Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers

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Now there are two species of coca. As I said, there’s 200 species in the genus Erythroxylum. 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. 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. 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.” Please enjoy this transcript of a special edition of The Tim Ferriss Show, featuring episodes from the podcast Plants of the Gods, hosted by Dr. Mark Plotkin. I’ve listened to all the episodes and chose a few favorites to share with you all.

Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and

Joy of the mind and of the soul, Plants of the Gods is just always such an entertaining yet so pedagogical and rich in knowledge.Interestingly enough, coca and cocaine is still produced in enormous quantities around Trujillo in northern Peru. They take the cocaine out of it and use the rest of the 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. Plants of the Gods: S4E7. Part 2 — Ayahuasca and Tobacco Shamanism: an Interview with Ethnobotanist Dr. Glenn Shepard Transcripts may contain a few typos. With some episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy! Hemp (marijuana) was mentioned by the Greek geographer and historian Strabo (c. 63 BC-AD 21) in his Geography as growing in Colchis in Scythia, and he referred to “Getae dancers who burned cannabis flowers to reach states of ecstasy.”[ 3] The Greek physician and botanist Dioscorides (AD 40–90) cites hemp as a source of fiber for making textiles and recommends it as treatment for earache. The great Greek physician and surgeon Galen (AD 130–200) notes that hempseed was added to sweet foods in banquets to induce euphoria and arousal.[ 3] 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.

Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing and Hallucinogenic Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing and Hallucinogenic

Atropa belladona L. played a major role in the war of the Scots under Duncan I against the Norwegian king Sven Canute about A.D. 1035. The Scots destroyed the Scandinavian army by sending them food and drink laced with 'sleepy nightshade'.Anyhow, they spent a night in the teepee taking peyote in a ritual setting led by what the Kiowa called a roadman, essentially a shaman. 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. Now Schultes often said that the difference between an ethnobotanist and an anthropologist was the shaman leans forward, and she or he offers you the brew containing ayahuasca or the snuff tubes containing yopo with 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 ha!” 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 Kogi, 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 them out into 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. The Aztecs called these mushrooms Teonanácatl (“divine flesh”), and as we have mentioned, the Mayans also ingested them, although peyote may have been the most commonly used hallucinogen in both civilizations, as well as by most other Mesoamerican cultures.