July/August 2010

THE NEXUS INTERVIEW

A long strange trip
Memories of a psychedelic
journey -
An interview with
Marlene Dobkin de Rios, Ph.D.

BY RAVI DYKEMA

How did a nice girl from the Bronx end up deep in the Peruvian rainforest, doing hallucinogenic drugs with shamans and native healers? For Marlene Dobkin de Rios, medical anthropologist and psychotherapist, it was an unlikely profession.

“My original plan as an anthropologist was to study embroidery in Guatemala,” she says. But this field “was kind of like Mt. Everest. When somebody asked Sir Hillary why he climbed Mt. Everest, he said, ‘Because it was there.’ This study was like my Mt. Everest.”

And it was a mountain worth climbing: de Rios went on to become a leading public speaker and authority in the field of hallucinogens and sacred plants, and to spend the better part of her life studying them. She also studied shamanic techniques of healing and psychotherapy with shamans, ethnobotanists, ayahuasceros and native healers.

De Rios has written seven books and several hundred professional articles and book chapters about psychotropic plants, including The Psychedelic Journey of Marlene Dobkin de Rios (Park Street Press, 2009), a chronicle of her 45 years of experiences in the field. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist, and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry & Human Behavior at the University of California, Irvine where she lectures to psychiatric residents and fellows. Here, she talks to Nexus about the politics of hallucinogens, the million-dollar industry of plant psychotropics, and the very real dangers of being a thrill-seeker in a sacred world of healing plants.

RD: How did you get involved in studying psychotropic plants?

MDR: My original plan as an anthropologist was to study embroidery in Guatemala; then the civil war broke out, and I wasn’t able to go. Shortly thereafter, I was at a dinner party, and I met a Peruvian scientist who said he needed an anthropologist – and I needed a dissertation topic. So I wrote the grant, and we got the money.

RD: Did he pick the topic?

MDR: Yes. He took his wife to an Ayahuasca session on their honeymoon. It was his thing, and he wanted to know more about it. I was just the anthropologist who wasn’t going to get to study embroidery as I had planned.

RD: And since then, you’ve gotten deeply involved in the study of psychotropic plants. Tell me about your first Ayahuasca journey; was it spiritual?

MDR: My first experience with Ayahuasca was very psychoanalytic. I was in my 20s, working toward my PhD and being a scientist. I was searching for understanding of family, the Oedipal complex, the parent-child relationship, those kinds of things. I wasn’t questing; I was just working. And I wasn’t breaking any rules. For one thing, Ayahuasca was legal at the time. Moreover, it was given to me by a psychiatrist. So I wasn’t worried that the police were going to raid the house or something like that. We took it in the slum, in the barrio, on a houseboat, late at night. And there was a shaman with a music-making apparatus of leaves and drums and he was chanting. I was surrounded by people I cared about, so I was safe.

RD: Did the experience influence you in some unexpected way?

MDR: From an intellectual point of view it was fascinating. When you take Ayahuasca, part of the process is that you vomit. I don’t vomit, so it went to diarrhea. The body effects were really quite awful. You’re not supposed to eat before a session, so when you go to vomit, it’s just dry heaves. And when I was doing my research and interviewed hundreds of people, their experiences were not “spiritual.” They talked about it in narrative. I don’t doubt that some people who take Ayahuasca have spiritual quests; it’s just not a universal thing.

RD: The daughter of a friend of mine was traveling in South America, and she took Ayahuasca, and her experience was very different from what you’re describing (see “Ayahuasca – up close,” page 24).

MDR: So she was taking it more out of curiosity?

RD: Partly, but she had also heard it was a spiritual path.

MDR: So it sounds like part of it was she was looking for meaning in her life. And that has become a growing problem, what I call “drug tourism.” With the popularity of Ayahuasca comes a lot of abuses, and people like your friend’s daughter are often the victims of unscrupulous men – and some women – who are just chasing the buck. Even the river’s edge healers, who were in the forest communities, have left their communities to go to Iquitos and Pucallpa and Tarapoto and Contamana and all the big cities, because that’s where the money is. They’re catering mostly to tourists, because taking Ayahuasca has become so expensive, and the Peruvians don’t have that kind of money. It’s a big business.

