User:Doctorcito/Drafts/Ayahuasca

	Home		Talk		Toolbox		Drafts

Intro

Ayahuasca (ayawaska pronounced [aja'waska] in the Quechua language) is any of various psychoactive infusions or decoctions prepared from the Banisteriopsis spp. vine, usually mixed with N,N-dimethyltryptamine-containing leaves of other plant species, notably of the Psychotria genus. The brew, described academically since the beginning of 20th century by scholars who find it employed for divinatory, healing, or festive purposes among Amerindians of Western Amazonia, is known by a number of different names (see below). A notable and puzzling property of ayahuasca is that neither of the ingredients cause any significant psychedelic effects when imbibed alone; they must be consumed together in order to have the desired effect. How indigenous peoples discovered the psychedelic properties of the ayahuasca brew remains a point of contention in the scientific community.

caapi psychotropic

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Phytochemistry and pharmacology The identification of B. caapi active components, and determination of their pharmacological properties proved to be a long, saltatory, and still unfinished task.

Timeline

1905. Colombian naturalist Rafael Zerda Bayón obtains a vaguely crystallized sludge from specimen of (probably) B. caapi he brought back from an expedition in the Caquetá and Putumayo areas. He believes to have almost isolated the active principle of the vine, that it is an alkaloid, and names it "telepathine".

1957. American chemists Francis Hochstein and Anita Paradies, from the Pfizer Research Laboratories, isolate harmine, harmaline, and, for the first time, d-tetrahydroharmine (THH) from botanically well identified samples of B. caapi stems "collected on the Napo River, near Iquitos, Peru".

ß-carboline alkaloids identified in dried stems of B. caapi in at least 2 quantitative studies

Study	Method	Samples	Origin	Harmine (mg/g)	THH (mg/g)	Harmaline (mg/g)	Harmol (mg/g)
Rivier & Lindgren (1972)	GC/MS	13	Mostly from the Upper Purus River area, Peru	2.6 ± 1.3	0.8 ± 0.9	0.2 ± 0.2	Range: "trace" to 0.6
McKenna et al. (1984)	HPLC	6	Mestizo Peruvian cultivars, mostly from Tarapoto and Iquitos areas	3.9 ± 2.5	1.5 ± 1.0	1.9 ± 1.4	0.3 ± 0.5
Callaway et al. (2005)	HPLC	33	Mostly UdV cultivars from "22 sites throughout Brazil" (p. 145)	4.8 ± 2.1	1.0 ± 0.8	0.5 ± 0.2	-

Notes and references

Bibliography

• Callaway, James C.; Brito, Glacus S.; Neves, Edison S. (2005), "Phytochemical analyses of Banisteriopsis caapi and Psychotria viridis", Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 37 (2): 145–50, PMID 16149327.

• Hochstein, Francis A.; Paradies, Anita M. (1957), "Alkaloids of Banisteria caapi and Prestonia amazonicum" (PDF), Journal of the American Chemical Society, 79 (21): 5735–5736, retrieved 2008-01-27.

• McKenna, Dennis J. (1999), "Ayahuasca: An ethnopharmacologic history" (PDF), in Metzner, Ralph (ed.), Ayahuasca: Hallucinogens, Consciousness, and the Spirit of Nature, New York: Thunder's Mouth, pp. 187–213, ISBN 0-87477-911-1 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help).

• McKenna, Dennis J.; Towers, G.H. Neil; Abbott, Frank S. (1984), "Monoamine oxidase inhibitors in South American hallucinogenic plants: Tryptamine and ß-carboline constituents of ayahuasca", Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 10 (2): 195–223, PMID 6587171.

• Rivier, Laurent; Lindgren, Jan-Erik (1972), "Ayahuasca", the South American hallucinogenic drink: An ethnobotanical and chemical investigation", Economic Botany, 26 (1): 101–129.

• Rouhier, Alexandre (April 12, 1924), "Le Yajé : plante télépathique", Paris Médical, 15: 341–346 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link).

• Schultes, Richard Evans (1986), "El desarrollo histórico de la identificación de las malpigiaceas empleadas como alucinógenos", América Indigena, 46 (1): 9–47.

• Siqueira, Denilson Soares de; Pereira, Alberto dos Santos; Aquino Neto, Francisco Radler de; Cabral, José Augusto; Ferreira, Carlos Alberto Cid; Simoneit, Bernd R.T.; Elias, Vladimir O. (2003), "Determinação de compostos de massa molecular alta em folhas de plantas da Amazônia [Determination of high molecular mass compounds from Amazonian plant's leaves]", Química Nova, 26 (5): 633–640, doi:10.1590/S0100-40422003000500002.