Cross-Ecosystem · Episode 1
Decolonize This
PASTE THIS AS YOUR NOTEBOOKLM SOURCE DOCUMENT.
This is a cross-ecosystem episode, not tied to a single book but drawing on multiple sources: the Gregoire NEO.LIFE investigation, the Schultes NIMH paper, the Labate/Cavnar ayahuasca volumes, and Hofmann's account of María Sabina. The episode is specifically about the decolonization of psychedelic pharma and why the pharmacological argument and the ethical argument are actually the same argument.
Full source material
SOURCE 1, María Sabina's verdict (Hofmann, LSD: My Problem Child, 1979):
When Hofmann gave María Sabina synthetic psilocybin pills, she used them in a healing ceremony. Afterward she said the pills lacked the spirit of the mushrooms, though by dawn she said they had the same power (Hofmann, LSD: My Problem Child, chapter 6).
SOURCE 2, Gregoire on the industry (NEO.LIFE, 2020):
"Sabina's house was burned. Her son was murdered. She died in poverty in 1985. The psilocybin industry that her knowledge made possible is now worth $1.1 billion."
"The psychedelic drug market is projected to reach $6.85 billion by 2027."
"Journey Colab was the first psychedelic pharmaceutical company to pledge adherence to the Nagoya Protocol, the UN biodiversity agreement designed to prevent biopiracy."
SOURCE 3, Schultes on indigenous knowledge (NIMH Symposium, 1967):
"Perhaps the greatest enemy of ethnopharmacological research is the arrival and cheap availability of the aspirin pill."
"In the search for new hallucinogens, we have much to do and little time in which to do it."
SOURCE 4, The entourage effect (Labate & Cavnar, Therapeutic Use of Ayahuasca, 2014):
"The beta-carbolines in Banisteriopsis caapi not only inhibit the MAO enzymes that would otherwise metabolize DMT, harmine independently inhibits DYRK1A kinase, promoting neurogenesis through a mechanism entirely separate from the psychedelic effect. The whole plant produces effects that the isolated compound does not."
SOURCE 5, LisaNa Macias Red Bear (Gregoire, 2020):
"We used this medicine before Jesus Christ walked this Earth."
Focus questions
- 1María Sabina's verdict, as Hofmann reports it (the pills lacked the spirit of the mushrooms, though by dawn they had the same power), has been read as the first observation of the entourage effect. What does it mean that the most important pharmacological observation of the decade was made by a Mazatec healer and dismissed?
- 2The psilocybin industry is now worth over a billion dollars. The Mazatec received nothing. Is there a policy framework that could address this?
- 3The Navajo Nation opposes peyote decriminalization. How do you hold the cognitive liberty argument and the indigenous sovereignty argument in the same frame?
- 4Schultes warned in 1967 that the aspirin pill was destroying indigenous pharmacological knowledge. What have we lost in the fifty years since?
- 5Journey Colab pledged to the Nagoya Protocol. Most companies have not. What is the standard that should be required?
Suggested guests: Beatriz Labate (Chacruna Institute), or Carolyn Gregoire (NEO.LIFE investigation author)