Do Shamans Take Drugs?

People somehow find me on the internet listed as a Shaman and I often get calls asking if I conduct courses or take on apprentices.
I am often wary of such requests.
Though I haven't yet done so I have been thinking for years now that I need to write some kind of article to send back to these enquirers.

Perhaps it was the books of Carlos Castaneda that kick-started an interest in shamanism in our modern day.
Back in the 70's when I was studying an Anthropology Major I was under the tutelage of Tony Van Fossen (then studying his PhD). I was studying for a Major in the Anthropology of Religion and we were particularly studying apocalyptic cults with an emphasis on Charles Manson.
I have often joked that studying this marrying of psychopathology woven into religious fabric is what sparked my initial interest into the minds and motivations of violent criminals.

I bring Tony into this topic because he was keen to debunk Carlos Castaneda who he claimed was in Anthropology class.
Tony told us that he knew that Carlos did not study Indians but, instead booked himself into some good motels on a number of weekends and 'dropped' a few psychotropic substances and proceeded to write up his tales that focused around a Yacqui Indian shaman called Don Juan.
"Good fiction" Tony told us, "with no basis in fact".

A consequence of Carlos' psychotropic, weekend drug retreats is that his books were more an investigation into the effects of psychotropics rather than Yacqui culture. Richard de Mille debunked Carlos.
Mind altering drugs developed cult followings during the 60's and 70's and I tried a few myself too, though never was I particularly interested in the works of Carlos Castaneda.

during the early 1990's I formally studied drug taking behaviors. Professor Michael Gossop in his text Living with Drugs (right click here) tells us that the social and environmental context within which drugs are consumed is of itself equally as important as any physiological or psychotropic effects of a drug.

For instance whilst many in western culture consider alcohol to be something that lowers inhibitions and can make us 'loud' he states that there is no basis for this within the chemical make up of alcohol and that there are instances where other cultures use it to produce quite different effects such as where one indigenous cultural group who annually perform an initiation ceremony involving all the teenage and adult males being gathered and assembled into a large circle for a whole week periodically imbibing a specially prepared alcoholic beverage. This week long ceremony is a silent and somber affair involving little conversation and completely no 'loud' behaviours. They drink until they vomit (into a provided receptacle) and then fall over into drunken sleeps.
So in other words the same drug can produce completely and even opposite effects dependent upon the cultural setting.
How we act under the influence of particular drugs is largely a culturally based experience and we need to 'learn' how to act under the influence of any particular drug.
Have you ever felt immediately stoned or drunk when entering a room full of people under the influence?

When people email me asking about shamanism (unfortunately) I almost always wonder if they are a seeker of hedonistic drug thrills. When I conduct shamanic workshops I take care to screen out such seekers.
What seems to be so often overlooked is that the drug-taking episodes partaken of by Indigenous people undergoing 'ceremony' were an occasional thing. Drugs sometimes served a central role as part of certain peoples' roles within the ceremonial context.
More often than not the shaman himself (or herself) did not require drugs to be able to have insight into effects.
The ceremonial context was extremely important and was not an hedonist pursuit to be taken lightly.
And not all ceremonial roles involved drug induced alterations of consciousness and indeed often altered consciousness was also derived by non drug means.
Indeed I would hazard to guess that nearly all 'altered states' that can be drug induced were also replicated by non drug means. In other words there were extremely few 'altered states' that could not be accessed by non drug means also.

Many of the strong hallucinogens that were occasionally taken for ceremonial purposes involved extended periods of time and this, I believe is/was because the effects were a long term affair. And more often than not there was an initial period of great and precipitous danger from the toxicity of the plant taken.
Doses needed to be controlled and administered by an experienced shaman who well knew the 'places' the drug might take the traveler and whose role it was was to carefully and skillfully navigate and monitor the initiate throughout the experience. Invariably the shaman, when in such a role was not under the influence of the drug themselves.
Hence the shaman was not sharing this induced drug state but was instead supervising it. The well experienced shaman could easily travel into the places of mind that the drug was capable of producing in the initiate.

Drugs used during such 'ceremony time' were crude and minimally processed which explains why there was almost invariably a poisonous and toxic stage that produced precarious sickness before the hallucinogenic effects came to the forefront. Conversely there was also a 'coming down' stage that also required particular supervision and intervention to make it safe and to minimize bad after-effects.
Initiates were at all times coaxed and guided through the psychotropic process.

I think that one of the great sadnesses of our modern culture is that drugs are taken without ceremony and on a daily or other regular basis. I have so often heard chronically addicted drug-takers say that they need their drugs to make them "feel and act normal".
I have come across people in search of an elusive Australian psychotropic plant called pitjuri and if you ask any traditional Aboriginal person they will more often than not tell you that the plant is mythological. These people sometimes seek me out hoping for a 'pitjuri' experience.
People thinking that I can perhaps initiate them with a 'new, exciting thrill' seeking alternate and hedonist drug highs are discouraged from attending any of my shamanic workshops.
So perhaps next time someone accidentally surfs to me with a shamanic inquiry I shall direct them firstly to this article.

Keep posted.

To read other articles surrounding Indigenous issues go here;

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/750989/anyone_for_free_petrolgas_.html?cat=34
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/752627/could_you_burn_2_million_bucks.html?cat=38
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/765577/indigenous_issues_and_biomimicry_are.html?cat=47
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/805505/where_were_you_when_911_was_happening.html?cat=47
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/807007/the_price_of_petrolgas_is_going_through.html?cat=47
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/805533/sorry_day_aka_reconciliation_day_may.html?cat=33
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/807441/being_raised_in_a_cross_cultural_home.html?cat=47
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/867361/am_i_an_olympic_games_heretic.html?cat=14
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/899759/mirror_mirror_on_the_wall_part_one.html?cat=69
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/905231/chook_democracy.html?cat=75
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/926391/the_flower_calendar.html?cat=74
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/926483/too_much_information.html?cat=37