Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs

An interesting and stimulating con ference was held from January 28th to 30th, 1967, at the University of Califor nia San Francisco Medical Center. The meeting was several years in preparation, and financed by the National Institute of Mental Health. It was an interdisciplin ary gathering of botanists, anthropolo gists, chemists, pharmacologists, medical specialists and others who are concerned with the search for psychoactive plant substances and chemicals derived there from. The topics programmed at the conference related particularly to psychodysleptic rather than psycholeptic and psychoanaleptic substances. The cur rently popular 'mind-expanding' drugs, LSD and mescaline, were not discussed, and nor were the primarily narcotic and usual addicting drugs. The substances dis cussed were Piper methysticum (kava), Myristica iragrans (nutmeg), South American snuffs (epena, etc.), tryptamine derived chemicals (DMT, etc.), Banisteriopsis (ayahuasca, etc.) and Amanita muscaria (fly agaric).