Sandor Iron Rope, president of the Native American Church of South Dakota, looks for seeds from a peyote plant in Hebbronville, Texas. Photograph: Jessie Wardarski/AP
Aldous Huxley wrote about the spiritual visions he had while taking the drug mescaline in The Doors of Perception, while Hunter S Thompson wrote of driving at 100mph while under the influence of it in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
But now a growing number of western spiritual seekers dabbling in psychedelics are accused of causing a shortage of the plant that produces mescaline.
Experts warned last week of a shortage of peyote, a sacred cactus used by Native Americans in religious rituals, which produces the hallucinogenic drug and only grows in limited range across south-western US and northern Mexico. They blame a psychedelic renaissance taking off in wealthy western societies, as well as overharvesting and land development.
Demand for the psychedelic drug, which became popular during the counterculture hippy movement of the 1960s, has surged alongside ayahuasca, a South American psychoactive compound, traditionally used by Indigenous cultures and folk healers in the Amazon and Orinoco basins, and also now widely used by the alternative healing industry.
The shortage is concerning for members of the Native American Church of North America who practise peyotism, a synthesis of traditional Native American beliefs and elements of Christianity that considers peyote a sacred sacrament and has about 350,000 adherents.
“This is a Native American sacred medicine and we don’t want people messing around with it,” said a Navajo member of the church from a congregation in Rio Grande C
ity, Texas, who asked not to be identified. “The Natives people don’t like it. White people shouldn’t mess around with it.”
The Native American Church originated in the late 19th century in the Oklahoma Territory after peyote was introduced to the southern Great Plains from Mexico. Typically the sacrament, or medicine, is taken at night, in a tipi, around a half-moon-shaped sand altar – representing the grave of Jesus Christ – and a fire. The ceremonies include prayer, singing, water rites and spiritual contemplation.
The church has raised concerns about peyote supplies before and met US government officials in 2022 to discuss possible protections for the plant. In Mexico, dwindling peyote gardens compelled the government to enact a conservation law, classifying peyote as threatened and a protected species. But demand among non-Native Americans has continued to grow.
A peyote plant in the nursery at the Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative homesite in Hebbronville, Texas. Photograph: Jessie Wardarski/AP
The drug decriminalisation movement in the US has also added to pressure on the cactus.
Under US federal law, mescaline is a controlled substance, but a 1994 exemption to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act made it legal for Native Americans to use, possess and transport the cactus to communicate with the Great Spirit, alongside the Trinity of the Christian faith, in traditional religious ceremonies.
Colorado and Oregon have legalised natural psychedelic compounds, including peyote, without proper consultation with Native American groups, critics say.
“There was some effort by the Native American Church to reach out to decriminalisation groups to ask them to remove peyote from their initiative,” said Kevin Feeney, a medical anthropologist at Central Washington University. He added that the issue is keenly felt in Indigenous communities.
“The concern is … this opens up a limited resource to mass consumption that will price out people who use the cactus in a traditional fashion for religious purposes and be used by people in a western experimental perspective,” he added.
Feeney said there were a number of factors behind dwindling supplies of peyote, including environmental pressures, the slow-growing nature of the cacti, incorrect harvesting of the tops (or buttons) that contain most of the active psychoactive mescaline and access to land.
According to recent reports, only three licensed peyoteros are legally allowed to harvest the plant for sale to church members across the US, though in order to qualify church members must show at least a quarter Native American heritage, or blood quantum.
Zulema “Julie” Morales, based in Rio Grande City, is one of them. She blamed illegal poaching on the Texas peyote gardens for the dwindling supplies of the prized plant.
“It’s a natural resource, limited in range, that can be harvested and re-harvested, but it is very slow growing and takes 10 to 12 years for the plant to reach maturity,” Feeney said. “If the top is taken correctly and cleanly it will regrow, but you’re looking at many years.”
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