shamans: drug users or healers?

while watching the documentry "Shamans of the Amazon" discussed in this thread it got us thinking and i had a debate with a friend regarding shamanistic healers of ancient times. the question put simply: were shamans drug users enjoying a high, or were they channelling the hallucinogen achieving knowledge and deeper self discovery?

i argued that shamans were unlike drug users of synthetic substances of the modern era for a number of reasons. ancient cultures lived within the harmony of nature like any other species, and part of that included using the environment around them to survive. they would not have considered plants that contained hallucinogenic properties drugs, but gifts from their gods which they used ceremonially to connect and achieve states of mind not possible without them. they had no knowledge of what drugs were, so logically that due to the effects of those plants/fungi/catai etc. they would be quite profound and conclusions would be drawn that they were put there to communicate with god(s). they built religious ceremonies around them and embedded them into their cultures using them to heal and enlighten themselves, to channel the experience.

i dont think they were simply people looking to get high off these plants, and i dont think in 3000 years people will look back at the way we use synthetic drugs as way we view ancient shamans. this is because live in a different age where we know the substance we are consuming is a drug and therefore we wont incorporate them into our culture in such as way that they were able to thousands of years ago.

would be interested in peoples thoughts, especially those who think they were just ancient druggies...

Cowboy Mac said:

[they would not have considered plants that contained hallucinogenic properties drugs, but gifts from their gods which they used ceremonially to connect and achieve states of mind not possible without them.. [/B]

Click to expand...

in older civilization, people refered to anything they couldn't understand as gift of god or hand of god. Nowdays, we understand why it rains or why it doesn't, the change of seasons, or that drugs do what they do because of chemical reactions in the brain to the drug.
The shamans knew what they're drugs did to them, they can't have really hated the experiences they kept on for 3000 years. that doesn't mean i think they were "just druggies". i think almost all druggies including those of our time look to our drugs for spiritual healing and enlightenment.

So i would say the shamans were not just druggies, just as we are not

very clearly reasoned Mac. i think youre right.


...and yay for mushrooms!

IMHO there's a world of difference between shamanism and hedonism. The shaman induces altered brain states to learn, feel, transcend the normal limits of the concsious brain. The hedonist likes to get mad fucked up, y0.

BigTrancer

Traditional shamans lived a pretty hardcore life. It wasn't something that they messed around with.

I know of the shamans in northern Ecuador regularly being killed if the village folk suspected them of causing some kind of bad event.

When they used things like San pedro, they would enforce strict diet restrictions on the participants for several days in advance. The diet would consist of unripend bananas, rice, and not much else.

The San pedro was a medicine for them. The "positive" effects (which we deem positive such as euphoria, laughter, pretty visuals etc) weren't considered the real essence of the drugs purpose. It was the visionary and mystical element of the psychedelic that was the most useful for healing.

You couldn't go visit a shaman on a Saturday night to get LoAdEd. It was all about intent. The shamans intent was to heal, to see into the future, to contact spirits, etc.

I think that people in this day and age are also capable of using drugs with a positive intent, similar to that of the shamans. I'm thinking particularly psychedelics, but thats my personal bias.

Currently, any illegal drug use is seen by society as mindless hedonism (at best, pathological at worst), yet I think we have to acknowledge that there is a middle ground, where drugs can be used in a positive way, without the hedonistic cultural bagage.

I think our current cultural refernce point for this (alcohol) provides a really bad example of future models of drug use. Looking at the ways traditional shamans used these drugs provides an excellent counterpoint to our society's traditional ways of looking at drug use and users.

Hope that made some sense

Using hallucinogens in search of euphoria is misguided. Most experienced travellers in the pychedelic headspace are well aware of the possible ups and downs of the psychedelic experience. Most of them use psychedelics to help understand the mind and the world around them. This is done by providing access to unconcious information which is used to define reality by way of a language/belief system to interpret this information.

However, Terrance Mckenna defined the Shamanistic experience as a definition of reality, not only an interpretation of unconcious material.

Todays psychedelic rituals are different in that they cannot be practised as a culturally accepted methods of healing...

In general, it is my opinion that there is really no such thing as a purely FUN/EUPHORIC psychedelic experience. Its more of a journey that finalises in a set of teachings/lessons to help a person grow.

well said lep.