Hallucinogens: Serotonin Enhancers Flashcards
(99 cards)
1
Q
Where is serotonin derived from?
A
Amino acid tryptophan.
2
Q
What is serotonin?
A
A common neurotransmitters of the CNS, occurring most commonly in the upper brain stem.
3
Q
What are the roles of serotonin?
A
Regulation of body temperature, sleep and sensory perception.
4
Q
What are serotonin enhancers, which stimulate the serotonin receptors of the CNS, classified as?
A
Powerfully hallucinogenic.
5
Q
How would you describe the IBOGA?
A
A low woody shrub (2m).
6
Q
What family does the Iboga belong to
A
The Periwinkle (Apocynaceae) family.
7
Q
Where is Iboga native to?
A
Tropical West Africa and is widely cultivated outside its native range in both West and Central Africa.
8
Q
Which part of the iboga contains the active hallucinogenic principle ibogaine and has a long tradition of shamanistic use in West Africa?
A
The root.
9
Q
What is the iboga root said to do?
A
Enhance psychic powers, increase inspiration, and assist in contemplation and is considered an important element of life.
10
Q
What ritual is the iboga root incorporated into in which young women and children under the influence of iboga are said to reveal where they hid treasure in their former lives?
A
The oghanje or object ritual.
11
Q
How was iboga used entheogenically?
A
Used as an important component of Bwiti cult of Gabon and Congo.
12
Q
What is Bwiti?
A
A religious revitalization movement that developed during the period of social and cultural upheaval following European contact.
13
Q
What does the Bwiti stress?
A
Stresses social cohesion and solidarity.
14
Q
Along with enhancing psychic powers, increasing inspiration and assisting in contemplation, and is considered an important element of life, what is the iboga root used for?
A
It is used to facilitate visual hallucinations of a superior divinity known as the Bwiti, and to foster communications with the spirt world.
15
Q
What is the active principle of the iboga root?
A
The indole alkaloid ibogaine, a powerful serotonin enhancer.
16
Q
What are the effects of the indole alkaloid ibogaine?
A
Its effects are smilier to other hallucinogenic serotonin enhancers; it prompts strong visual and auditory hallucinations, and interferes with motor skills.
17
Q
What happens to users of ibogaine?
A
They become highly suggestible, and gaze intently into space with blank expressions. A sensation of floating or flying is commonly reported.
18
Q
In what type of therapy is ibogaine being investigated for use?
A
Opiate addiction therapy and alcohol, amphetamine and nicotine dependence.
19
Q
Why is ibogaine being investigated for opiate addiction therapy?
A
It has been shown to calm the opiate receptors, thereby reducing the unpleasant symptoms of heroin withdrawal.
20
Q
What limits ibogaine’s used as a therapeutic drug?
A
Its hallucinogenic properties limit its use however non-hallucinogenic semi-synthetic alternatives could potentially be developed.
21
Q
What is the name of the hallucinogenic “magic” or “sacred” mushroom traditionally used in Central America?
A
Psilocybin mushrooms.
22
Q
What genera exist?
A
Psilocybe, Conocybe, and Paneolus.
23
Q
Where do these hallucinogenic magic mushrooms occur?
A
Mainly in the tropics, but some are found in temperate regions.
24
Q
What are Psilocybin mushrooms used as?
A
Used as entheogens by the Aztecs.
25
What did the Aztecs name the Psilocybin mushrooms?
Teonanacatl or divine flesh.
26
What earlier civilizations did these mushrooms belong to?
Mayan.
27
What were these mushrooms used for in these Mayan civilization times?
Used to communicate with the spirit world, and in shamanistic practices to diagnose illnesses.
28
Who's conquest of the Americas (1500s) forced the indigenous entheogenic use of psilocybin mushrooms underground?
Spanish.
29
Why did the Spanish conquest force this use of mushrooms underground?
