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The Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugsby Edward M. Brecher and the Editors of Consumer Reports Magazine, 1972 Part VII LSD and LSD-Like Drugs Scores of substances with widely varying chemical compositions are known to have effects similar (not identical) to that of LSD on the human mind. In general there are three major sources for these drugs. Some are natural plant substances for example, peyote, a cactus plant. Some are extracted from such substances; thus mescaline is derived from peyote. Some LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, and others can be manufactured synthetically. To an even greater extent than for other psychoactive drugs, the effects of these drugs vary with the expectations of the user, the setting in which they are used, and other nonpharmacological factors. Three drugs in the group LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin have been used in psychotherapy, and LSD is still used as an adjunct to psychotherapy in countries other than the United States. These drugs are commonly taken orally. They are not addicting. Tolerance for LSD builds up very rapidly, but no withdrawal syndrome has been reported. LSD is longer-acting (usually seven hours or , more) and is effective in smaller doses (as little as 25 micrograms) than most other drugs in the group. Effects, both undesirable and favorable, are primarily psychological. The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been recorded. Chapter 45. Early use of LSD-like drugs LSD was not discovered until 1938, and its effects on the human mind remained unknown until 1943; but numerous other drugs producing LSD-like effects have been known since time immemorial, and have been used by peoples throughout the world, especially by North and South American Indians. The plants that produce these drugs grow almost anywhere in temperate as well as tropical climates; in deserts as well as forests. Almost everywhere, the effect of such drugs was considered a mystical and religious phenomenon, an experience that brings man closer to the gods and to nature. Peyote. Peyote (in Aztec, peyotl) is a spineless cactus with a small crown or "button" and a long carrot-like root. The crown is sliced off and dried to form a hard brownish disk known as a mescal button. The dried button is generally held in the mouth until soft and then swallowed unchewed; several buttons may be required to achieve a peyote "trip." "Native to the deserts of central and northern Mexico," Professor Richard Evans Schultes reports, "peyote claims centuries of use . . . and was basic to pre-Columbian religious practices of the Aztec and other Mexican Indians." 1 Much of the account that follows is based on a 1969 survey by Professor Schultes, director of the Botanical Museum of Harvard University and one of the nation's foremost authorities on ethnobotany. * The peyote effect is highly complex and variable, Dr. Schultes notes. "Its most spectacular phase . . . comprises the kaleidoscopic play of visual hallucinations in indescribably rich colors, yet auditory and tactile hallucinations and a variety of synesthesias are among the effects." 2 A typical synesthesia is the "seeing" of music in colors or the "hearing" of a painting as music. In addition to these sensory experiences, there is often a mystical experience of insight into a reality deeper than mere everyday appearances, or of communion with the gods; hence peyote was revered as a sacred medicine and used in healing rites and ceremonies.
The Spanish warriors and priests who conquered and ruled Mexico viewed peyote, and other LSD-like drugs in common use among the Aztecs, as diabolical. Neither the civil authorities nor the Spanish Inquisition, however, was able to stamp out peyotism altogether; 'primitive peyote religious dances still survive among the Cora, Huichol, and Tarahumare of northern Mexico," 3 Professor Schultes reported in 1969. * Indians on the United States side of the Mexican-United States border notably the Mescalero ** Apaches adopted the custom from the Mexican Indians.
