Study on the Active Principle of Yagé

Introduction

The wild Indians of the plains of the Caquetá and the Putumayo, toward the south of the Republic, drink — to bring on a particular state of intoxication — the decoction and maceration of a plant called Yagé, to which they attribute marvelous properties confirmed by the tradition of various tribes.

Accounts from serious and educated persons all agree that this plant produces above all dreams and visual hallucinations, in which the individual under the effect of any one of its preparations sees things that do not belong to the primitive civilization surrounding him, but rather to a more complex one.

Yagé is a vine, a climbing plant, whose botanical classification has not yet been made. That field of experiment is left to the botanist. It appears to be an aristolochia, judging by certain details of its anatomical and histological structure: in cross-section its woody bundles are arranged in a ring.

The first person among us to undertake its study was Dr. Rafael Zerda Bayón, of cherished memory, a true man of science, who spent most of his life observing nature with the conviction that he would one day wrest some of its hidden secrets from it.

He made a celebrated scientific expedition to the Caquetá and the Putumayo with the purpose, among many others, of studying more closely and in detail the active principle of this plant. It was the object of profound and painstaking work, through which he came to suppose, after multiple experiments that did not succeed in isolating it, that this plant must contain as its active principle an alkaloid, which he christened telepatina [telepathine] for the very particular and curious effects produced by the ingestion of its preparations.

Out of respect for the memory of that illustrious scholar, the alkaloid we have isolated — and whose existence he supposed — should keep the name telepatina.

[The author here thanks his thesis director, Dr. Eduardo Lleras Codazzi. Chapters I through III are omitted here as not bearing directly on the drug itself: a general account of alkaloids and their physiological action (Chapter I), a detailed account of the chemical procedure for extracting the yagé alkaloid (Chapter II), and toxicity experiments performed on frogs, rats, rabbits, and dogs (Chapter III). Chapter III concludes by noting that in animals the substance produces tremor, loss of balance, and motor incoordination, and, at the highest doses, a sleep broken by "sudden starts," but no deaths at the doses tested.]

Chapter IV. Action of the Yagé Alkaloid on the Human Organism

First observation. Mr. N. N., aged 24, weighing 64 kilos. He took 60 drops of an aqueous solution of Yagé by mouth and had the following symptoms: twenty minutes after ingesting the preparation he began to feel an extraordinary sense of well-being, mixed with great optimism about the events of his present life and his future, and an increase in memory and intellectual faculties. When walking it seemed to him as though he were walking on air and that his limbs scarcely touched the ground. After thirty minutes he lay down, because he began to have certain subjective sensations: an excessive swelling of the head and an unpleasant dizzy sensation; a heavy sleep then took hold of him, and he had the following hallucination, which he describes thus:

"I began to dream that I had turned into a gigantic man, whose height far surpassed that of the tallest buildings, and at my feet I beheld a multitude of pygmies moving in different directions, who raised their tiny faces to look at me in astonishment and then burst into loud laughter. Then came a gap, of who knows how much time, and I saw on the desk of my room two very small figures, no taller than ten centimeters each, a man and a woman, dressed thus: the woman in a yellow jacket, fitted at the waist, and a skirt of the same color with black ruffles, green stockings, and green slippers; the man in a fitted frock coat and knee-breeches, both green, with red stockings and black shoes. They danced merrily and looked at me smiling, with the utmost coquetry."

The next day I woke up with a slight headache, which lasted until midday.

Second observation. The author of this study, one night on going to bed, took a dose of about 10 grams of an aqueous solution, and after 15 minutes began to see blue spots on everything around him, accompanied by hemianopia and numbness in the lower limbs, fatigue and anxiety with precordial oppression that hindered his breathing, dryness in the larynx, heat in the epigastrium and intestinal colic, a slowing of the pulse, ringing in the ears, and a strange sensation in the scalp, as if it were tightly stretched and pressed against the cranial vault like a cap. A slight chill ran from the nape of the neck to the buttocks like a thread of water. Sensibility remained intact. These symptoms made him understand that he had entered the period of intoxication. On rising from bed, a dizzy sensation prevented him from walking quickly. Rapid measures taken to evacuate the toxin did not permit any accentuation or increase of these unpleasant phenomena. Even so, a heavy, gravitating headache eventually appeared, localized especially in the right frontal region, and it persisted — though not with the same intensity — until the afternoon of the following day.