RD: How big?

MDR: We’ve estimated in the millions. Roger Rumrill and I wrote a book called “A Hallucinogenic Tea, Laced with Controversy,” in which we interviewed 27 drug tourists and shamans, and we found that the shamans were mostly charlatans. Most of them had no training in anything. And some of them are doing terrible things. Under the effects of these hallucinogens, people are very suggestible, so it’s easy for these so-called shamans to suggest things that are untrue or painful or harmful.

RD: How suggestible are people?

MDR: Suggestibility is a major feature of the plant psychedelics. Charlie Grob, M.D., did several papers on what we call managed altered states of consciousness. Some cultures do coming of age ceremonies in which plant psychedelics are used on youth to promote cultural values like altruism, sharing, being of one heart, burying personal animosities to work for the wellbeing of the community. Those rituals have a lot in common with bootcamps. You break down the sense of self, and then you rebuild it in a way that’s culturally acceptable. Adolescent brains don’t stop maturing until about 25, so Ayahuasca can be a very powerful way of shaping the brains of youths.

RD: Marlene, your lifelong exploration has examined a part of human experience that is almost relegated to invisibility. Even in the holistic health community, aside from a bit more comfort with recreational drugs, these altered state experiences aren’t incorporated into the understanding of self and world. But in some societies, pretty much everybody gets their view of themselves and the world from these inner experiences induced by plants.

MDR: If you know anything about cultural evolution, survival is the name of the game. Any plant, animal, ritual or anything that will enhance survivability is highly valued, whatever the danger. And there are some dangers. A friend of mine worked in Africa with an indigenous group that gave women plant psychedelics before they could marry and bear children. If they didn’t see the blue-green snake, which represented the fertility god, the shamans would just keep dosing them until they either had the experience or they died. Nobody’s fooling around in these ceremonies. It’s very serious stuff.

The main finding of my research is that culture determines the nature of the visionary experience. So in our society, where we have no real history of psychedelic use, the experiences are what you could call idiosyncratic; it’s almost like an every-man-for-himself deal. In other societies where there is a long history of the plants’ use, the visionary content is stereotypic. That is, if you are a peasant in Iquitos and you take Ayahuasca, chances are you will see a boa constrictor, which is the mother spirit of the Ayahuasca, and as the nausea goes up through your mouth, you conceptualize it as the snake bringing healing messages – so the vomiting and all that kind of stuff is very positive.

I grew up in the Bronx, and the only time I ever saw a snake was in a snake house in the New York botanical zoo, so when I took Ayahuasca, there was no way in heaven I was going to see a boa constrictor. I saw my mother. A lot of psychoanalytic issues came out, plus a whole lot of movement and color and form; but why would I see a boa? It wasn’t part of my cultural heritage, and it wasn’t anything that was meaningful in the cement city where I grew up.

RD: Do you see this practice as having a place in modern societies where it isn’t indigenous?

MDR: There’s a lot of research going on right now in that area. At least two studies have been reported recently on using Ayahuasca for end-of-life use for suicide and for death anxiety. And, of course, there’s a lot of work going on with marijuana and healing, so the tide is changing, and actual scientific research is being conducted on the uses and effects of these substances.

For most of the 45 years that I was doing tribal studies, all we had was anecdotal information. Even if you have a large data base, the use of carefully planned studies with control groups and such is very recent. There seems to be more room now for serious study of these powerful chemicals and any role that they might have. Some studies suggest that they’re good for soldiers returning from war zones, for post traumatic stress, and for grief counseling. As a licensed psychotherapist, I see a whole lot of people who have tried every medication on the market, and they just don’t get better, so these chemicals may have some real potential for the future. Right now, though, there are too many drug tourists having a good old time with people who don’t know which way is up.

