The World Ayahuasca Diaspora
September 1, 2016 DOI: 10.4324/9781315551425 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis |
|---|---|
| Topics | Ayahuasca |
| Keywords | Diaspora |
| Citations | 47 |
| Key points | Argues that DMT's cultural career—from psychotomimetic to recreational drug to entheogen—remains conspicuously under-researched despite its recognized endogenicity and complex effects. |
Abstract
While the complexities of the global ayahuasca proliferation have drawn the attention of scholars in recent years, the cultural career of DMT (N,Ndimethyltryptamine) remains conspicuously under-researched. Most known for its role in the ayahuasca brew – where it is orally potentiated by beta-carboline harmala alkaloids contained in the liana Banisteriopsis caapi – the tryptamine compound DMT has made an independent, if gradual, release into the modern cultural bloodstream. DMT’s psychopharmacological actions were discovered in 1956 (Szára, 1956) after which it was identified within psychiatry as a “psychotomimetic,” before its appearance as a recreational drug in the 1960s and subsequent classification as a “dangerous drug” with “no medicinal value.”2 Given these developments, along with its recognized occurrence throughout world flora and mammals (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997), its “coming out” in the 1990s-2000s as an “entheogen” (Ott, 1996) enabling access to higher dimensional “hyperspace” (McKenna, 1991), and its role in customizable “ayahuasca analogues,” DMT has had a complex career of its own (see St John, 2015a). DMT is responsible for sudden and short-lasting (20-to 30-minute) effects ranging from complex geometric patterns and synesthesia to out-of-body states and encounters with disincarnate beings, and its impact is apparent within a networked cultural movement of experimentalists, artists, and alchemists. While today recognized as a serotonergic neurotransmitter that crosses the blood-brain barrier, where it has an affinity with various receptor sites (Hanna & Taylor, n.d.), and where its endogenicity to humans has prompted its veneration as “the spirit molecule” (Strassman, 2001) and “the brain’s own psychedelic” (Strassman, 2008), the ubiquity of DMT throughout nature and its purpose within the human brain remain a mystery.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on ayahuasca, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The globalization of ayahuasca: Harm reduction or benefit maximization? | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond | 2014 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience | 2003 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Towards psychedelic apprenticeship: Developing a gentle touch for the mediation and validation of psychedelic-induced insights and revelations. | 2022 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Ayahuasca healing beyond the Amazon: the globalization of a traditional indigenous entheogenic practice | 2008 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cited by 37
- Chemical evidence for the use of multiple psychotropic plants in a 1,000-year-old ritual bundle from South America. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences June 4, 2019
- Effects of ayahuasca on mental health and quality of life in naïve users: A longitudinal and cross-sectional study combination Scientific Reports March 5, 2020
- The socialization of hallucinations: Cultural priors, social interactions, and contextual factors in the use of psychedelics. Transcultural Psychiatry October 1, 2022
- Psychedelics as Tools for Belief Transmission. Set, Setting, Suggestibility, and Persuasion in the Ritual Use of Hallucinogens. Frontiers in Psychology November 23, 2021
- Motives for Classical and Novel Psychoactive Substances Use in Psychedelic Polydrug Users Contemporary Drug Problems September 1, 2019
and 32 more in the library