EL COMPROMISO, VALOR Y PRINCIPIO INSTITUCIONAL QUE ORIENTA LA FORMACIÓN DEL DOCENTE EN LA ENS

In Chapter Nine of Visionary Vine, Marlene Dobkin de Rios says that many of the patients at jungle ayahuasca sessions go (in the language of Western medicine) "for psychiatric help." She calls "drug healing in the Peruvian jungle __ a very old and honored tradition of dealing with psycho logical problems diat predates Freudian analysis by centuries." Much of the treatment she enumerates is nonverbal. In some places, natives refer to

Banisteriopfis as "the vine of death"—meaning that it causes one to "die," and then be "born anew."

Some seven years after William Burroughs went out looking foryagt

(on his first buy he got twenty pounds of it), Allen Ginsberg followed his path to South America. Ginsberg soon had a number ofyagdsessions. One produced the feeling that he was all covered with snakes; later he felt "like a snake vomiting out the universe." Ginsberg soon learned what was meant by "vine of death." He wrote, "the whole fucking Cosmos broke loose around me, I think the strongest and worst I've ever had," He had fears that he might lose his mind. An epilogue, written by Ginsberg in 1963, puts the experience in perspective:

Self deciphers this correspondence thus: the vision of ministering angels my fellow man and woman first wholly glimpsed while the Curandero gently crooned human in Ayahuasca trance-state I960 was prophetic of transfiguration of self consciousness from homeless mind sensation of eternal fright to incarnate body feeling present bliss now actualized 1963. Transforming experiences interested Naranjo when he gave out harmaline. More than other psychedelics, he found this one to be nonverbal, with mechanisms of psycho-interaction much less clear. Yet—

Of the group of thirty subjects who were our volunteers, fifteen experienced some therapeutic benefit from their harmaline session, and ten showed remarkable improvement or symptomatic change comparable only to that which might be expected from intensive psychotherapy.

Naranjo summed up the quality of harmaline-aided psychotherapy in this way:

Transformation Experiences 355

For one sharing the Jungian point of view, it would be natural to think of ihe artificial elicitation of archetypal experience as something that could facil- itate personality integration, and therefore psychological healing. Yet the observation of the psychotherapeutic results of the harmaline experience was not the outcome of any deliberate attempt to test the Jungian hypothesis. images became apparent . . . .

It would be hard to offer a simple explanation for the instances of improve- ment brought about by the harmaline experience. Such improvement usually occurred spontaneously, without necessarily entailing insight into the partic- ulars of the patient's life and conflicts. As in all cases of successful deep therapy, it did involve greater acceptance by the patients of their feelings and impulses and a sense of proximity to their self. Statements like these, however, are not very explicit, and only case histories can adequately illustrate . . . .

The more successful experiences with harmaline have a characteristic sponraneity, and these pose littie problem to rhe therapist. In contrast to experiences of self-exploration at the interpersonal level, it is probably in the nature of an archetypal experience to develop naturally from within, so that the most a person's ego can do is stand by watchfully. Yet such experiences of easy and spontaneous unfoldment of images and psychological events occur only in about every other person, so that it is the business of the psychother- apist to induce them when they will not naturally occur . . . .

Naranjo brought up the issue of intervention because he sees this as a "permanent dilemma in the guidance of harmaline sessions: the balance between stimulation and non-interference." He explains:

Little intervention may well leave a patient to his own inertia and result in an unproductive session; on the other hand, uncalled-for intervenrion may disrupt rhe organic development which is characteristic of the more successful harmaline experiences. As a consequence, more tact is needed in conducting these sessions than any other . . . .

Apart from Naranjo's The Healing journey, little has been published about the psychiatric use of harmala alkaloids. Lewin tried harmaline clin- ically on mental patients in the late 1920s; he wrote a monograph about

Banisteriopsis caapi as he lay dying. There was no further study until 1957, when Pennes and Hoch gave harmine to hospitalized subjects, mostly schizo- phrenic. Their results presented in the American Journal of Psychiatry indi- cated that harmaline acted like LSD or mescaline, though the mental effects seemed more clouded. (Hoffer and Osmond describe and criticize this work on pages 476-477 of The Hallucinogens.)

While profiling harmaline for the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, Shulgin made an intriguing remark: in psychotherapeutic studies, he wrote, it "has often been used in conjunction with other psychedelic drugs (e.g., MDA, LSD, and mescaline) in which the effects of the latter appear greatly prolonged, and qualitatively modified." He did not elaborate.

3-56 Ayahuasca, Yage" and Hat inline Bark/Drink/Cry slat ₃₅₇

FORMS AND PREPARATIONS

Once Banistenopsii caapi and B. inebriam take root, they are quite hardy and can attain great heights. Frequently cultivated in South America, they have been grown only rarely in U.S. greenhouses. After the vine has been cut into half-foot to eight-inch pieces, it is pounded to break open the bark, or the bark is scraped off. The bark is then put in water to soak or it is simmered for up to rwenry-four hours. When it is boiled, the bark has a light chocolate or reddish color with a slight greenish tinge. Villalba noted in

1925 that standing yag£ changed "to a topaz color with a bluish green fluorescence." After six or seven experiences of the cold water infusion, as prepared in the Colombian Amazon, Schultes judged the effects as differing little

from those from the boiled concoction used in the Purumayo. The intoxication is longer in setting in, and much more of the drink must be taken, but the symptoms of the intoxication and their intensity seem to me to be very similar. These vines have now become relatively rare in their native jungle growing area, so genuine yagt is rarely seen. (Several people who have searched for it report that a decent ayahuasquero is hard to find these days; many have given in to "alcohol abuse.")

Harmaline and harmine are both crystalline, the first appearing as yellow and the second as green hydrochloride salts. According to Hoffer and Osmond, both form these salts

with one equivalent of acid. Harmine crystallizes in needles, melting point 256-257° C., harmaline in platelets, melting point 238° C. Harmine is slightly soluble in water, alcohol, chloroform, and ether. Its hydrochbride salt is freely soluble in hot water. Harmaline is slighdy soluble in hot alcohol and dilute acids, and forms blue fluorescent solutions.

Still legal in the U.S., both are currently available at a few chemical , supply house at about $5-$ 10 per dose. If orders are large, however, it is likely that the Drug Enforcement Agency will take an interest.

History, 359-361 Early Reports and

Synthesis of Ibogaine, 559 Recent Usage, 360 Botany, 361 Chemistry, 361-362 Physical Effects, 362-363 Mental Effects, 363-366 N«ive Accounts, 363 Modern American Experiences, 365 Naranjo's Psychotherapeutic Findings, 366 Forms and Preparations, 367