Ritualistic use of these mushrooms was considered heretical by Roman Catholic clergy, and was discouraged on "pain of death".
30
When did Spanish inquisitions go further, denouncing divine mushrooms as "devices of the devil" since they induced an ectastic state?
1620.
31
What was the result of Spanish inquisitions denouncing divine mushrooms as "devices of the devil" since they induced an ectastic state?
Shamanistic and cultural use of psilocybin mushrooms ceased in much of Central America.
32
Where did traditional use of the "divine flesh" persist into the 20th century?
Isolated areas of Mexico-remained unknown until 1950.
33
When did anthropologists propose an idea regarding the fact that hallucinogenic mushrooms did not exist and that the divine flesh was in fact reference to peyote cactus?
20th century.
34
When were anthropologists who proposed an idea regarding the fact that hallucinogenic mushrooms did not exist and that the divine flesh was in fact reference to peyote cactus proved wrong?
1930s, when botanists began to collect and classify sacred mushrooms.
35
Who witnessed shamanistic use of sacred mushrooms?
R. Gordon Wasson (1898-1986), who searched for mushroom purpose evidence in south Mexico.
36
Who was the mazaec shaman that invited Wasson to witness and participate in a sacred mushroom ceremony?
Maria Sabina.
37
When were Wasson's findings published?
1957.
38
When was the traditional mushroom ceremony of Oaxaca compromised by an influx of American and European youth seeking the mushrooms for recreational purposes?
1960s.
39
What are the active principles of the sacred mushroom?
Psilocybin and psilocin, both potent serotonin mimics.
40
What are the initial effects of psilocybin and psilocin?
Muscle relaxation and dilation of pupils, followed by powerful visual and auditory hallucinations.
Feelings of lassitude, and mental and physical exhaustion, are characteristic.
Isolated from surroundings, dream like hallucinations become reality.
Lasts 4-6 hours.
41
What is the genus classified as a South American hallucinogenic snuff?
The Virola, the Virola theiodora is commonly used as an entheogen.
42
Where are hallucinogenic snuffs prepared from?
The inner tree bark.
43
Where do hallucinogenic snuffs have a long history of traditional use?
In Northern Amazoina, indigenous groups believe that a spirit dwells within these trees.
44
Who are the people that only utilize the snuff?
Men, and in some tribes its use is restricted to shamans.
45
What are virola snuffs used for?
To diagnose illnesses, in prophecy and divination, and for magical purposes.
46
What are the two ways in which the snuff is prepared?
The bark stripping method and the bark resin method.
47
What is the bark stripping method? Explain.
The outer bark of the tree is stripped away and scrapings taken from the inner bark. This material is boiled until the water is evaporated, leaving behind a sediments concentrate that is heated over a fire and dried to a fine powder.
48
What is the bark resin method? Explain.
The bark is stripped from trees in the morning, the trees are revised in the evening and the blood-red resin exuded from the bark wound scarped away. This resin is then kneaded with water, strained, and boiled into a thick syrup that is dried in the sun and powdered.
49
Where do the hallucinogenic principles of the powdered snuffs come from?
The Virola bark, but traditionally prepared snuffs often contain other species as well. These species THOUGHT to increase hallucinogenic effect.
50
What are the most common additives of these snugs?
1) Ashed bark from Theobroma subincanium (tree related to coca).
2) Leguminous tree Elizabetha princeps.
3) Fresh, pulverized, aromatic eaves of Justicia pectoralis.
51
What color is powder produced with these additives and what is the process of consuming the snuff?
Fine, greenish-gray powder snuffed through reeds or bird bones or ingested.
52
What are the active principles of virola snuff?
Tryptamine alkaloids, particularly DMT, which are serotonin enhances, and smaller amounts of B-carboline alkaloids (harmine) that are inhibits of the monoamine oxidase MAO enzyme.
53
What does the DMT-MAO inhibitor combination do?
