's competent, trained and UM, empathetic and willing to stay there with you, to prepare you, to stay with you, to keep an eye on you. You need to be monitored. You can't be up and like just running off into the jungle by yourself, because terrible things are going to happen to you in that situation. UM. And then to help you afterward as well, and from from some of the preliminary research that's starting to come in, if you undertake an ayahuasca journey, I guess is that it's the best word I can come up with. UM. Under the right setting, under the right guidance, with the right support, both pre during and after, it can have profound effects on your spirituality and your sense of connectedness to the universe. It can also possibly help you with UM with diagnosed mental illness as well. Yeah, well we'll get to the illness part mental illness part at the end, but UM, just your standard sort of truth seeker, let's say, okay, UM, it's very much tight into like what the and ideal conditions and like the sixties and seventies with Ellis and Guess beyond, but the LSD experience and that. Uh, there was a lot of talk in the sixties about the ego and every you know, hip musician and in the United States talked about stripping away the ego, from Brian Wilson to the Mamas and the Papa's too, you know Neil Young. Uh is stripping away that ego of self basically, which which means kind of getting outside yourself to the point where, uh, you're not looking at the world around you and how it affects you, but there there is no you. There is no It's a loss of self such that's so profound that you can only see the world and people around you as they exist in reality. Uh. It's it's a pretty sort of deep, trippy thing to try and describe in words on a podcast, But I think that's sort of the general thing is is uh washing that ego down to where it's not around anymore and you get like a true sense of the world around you, like for the maybe for the first time. Yeah, yeah, and the the ego in and of itself isn't a bad thing like it's it's they think that it developed among animals. Is a like, that's your sense of self awareness. That's the thing that leads you to want to preserve your own life, to get away from danger, to realize that, like, you can die because there is a you, right, It's a very basic thing. Um. The problem is is in humans, as we've evolved, our ego has also evolved, and it can get to a point where it's unhealthy. It's kind of toxic. It can help you develop bad, bad relationships, people don't want to be around you. It can also affect your self esteem if your egos underdeveloped. There's a lot of problems that can go wrong with the ego, and so a lot of people who prescribe psychedelics to deal with that kind of thing say, psychedelics strip away the ego. And now that we've gotten to the point where where we are advanced enough as a civilization that we can give people acid and put them in the an MRI machine, the Wonder machine and watch what happens, we've shown that, Yes, it seems like the the areas that are responsible for generating the ego, don't they get kind of turned off while you're under the influence of psychedelics, and it allows you to connect, to see outside of yourself, to see that you are connected with all of this other stuff. So this whole ego depletion or ego stripping, UM, it's a major component of not just ayahuasca but all psychedelics. But it is a big it's a big reason why people undertake ayahuasca UM journeys. Again. But get this, Siss, there was something I hadn't realized before, Chuck, So that from those m r I studies, they found that, UM, there's something called the default mode network, which is the thing that keeps your body humming and keeps your It's the part of your brain that's going while you're not thinking right, And they found that when the default mode network is suppressed and your frontal cortex is activated, that's when it seems that your um, your ego is at the least, it's when your egos turned off and you're free to connect with the universe or whatever. Right. Well, that default mode network is a very primitive part of our brain. It's a very primitive system of our brain, and it kind of suggests in a way that the loss of ego is something that we may eventually evolve to. Isn't that cool? Because if your frontal cortex is what's being activated in your default mode network is inactivated, that's like your ancient brain and your evolved brain. One's activated and one's one's suppressed and your egos gone. That that says to me like, well, yeah, if we keep evolving a frontal cortex, I wonder if we'll lose our ego at some point, or at least it will be radically altered. Interesting, I thought so too. Yeah, so what can happen? Uh? You know, like like any sort of psychedelic trip, it's going to be completely um singular to the person that's doing it. There is no across the board sort of sweeping statements you can make. But um, you strip away that ego and anything can happen. From feeling connected to the more connected to the universe or the earth or the tree, or leaning against or maybe the father that passed away when you were a child that you didn't have a relationship with, or the loved one that you currently have a toxic relationship with. You can feel sort of a not imaginary but it is in your mind, but a bond and that they're not like right there in front of you, Um, just new understandings of relationships that may be complicated or toxic