Between 2016-17, US comedian Shane Mauss was performing on a tour called A Good Trip, a two-hour comedy show about psychedelics. One of the aims of this tour, he said, was to remove the stigma that surrounds the use of psychedelics. Public Perceptions About Psychedelics Many people have misguided and negative preconceptions about what these substances…
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Luis Tamani is an artist who was born in the Peruvian city of Pucallpa on the Amazonian Ucayali River. At the end of his academic training in art, he was introduced to the hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca, used by the indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon for healing, divinatory, and spiritual purposes. Tamani’s work is influenced…
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Jonathan Solter is a visionary artist from the Bay Area in California. He said he tries “to put as much detail into every painting as possible.” And looking at some of his artwork, this is clear: he paints brilliantly intricate ethereal worlds. His paintings often feature Shipibo patterns (influenced by ayahuasca) overlaid on pyramidal, temple-like and…
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N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a psychedelic compound of the tryptamine family. This family of compounds also includes psilocybin and psilocin (both found in magic mushrooms), which are similar in molecular structure to DMT. DMT is also similar in molecular structure to the neurotransmitter serotonin. Indeed, this is precisely why these compounds can affect our minds in the way that…
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Ayahuasca, the hallucinogenic brew, is a combination of two plants native to the Amazon rainforest: the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and the leaves of Psychotria viridis. The caapi vine contains MAOIs which allow the DMT in the leaves of the Psychotria plant species to become orally active in the human body. If DMT-containing plants are taken…
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