RD: What do you think will ultimately happen to Ayahuasca?

MDR: I think they’re just going to run out of Ayahuasca. It’s a difficult plant to cultivate botanically, so the healers keep going further and further away to get the Ayahuasca. Among tribal groups a native brew of tobacco is infused through the nose as a substitution for Ayahuasca because of its scarcity.

RD: Historically, at least in the United States, hallucinogenics were adopted by the youth culture. Did you and your colleagues who were looking into this find that there was grave danger in this kind of widespread experimentation with hallucinogenics? Or did you see that it wasn’t as dangerous as many people thought?

MDR: When I was studying abroad, these were not drugs of abuse. There was no danger that a researcher would be accused of guilt by association. When I came to the United States, I didn’t want to personally get involved in any studies of contemporary drug use, because I didn’t want to get in trouble. You can’t help anybody if you’re sitting in jail because your interviewer is holding drugs and you get raided. But it was pretty clear, just from the literature that was around, that these substances are double-edged swords. They have a role in society, but they also have a tremendous potential for abuse and for consequences of that abuse.

RD: Has the interest in these substances grown steadily throughout the years?

MDR: No, actually, in the ‘90s, we predicted that Ayahuasca use would die out. Then, suddenly, there was a resurgence of interest with drug tourism, and now it’s a national treasure and the government thinks it’s wonderful and it brings in tourist dollars and so on.

RD: So the government’s on board?

MDR: Absolutely. They’ve declared it a national heritage.

RD: Other than Peru, are other countries comfortable with using plant medicines to attract tourism?

MDR: I don’t know. We’d love to get some research funds and find out, but it’s very dangerous. But it’s also important to know what’s going on in the drug tourism industry, because there are so many abuses. And these aren’t the kind of substances you can play around with. They’re powerful; people can have horrible experiences if they’re not with someone who’s experienced and trained in the process.

RD: That’s what happened to my friend’s daughter. She wasn’t recommended to the person she went to – it was kind of random – and she was convinced she was going to die. She didn’t vomit, and she was tripping way after everybody else had resolved.

MDR: She probably overdosed. In addition to what constitutes the Ayahuasca potion, there are another eight or nine powerful plants that are used in witchcraft. The drug healers who are working with the tourists may mix all ten of them together, so you’ll definitely have an experience. Then they hope you’ll send your brother and your sister and your auntie and your cousins to see that shaman. There have been several deaths, and these shamans don’t have any way to screen for health problems, like history of heart disease or other conditions. These can also be very anxiety-provoking substances, and after-effects and behavioral changes can last for some time.

Now, I’m certain there are some good people. The healer I worked with was very good. He didn’t take money. He didn’t seek people. He was just there. And mostly his clients were people from the neighborhood. And of the hundred people we inteviewed, 99 of them had been brought to see him by somebody who claimed they had been cured by the healer.

RD: What exactly is the role of the healer?

MDR: They use Ayahuasca to determine who bewitched somebody. And then they turn the evil back, and then in a vision they see plants that are appropriate for the healing. So it’s quite different than the stories we hear, of the “healers” who pick up a tourist at the airport, drive them to the Shamans highway in Iquitos, drop them off at a center somewhere in the middle of nowhere, give them some Ayahuasca, and spend the rest of the evening on their cell phones booking the next tour. And then they get on a motorcycle and disappear, leaving people to find their way home.

RD: That’s what happens?

MDR: Sometimes.

RD: And is there really a highway called the Shamans Highway?

MDR: That’s what I call it; there’s a little new city called Nauta, and a beautiful paved road, and all the shamans have their little centers with cutesy houses and trees and sort of retreats, some prettier than others. From the outside, it all looks legitimate. But they really mistreat the clients. It’s just terrible. Like I say, there have been a couple of deaths.

RD: That sounds really scary. Someone reading this might currently have a son or daughter traveling in South America, maybe in Peru. Should they be warning them?