in your life, right exactly, like you're you're you're seeing them in a different way because of the ego loss. Yeah, yeah, I think that's fascinating. Um. And like you said, it is symbolic death of the ego, which is why that vomiting is important. Like in theory, I guess you're you're vomiting up that ego and then it's go time. Um. Apparently you can hallucinate your death. Uh. And like you said before, it's not often looked at it's like, hey man, this is this is gonna be a great time. Um. But at the same time, I think it's also typically not like looked at as like some horror show that you're about to undergo. Um, although it can be. But it's just a profound emotional and psychological experience exactly. I've never done it, I mean either, but this is from researching it, right exactly, which is like we've never been to the sun either. But we talked about that. Yeah, that went great. Actually, now that you mentioned it, should use a different example. Uh, let's take another break, and then we'll talk about what you kind of teased earlier with um uh ahuashka and how it could be used to treat addiction or PTSD or other mental illnesses. Right after this, Okay, Chuck, So we're back and we're talking about using ayahuasca as a tool like taking that experience of being outside of yourself have connected to the rest of the universe of reevaluating your life in a lot of ways to cure mental illness UM. And one of the things that it's been I guess some studies have actually shown like now this this actually works is to treat addiction um, whether it's cigarettes or booze or drugs or whatever, that that you can undergo an ayahuasca ceremony. People have and have come out on the other side like I'm good, I don't need that the cigarettes or booze or drugs or whatever. Yeah. And one of the one of the suggestions for what's going on with this that I saw is that you are actually healing the psychic damage that's causing you to self medicate in the first place, something probably from your past, and then so you with with that need to self medicate you don't have necessarily the desire to drink or smoke cigarettes or whatever that you used to, which is a different model of addiction that's kind of starting to gain a little bit of traction, but is also very controversial because it makes it sound like addiction is a choice, but you're self medicating, You're choosing to do all those drugs and like throw your life away because of some psychic trauma. But there there does seem to be a camp in in medicine that is saying like this actually might have legs. It kind of makes a lot of sense, and from what I can tell, those ayahuasca studies kind of are a checkmark in that view's favor. Yeah, and I think that can work in conjunction with the other piece, which is removing that ego. Even if it's for whatever how many hours that you're undergoing this trip um could just simply disrupt that. You know, you often hear about addiction being like this sort of cycle, like a cyclical thing um, and even just disrupting that sick coal path of that circular path um can be enough to sort of get you on the off ramp, uh from using Yeah, get you on the off ramp gets you yeah, on the off ramp. Yes, that's how you said, right, yeah, and then eventually off that off ramp onto a nice chill side street. Yeah, and maybe a nice drive into the country past a few cows and then sleep. Yeah. I had a at a therapist one time that talked about getting off of the highway. It was a metaphor that actually worked for me. But like choosing to get off the highway when certain things were happening, and sometimes something that simple is just kind of clicks in, like, oh, if I notice something's going on, I'm speeding down the highway towards the badness, and just get on that exit ramp and now I'm in my neighborhood. I'm hanging out with cows in a nice pasture. PTSD is another specifically, I think a lot of times with military PTSD UM they've been, you know, using psychedelics more and more in Ayahuasca is no stranger to this treatment, and UM, while it is not a magic pill, they are doing some studies on this and it seems like, uh, and like with all these is tough to get funding for these kind of studies sometimes, but it does seem like it's gaining more ground in the medical community to try out these kind of experiments. Well, they're trying, like how to get some of these studies underway in the United States, but because ayahuasca is considered a Schedule one drug, which is the the worst, most nefarious drugs of all, UM, they can't. They just I don't think there's been a single study in the US. But fortunately they can just go down to South America and do the best they can with some of the Ayahuascar centers that are down there, and they're like, again, there are some legitimate Ayahuascar centers that take Western tourists for ayahuasca journeys. UM, and some groups are are going down their departner with those centers to study people, and some of the people they're trying to study our PTSD patients, and they think that if ayahuasca is helping people with PTSD, which it seems to be, it's it's basically negative exposure therapy where you're dredging up all of those worst, your worst memories that are causing your PTSD, which is bringing them to the surface and allowing your awareness to kind of shine a light on them and say, okay, I'm going to recategorize these now and they're not being categorized as bad and and frightening as