The Journal of California Anthropology

An increasing number of anthropologists have turned their attention in recent years to the topic of altered states of consciousness, with the result that an extensive list of pharmacologically active substances capable of inducing such states has now been compiled. However, virtually all hallucinogenic materials reported so far in ethnographic contexts have been botanical in origin, even though the wide range of substances and techniques (e.g., sensory deprivation, pain, etc.) used in various areas of the world argues for lengthy and extensive experimentation with most facets of the environment on the part of many generations of native scholars. Reports of apparent hallucinogenic agents of a non-botanical nature should therefore be of more than passing interest, particularly when the ethnographic context involved is California.