Chamomile? Ayahuasca?
Probably every food or drink affects us in unknown ways. From subtle to striking, some teas can even influence mood and mind. Want to relax? Just about every package of chamomile says this is your cup of tea. Want a psychedelic trip into the recesses of your neurons? Ayahuasca might convey you there. But beware.
In an era when people have access to more than 50,000 foods and thousands of drinks, we cannot know the consequences of much of what we ingest and imbibe. Sure, there are some test results. Yes, there are many rumors. Much of what we put in our bodies is derived from tradition and hearsay. Are you suffering from a cold? Try chicken soup. Chicken soup? Where’s the clinical study? Who cares? Grandma said it works; you have tried it, and it appears to work. But no one really knows why, and no two chicken soup mixtures are precise measures of chemicals.
Let’s revisit ayahuasca. Seems this is the rage tea for those seeking an hallucinogenic release from the past: A “cleansing.” The Peruvian tea is a complex of chemicals that enable DMT to get into our brains without breaking down chemically as it crosses the brain-blood barrier. DMT [2-(1H-Indol-3-yl)-N,N-dimethylethanamine] is suspected to be a natural part of physical mechanism for dreams, so pumping more of it into our brains probably generates the dream-like experience. But evolution seems to have built into our brains a limit on the availability of natural DMT. The tea overcomes that limit because it includes a chemical that keeps DMT from breaking down.
So, there are those that seek an unlimited dream state by imbibing the tea. Yet, there might be, as anecdotes are now surfacing, some very real dangers in trying to enter the topsy-turvy world of unbridled dreams. Suicide and schizophrenia have been linked to ayahuasca by parents and relatives of those whose lives have fallen apart because of this “liberating” tea that is, like chicken soup, not a precise measure of component chemicals, but potentially far more dangerous than Grandma’s soup.
Maybe chamomile is a better choice. You drink. You relax. You dream the kinds of dreams that you have always dreamed, some strange, some scary. And you are assured of waking up sane in the morning just like the person who went to sleep after a warm cup of chamomile.
Probably every food or drink affects us in unknown ways. From subtle to striking, some teas can even influence mood and mind. Want to relax? Just about every package of chamomile says this is your cup of tea. Want a psychedelic trip into the recesses of your neurons? Ayahuasca might convey you there. But beware.
In an era when people have access to more than 50,000 foods and thousands of drinks, we cannot know the consequences of much of what we ingest and imbibe. Sure, there are some test results. Yes, there are many rumors. Much of what we put in our bodies is derived from tradition and hearsay. Are you suffering from a cold? Try chicken soup. Chicken soup? Where’s the clinical study? Who cares? Grandma said it works; you have tried it, and it appears to work. But no one really knows why, and no two chicken soup mixtures are precise measures of chemicals.
Let’s revisit ayahuasca. Seems this is the rage tea for those seeking an hallucinogenic release from the past: A “cleansing.” The Peruvian tea is a complex of chemicals that enable DMT to get into our brains without breaking down chemically as it crosses the brain-blood barrier. DMT [2-(1H-Indol-3-yl)-N,N-dimethylethanamine] is suspected to be a natural part of physical mechanism for dreams, so pumping more of it into our brains probably generates the dream-like experience. But evolution seems to have built into our brains a limit on the availability of natural DMT. The tea overcomes that limit because it includes a chemical that keeps DMT from breaking down.
So, there are those that seek an unlimited dream state by imbibing the tea. Yet, there might be, as anecdotes are now surfacing, some very real dangers in trying to enter the topsy-turvy world of unbridled dreams. Suicide and schizophrenia have been linked to ayahuasca by parents and relatives of those whose lives have fallen apart because of this “liberating” tea that is, like chicken soup, not a precise measure of component chemicals, but potentially far more dangerous than Grandma’s soup.
Maybe chamomile is a better choice. You drink. You relax. You dream the kinds of dreams that you have always dreamed, some strange, some scary. And you are assured of waking up sane in the morning just like the person who went to sleep after a warm cup of chamomile.
RSS Feed