The peyote cactus has been considered a sacred medicinal plant by local cultures in North America since ancient times. However, the plant is now said to be under threat of overexploitation mainly due to its growing popularity and a renaissance in the West for psychedelic drugs, where the peyote cactus has gone far beyond its traditional contexts.

Peyote (Lophophora williamsii) is a succulent plant in the cactus family. The blue-green cactus grows naturally in the southwestern United States and down to central Mexico. It contains several alkaloids, including the hallucinogenic substance mescaline. The plant is slow-growing and can take up to thirty years to flower, but if allowed to thrive it can live for over a hundred years. In Sweden, the plant is legal to grow, but not to cultivate or extract mescaline from. Due to its psychoactive properties, the plant is completely banned from possession in the United States.

At the same time, for over 2 000 years, peyote has been used in religious and ceremonial contexts and for its medicinal properties, as has the closely related San Pedro cactus (Trichocereus pachanoi), originally named by the Inca as Wachuma but later named after St. Per, San Pedro, in adaptation to the Spanish Christianization of the region.

Peyote cactus has been used ceremonially and medicinally mainly by indigenous tribes in North America, including the Huichol, an indigenous people in Mexico. In 1994, an exemption was created in the United States in the form of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which made it legal to use, possess and even transport peyote for traditional religious purposes.

For example, the Native American Church (NAC) is a syncretic religious movement in the United States which, in accordance with this legislation, combines traditional indigenous beliefs with elements of Christianity. It is particularly strongly associated with the Peyote, and has sometimes even been referred to as “Peyotism”. Around 400,000 people are estimated to be affiliated with NAC in some form today.

According to the NAC, there is a story of an Apache woman who fell behind her group during a forced removal by the US government under the Indian Removal Act in the 1830s. The woman was dehydrated, malnourished and near death, but just as she was about to give up, she heard the peyote speak to her and, according to the story, she survived and then took the plant to the Apache medicine men and elders, who began to meditate and pray with it.

– It gave us hope and helped us process our thoughts, emotions and life purpose, Adrian Primeaux, who is from the Yankton Sioux and Apache tribe, explains to AP News.

Described as sacrament

Frank Dayish, former vice president of the Navajo Nation and chairman of the Council of the Peyote Way of Life Coalition, compares peyote to communion as a sacrament in Christianity.

– Peyote is my religion, he says. Everything in my life has been based on prayers through that sacrament.

In both NAC and Huichol’s culture, the plant is considered a bridge between the human and spiritual worlds. In the NAC, peyote is typically consumed during sacred night ceremonies in a hogan, a traditional Navajo building, or a teepee. The ritual usually begins around eight o’clock in the evening and includes prayer, singing and sacramental consumption of peyote. The effect of mescaline lasts for ten to twelve hours and is said to induce spiritual or philosophical insights as well as visual experiences. The ritual ends in the morning with a communion breakfast.

Since 1846, the official Mexican pharmacopoeia has also recommended the use of peyote extract in microdoses as a tonic for the heart. The plant is also used medicinally to relieve fever, healing of wounds, bone fractures and rheumatism. At the same time, according to WebMD, there is currently limited scientific documentation on the medicinal properties of the plant.

Overexploitation

Over the past two decades, there have been concerns about the lack of availability of peyote, pointing out that illegal and excessive harvesting threatens the species and has destroyed significant parts of its sensitive habitat. Members of the Native American Church say the situation has worsened as new groups use it in health rituals.

In Mexico, the peyote is said to have been overexploited to the point that it is now classified as critically endangered and there is now a heated debate about whether the peyote should be cultivated outside its natural habitat. Scientists argue that cultivation is necessary to protect the species, while the NAC believes it would weaken the plant’s sacred position, with many members of the NAC considering the plant’s habitat to be of great importance. Hershel Clark, Secretary of the Teesto Chapter of the Azee Bee Nahagha of Diné Nation in Arizona, believes that the ceremonial protocols they follow were given by the grace of the Creator and have been preserved in their storytelling.

– That’s why we don’t support greenhouses, growing it outside its natural habitat or synthesizing it to make pills, he says.

At the same time, many also advocate for the decriminalization of the cactus among other things to facilitate its cultivation. Particularly in Western countries, psychedelic substances, also known as entheogens, such as psilocybin, have gained strong recognition with a surge in research into the treatment of mental disorders such as depression. In Australia, for example, MDMA and psilocybin were approved for medical use last year. In Brazil, research has also been conducted on the traditional drink ayahuasca, based on Amazonian plants, and its effects on depression. Indigenous people in the Amazon region of Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador have used the drink for therapeutic and spiritual purposes since ancient times.