Animals and Psychedelics Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Foreword: Evolution Through Inebriation?

  Introduction: Drugs in the Animal Kingdom and Beyond

  Chapter 1 • Crazed Cows

  Chapter 2 • Alcohol and Animals: From Drunken Elephants to Sauced Snails

  Chapter 3 • Frenzied Felines

  Chapter 4 • Mushroom-Loving Reindeer and Craving Caribou

  Chapter 5 • Galloping Goats

  Chapter 6 • Birds on a Binge

  Chapter 7 • Other “Out There” Animals

  Chapter 8 • Intoxicated Insects

  Chapter 9 • The Lazarus Fly: A New Hypothesis

  Chapter 10 • Animals, Humans, and Drugs: The Why of It All

  References

  Index

  About the Author

  About Inner Traditions • Bear & Company

  Books of Related Interest

  Copyright & Permissions

  Foreword

  Evolution Through Inebriation?

  That animals drug themselves is a deceptively simple statement. Contained within it, as within the pages of this remarkable book, is nothing short of a radical reexamination of what it is to be human. The consequences of this simple truth are both far reaching and immediate.

  Let’s begin by breaking this concept down into two aspects: first, that animals do drug themselves as a nonartificial impulse and second, that they do so intentionally. That they drug themselves requires drawing upon the comparatively precise sciences of botany, chemistry, and pharmacology to discover what exactly are the drug sources, their composition, and their activity. That animals drug themselves raises a different order of consideration. This involves the scientific study of animal behavior, or ethology. Although it may be possible to know through behavioral observation whether an animal is intoxicated or not, and by what means, some of the more subtle—and therefore most intriguing—types of altered states and inebriation can be difficult to discern. Much less can be understood about the nature of that animal’s felt experience, let alone what the individual’s motivation might be for consuming the drug. This field of study, however, promises such fascinating and crucial insights into the nature of consciousness that we are compelled to explore it with every resource available. The results will surprise you.

  We all are familiar with neighborhood cats indulging themselves with garden catnip, and many know about the pet monkeys that enjoy smoking tobacco cigarettes. Most of us have heard of animals in cruel laboratory research clinics self-administering drugs such as cocaine. We can even conjure images of animals, on their own, unwittingly consuming fermented fruits or psychoactive plants and experiencing accidental intoxication. But how many of us realize that—entirely on their own and without the influence of captivity or conditioning—wild animals, birds, and even insects do indeed drug themselves? This deliberate seeking of inebriation among all classes of animals is a perfectly natural, normative behavior. Indeed, the pursuit of inebriation has been proposed as a kind of fourth drive—akin to hunger, thirst, and sex—so ubiquitous is its manifestation.

  Animals engage in intoxicating drug consumption. This fact forms one of the most provocative and original of Giorgio Samorini’s insights: this moment of drug-induced inebriation produces a deschematizzazione, or deconditioning, that allows for new behavioral ways to be established in a species. This prefaces the long-established discovery by R. Gordon Wasson and successive others, that consciousness-expanding plants and mushrooms are key to the origins of humanity itself and the inspiration for religious thought, influencing humanity since remotest history through the present and surely into our future. Before taking this conceptual leap from the influence of psychoactive drugs on human culture to their influence on species evolution, we must ask what distinguishes human from animal awareness, and is it such a great distinction at all?

  Ethology is the science of animal behavior, ethnobotany studies human uses for plants, and ethnopharmacognosy is the science of human use of drug plants. Ethnozöopharmacognosy is the study of man’s use of animals as medicines—bugs as drugs. Drugs of animal origin include serum vaccines, hormones, aphrodisiac beetles (spanish fly), immunostimulating ants, cod liver oil, deer musk, cat civet, psychoactive toad venoms, dream fish, and toxic honeys. These are things that people use. Animals also seek out drugs in their environment for medicinal use, such as purgative grasses. We have learned to observe these animal uses of healing plants for our own drug discovery, and indeed this may be how we humans developed most of our medicinal repertoire.

  A further subdiscipline of ethnobotany is the study of psychoactive plant use, sometimes called entheobotany. Giorgio Samorini estimates that there are nearly 200 scientific researchers devoted to this emerging field of entheobotany, and among us, even fewer investigators of entheozöopharmacognosy, or the use by humans of inebriating animal products. It follows that there is also a study of the use of psychoactive substances by animals. Yet there is currently no name for this line of study and—although it may be fun to create one—this lack of terminology is indicative of the appalling absence of scientific research in this area.

  Animals do use drugs, and within this new study of animals medicating themselves exists the sphere that is the intriguing subject of this book: animals intentionally inebriate themselves. This book addresses the fact that animals drug themselves for more than medicinal purposes; they drug themselves for inebriation. Animals use drugs, and animals drug themselves.