Third observation. Mr. N. N., a medical student, was very keen to try the effects of the alkaloid, and for that purpose was given a small quantity of a slightly acidic solution, with the warning not to exceed, in 24 hours, a dose of more than 40 or 50 drops. Here is his account:

"I confess that on the first night chosen for the experiment, as I was retiring, I was seized by the fear that the preparation might poison me. After much hesitation, and with my nerves excessively on edge, I finally resolved, hoping for a bizarre, hallucinatory dream, to take only 25 drops.

"I lay down regretting having drunk the preparation, but what was my surprise when, about a quarter of an hour after ingesting it, I felt a great calm, a state of true euphoria that contrasted with my earlier panic. And so great was my serenity that I almost instinctively poured another 25 drops into a little water. I took my pulse. My heart rate, which only a moment before had been 98, had dropped to 76.

"But despite my tranquility, no hallucinations or illusions came, either before or during normal sleep. At three in the morning a hospital orderly came to wake me to attend to a seriously wounded man. I got up without the slightest discomfort or sluggishness, laughing to myself at this so-called Yagé; nevertheless, the following night, on going to bed, I resolved to take the substance again.

"This time I swallowed 50 drops in a single draught. Sleep came as usual, without the least hallucination. I only experienced again the same state of calm and indifference as the day before.

"I must confess that very, very rarely do I manage to dream anything at all. As a rule I sleep through the night without the slightest image or the faintest illusion appearing in that sleep. Perhaps for that very reason, I was able to notice, on three consecutive nights of taking yagé, that during sleep I returned to a clear and precise representation of whatever more important events I had seen or experienced while awake. The most significant things in my daily life would resurface at night, during sleep, with the same precision with which one watches, on a cinema screen, the sight of a place or a building that is familiar to us.

"On the first night, when the orderly came to wake me to attend to the wounded man, after giving him the necessary help I returned to my room and fell asleep again. Well then — although at the time I paid it no mind — I later remembered that I had dreamed of that wounded man exactly as I had seen him while treating him: with his penetrating chest wound, his labored breathing, and his anguished face.

"The next day I was at a social gathering, and that night, no doubt under the influence of the yagé, I again saw that gathering in detail, with the same people and with astonishingly sharp detail.

"On the third day I passed the time reading an interesting chapter of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In that chapter Blasco Ibáñez masterfully recounts an attack on a castle in France. Well then, while asleep, the scene painted by Blasco Ibáñez reappeared with total clarity; I saw myself again holding the novel, reading that chapter.

"In summary: with the 150 drops of the Yagé preparation that I ingested, I was able to notice, over three nights, that I went back to dreaming of the most important things I had seen, felt, or read during the course of the day. It should also be noted that the plant exerts a sedative effect on the nervous system, since otherwise the general sense of well-being it produces cannot be explained. My morning urine had a slight olive-green color and had increased in quantity."

Fourth observation. Mr. N. N., weighing 70 kilos, a timber merchant. On the first night he took 25 drops of an aqueous solution of yagé and, after half an hour, began to feel a sensation of well-being and calm. He fell asleep very quickly and dreamed, with great clarity, of taking a trip to a beautiful town, where everything he saw surprised him with its novelty. The next day he woke up with no disturbance whatsoever.

Fifth observation. The same person, some nights later, took 40 drops of the same solution, experiencing, as before, well-being and calm, fullness of life and joy. Half an hour later he fell asleep and dreamed that he was in a beautiful town he had never known, with magnificent buildings and great crowds of people moving about, which in the dream he imagined to be in Mexico; but all with a perfect clarity, as though he were seeing it while awake. He says he had moments of something like half-wakefulness, in which he realized he had taken the drops of the yagé preparation and was troubled by the fear of poisoning himself — moments that passed quickly, giving way again to the dream of the same town with its sumptuous buildings. The next day he woke at his usual hour with a slight heaviness in his head.

Sixth observation. Mr. N. N., aged 42, weighing 66 kilos. One night, on going to bed, he took 50 drops of an aqueous solution of the alkaloid. Here is his description:

"Twenty minutes after taking the drops of the preparation with a little water, I began to feel a sensation so pleasant, so delightful, with such great lightness in all my movements, that it seemed as if I had suddenly grown young again.

