Sustainability and the Mescaline producing Peyote Cactus
For those of you who know me, I have a Master’s degree in sustainability. This has always been a topic/field of interest to me for many years now. As I have gotten older, and I continue to figure out more of who I am and where my passions lie, I have been recently thinking about native medicinal plants and the issue of sustainability and extinction. In particular, I have been reading a lot about the peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii).
What is Peyote?
Peyote is a small, circular, spineless cactus that contains psychoactive alkaloids, in particular, mescaline. Peyote is native to Mexico and southern Texas. The word Peyote means “to glisten ‘’ and has been used for centuries by Indigenous peoples and Shamans in ceremonies and rituals for medicinal and healing practices. The Peyote plant is still extremely sacred to these people today.
Peyote is a hallucinogen and is very similar to LSD, which is why there is controversy around it. The DEA has listed Peyote as a schedule 1 drug, but the Native American Church can still use it for religious ceremonies. Ingesting Peyote or the active alkaloid Mescaline produces psychedelic effects associated with the plant. Mescaline interacts with the 5-HT2A within the brain and impacts how the brain uses serotonin. These are the same receptors that are impacted by LSD and psilocybin; and are responsible for the “trip” someone experiences when using these substances.
Vivid hallucinations are common when ingesting peyote and it is common to “see sounds” and “feel colors”. Your senses are heightened a great amount and visions are common. These visions are what can be contributed to people being able to have life changing experiences, which is why psychedelic drugs are so important in advancing mental health therapies and medicines.
Ingestion of the Peyote Cactus
Eating the dried crowns of the peyote cactus, boiling the cactus into tea, and taking capsules containing peyote/mescaline are all common ways. Dosing is a bit tricky and mescaline is absorbed quite fast into the body. You can start feeling the effects in an hour or less and the trip can last up to 12 hours.
Health Benefits
Many different indigenous cultures have revered tremendous health benefits from the peyote cactus. They have used it to treat snake bites and wounds, skin conditions, diabetes, and general pain. On top of that, peyote could be used in a similar way to ayahuasca; in ceremonies for people to dive deep into themselves and see things within that they may never have known or wanted to come to terms with before. This altered state of consciousness can have tremendous benefits, which is why psychedelic assisted therapies are making a comeback. Most people also don’t know that psychedelic therapy has its roots in the history of peyote, which is why it needs to be studied and protected.
Why Peyote Sustainability Matters
Peyote, like I said, has been around for centuries and is a natural medicine to so many indigenous people and shamans. Sustainability is normally associated with ecological issues, but in this case, I want to think of it as a cultural issue. There are serious risks of peyote disappearing in the United States, particularly in Texas, where peyote grows. The sacrament is considered to be endangered at the local level. Peyote sustainability is possible, but only if people learn about the ethical issues surrounding peyote and make it a priority to support the people and cultures who steward this medicine.
Peyote has a long and complex history with research and therapy. In the 1960’s when the war on drugs began overharvesting and illegal poaching of the sacrament was taking place without any thought about how important this medicine was to native cultures. Researchers are currently working to better study the drug and overcome the over harvesting issues, it is challenging because government funding is not available for studying the sustainability of schedule 1 drugs. In terms of environmental sustainability, it is essential to understand that peyote is critically threatened in Texas, and almost all of the land where the sacrament naturally grows is privately owned.
Western anthropologists learned about psychedelic therapy by observing Native Americans’ use of peyote, specifically members of the Comanche Tribe who had recently endured forced relocation to Oklahoma. To grasp the concept of cultural sustainability, it’s important to understand the full history. Gaining a deeply rooted understanding of peyote’s complex history might help demonstrate why both the environmental and cultural sustainability of peyote matters now more than ever.
A Peyote Ceremony Inspired the First Synthesized Psychedelic
The Peyote sacrament was first shared between tribes of the great plains and the southwest by “guardians of the cactus” the Wixárika, or the Huichol as they are commonly referred to, who reside in the Northern lands of present-day Mexico where peyote grows naturally. After 40 million bison were exterminated in an effort to starve the tribes, the massacre at Wounded Knee unfolded in 1890 and marked a turning point in the US war against the Native Americans. Forcibly removed from their Native Land and sent to reservations in Oklahoma; forced to live off limited Army rations, the Peyote ceremony emerged as a therapeutic and unifying communal ritual for Native Americans.
In Oklahoma in 1896, James Mooney, an ethnographer working with the Smithsonian Institute, obtained a bag of the sacred mescaline containing cacti from a Comanche elder. Mooney reported on the ceremony he witnessed, relaying in an article that “the Indians regard the mescal [cacti] as a panacea in medicine, a source of inspiration, and the key which opens to them all the glories of another world.”
In 1912 a federal law was proposed to ban peyote use, but the bill did not clear the Senate because one Oklahoma Senator was persuaded by his constituents to reject it. He, in turn, convinced his colleagues to pause on the measure. After this event, many anthropologists and leaders united with several Native American tribes to present evidence of peyote’s sacramental use. In 1918 the Native American Church formed and fought several legal battles to protect access to their sacrament which the government had tried to label as a controlled narcotic despite evidence of traditional use.
By the 1960s, psychedelic enthusiasts sought the sacred peyote cactus, leading to overharvesting and poaching in the areas where it grows naturally.
The cactus grows extremely slowly, taking years to reach adulthood and decades to mature to a usable size. If sustainably harvested with roots undamaged, a cactus will produce medicine for decades, even hundreds of years.
Current Day
Peyote is now locally extinct from an ancient grove near Big Bend National Park. In Mexico, the cactus is also facing sustainability issues resulting from drug tourism and illegal poaching.
Some see solutions to the sustainability concern in the form of greenhouses and mass production. Sustainable cultivation can occur, if the cactus were afforded the same level of protection as any other endangered plant, but because peyote remains classified as a schedule 1 narcotic, landowners are hesitant to lease their private property for the purpose of peyote cultivation, especially when ranching is easier on insurance costs.
Final Thoughts
Peyote is an ancient medicine with a long history of ceremonial use. It has grown in the same regions for centuries. Despite its status as a federally protected religious sacrament, in the past 50 years, This could be avoidable as long as people and providers make commitments to work respectfully with Native American tribes to support an ethical, sustainable, and sovereign peyote market.
It is going to take a lot to make sure that this sacred plant medicine doesn’t go extinct. Hopefully with the resurgence of psychedelics as therapies and medicines, there is hope for this wild medicinal plant to be saved. We need to focus more on decriminalizing nature in hopes for sustainability in the future.