Enhances the hallucinogenic effect; MAO naturally deactivates DMT, but harmine inhibits MAO activity and thereby prolongs the psychoactive effect of DMT.
54
What are the effects of the virola snuffs?
1) Produce initial excitability.
2) Followed almost immediately by nausea, numbness of limbs, twitching of facial muscles, and a general lack of muscle coordination.
3) Followed by powerful visual hallucinations, in which objects appear unnaturally large, distorted and inverted.
4) Sleep and visual imagery.
55
Where in the Yopo, a Souther American leguminous tree found?
In open habitats of the Orinoco River basin in Colombia and Venezuela.
56
Which part of the yoyo contain the highest concentrations of the hallucinogen?
The seeds, and have been used to prepare an entheogenic snuff.
57
How is yopo powder produced?
1) Seed pods moistened --> Ferment
2) When black, seeds removed and mixed with cassava flair and snail shells to form cake.
3) Mixture roasted and crushed and powdered producing potent snuff.
58
What did Humbolt falsely believe to be the hallucinogenic principle of the snuff?
The snail shell.
59
What, like virola, does the yopo contain?
Tryptamine alkaloids (DMT) and B-carboline alkaloids (hermine).
60
What did yopo contain that virola did not?
Bufotenine (serotonin enhancer).
61
Where is the leguminous south American tree, Cebil, native to?
The dry southern Andean region of Chile and the adjacent Puna Desert of Argentina.
62
When is the evidence from that was found in the Puna Desert of ritual and shamanistic smoking of Cebil?
4500 years.
63
What is the active hallucinogenic principle of Cebil?
The tryptamine alkaloid bufotenine, which produces strong hallucinations lasting 20 min.
64
How is the Cebil experience different from virola and yopo?
Visual hallucinations are instead in bl
65
How is the Cebil experience different from virola and yopo?
Visual hallucinations are instead in black and white and consist largely of abstract, worm like flowing imagery.
66
What is the name given to two closely related species of vine (liana) native to the Amazon rainforest of South America?
Ayahuasca.
67
Who uses the name ayahuasca?
The Quechua tribe and loosely translates as "vine of the soul" and refers to both the plant and hallucinogenic beverage produced from bark.
68
Who has a long history of used of ayahuasca as an entheogenic substance?
The amazonians.
69
What is believed about the ayahuasca?
Said to free the soul from physical confinements, under its influence, the soul is said to wander and return to the body at will.
Will librate one from everyday life, offering visions of wondrous realms and opening lines of communication with ancestors.
Telapathic powers (telepathine was the name of the active principle that later became harmine).
70
How is ayahuasca taken or practiced?
In large groups, one person abstains to care for the others.
Musical played, the drink is bitter and unpleasant (lead to vomiting)
In conclusion, it is a social affair.
71
What are the three stages of the hallucinogenic experience of ayahuasca?
1) Initial spiralling phase
2) Accentuation of hearing, reduced motor coordination, and strong visual distortion-face becomes distorted and grotesque, and alarming to animals.
3) Sensation of flying, during which physical discomfort is forgotten.
72
What are the two plant species used in the preparation of traditional ayahuasca beverages?
1) Stems of the ayahuasca vine.
| 2) Shrub chacruna.
73
How are ayahuasca beverages prepared?
1) Vine cut into sections and dried.
2) Inner bark removed, added to water and heated almost to boiling.
3) Leaves of shrub are then added to the brew
4) Simmered until reduced to tonic.
5) Cooled- remains potent for a month.
74
What are the active principles of the ayahuasca vine?
B-carboline alkaloids (hermine and hamaline), that inhibit the monoamine oxidase (MAO) enzyme that breaks down serotonin.
Vine does not contain DMT but shrub does to form DMT-MAO inhibit combo.
75
What do the ayahuasca analogues consist of?
Mixture of Syrian rue (harmine), and legume mimosa (DMT).