"I took advantage of this state of euphoria to read a book I had at hand, and I noticed that I absorbed the passages passing before my eyes with great ease; but little by little a peaceful sleepiness began to overtake me at this task, and I decided to go to bed. Within five minutes at most I fell asleep, and I saw — something that has astonished me enormously — with startling clarity, a scene from my childhood that I had never dreamed of before and had always tried to forget in the course of my life since those events. Two people who had since died took part in it, whom I saw perfectly, with their most striking features and their complete, vivid countenance, with their characteristic gestures, as if I had seen them alive again at my side.

"After this scene had played out, I saw a crowd of very handsome men and beautiful women, dressed in bright colors, who, holding hands, whirled merrily around a gigantic wheel literally covered with yellow flowers as large as an open umbrella.

"I confess that I almost never dream, not even of the things that have most preoccupied me during the day, in the midst of life's cares, nor even when I fall asleep brooding over them, because the last thought always fades away with sleep without continuing into it."

Seventh observation. Mr. N. N., aged 23, weighing 52 kilos, of a very nervous temperament. One night he ingested 40 drops of an aqueous solution. Here is his account:

"I did not dare to take all at once the 40 or 50 drops I was told I could safely take, for fear of something strange happening to me — poisoning, for example. I decided to take it drop by drop, testing as I went, intending to stop as soon as I noticed any alarming symptom, but happily I found that as I increased the dose I became calmer and more serene. A short time later a somewhat heavy drowsiness came over me, along with a sensation of dizziness and malaise. I lay down, and with rest in bed these unpleasant symptoms diminished until I fell fully asleep and saw the following in a dream: I was walking through a field when suddenly a man of medium height appeared before me, with an enormous head and a highly ridiculous countenance: a parchment-like face covered in wrinkles, malevolent eyes that rolled continuously in their sockets in every direction, a sardonic smile. This disagreeable figure took to pursuing me wherever I went; I fled from him and hid wherever I could, but always, to my misfortune, ran into his repulsive figure again; disgusted and frightened, I would again try to shake him off, always with the same result.

"The next day I woke at my usual hour with a slight headache, still under the impression of the unpleasant dream that the Yagé preparation had given me."

[A theoretical section follows in the original, "Considerations on the action of yagé in man," offering a general discussion of the physiology of sleep and a comparison between hashish and yagé; it is omitted here as it adds no new observations on the drug itself.]

General Conclusions on the Action of the Yagé Alkaloid

Absorption and elimination. — Absorption through the skin is nil. Absorption by the digestive route is rapid: general effects are already observed within 15 to 20 minutes. Absorption by the subcutaneous route generally takes between 10 and 15 minutes. Elimination occurs through the urine, to which it imparts a greenish-yellow coloration.

Toxicity. — Three centigrams of the alkaloid sulfate in aqueous solution produce loss of balance in the frog. A larger dose, seven centigrams, brings death within two hours, with stupor. Rats and rabbits given ten centigrams of the alkaloid sulfate in aqueous solution show symptoms of loss of balance, with tremor and motor incoordination. In man, ingestion of small doses produces dreams. High doses produce intoxication.

Digestive system. — Preparations of Yagé have a slightly bitter, pungent taste that provokes a reflex secretion of saliva. High doses cause heat in the epigastrium and mild intestinal colic.

Respiratory system. — In the frog, rat, and rabbit there is an increase in the rate of breathing. In man there is a slowing. High doses cause dryness of the larynx in the latter.

Small doses cause a decrease in pulse rate. In some cases blood pressure appears to increase.

Nervous system. — In small doses it produces an agreeable sensation of well-being and serenity, and pleasant dreams. In high doses there are hallucinations, headache, ringing in the ears, vertigo, precordial oppression and anxiety, and subjective sensations such as numbness of the lower limbs, visual disturbances — hemianopia and the perception of blue spots — and a sensation of cold across the back.

--- Translator's note: prepared for the archive from the Spanish original; a careful working translation that has not yet been checked by a specialist reader. Roman numerals in the original (e.g. "LX gotas," "XL o L gotas") have been converted to arabic numerals for readability.