Our History on Drugs

spanby Stephen Kiesling
 In ancient Greece, the center of the universe was at Delphi, on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. That center was determined when Zeus unleashed two eagles from opposite ends of the earth, and they met over the mountain. But the more practical draw at Delphi was the oracle at the Temple of Apollo. Inside the famous grotto, beautiful young women breathed vapors emanating from a crack in the rock that allowed them to communicate directly with the gods and to predict the future. The vapors were exhausted by 300 C.E., but in 2002 a geologist revealed that the gas likely had been ethylene, an anesthetic that produces the feeling of floating on a cloud. In other words, in classical antiquity, truly momentous personal and political decisions were first given to young women on drugs.

Our own religious heritage may not be so different. Religious leaders from a variety of cultures have contended for millennia that burning incense helps open people to the spirit. In May 2008, an international team of scientists from Johns Hopkins University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem announced that burning frankincense (resin from the Boswellia plant) activates ion channels in the brain that can alleviate anxiety and depression. Explains Raphael Mechoulam, one of the study’s coauthors, “We found that incensole acetate, a Boswellia resin constituent, when tested in mice, lowers anxiety and causes antidepressive-like behavior.” Or as Gerald Weissmann, M.D., editor-in-chief of the FASEB Journal, explains, “Burning incense really does make you feel warm and tingly all over!”

In July, another team from Johns Hopkins published a follow-up to some 2006 research on psilocybin, a plant alkaloid contained in “sacred mushrooms” that’s been used historically for religious, divinatory, and healing purposes. Psilocybin exerts its influence on some of the same brain receptors that respond to the neuro-transmitter serotonin.

In 2006, the Johns Hopkins researchers gave the drug — under controlled conditions — to 36 healthy, well-educated volunteers with active spiritual lives, and fully 60 percent reported having a “full mystical experience.” In the follow-up study 14 months later, researchers readministered the questionnaires used in the first study, along with a specially designed set of follow-up questions, to all 36 subjects. Results showed that about the same proportion of the volunteers ranked their experience in the study as the single most (or one of the five most) personally meaningful or spiritually significant events of their lives and regarded it as having increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction.

“This is a truly remarkable finding,” says lead investigator Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., a professor in the Johns Hopkins departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Neuroscience. “Rarely in psychological research do we see such persistently positive reports from a single event in the laboratory. This gives credence to the claims that the mystical-type experiences some people have during hallucinogen sessions may help patients suffering from cancer-related anxiety or depression and may serve as a potential treatment for drug dependence. We’re eager to move ahead with that research.”

We’ll explore hallucinogens, or entheogens, further in upcoming issues.