Bringing the Ancient Potion to the City:
An Interview with Jimmy Weiskopf
By Jason Webb
BOGOTA, Colombia, Jan 3 (Reuters) - They crouch
in a daze as the shaman plays the harmonica, forcing themselves
to gulp down a murky liquid so bitter it makes them sick.
It is a long, dizzy night in a smoky room wheezing
with ritual music. But, perhaps just a precious few times, with
their eyelids clamped shut, the brew takes effect and they see
visions. Colors flow into shapes, swirl then snap into focus.
Stick men may appear, or totemic animals such as
the boa constrictor or tiger, or Indian villages or submarine
cities.
When morning comes, it's back to reality for the
groups of people around Colombia's capital Bogota who have been
drinking yage, an Amazonic potion which is attracting a following
among urban intellectuals and artists. But, as the shaman packs
away his ritual fan and the nocturnal imbibers emerge blinking
into the traffic, they hope reality won't seem quite the same.
Yage makes you vomit repeatedly and gives you diarrhea.
But users say they feel physically cleansed, as well as mentally
reinvigorated by a sense of meaning attendant on the visions,
a conviction of the existence of a world beyond the material.
In the 1950s, the writer William Burroughs, a dedicated
drug addict and proto-drop-out, found out about the vile, bitter-tasting
brew and came to South America to look for it.
"All Medicine Men use it in their practice to
foretell the future, locate lost or stolen objects, name the perpetrator
of a crime, to diagnose and treat illness," he wrote in a
letter to the British Journal of Addiction, in which he recommended
scientific research, speculating "perhaps even more spectacular
results could be obtained with synthetic variations."
But the history of yage far predates Western counter-culture.
For centuries, the potion, together with the gnarled jungle vine
used to brew it, have been central to the religions of dozens
of South American Indian ethnic groups.
American-born Jimmy Weiskopf, a slightly-built 60-year-old,
quotes an Indian shaman, or "taita", in his new book
"Yage, the new purgatory".
"When I am drunk with yage," one of them
explains, "I fly up to the Milky Way and talk with the spirits
and they tell me how to cure. Sometimes, in these visions, they
show me a particular plant and the next day I go to the forest
tofind that plant and am able to cure the sick person."
VINE OF THE DEAD
Yage is a Colombian name. Peruvians use the Quechua
word "ayahuasca", meaning "vine of the dead"
or "vine of souls". The drink contains the chemical
dimethyltryptamine, or DMT -- a compound which is outlawed in
the United States and produces a similar class of effects to psychedelic
drugs such as LSD.
Perhaps with an eye to following the advice of William
Burroughs, a California-based businessman patented the yage vine
in the 1980s, although U.S. authorities took away the rights a
decade later after complaints by Amazon
Indians.
U.S. law enforcers frown on yage, even if they have
sometimes found it hard to explain exactly why. A federal judge
recently ruled customs agents violated religious freedoms when
they confiscated ingredients from a Brazilian-inspired Church,
known as the "Union of the Vegetable", which used the
brew in ceremonies in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The judge also said
there was no proof that it was harmful.
Its use is permitted in much of South America, and
has a certain cache in the arty circles of Bogota, where even
the mayor, a former mathematics professor, has tried it.
Of dubious legality or not in the United States,
the Internet is full of ayahuasca information for American dabblers
in drugs.
Often describing their visions in terms more reminiscent
of sci-fi movies than religious experience, many trippers dwell
on the horrible side effects and one recounts how he tried, unsuccessfully,
to drown out the flavor with
syrup.
A typical excerpt: "A little after 1:30, R got
up to puke. K puked a little after that. Soon they were on their
way to join me. We all arrived in hyperspace
around 1:45 or so."
Such louche accounts of narcotic tourism could hardly
be further removed in tone from Weiskopf's professions of respect
for the vine, which he insists is a sacred plant.
SHAMANS FLEE TO CITIES
He has taken the stuff for more than a decade,
since his teenage sons returned from a holiday with their mother
in the jungles of Putumayo in southern Colombia and intrigued
their father with a story of drinking yage in an Indian village.
"It seemed to have changed them, it seemed to
have made them more mature and it seemed to have been a very interesting,
illuminating experience for them," Weiskopf told Reuters
at a cafe near his Bogota home.
These days, his yage sessions generally take place
with friends in the capital city. The 38-year-old war which scours
Colombia's countryside has forced many Indians, including taitas,
to seek refuge in urban centers in the past few years, spreading
the practice of taking their visionary drink.
In his book, so far published only in Spanish but
eventually to be available in English, Weiskopf likens the sense
of their own insignificance which is impressed on yage users to
the humbling message of many religions.
Those who drink see their faults with great clarity
and are therefore enabled to heal emotional problems, he said,
also ascribing great medicinal properties
to the brew because of its ferocious expulsion of toxins from
the body.
Yage is not addictive, users say, in fact quite the
opposite. At least one doctor has claimed that he has successfully
cured addictions to cocaine using the potion.
Weiskopf, who has only rarely drunk yage without
the guidance of a taita, dismisses suggestions the drink, with
its messy excretory effects, could become a recreational drug.
While its visions offer glimpses of the sublime,
a world in which users feel hidden spirits are revealed to them,
a night of yage-drinking can often warm up with diabolic apparitions
and a terrifying conviction of imminent death.
"I think there's a spirit in the bottle and
you have to liberate that spirit. Now I think if you don't have
a ritual and you don't do it on a special occasion with reverence
and with seriousness probably you're going to have a very flat
experience," said Weiskopf.