MDR: That sounds like a good idea to me! Traveling in South America can be an amazing experience. Machu Picchu is very pretty. The food is wonderful. But you can’t just get pulled off the street into something. You wouldn’t do it here, so why would you do it in a foreign country?

RD: That’s a really good point. If you were in Chicago and somebody you’ve never seen before comes up and says “Hey, I’ve got a really great experience for you. Just follow me,” you probably wouldn’t go.

MDR: Yes, but you do that when you’re a teenager, or in your twenties. You get older, you think twice about new experiences.

RD: But even here in Denver, Colorado, people are doing Ayahuasca—and not just teenagers. Is this a somewhat safer situation than what you’re describing in Peru?

MDR: I’m not a fan of using all this stuff in a recreational setting, no matter where that setting may be. I think it’s dangerous. I agree that it should be studied scientifically. I’m a scientist; my training is in medical anthropology. And I think these substances are dangerous and need to be handled carefully. It would be a shame to see a re-run of the ‘60s with some of the runaway use of these drugs. These aren’t mild substances, like the old-time marijuana before they started doubling the chromosomes. The dangers are just too great.

RD: Then why do people—and not just teenagers—continue to be attracted to them and experiment with them?

MDR: We live in a society that’s in decay, and these are all manifestations of people’s response to the decay. The West is losing its hegemony. The world is getting shaken up. The future’s unclear. People try to cope, and these are substances that sometimes help them.

RD: Well at least they’re trying; maybe they’re thinking “I’m not just going to do the same old thing this time.”

MDR: Yes, and it may be that the people in your area are trying these kinds of substances for different reasons, as a more spiritual approach, more from the perspective of seeking something, rather than trying to escape, avoid or run away from something.

RD: I think that’s true. Especially because, in the Denver metro area, a lot of people are experimenting with changing their consciousness without using drugs.

MDR: Yes, and you have people who experiment with communes, or the Hari Krishna groups, or whatever. I’m not against experiential kinds of things; I’m just acutely aware of the harm/risk/benefit ratio: what’s the likelihood in the hundreds that you’re going to get in trouble? Rationality is always important if only as an anchor.

RD: I’ve looked at a number of books on psychotropic substances, and they’re mostly positive. They claim to have found a new view of the world and a new understanding of self that is liberating or ecstatic or healing in some grand way. The people reading these books will, I think, consider this avenue. They’d be interested in a peyote journey or Ayahuasca or psilocybin. Moreover, I think the authors of these books want us to see the world through a slightly different lens than we are now able to.

MDR: I know what you’re saying. Oscar Janiger, a University of California, Irvine, psychiatrist, gave almost 1,000 people LSD in the 1950s, and he kept records. The book is incredible, because there’s all this pre-modern use of LSD. And he found that 24 percent of the people—from all walks of life – who took it, had spiritual experiences well within the context of their background and training and conditioning. As far as creativity, he gave 100 artists LSD and he had them draw or paint a Kachina doll, and he got some really interesting stuff. The book has pictures of some of the artwork. The artists liked LSD; they found it was very liberating.

But here’s the difference: everything was done under controlled conditions. There was a doctor. There were nurses. It was in a little house in L.A. The drug was pure, and the people were screened for health conditions. They were analyzed to make sure they didn’t have psychotic imagery. There’s a place for these substances, but it’s not up to just anyone to decide what that place is. You have to have knowledgeable people in control.

RD: So you would recommend that people ought to get very experienced professional help if they’re going to explore these substances?

MDR: I’m not a person who’s going to recommend exploration. I have academic credentials; I’m a scientist. What do scientists do? They study things. Do you remember that cartoon, “Peanuts”? Linus says to Lucy, “When I grow up, I want to go to a university.” And she says, “Oh, isn’t that wonderful. You’re going to learn all these things so you can help people.” And Linus says, “No. I’m just nosey.” That kind of summarizes my work. I’m just a nosey bitch from the Bronx.