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compounds. 22 * THE BUILDING BLOCKS The visions, ecstatic states, and flights of imagination made possible by psychedelic drugs gave these substances an important role in many ancient cultures. Hundreds of years of anthropological research have demonstrated that these societies used psychedelics to maintain social solidarity, aid the healing arts, and inspire artistic and spiritual creativity. New World aboriginal people used, and continue to use, a wide range of mind-altering plants and mushrooms. Most of what we know about psychedelics comes from investigating chemicals first found in Western Hemisphere materials: DMT, psilocybin, mescaline, and several LSD-like The depth and breadth of psychedelic plant use by New World resi- dents surprised and alarmed European settlers. Their reaction may have been due to the relative lack of psychedelic plants and mushrooms in Europe. Just as important was the association of mind-altering substances with witchcraft. The Church effectively suppressed information about the use of those materials in both the Old and New Worlds and persecuted bearers and practitioners of that knowledge. It is only in the last fifty years that we have realized that Mexican Indian use of magic mushrooms did not entirely die out in the sixteenth century. In Europe, there was little interest in, or access to, psychedelic plants or drugs until the end of the late 1800s. Some authors described their own "psychedelic" reactions to opium or hashish, but the amount required for psychedelic effects was difficult to consume, excessive, or dangerous. This situation began to change with the discovery of mescaline in peyote, a New World cactus. German chemists isolated mescaline from peyote in the 1890s. The more literary among those exploring its effects hailed its ability to open the gates of an "artificial paradise." However, medical and psychiatric interest in mescaline was surprisingly restrained, and researchers pub- lished only a limited number of papers by the end of the 1930s. The unpleasant nausea and vomiting that often occur with mescaline may have had something to do with the lack of interest in it. Another reason for the minimal enthusiasm about mescaline may have been that there was no scientific or medical context in which to