Wednesday, April 24, 2013

what have 4000 years of hallucinations taught us?


psychologytoday | About sixty years ago the scientist C.H.W. Horne wrote that "it is remarkable that one characteristic which seems to separate man from the allegedly lower animals is a recurring desire to escape from reality."  He was referring to the widespread use of hallucinogens by young people during the middle of the last century.  What is even more remarkable, in my opinion, is how long humans have been documenting their interest in the use of hallucinogens. Cultural and religious rituals developed around the use of these hallucinogens probably as soon as they were discovered in the various plants and fungi that were present in their environment.  

Imagine that the year is 2000 BCE (before the current era) and as you are foraging for something safe to eat you discover a small yellowish mushroom that would one day be called Psilocybe mexicana. We now realize that this mushroom contains a hallucinogen called psilocybin.  Indeed, psilocybin would ultimately be discovered in at least 75 different species of mushrooms, so there was a good chance that someone, one day would have stumbled onto a mushroom containing it. Regardless, today is your lucky day - you discovered it first.

After eating this mushroom you rather quickly developed a stomach ache that lasted for about thirty minutes and then something truly mystical started to happen.  You began seeing things that you had never seen before, images that could only be due to the intervention of a god (or goddess, depending upon your local traditions).  You began sharing your collection of mushrooms with others and everyone marveled at their amazing and quite mystical visual experiences. Ultimately, the use of psilocybin-containing mushrooms in the Central and South America became an integral part of many religious rituals.  The mushroom was worshiped and was given the name Teonanacatl, which is thought to mean "god's flesh" or "sacred mushroom."  Using this sacred mushroom became an important milestone in every person's religious path to the spirit world.  Mushroom art and sculptures as well as numerous images on stones clearly designate the important role played by this mushroom in the local religions. When the Spaniard Francisco Hernandez invaded in the 1570s he documented the use of these mushrooms and eventually added them to their own list of medicinal herbs.

The stone carvings provide some insight into the effects that the mushrooms produced in the minds of these primitive peoples.  Some of these carvings are shown above.  You can imagine the challenge facing someone 4000 years ago who wished to represent to others what they experienced while visiting their mushroom-inspired spirit world.  What if your only tools for representing this experience were stones and bones?
Even today people find it difficult to describe their personal experiences with hallucinogens. Consider this interesting question: Did hallucinogens produced qualitatively different experiences in people living 4000 years ago as compared to people alive today?  In 1928 the scientist Heinrich Kluver attempted to answer this question. He interviewed people who had used hallucinogenic mushrooms as well as many other naturally-occurring hallucinogens. He discovered that these drugs all produce a surprisingly similar consensus of experiences that consistently included seeing geometric images that were accompanied by highly altered emotions.  Although the specific colors reported varied, participants consistently reported brightness intensification. Moreover, the apparent size and design of the geometrical shapes, as well as their degree of symmetry, were strikingly similar from participant to participant.

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