The Santa Fe Tea Party
Hallucinogenic Ayahuasca and Religious Freedom in America
by Elizabeth Ryznar and Sarah Schechter
Two hundred years ago, the most famous Tea Party in American history took place in Boston Harbor. For the colonists, the tea represented years of oppression by the British monarchy. But on May 21st, 1999, when U.S. federal agents barged into the headquarters of a small Santa Fe church and seized thirty gallons of tea, the meaning of the tea had changed: it now symbolized not oppression, but religious freedom.
The Santa Fe church in question serves as the New Mexico headquarters of the Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal (UDV), a Brazilian syncretistic religion allegedly in existence for hundreds of years and organized formally in 1961 by Jose Gabriel da Costa. The UDV is a peaceful religion focused on intellectual and moral self-improvement. To heighten spirituality and to connect believers with God, members of the UDV participate in ritual drinking of hosca, the tea that instigated this conflict.
Hosca, more commonly known by its Quechua name ayahuasca ("vine of the souls"), is used across the Amazon basin in shamanistic ceremonies and is considered sacred because of its mind-altering powers. Indeed, it was through his encounters with Amazonian natives that da Costa experienced the hallucinogenic effects of ayahuasca. During one of these occasions, da Costa experienced a vision instructing him to organize a church. This vision inspired him to re-create UDV, which today claims over 15,000 members in over 100 cities in Brazil, the United States, and Spain.
The main psychoactive substance in ayahuasca is dimethyltryptamine (DMT), extracted from the leaves of Psychotria viridis, a small green shrub found in the Amazon. Interestingly, orally-consumed DMT is inactive due to degradation by monoamine oxidase enzymes (MAOs) in the gastrointestinal tract. In other words, drinking P. viridis leaves by their lonesome would be no more exciting than sipping Lemon Lift tea in Lowell House. The magic behind ayahuasca, however, lies in the inclusion of Banisteriopsis caapi bark. This jungle vine contains β-caroline alkaloids that block MAO activity, thereby ensuring that DMT is not broken down in the gut and allowing it to eventually cross the blood-brain barrier and elicit its hallucinogenic effects.
Though the exact mechanism of ayahuasca's psychedelic effects is unknown, tellingly, all of its active ingredients relate to the sleep cycle. DMT is a structural analogue of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which modulates sleep, appetite, sexuality, anger, aggression, and metabolism. The β-caroline alkaloids found in ayahuasca are also found naturally in humans, regulating our sleeping cycle along with melatonin. Together, DMT and the β-caroline alkaloids result in overexcitation of the serotonin pathway, with the latter protecting DMT and serotonin from breakdown by neural MAOs, just as they did in the digestive system. Furthermore, tetrahydroharmine, one of the β-caroline alkaloids in B. caapi, also may also weakly inhibit the uptake of 5-hydroxytryptamines like DMT, thereby keeping DMT in the synaptic cleft—the region of communication between two neurons—for longer. Indeed, an ayahuasca trip can last up to four hours, compared to just forty minutes for DMT inhaled in isolation.
Such trips are not for the faint of heart, however. As Kira Salak, a writer who uses ayahuasca to treat her depression, warned, "The unconscious mind holds many things you don't want to look at. All those self-destructive beliefs, suppressed traumatic events, denied emotions…an ayahuasca vision can reveal itself as a kind of hell in which a person is forced—literally—to face his or her demons."1 For her, the hallucinations included inconsolable darkness, fiery tunnels, demons, snakes, her past selves, and eventually peaceful white heavens. Though ayahuasca visions are subjective, most seasoned users like shamans report seeing and interacting with God. In fact, the preferred term for ayahuasca is not hallucinogen but entheogen, from the Greek entheos, or "divinely inspired."
Though DMT provides ayahuasca with its spiritual functionality, it also grants it illegal status. The United States considers DMT a Schedule I drug, banned for all purposes due to its high potential for abuse and lack of a currently accepted medical use. With the hope of prohibiting the use of ayahuasca, the government constructed a case against it, claiming that ayahuasca had dangerous health effects on users, that it could be diverted to non-religious purposes, and that importing the tea violated international treaties. The UDV, a recognized church, countered that the government was restricting the free practice of its religion in violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.
Contrary to the government's claims, members of ayahusca-based sects have long attributed positive effects on their well being to the drug. Recent studies on ayahuasca seem to support the notion that the entheogen may in fact have beneficial health effects. Charles Grob, a psychiatrist at the UCLA School of Medicine, studied members of UDV and found that its adherents were healthier, both psychologically and physically, than controls. He discovered that members of UDV actually had greater numbers of serotonin receptors. Because of this, Grob argues that ayahuasca may be a better way to treat depression than selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which can actually cause neurons to lose their serotonin receptors in order to compensate for the artificially high levels of serotonin. Indeed, UDV adherents who previously suffered from addiction, depression, or anxiety overcame their disorders and none had experienced remission. (Atheists looking for some relief from such afflictions can turn to tourist agencies that lead shamanistic ayahuasca "cleansing" rituals in the Amazonian jungle, like the one Salak attended.)
When combined with certain medications or foods, ayahuasca can have dangerous side effects, such as vomiting, hypertension, or even cardiac irregularities. However, UDV members tend to fast before religious ceremonies in order to reduce the possibility of negative reactions. Grob's results suggest that the government was wrong. The health hazards claim fell through, along with the other two, and the district court ruled in the UDV's favor. An appeal to the federal circuit court upheld the decision.
High tea was not yet over, however. The government appealed yet again, this time to the Supreme Court. Realizing the lack of evidence supporting its previous claims, the government experimented with a new approach. This time, the U.S. merely asserted that DMT was an illegal drug and that the UDV therefore cannot use it, despite its central position in the religion. This stance threatened the very essence of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was meant to safeguard the practices of recognized religious institutions during conflicts with the government. Indeed, if the United States won, the ruling would have established a precedent of government interests overriding conflicting religious traditions.
In late February of 2006, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the New Mexico branch of União do Vegetal could use ayahuasca tea in its religious ceremonies. The unanimous ruling stated that the federal government had no compelling interest in barring UDV from sacramental use of the tea. Ayahuasca joins peyote (used by the Native American Church) in the ranks of drugs permitted for religious use in the United States. Tea has prevailed as a symbol of liberty.