Farther north, early white traders introduced the Indians to alcohol; and as the post-Civil War tide of white settlers and United States Army expeditions drove the Indians from their lands and onto the newly established reservations, alcoholism became a major problem among them. The peyote cult, with its mystical setting and religious rites, then spread northward in competition with alcohol. The Comanches and the Kiowas adopted peyotism in the 1870s; the Shawnees, Pawnees, Delawares, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and numerous other tribes followed. 5 Great Indian prophets like Quanah Parker (a Comanche), and John Wilson (part Caddo, part Delaware) carried both the drug and its meaningful ritual from tribe to tribe. 6 By 1954, it was estimated that one-half of all American Indians had experienced the peyote "trip." 7 Before discovering peyote, we are told, Quanah Parker "was dedicated to destroying every white man he came in contact with. He had more scalps in his tepee than all the other chiefs combined." 8 As the white man continued to come west in ever larger numbers, however, Parker saw he was fighting a losing battle. He accordingly went alone into the wilderness "where he could think and pray to the Great Spirit Within." After many moons, we are told, the Great Spirit Within appeared and spoke to him:
When Quanah Parker returned to his people, we are further told, he called together his council and they adopted the peyote ritual, "which still prevails to this day. They broke the bow and arrow, signifying the ending of killings and wars. Quanah Parker was never to kill another man after that day." 10 Anthropologists are quite generally agreed that the migration of peyote and its associated religion northward to the beleaguered Indians of the United States brought many advantages. The peyote cult required total abstinence from alcohol and there is abundant evidence that Indians who accepted peyotism did in fact abandon alcohol in substantial numbers. 11 In some tribes, where some members have adopted peyotism while others continue on alcohol, the contrast is quite striking. In addition the peyote cult eased the Indians' acceptance of their subjugation by the white man, and brought a sense of solidarity and brotherhood within that subjection. Finally, peyote was shared by many tribes and was thus a step toward pan-Indianism, the awareness of common interests that is a dominant theme of American Indian culture today. Land speculators, who coveted the tribal lands where the peyote rites were practiced, and Christian missionaries sought to have peyote outlawed. 12 They scored modest successes in a few state legislatures. They were less successful, however, in getting antipeyote legislation through Congress; 13 anthropologists and friends of the Indians joined with the Indians themselves to defeat such legislation year after year. Even some of the state legislatures that had passed antipeyote laws later repealed them. Oklahoma, the first state to outlaw peyote (1899), repealed its law in 1908 after Comanche Chief Quanah Parker himself testified before a legislative committee. Efforts to reenact the Oklahoma law in 1909 and 1927 were defeated. New Mexico outlawed peyote in 1929, but the law was not enforced and in 1959 it was amended to permit ritual use. Montana also has legalized the use of peyote in worship. 14 A major factor in maintaining the legal status of peyote has been the Native American Church of North America, an organization that claims some 250,000 Indian members from tribes throughout the United States and Canada. In addition to successfully opposing Congressional action against peyote and securing the repeal of state laws, the Native American Church has succeeded in several states in having such laws declared unconstitutional as a violation of freedom of religion. To supply peyote to Indian tribes throughout the United States, mail order companies sprang up that sold the dried buttons at very low prices. Interest in the drug widened, stimulated by books and by magazine articles such as Alice Marriot's sensitive account in the New Yorker (1954) of her experience with peyote among the Indians of South Dakota. The mail-order companies began advertising in college newspapers and other publications during the late 1950s and early 1960s. * Although peyote was not illegal, there were periodic raids on those in possession of it. In 1960, 311 peyote buttons were confiscated from a New York City coffeehouse. 16 Still, peyote remained generally available and openly used until LSD took over its market in the 1960s.
