"Another intriguing lead was the discovery of plants used to improve hunting accuracy and
effectiveness. Schultes observed the Kofán feeding their dogs a combination of red Datura plants
and tobacco leaves, intoxicating the animal while reputedly improving its hunting prowess
(Schultes Field notebook 1942, p. 44)."
"One of the greatest gifts you can give a Shaman is tobacco"
The relationship with the two sacred plants (tobacco and coca) had by the indiginous people of South America is completely different from the western approach.
If you ever get a chance try rapé, a powdered form of tobacco which is taken by being blown up your nose generally at the commencement of a ceremony.
A long way from smoking a Marlboro red.
Rapé is not the same as Rape, not even close. I know the letters look similar, but they just... aren't. To people whose native language includes accents, the idea of reading one as the other is bizzare.
Not to mention the existence of the common European crop rapeseed, which actually is pronounced exactly the same as "rape" and has been for hundreds of years.
It's the same objective, even if you romanticize it. You're getting high and enjoying it. (I lived in Bolivia, tried coca leaves in many forms, many people literally use it for energy every day, not shamanistic rituals).
I appreciate your understanding of subtances and their uses as it's part of our bad relationship.
However, drinking a coca tea for invigoration vs doing a line in a night club isn't really comparable.
And that's at the personal use level, when you participate in a shamanic ritual, it's a complete different opportunity to use a plant for benefit. When in Colombia I never saw anyone go to a shamanic ritual wanting just to get high.
It's easier just to order some substance and go to town on that. There's no scarcity premium on out-of-your-mind experiences.
If you try rapé, get back to me and tell me how 'high and enjoyable' it was.
I wonder how many different plants humanity smoked before settling on tobacco? The idea that you could light a plant and inhale the smoke sounds crazy and yet over the hundreds of years has become something normal.
I understand this brings some sort of comfort, a crutch, but why it does seem more effective than just modifying ones mood by changing thoughts?
It is the idealist folly to presume that all drug induced states can be produced naturally through meditation and other types of thought training.
However, this is just not the case. Drugs have a limited time of duration. Some, like ketamine, and even tobacco, put the brain in a thoughtless space. And there is no exertion required. That is a great thing about them. When you hallucinate on psychedelics, remembering that you won't be stuck that way, it is very comforting.
On the other hand, natural hallucinations may not have an expiration date. Not knowing if you have become schizophrenic or neurologically impaired..well it is not an enjoyable experience.
The exertion and training required to reach highly altered states of consciousness is not something everyone can produce or is able to afford (time is money.) And these natural states are not identical to the ones the drugs produce, even if similar on the surface.
It's not crazy, or that hard to imagine. Modern people don't deal with fire much, but our ancestors were always surrounded by fire and smoke. In fact, as a smoker (natural leaves only), I feel my lungs take it pretty well, contrary to popular belief. I believe our ancestors adapted to smoke, and eventually burnt enough things to know which plants did what. It's sad in modern times we're completely disconnected from nature and substances that can only be toxic precisely because of this disconnect.
I'm not sure we settled on tobacco. I think it's a legacy of European trade revolution in the last 300 years. Seems marijuana is picking up. Probably other things will come along in future as well.
Regarding discovery of the administration route i think it's surprising from the point of view of city dwellers in modern times but not surprising from the point of view of people who live in nature and smear their bodies with various plant products as pigments and use fire as other people have said. what I think is more surprising than the discovery of the administration route of tobacco is the administration route for yopo, a drug that someone else mentioned on this thread.
For that, people somehow discovered that you need to take snail shells and then reduce them in a fire to quicklime (a very white substance) and then mix that quicklime with
crushed seeds of a certain fern-like plant. Then doing all that you put it up your nose and it gives you some sort of day long hallucinations as a result of tryptamine derivatives. That to me is next level... but perhaps it's not surprising from the point of view of people who are constantly experimenting with crushing plant products to create pigments and then rubbing them on their faces, like many indigenous natives of islands and rainforests around the world. you could imagine the situation where people inadvertently got some pigment up their nose and discovered its effects.
In some sense it's sad that our modern city dwelling lives have become so disconnected as someone else has said from nature.
Regarding the use of tobacco to alter your experience, I think the following is a good additional point to make. You know, it's like overeating. Sure you can tell yourself to stop eating so much or you can tell yourself to eat less, or eat differently, but for many people that's not exactly easy to do and a lot of the effects that they get they can't find, or they don't yet know how to find, in such an easy way doing something else.
these people who already probably understand that it's not healthy for them but they do it anyway even though they could choose to think and act differently. So overeating, or eating your feelings can be comforting, a crutch, and all those people could tell themselves just simply change their thoughts or change their mood or not think too much. That's reasonable isn't it? It's good to remember anyway. Same as with exercising.
But I also think people are not really using tobacco for the mood effect. not everybody anyway. I think some people are using it for the body effect, or the energy effect, or some health effect that doesn't really have anything to do with thoughts or feelings. As an aside tobacco has use in ayurvedic medicine. In the same way that taking some medication to improve some body condition (such as, oh I don't know, say, acne) is not really something to do with thoughts or feelings. No... I'm not discounting the possibility that creating a certain type of correct thoughts or correct emotions can lead to these body outcomes or health outcomes or any outcomes that can be a lot better for the person...but maybe before someone has discovered how to do that some sort of chemical or medication allows them to see that it's possible.
For instance the person taking an acne medication allows them to see themselves as beautiful for the first time or to see that they can have a life or an image beyond these acne that they live with for so many years and then once they are able to see that it's possible maybe later on they can discover the diet or lifestyle changes or energy work or breath work or exercise that somehow creates that same experience for them.
in that sense sometimes these compounds can be like Windows to a possible future to show you some of the things that are possible for you to achieve even when in the future the compounds have nothing to do with it.
So I definitely think it's possible for people to create a lot of those effects themselves at the same time maybe it helps to show them that they can even do that by a compound being able to help them see that it's possible that that is something that they too can experience.
I'll second this, based entirely on personal anecdotal evidence alone: Heavy smoker here, at least a pack a day, and it has to be commercial, industrially manufactured cigarettes. I've tried every form of natural tobacoo you can imagine and none of them satisfy. I've also tried purely nicotine gums and patches, as well as vaporizers, with no serious reduction in cravings for...... commercial, industrially produced cigarettes. Nicotine surely is addictive to a certain extent, but I suspect it's something else, something much more intensely addictive in commercial cigarettes that really creates the powerful cravings. Another possibility: Different smokers are just prone to different highly specific variations of addiction.