  As this book reveals, the occurrence of animals inebriating themselves is present throughout all levels of the animal world—present, but scattered. Within any species, inebriation-seeking behavior is not shared by all individuals. There may be a rather constant percentage of individuals—animals, birds, insects, and humans—for whom inebriation is a sought-after experience, an intentional impulse. It is not for everyone, so to speak, but there are positive indications that this special, altered minority contributes something beneficial for the ongoing development and adaptation of its species.

  Could it be that animals that consume various plant inebriants develop enhanced senses and perceptual acuity that confer an adaptive advantage in evolution? Even strict biologists agree that behaviors leading to more successful food acquisition or hunting techniques increase survival. Suggestive evidence shows that altered states produced by certain psychoactive plants can allow rigid instincts to be bypassed, enabling new behaviors and techniques to be learned and passed along by the experimentalists of a species. Awareness-enhancing plant drugs are indeed sought out by certain animals. And behavior which increases mating, such as eating prosexual or libidostimulant plant drugs (the so-called aphrodisiacs), means disproportionate breeding by that savvy individual who thus breeds more of its gene type into the species.

  Consider some of the latest discoveries in this ongoing study. Wild chimpanzees in the rainforests of tropical West Africa have been observed intentionally using medicinal plants, which these chimps seem to apply as effective antiparasitics. This chimp herbalist subculture must have developed long, long ago. Its documentation by Professor Michael Huffman of Kyoto University’s Primate Research Institute is having tremendous impact on our understanding of these primates. Even more startling is Dr. Huffman’s discovery of the recreational use of the drug plants for inebriation—Alchornea floribunda by gorillas and A. cordifolia by chimpanzees—as published in the journal African Studies Monographs, Winter 2002. A. floribunda is the source of the plant drug alán, a visionary intoxicant and aphrodisiac used by West African cults. Local people claim to have discovered these uses by observing gorillas become inebriated after eating the roots. The same is said by native Africans of the more widely known eboka, Taberna
nthe iboga, a potent psychoactive root used in an initiation ceremony in the Bwiti religion in Gabon. Samorini himself is an initiate of this modern eboka order.

  Gorillas really do know to dig roots of the iboga bush, they know how to distinguish this particular species amongst the bewildering number of plants in the rainforest and selectively decide to eat these extremely bitter roots for the sole purpose of experiencing the impressive psychoactive effects produced by its indole alkaloids. One must remember that the task of finding such a nondescript rainforest bush in the wild is no simple matter. It requires a level of sophistication and learning thatmodern botanists rarely possess.

  What can we conclude from the fact that there are ants engaged in an elaborate relationship with a species of beetle that they host in their nests? A Coleopter beetle whose inebriating abdominal secretions are so desired by the ants that, should the colony be disturbed, they forego rescuing their own larvae to protect the beetle, and even under nonemergency conditions the ants drug themselves to the point of losing their ability to work and creating sterile queens. Why do they do this?

  Does it surprise us that reindeer eat fly agaric mushrooms or that bighorn sheep selectively seek out, and repeatedly consume, psychoactive lichen for the sake of an altered state of consciousness—not by accident, but with foreknowledge and premeditation?

  Intention is at the crux of understanding the significance of these behaviors: whether the animals know what will happen from the drug experience and seek it out. Since these are indisputable facts, better we ask: Why would it surprise us? Is it that such behavior would be unique to humans, a kind of hallmark of intelligence or consciousness? Is knowledge and premeditation a precious defining line between animal and human consciousness? Why would we care to draw a line? In studying the drug-seeking behaviors of animals we may find answers that explain parallel human behavior. Do animals pursue psychoactive drugs for the same reasons as we humans do? If animals, birds, and, yes, even insects avail themselves of inebriation, then we must see this as a natural impulse to take drugs to alter consciousness, and it exists in man as well. Perhaps, then, the problem of “problem drugs” is no problem after all.

  Fortunately science, and not soft thinking, surrounds the relevant disciplines relied upon as background in Animals and Psychedelics. Conclusions may be drawn, but they are always done so at the risk of being drawn out, attenuated by speculative deduction. Here is where Giorgio Samorini does not fail us. He thoroughly presents the most thought-provoking facts, arranging them for our contemplation without surrendering to conclusions. By bringing us to the vista point, showing us the expansive natural panorama, enumerating the many details, and presenting what is known about how it came to be, he leaves us to find our own aha!

  ROB MONTGOMERY,

  Founder of Botanical Preservation Corps

  Introduction

  Drugs in the Animal Kingdom and Beyond

  When we speak of drugs, most people immediately associate them with the “drug problem,” bringing us to a communal vision that perceives drugs and the drug problem as identical. This negative connotation surrounding the concept of drugs is even more greatly exacerbated in a cultural environment that negates the slightest useful significance to the act of drugging oneself.

  Drugs are harmful; drugs are a vice; drugs are symptoms of individual and social unease and suffering—such judgments, often implied, create in the collective mind the concept that the use of drugs is an aberrant behavior specific to the human species.

