Drugs in the Bible on Hancock Official!
Most people today in the industrialised world think that medicine was a barbaric hit-and-miss affair until the advent of science, and that the medicines that were known to the ancients were discovered by trial and error.
Looking closer, we discover that ayahuasqueros in the Amazon have known for centuries at least how to combine plants to unlock spectacular psychedelic effects. Cooking Banisteriopsis caapi vine along with Psycotria viridis leaves means that the monoamine oxidase enzyme inhibitors (MAOis) in the vine prevent the body's MAO enzymes from breaking down the DMT in the leaf. The DMT can therefore migrate across the blood-brain barrier and cause all kinds of magic.
This synergy is unlikely to have been learned by trial and error, given the vast number of plants in the Amazon and the astronomical number of potential combinations - so how did they do it?
Western science only caught up with the medicine men in 1952 when the first enzyme inhibitor with effects on the mind was discovered in the form of Iproniazid. It wasn't even trial and error that revealed this MAOi but sheer fluke, as they weren't trying to find anything of the sort at the time. They were testing it against tuberculosis and noticed by chance that depressed patients were cheering up. Since then, pharma companies have made a fortune with this class of anti-depressants, and today more than 8 million British people are currently on SSRIs, 2 million of them for five years or more.
Amazonian tribes are not the only people who had a functional understanding of synergistic enzyme inhibition, nor the first. Analogous combinations are recorded in an Israelite recipe in Exodus 30, and in Diascorides' description of the Egyptian mendesium oil. Perhaps we still have something to learn about the skilful use of these plants from cultures that revered them as allies and plants of the gods.
In this interview on Hancock Official, we discuss the Biblical evidence for this and other techniques of advanced psychopharmacology, and the impact these preparations had on the Abrahamic religions that influenced Western culture so deeply. We also explore the poetic ambiguity built into those scriptures and how metaphor speaks to the nature of our existence. Then there are adventures with ayahuasca and a flesh-eating parasite in the Amazon, networked intelligence in nature, decolonial ecosystem restoration and plenty more…
Exod(r)u(g)s is a the chapter of Neuro-Apocalypse that explores the subject - you can enjoy it along with the interview on Graham Hancock Official. If you prefer your psychopharmatheology peer-reviewed and with more agonists among the ecstasies (and fewer puerile jokes,) you can read "Getting High with the Most High: Entheogens in the Old Testament" in the Journal of Psychedelic Studies.