they were before. It's not as traumatic as as they were originally categorized. Yeah, and and specifically in this study that you're thinking about, is uh Or talking about his combat veterans suffering from PTSD and it's the Temple of the Way of Light uh And the Amazon has partnered with a group in Spain and the UK, the International Center for Ethnobotanical Research and Service and PANE and then the Beckley Foundation in the UK, and they're treating close to six combat veterans a year and it says it's the largest psychedelic study um ever undertaken. So yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah, I know that they're using um M d M A to treat PTSD as well. And then I can't remember the name of that one treatment. But remember you like follow a pen with your eyes while you're going over your worst memory, and it it recategorizes the memories, is less scary. I want to remember that one. Yeah, I can't remember what we talked about it And but that apparently works really well too, so without the vomiting, that's a big part of it though, my friend just bring your own bucket. Uh. Problems with ayahuasca. Um, it is not generally toxic and you would have to take so much ayahuasca sort of like when we were talking about marijuana, Like is there even a lethal dose? Can you even say that? Because the lethal dose apparently for aguasca is twenty times what you had normally taken a typical ceremony. Uh as the grabster put it, or uh he might have been quoting someone, but it's uh, could could anyone even choke this much of that down? Right? Probably? Not? Is that even possible? But there have been I mean, there have been some deaths that have been related to ayahuasca, and and when you dig a little deeper you find like, oh, it wasn't actually the ayahuasca directly that caused this, but the people would not have died had they not been in South America on the ayahuasca journey, right. Yeah, There's this one guy who, um who died in I believe two thousand fourteen. He was an American, you know, he's British, I'm sorry, and his name was Henry Miller. And he died on the way to the hospital because he gone kind of non responsive and the Iowa squeros Ia Iowa square. Yeah, I said, um that took him to the hospital, had him on a motorcycle. He fell off the motorcycle and died of a head injury on the way to the hospital. So it wasn't the ayahuasca that killed him. But he wouldn't have been on the motorcycle in the first place had he not been on this aahuasca trip. So the shorthand and the headlines is a man dies from ayahuasca. Yeah. There have been some other cases where like people would be having a bad trip and maybe attack someone else and that would lead to like violence or death or just this year in two thousand eighteen in Peru, um an eighty one year old shaman woman was shot and killed. Uh, and then a Canadian man was murdered for revenge for that killing. But supposedly this had nothing to do with like being under the influence, but it was some sort of dispute that happened during this this whole conflict. Yeah. The woman was named Olivia are Avalo and she was the spiritual mother of Peru's second largest indigenous tribe, the Shapebo Canibo. And this guy, this Canadian guy named Sebastian Woodruff shot and killed her, allegedly because um her son owed him money. He was there to learn ayahuasca and I guess he didn't feel like he'd gotten his money's worth, so he killed her. He killed this this woman, the shaman, the spiritual leader of the second largest tribe in in Peru, and he was Canadian. Yes, yeah, I know it was surprising, not a very Canadian thing to do. No, it really wasn't. But the the whole thing really revealed the problems that that have been developing from this ayahuasca tourism. First, this guy was down there and wanted to learn about ayahuasca so he could take it back to Canada and appropriate this culture. There's problem one. Two, he didn't get his money's worth, so he shot and killed the woman who was supposed to be teaching him. It's a big problem as well. But then also between the Iowa squeros and the practitioners who are are hosting these tourists, and then the governments of the countries that they're hosting them in. There's tensions there as well. Because this village said there's police everywhere. The police never come here, but then a Canadian man goes missing and now our village is overrun with with police, like, what's the what's going on here? Um, So there's there's a lot of tension that's being there's a lot of simmering tension that's being heated by this this Western ayahuasca tourism, and um, it's kind of largely in part because it's unregulated, but also because a lot of people going down there don't have respect for what they're doing. And then also a lot of the people who are popping up as Iowa squaros don't have any respect for what they're doing either. So the the respect that's been given to this this tradition for so many hundreds or thousands of years being lost, and then on top of that, the ayahuasca that they're they're drinking is so wildly more potent than what traditionally is all those hundreds of thousands of years, you know, the Jesuits version of ayahuasca. Um. That's really kind of I think fueling this kind of recklessness that's that's becoming part and parcel with ayahuasca used down in South America. Yeah, because some of these areas are are poor and so all of a sudden, it becomes a hip thing for uh, Westerners with money