76
What family do the ololiuqui and the morning glories (climbing herbaceous annuals) belong to?
Morning Glory (Convolculaceae).
77
Where is the Morning Glory (Convolculaceae) family native to?
Central and South America and are grown in European and North American gardens for their showy blue and white flowers.
78
Who used the Morning Glory (Convolculaceae) family traditionally?
Aztecs, Mayans, and earlier civilizations of Central America
79
What is the difference between ololiuqui and tlitliltzin?
Round seeds vs elongate angular seeds.
80
What were morning glory seeds that contain hallucinogens used for?
To communicate with the Gods (divination ceremonies).
81
When did the Spaniards actively discourage ololiuqui and tlitliltzin in Aztec ceremonies claiming that they caused satanic hallucinations?
1500s.
82
Who continued to use, as with the mushroom?
Mexicans in 20th century.
83
When did Richard Schultes (Harvard) collect Turbina corymbose from Oaxaca Mexico, noting that it was being cultivated as an entheogen?
1939.
84
What was the purpose of drinking the turbina corymbose decoction?
To induce rapid intoxication characterized by powerful and often grotesque hallucinations of people and places.
85
What is the hallucinogenic experience of those using these morning glories?
1) Bursts of laughter.
2) Period of lassitude euphoria and deep sleep.
3) Loss of awareness of oblivious surroundings-become highly suggestible.
86
What did Hofmann discover about ololiuqui seeds and their hallucinogenic properties? (1940s)
They were lysergic acid alkaloids, the same groups of psychoactive secondary products found in fungal ergot.
87
What are the morning glory hallucinogens?
Lysergic acid amide and isoergine, serotonin enhancers.
88
What was discovered regarding these lysergic acid amides and morning glories?
Symbiotic relationship with fungal ergot is what produces these, not the morning glories themselves.
89
What is ergot?
A fungal pathogen of many cereal crops and forge grasses.
90
How does the fungus exert its affects?
Attacks maturing cereal grains, producing fruiting bodies known as schlerotia.
91
What are the effects of the ergot alkaloids produced by this fungal pathogen?
1) Constriction of fine arteries.
2) Contraction of smooth muscle.
3) Powerful visual-auditory hallucinations.
4) Delirium and confusion.
92
How was ergot used medicinally in the 1940s?
To induce labor and control uterine haemorrhaging and to treat migraines.
93
What did Albert Hofmann first semz-syntehize?
+-lysergic acid diethyl amide (LSD) in 1938.
94
What are characteristic of the four LSD stereoisomers?
1) Three are psychoactively inert.
| 2) Fourth is a potent hallucinogen.
95
What did Hofmann advocate LSD be used for?
Medicinally in the aid of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.
96
When did the first peer reviewed research come to be in regard to using LSD to help understand and treat schizophrenia and related mental disorders?
In Germany in 1947.
97
What was the timeline of the LSD usage?
1) Hollingshed heard the drug was used in 1950.
2) Hollingshed mixed LSD with icing and took daily in 1954.
3) Leary and Hollingshed parter in 1962 due to Leary's experience with mushrooms.
4) Leary brought the drug to Harvard for trials and fired in 1963. Continued work with Alpert in mansion.
5) Leary and followers move to Mexico- not welcome.
6) 1965 Sandoz (company) stops manufacturing LSD.
7) Mid 1960s, LSD is illegal in US.
.
98
Who was a key player in converting LSD from a therapeutic to recreational drug?
Briton Michael Hollingshed.
99
What was Leary's timeline of events?
1) 1969 Leary arrested for possession of marijuana at Mexico/US border.
2) Jailed for 30 years.
3) Escapes with political anarchist help.
4) Fled US on forged passport to Algeria.
5) Sought asylum in Switzerland.
6) 1973 arrested in Kabul, Afghanistan by US drug agency.
7) Finished sentence in US and paroled after 3 years.
8) Lived in California, died in 1996.
