New mescaline concentrations from14 taxa/ cultivarsof echinopsis spp.(cactaceae) (“sanpedro”)and theirrelevancetoshamanicpractice

G Model JEP 6221 1–7

ARTICLE IN PRESS
Journal of Ethnopharmacology xxx (2010) xxx–xxx

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Journal of Ethnopharmacology
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New mescaline concentrations from 14 taxa/cultivars of Echinopsis spp. (Cactaceae) (“San Pedro”) and their relevance to shamanic practice
Olabode Ogunbodede a ,Douglas McCombs a , Keeper Trout b , Paul Daley c , Martin Terry a,b,∗
a b c

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Sul Ross State University, Department of Biology, Alpine, TX 79832, USA Cactus Conservation Institute, 909 E. Sul Ross Ave., Alpine, TX 79830, USA California Pacific Medical Center, Addiction Pharmacology Research Laboratory, P.O. Box 7999, San Francisco, CA 94120, USA

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a r t i c l ei n f o

a b s t r a c t
Aim of the study: The aim of the present study is to determine in a procedurally uniform manner the mescaline concentrations in stem tissue of 14 taxa/cultivars of the subgenus Trichocereus of the genus Echinopsis (Cactaceae) and to evaluate the relationship (if any) between mescaline concentration and actual shamanic use of these plants. Materials and methods:Columnar cacti of the genus Echinopsis, some of which are used for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes by South American shamans in traditional medicine, were selected for analysis because they were vegetative clones of plants of documented geographic origin and/or because they were known to be used by practitioners of shamanism. Mescaline content of the cortical stem chlorenchyma of each cactus wasdetermined by Soxhlet extraction with methanol, followed by acid–base extraction with water and dichloromethane, and high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC). Results: By virtue of the consistent analytical procedures used, comparable alkaloid concentrations were obtained that facilitated the ranking of the various selected species and cultivars of Echinopsis, all of which exhibited positivemescaline contents. The range of mescaline concentrations across the 14 taxa/cultivars spanned two orders of magnitude, from 0.053% to 4.7% by dry weight. Conclusions: The mescaline concentrations reported here largely support the hypothesis that plants with the highest mescaline concentrations – particularly E. pachanoi from Peru – are most associated with documented shamanic use. © 2010 Publishedby Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

Article history: Received 17 April 2010 Received in revised form 29 May 2010 Accepted 6 July 2010 Available online xxx Keywords: Traditional medicine Shamanism Echinopsis Trichocereus San Pedro Analytical chemistry Mescaline

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1. Introduction The portion of the genus Echinopsis (Cactaceae) that was formerly known as Trichocereus(Friedrich, 1974; Rowley, 1974) consists of largely columnar cacti native to the Andean slopes of Ecuador, Peru, northern Chile, and Bolivia. Several species of Echinopsis are used for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes by indigenous practitioners. Such use is evidently based on their psychoactive properties due to their mescaline content (Dobkin de Ríos, 1972). The species most widely and frequentlyused in this manner, viz., Echinopsis pachanoi (Britton and Rose) Friedrich and Rowley (E. pachanoi), Echinopsis peruviana (Britton and Rose) Friedrich and Rowley (E. peruviana) and Echinopsis lageniformis (Foerster) Friedrich and Rowley (E. lageniformis), are often referred to in Spanish as San Pedro, alluding to St. Peter’s role as the gatekeeper to heaven (Schultes and Hofmann, 1980). The singlemost commonly utilized species, E. pachanoi, has been cultivated for such a long time that it is difficult to determine its geographic origin and natural habitat (Britton and Rose, 1920; Yetman, 2007).

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Abbreviations: AUFS, absorbance units full scale; C, centigrade; ca., circa (approximately); cf., confer (compare); cm3 , cubic...