Shine a light on Peyote

Peyote is the common name of the cactus Lophophora williamsii, native to northern Mexico and the southwest United States. The button-shaped seeds of the plant are chewed, releasing a number of psychedelic alkaloids, with mescaline being the primary psychoactive component.

Like many other healing plants, Peyote has also fallen in reputation due to lack of information.

Effects

A full dose contains about 200 to 400 mg of mescaline, and most people need about 6 peyote buttons to achieve this dose. Peak effects occur about 2 to 4 hours after ingesting and gradually decline over the next 8-12 hours.

The effects of mescaline are similar to LSD, profoundly altering perception of self and reality, increase suggestibility, and intensify emotions.

Within 30 minutes to an hour, most people begin to experience some form of physiological distress, nausea, discomfort, fullness in the stomach, sweating, and/or chills. Physical symptoms can last 1-2 hours, after which they are usually replaced with a sense of calm and acceptance. At this point, the psychological effects begin to occur.

The narcotic properties of peyote have attracted wide attention. Peyote-intoxication is divisible into two general phases: a period of contentment and over-sensitivity, and a period of nervous calm and muscular sluggishness, often accompanied by hypocerebrality, colored visual hallucinations, alterations in tactile sensation, very slight muscular incoordination, disturbances in space and time perception, and auditory hallucinations. Peyote-intoxication is unique in that during it consciousness is not lost, control of the limbs and senses is maintained, there is no tendency to commit acts of violence, and seldom do uncomfortable effects accompany or follow it.

Medicinal use

The emphasis on the curing powers of peyote is as great among the northern Indians who use it as it is among the Indians of Mexico. The Kiowa and Comanche, for example, the earliest recipients of peyote on the plains, rely on the cactus as a panacea. Among the Oklahoma tribes with which I worked, I found that there is hardly a disease which is not believed to be curable with peyote. Some of the ills listed as responding to peyote were tuberculosis, pneumonia, scarlet fever, intestinal ills, diabetes, rheumatic pains, colds, grippe, fevers, and venereal diseases. Among the Kiowa, partly masticated mescal buttons are packed around an aching tooth. The Delaware also practice this type of dental therapy. A Shawnee informed me that peyote tea was a good antiseptic wash for open wounds and a soothing liniment if applied warm to an aching limb. It is used “as white man uses aspirin.” Several mescal buttons are given three times during childbirth among the Kiowa, Kickapoo, Shawnee, and probably other Plains tribes. The frequent use of peyote as a medicine has led to the statement that the plant is employed as a habit-narcotic, but field investigators deny that this is so.

A lot of potential can be seen in a plant like Peyote and it is up to us, western society, to open our minds and start researching those amazing medicinal properties. Being from Europe I have not ever tried it, never even heard of it being available in the vicinity. Sadly:.

Literature:

1. Richard Evans Schultes, The appeal of Peyote.
2. Jen Sodini, An Essential Understanding of Peyote.