A recent study 17 of peyote use among American Indians today was presented at the 1971 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (and later published in the American Journal of Psychiatry) by Dr. Robert L. Bergman, chief of the United States Public Health Service's mental health program serving 125,000 Navajo Indians in the Southwest. Dr. Bergman had attended many peyote ceremonials and had interviewed some 200 peyote users, members of the Native American Church. Its religious services, he reported,
As hostility toward LSD spread through the United States during the 1960s (see below), hostility toward the peyote religion also increased. "There have been attempts lately to limit the freedom of the members of the Native American Church to practice their religion," Dr. Bergman noted. "There have been a few journalistic reports depicting them as drug abusers." Peyote ceremonials were attracting "popular, official, and scientific interest because of the growing concern over the use of hallucinogens by students and others in the population at large. The main source of this new attention is fear that the ceremonial consumption of Peyote may be dangerous." To determine the extent of this danger, Dr. Bergman and his associates launched their study. "For a period of four years, we have followed up every report of psychotic or other psychiatric episodes said to arise from Peyote use. There have been forty or fifty such reports. The vast majority have been hearsay that could never be traced to a particular case. Some have been based on a physician's belief that Navajo people use Peyote and if a particular person became disturbed it must be for this reason." In the end, the study found "one relatively clear cut case of acute psychosis and four cases that are difficult to interpret." The clear-cut case involved a Navajo who attended a peyote meeting after having taken alcohol several drinks. "Ordinarily, no one is allowed to participate if he has been drinking, but the road man did not realize that this person had been. "The Navajo became panicky and disoriented, then violent but recovered within twenty-four hours and remained well on follow-up six months later. "It is noteworthy," Dr. Bergman added, "that members of the church warn that the combination of alcohol and Peyote is very dangerous." Reactions in the other four cases were minor, and their relationship with peyote was doubtful. Dr. Bergman then went on to calculate that even if all five of these incidents were to be classified as adverse reactions, "the resulting, probably overestimated, rate [over the four-year period] would be one bad reaction per 70,000 ingestions." Dr. Bergman continued:
Dr. Bergman also describes in fascinating detail the precise ways in which the potential hazards of peyote are minimized and its potential for good enhanced by the peyote ritual. "Some of the crucial factors," he explains,
These safeguards, as we shall see below, are strikingly similar to the safeguards necessary for minimizing the hazards of LSD. Dr. Bergman concluded his paper with a plea for further study of peyotism among the Indians "not only to avoid injustice but also to learn from these people who use a potentially dangerous drug well and who, after all, have much longer experience in these matters than we have." At the conclusion of Dr. Bergman's paper, the audience stood and applauded a rare event at meetings of the American Psychiatric Association. Fly agaric. Concerning this mushroom, Dr. Schultes reports,
No use of fly agaric has been reported in the United States. Other Mushrooms. According to Dr. Schultes,
Reports are occasionally made of the use of such mushrooms by Americans today. The active principles in several of them psilocybin and psilocin have been isolated and synthesized, 21 and are occasionally marketed. They have been placed under legal control. Nutmeg. "It is interesting," Dr. Schultes continues, "that primitive American cultures have discovered [hallucinogenic] properties in Virola, since the related Asiatic Myristica fragrans the common nutmeg is hallucinogenic and is thought to have been employed narcotically in south-eastern Asia. It is occasionally so employed in . . . Europe and in the United States. . . ." DMT. " Yurema" Dr. Schultes states, "an hallucinogen of the Kariri, Pankararu and other Indians of eastern Brazil, prepared from Mimosa hostilis, forms the center of a cult using an infusion of the root to bring on glorious visions of the spirit world. The active principle has been identified as N, N-dimethyltryptamine. . . . " 22 N, N-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, is outlawed by Congress and some state legislatures. It has been called "the businessman's LSD" because it produces an LSD-1ike trip lasting only an hour or two and can therefore be taken during the lunch hour. 23 Morning glory. During the 1960s, the seeds of two varieties of morning glory were reported to produce LSD-like effects. With respect to hallucinogenic morning-glory seeds, Dr. Schultes has this to say:
For many years chemists sought to isolate the active principle in these morning-glory seeds, without success. Since 1960, the mystery has been solved. The hallucinogenic seeds contain a chemical very closely related to LSD. Most of the morning-glory seeds available in the United States, however, are believed to lack both this drug and the LSD-like effect. Numerous other Old World and New World plants with LSD-like effects have been used through the centuries. It is the ready availability of low-cost black-market LSD itself (see below) that makes the cultivation or even harvesting of such plants uneconomic for clandestine users. Since LSD weighs much less per dose, is much less bulky, and keeps better than the natural substances, it is better adapted to black-market distribution. In the event that the supply of LSD should be cut off or that prices should rise unduly, however, an increase in the growing and harvesting of plant materials would no doubt follow.
Footnotes
1. Richard Evans Schultes, "Hallucinogens of Plant Origin," Science, 163 (January 17, 1969): 250.
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