HALLUCINOGENIC PLANTS (PART 24)

AYAHUASCA and CAAPI are two of many local names for either of two species of a South American vine: Banisteriopsis caapi or B. inebrians. Both are gigantic jungle lionas with tiny pink flowers. Like the approximately 100 other species in the genus, their botany is poorly understood. They belong to the family Malpighiaceae. An hallucinogenic drink made from the bark of these vines is widely used by Indians in the western Amazon—Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Other local names for the vines or the drink made from them are dopa, natema, pinde, and yaje. The drink is intensely bitter and nauseating. In Peru and Ecuador, the drink is made by rasping the bark and boiling it. In Colombia and Brazil, the scraped bark is squeezed in cold water to make the drink. Some tribes add other plants to alter or to increase the potency of the drink. In some parts of the Orinoco, the bark is simply chewed. Recent evidence suggests that in the northwestern Amazon the plants may be used in the form of snuff. Ayahuasca is popular for its "telepathic properties," for which, of course, there is no scientific basis.

EARLIEST PUBLISHED REPORTS of ayahuasca date from 1858 but in 1851 Richard Spruce, an English explorer, had discovered the plant from which the intoxicating drink was made and described it as a new species. Spruce also reported that the Guahibos along the Orinoco River in Venezuela chewed the dried stem for its effects instead of preparing a drink from the bark. Spruce collected flowering material and also stems for chemical study. Interestingly, these stems were not analyzed until 1969, but even after more than a century, they gave results (p. 103) indicating the presence of alkaloids.

In the years since Spruce's discovery, many explorers and travelers who passed through the western Amazon region wrote about the drug. It is widely known in the Amazon but the whole story of this plant is yet to be unraveled. Some writers have even confused ayahuasca with completely different narcotic plants.