to come down there with cold hard cash. And then, like you said, they're appropriating their culture. So that's one strike. But then to appeal to these people all of a sudden, they're not as like, you know, we don't want to freak people out maybe by being too traditional, so we're gonna westernize our own methods a bit. So and let's say, let's get a website going uh and then we'll be the go to for when they come down here. So then they're undermining their own culture. Um. And it's just sort of becoming a big mess. It sounds like yeah. And again I think like if you're going down there, like whether you're Western or um Asian or whoever you are, if you're going down for a vision quest, that's not that's not what's being you know, brought out as as the fault. The fault is if you're if you're going down there because it's hip or because you just want to party, or because a friend did it, um, and you're not you're not being respectful of it. Then that's where the the issue seems to be arising from ayahuasca anything else you know. Oh yeah, there is one thing that we didn't cover, um, that that can happen because the copy vine is a m AO inhibitor. There's a lot of other things, um that can actually kill you that are pretty normal, like interactions. You can have drug interactions with things as normal as chocolate because the um monoamine oxidase typically breaks these things down. Uh. And if it's being inhibited so that the ayahuasca can work, it's effects you if you eat chocolate, your toast. And one of the other things that that it can do is so the motto the m A O ies prevent your serotonin from being taken up. And that's how d m T acts on the brain. It goes into where serotonin receptors normally fit and just says, let's party, right. Um. So with all this extra serotonin floating around, if you also happen to be on an s s r I as serotonin reuptake inhibitor, uh, you've got too much serotonin. You can go into what's called serotonin shock. This is where the diarrhea comes in. That's one of the um the symptoms of serotonin shock. But that's one of the mild symptoms. You can also have seizures. You your heart can also stop, and you can die from having too much serotonin flooding your brain. So that's that is a direct way you can die from ayahuasca. But it's not from the hallucinogen, uh the aspect of it. It's from the M A O I. So when they're when they show up from uh the Silicon Valley and they say they're translating in there, like, hey, bro, he wants to know if you've got anything, if you've had anything in your body. And then you're like, no, just mine my Selexa and a wolf down at Toblaron on the way up, way over. I'm good, let's do this. Let's skip the ceremony. Just let me drink that stuff, right you just yeah, you mash the shaman's face out of your way, like get out of here. Just give me that. I know. I know why we haven't been selling tickets in Seattle so much. Oh no, we love that's not Silicon Valley. Oh that's right. I mean well San Francisco to we love. We love all people. We love all of you, everybody. We love all potential ticket buyers are egos are are down in the pits. Uh. If you want to know more about ayahuasca, man, do some research. Uh. There's a lot of it out there, so do it. Um. And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail, Yeah, I'm gonna call this short and sweet. But we did get an answer to something ing. Uh remember in the fire Trucks episode, you could not remember that game and we got everything from sim City to uh civilization. Yeah, none of them were right. But our friend, our new pal, Mike man Goba, Mike says this, guys that just listened to the fire Twuks episode and also shout out to two things. All the people who wrote in and spelled at fire Twucks. Yeah, and then all the firefighters. We heard from a lot of firefighters and they all, every single one of them said, yep, it's chili. Josh did not overstate the chili thing. Yeah, And they're all very nice and said, you guys got most of this right. Um. Anytime it's something really specific like that, we're gonna get some stuff wrong. But they're like, you guys did a good job. And one of them even had a joke that said, if you're at a party, how do you know if there's a firefighter there, and the answer is, Oh, don't worry, they'll tell you that was from a firefighter. So I guess they have a sting game about it. Uh So, anyway, guys listening to the fire TALKX episode, and he talked about the old game that burns buildings to the ground if you don't have the fire station, and that game is called Pharaoh. Yes, Pharaoh yep e h a r a o h yep, you're building an Egyptian civilization camp. And he said it's an expansion game, the expansion games called Cleopatra, and it was one of my favorite games, which I still play today. Keep up the chatter, Mike Man, go thanks a lot, Mike, That's exactly what it was, and never in a million years would have remembered that, but it was. Indeed, Goes uh oh is that what we're calling him? Yeah, all right, thanks a lot, Goes. Well, if you want to be like Gobs and rescue us by reminding me of something I can't remember what it was, or just correcting my syntax, you can get in touch with us. We're all over social You can find those links at stuff you should Know dot com and you can just send us an email, wrap it ups to get on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff Podcast superbs dot com. H Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H