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Mescaline - effects, risks, dangers
contents
- How does mescaline work??
- Altered perception
- Horrortrips
- Dangers of mescaline
- Increased risk
- Stay away from Ayahuasca
- Hippies and scientists
- Indian wisdom?
- Brave New World and esoteric kitsch
- Legal or illegal?
- The peyote cult
- Mescalero Apaches
- An old teacher plant
- Forced replacement
- A substitute for freedom
- The Native American Church
How does mescaline work??
Mescaline has a similar structure to 3-methoxy-4,5-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MMDA), the methoxy analog of 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA). Similar hallucinogens are 3,4,5-trimethoxyamphetamine (TMA), 2,4,5-trimethoxyamphetamine (TMA-2) and 2,4,6-trimethoxyamphetamine (TMA-6).
Mescaline, for example, is found in peyote kakuts and has a very hallucinogenic effect even in the smallest amounts. (Image: Haramis Kalfar / fotolia.com) The substance binds and activates the serotonin receptor 5-HT2A and the serotonin receptor 5-HT2C. Serotonin is our happiness hormone, and mescaline increases its secretion. That's why users feel happiness, euphoria and "the world is wrapped in a gentle veil". However, intoxication often starts with nausea and vomiting. The first phase features hyperactivity and anxiety, similar to the symptoms of attention deficit syndrome.
Altered perception
It is only in the second phase that perception changes slightly, consumers perceive colors more intensively, dream images and visual hallucinations spread while awake. All senses are perceived to be much stronger: smells, sounds and sightings appear much more intense.
It comes to effects that are known from shamanic journeys: The affected see talking animals, things change their size, small objects appear enlarged, and distances shorten or lengthen. The users still retain a certain perception of reality - the intoxication does not correspond to an openly broken psychosis.
Like LSD, mescaline can lead to "horror trips", but these are firstly rare and rarely occur in a carefully chosen setting. In general, terrible images are primarily people who consume mescaline unprepared and / or mentally unstable.
Horrortrips
Although some users consider the "horror trips" to be particularly enlightening and value them as a type of crash psychotherapy that brings the fears of the subconscious much faster to the surface than would be the case with conventional psychotherapy - but that harbors great dangers. Those who are confronted with such images without a stable framework by a teacher and a protected atmosphere feel "in hell" for several hours.
Mescaline acts at an oral dose of the sulfate of about 200 mg up to 9 hours, the after-effects can still occur after 12 hours.
Dangers of mescaline
The "shaman drug" has a psychoactive effect and, as with most psychoactive substances, there is sometimes no return ticket for inadequate experiences with the "monsters of the human psyche".
Clinically, this means that mescaline can trigger a substance-induced psychosis and lead to permanent perceptual disorders. In general, however, this risk is lower than with LSD. In Indian societies, it is a crime to take peyote without the introduction and presence of a teacher. Psychiatric means that excessive arousal during and after a mescaline rush can be soothed by calming conversations.
To date, there is no study suggesting a link between mescaline use and psychiatric-related problems - at least, at least single use of mescaline is unlikely to be an independent risk factor for mental disorders.
The Amazon drug Ayahuasca should never be consumed with antidepressants. (Image: Ammit / fotolia.com) Increased risk
Antidepressants, so-called MAO inhibitors, should never be used in conjunction with mescaline. This includes the hallucinogenic ayahuasca, the drug of the Amazonian shaman. Since beginners often want to eat all kinds of "shamanic substances" in order to "go on a journey", there is a great risk of taking ayahuasca and mescaline together.
Stay away from Ayahuasca
Ayahuasca, however, strengthens the effects of serotonin-inducing agents on a large and unmanageable scale. There is danger to life, because the triggered serotonin syndrome can paralyze the control of the respiratory muscles. It comes to shortness of breath, difficulty breathing and in the worst case to respiratory arrest and death in a few minutes.
Hippies and scientists
Mescaline was fashionable in the 1960s hippie scene and, like LSD, was seen as a way to raise awareness. In the southwestern United States, the drug entered art and inspired countless psychedelic paintings, stories and pieces of music.
Indian wisdom?
While psychologists explored the psychic effect, esotericists saw in Vulgerradaptionen Indian ideas, the imagery in the Meskalinrausch as insight into other worlds of the supernatural. Traditional American natives are irritably reacting to mescalinfans who travel in Indian reservations and believe they can buy a "real shamanic experience" with a few dollars for peyote buttons. In addition to the abusive appropriation of cultural rituals by civilization-weary petty bourgeois, they criticize above all the psychological dangers that an unreasonable use of the substance entails.
Native American cultures are too familiar with people who call the Navajos "lost" trapped in the psychedelic effects of mescaline. On the other hand, intoxication is not an end in itself for the natives, but rather the content and interpretation of the psychic experiences made with the help of mescaline.
Brave New World and esoteric kitsch
The author of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, was just as much a fan of Mescalin as was the writer of the war, Ernst Jünger. The author of "The Yaqui Way of Knowledge", Carlos Castaneda, also devoted himself to the effect of mescaline and wrote various narratives about allegedly shamanic experiences he had made with a teacher called Don Juan.