  Contradicting this paradigm of modern Western thought is a collection of data that has become ever more conspicuous and incontestable—although it continues to be underestimated—that clearly demonstrates that self-drugging behavior is also widespread throughout the animal world. A few cases of animal addiction have been widely known for some time but not considered seriously, since researchers simply followed the rule—which Westerners vigorously obey—of not pursuing, not being interested in inexplicable data or facts in strong contradiction to established interpretive models. At best a scrupulous ethologist here or there interpreted these bizarre animal behaviors in psychological terms, as symptoms of some illness or imbalance in the animal, thus projecting onto the animal world the same pathological analysis attributed to the human species.

  In the past few decades, however, with the adoption of ever more refined techniques of observation and the centralization of data gathered from every region of the globe, ethologists are accumulating a mass of factual information about animals that drug themselves voluntarily, so that the pertinent data can no longer be underestimated. What seemed at first to be an exception now appears to be, instead, a behavioral rule scattered throughout all levels of the animal world—from mammals to birds and even insects—so that the interpretation of such behavior as a particular and individualized symptom of illness is no longer valid and acceptable. One must suspect, instead, that in the behavior of animals—and therefore, of human beings—the consumption of drugs constitutes some natural component. In other words, the appropriate drug triggers, within a given animal, some natural function not yet understood. For a more in-depth analysis of the motivations that drive animals and humans to drug themselves, the reader can refer to the final chapter of this brief study.

  The first references of a scientific character made to the use of drugs by animals seem to date back to the second half of the nineteenth century. Paolo Mantegazza, in his monumental work on drugs, reported that these “nerve nourishers,” as he loved to define them, “are almost exclusively used by man, who is imbued with a nervous system and life more complex than all other animals. Among these, those who are closest to us in intelligence may find [drugs] pleasurable when they learn to know them in a condition of domestication. Monkeys, parrots, and even dogs often love coffee and tea to the point of transport; but in nature they do not know how to find them by instinct.”

  But in a footnote he was quick to add: “The progresses of science are greatly devaluing this last, too resolute statement. Perhaps not even the use of ‘nerve nourishers’ is a purely human characteristic: Cats eat catnip and valerian, surely not to feed themselves but to become intoxicated.” So, too, Mrs. Loreau, Livingstone’s translator, states that elephants in some places search avidly for a certain fruit that inebriates them, enjoying their drunkenness very much. Darwin frequently observed monkeys, when given the opportunity, smoking with pleasure, and Brehm assures us that in northeastern Africa the natives capture monkeys by offering them pitchers full of a very strong beer that makes them drunk (Mantegazza 1871, 1:174–75).

  Before going on to demonstrate the data on the various animals that drug themselves, I would like to pause and examine some of the definitions regarding the complex relationship of animals with drugs.

  A primary problem concerns the very definition of what is or is not a drug. Such a definition is not precisely formulated in the field of human drugs and becomes even more problematic if we consider the drugs ingested by animals, since defining a given substance as a drug depends on the behavior that the use of the substance induces in a human being or animal.

  If we think of drugging oneself in terms of dependence and addiction, we might define a drug as something that creates in its user a strong behavioral dependence, the deprivation of which brings on an obvious crisis of withdrawal. But then food, too, would conform to such a definition, since it is something on which we are continually dependent, the deprivation of which induces the most evident and critical withdrawal of all: hunger leading to potential starvation. Apart from this consideration, a substantial number of substances that human beings use as drugs do not induce any physical dependency, nor do they lead to crises of withdrawal—for example, the entire class of hallucinogens.

  Or we could define drugs as those substances that act on the nervous system, but in this case, as well, the boundaries between drugs, medicines, and food are not clear. Various components in different foods and in the most commonly prescribed medicines affect th
e nervous system, and there are substances that act on the nervous system yet do not necessarily make the user feel drugged.

  Furthermore, we could define drugs as any substances that, when ingested, lead to uncommon and bizarre behaviors. This would seemingly address the case of both people and elephants who drink alcohol. In fact, it is precisely the observation of bizarre behavior in animals following ingestion of a given substance that causes us to assume that the substance involved acts as a drug. But in this case, also, there are innumerable substances and types of behavior that escape such a pat definition. There are people, for example, who, after taking lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), sit peacefully in an armchair—reading, writing, or simply thinking, without demonstrating any type of behavior that might lead a third party to believe them to be under the influence of a powerful hallucinogenic drug.

  But then, what is it that makes a person say, “I feel drugged”? It is a mental dimension clearly recognizable as different from the person’s ordinary mental dimension, induced by the administration of some determined substance that the individual and/or society in general characterizes as a drug. Yet even this is a limited definition. Most smokers do not even perceive the mental dimension induced by tobacco and consider themselves drugged only at the point in which they begin to recognize their addiction to cigarettes. (How many times I’ve heard people talk of “alcohol and drugs” or “tobacco and drugs,” demonstrating their conviction, as erroneous as it is deep-seated, that alcohol and tobacco are not drugs, since they are not illegal substances!)