His books became a cult in the esoteric scene, presumably because he designed a picture of a psychedelic "other world" that met the needs of the "liberal" American middle class. Elder Ones of the Yaqui distanced themselves from Castaneda's remarks, and there is much to suggest that this is fictional literature, not real events.
Legal or illegal?
Mescaline has been subject to the Narcotics Act in Germany since 1967. The UN has been running it since 1971 as a prohibited psychotropic substance. In the US, people may go to jail for possession of these five years. Without special permission, the use and possession of mescaline is fundamentally punishable.
In the US, Mescalin possesses several years in jail. (Image: Brian Jackson / fotolia.com) However, this does not apply to the possession of living cacti containing mescaline. The condition is that the owners have the cacti exclusively for botanical interest.
The peyote cult
The peyote cult is common among American natives. At the center of this psycho-religious ritual is a self-purification and spiritual journey promoted by the cactus species. In Mexico and Mesoamerica, Peyote has for many centuries been a shamanic plant used by Indian teachers for rituals intended to bring them into contact with the spirits of the dead and nature.
In contrast to popular stereotypes, the cult developed in North America only when the indigenous peoples there were militarily defeated and penned into reservations. So the cactus is not an old Indian teacher plant in North America.
The effect of the plants opens the participants to talk about mental problems and their feelings, it raises in this respect the alienation. Consequently, confession is a central part of the ritual. This can be done both before and after swallowing the peyote buttons.
In the peyote cult, it is considered harmful to keep committed sins to yourself. In the ritual, the participants should just name offenses openly.
Mescalero Apaches
The peyote cactus grows in a small area in the dry south of Texas and the adjacent north of Mexico. The Mescalero Apaches bear their name from the substance in the cactus, the Comanches knew it as Wokoni, the Kiowa as Seni and the Tarahumara as Hikari.
The Comanches and Kiowa had little use for the hallucinogenic plant when they lived in freedom. Both lived until the second half of the 19th century as cavalry warriors and bison hunters, who advanced on their raids far to Mexico.
An old teacher plant
The Caddo, Carrizo, Mescalero and Lipan Apaches, Karankawa and Tonkawa peyotes were used in ceremonies. Omer Stewart writes "Within these six tribes in the United States, we find the origin of the peyote ceremony. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, these are the tribes that lived in or near the natural occurrence of peyote. Everyone was familiar with his ritual use. "There is evidence that many of these tribes, especially the Mescalero, have known peyote for decades.
Forced replacement
In the 1870s, the US government deported various tribes from both the southwest and southwestern Midwest, and even from the eastern United States, into today's Oklahoma, the so-called Indian Territory, into a sort of collection reserve. Now peoples from the peyote area came into contact with others who had never heard of the cactus. The use of the plant spread so in the reserves.
However, the exchange created by genocide and forced relocation was not the only reason why the peyote cult originated. The Kiowa and Comanches, for example, had known the plant for a long time, but had never given it more importance.
The Comanches and Kiowa lived in the prairie, together with innumerable animals such as Pronghorns, bison and wolves. (Image: Chris / fotolia.com) As free people, they had lived an exciting life. They lived in a Serengeti of America in the midst of bison herds that counted millions of animals. They lived in the midst of elk, pronghorns, pumas, wolves, coyotes, foxes, badgers, prairie hens like prairie dogs, rattlesnakes and eagles, and the game was so abundant that warrior groups had the leisure to raid thousands of miles of raids into central Mexico.
In short, who rode through man-high prairie flowers in June, pitched his camp under the bizarre rock formations of the Chisco Mountains, unrolled under the belly of his horse with a footstrap, tamed wild Mustangs without violence and in the center of the southern Plains almost untouchable a terrain of The size of Central Europe roamed, which needed little additional substances to experience extraordinary experiences.
A substitute for freedom
In 1874, the last Kwahadi Comanches of the US Army surrendered, and the last survivors of the "Lords of the Plains" were exposed to starvation in miserable open-air prisons. The Comanche chief Quanah Parker, however, proved after the military defeat as a brilliant politician. He trained the bison hunters to ranchers and propagated the peyote cult.
Quanah had realized that the once proud Comanches suffered more from the boredom of reserve life than from hunger. The cactus, however, brought soft and peaceful visions that provided at least some substitute for the lost freedom.
The cult in the narrower sense of the Delaware invented John Wilson, after he had taken Peyote and enthusiastically true of the visions.
The Native American Church
Oklahoma was the birthplace of the Native American Church, officially founded in 1918. Its first bearer was the Kiowa. Unlike the US ban on mescaline in general, members of the Native American Church are allowed to use the plant in their rituals since 1978, however, for "solely traditional and ceremonial purposes associated with the practice of a traditional Native American religion."
The members of the Native American Church strictly reject the use of peyote outside the ritual. In Native American cultures in North America, the consumption of mind-altering substances was part of a holistic view of the world in which man was only one element in the interplay of animals, plants, stones and spirits.
The slightest mistake in a ritual could and may have the worst consequences in this performance. They rigorously reject the excessive use of teachers' plants as an end in themselves for the drug bust, and consider substance addicts as people who have lost their existential connection to the spirit world - as sick people who need to be healed. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)