History of Psychedelics in Africa

Human life was born in Africa, so it figures that the use of psychedelics may well have too. However, in Plants of the Gods, a classic work on psychoactive flora co-authored by LSD discoverer Albert Hoffman, it is claimed that the world’s second biggest continent has few such plants.

The book makes the error of amplifying the mistaken view that Africa is bereft of psychedelics, an idea established primarily by white South African researchers who overlooked the “magic plants” consumed by indigenous communities. There will remain many indigenous practices which have not been codified, but the use of psychedelics in Africa could potentially have been going on longer than in the Americas, or Asia.

“A great gap in the research field was created by the apartheid led academia at the time,” writes Jean-Francois Sobiecki, author of African Psychoactive Plants: Journeys in Phytoalchemy, which was published last year, for Chacruna. In the book, Sobiecki documents 306 plant species which are used for their psychoactive effects in Africa. Other notable African psychedelics include san poison bulb, a visionary plant used by the Zulu tribe; niando, which is said to cause heightened excitement (among other less desirable effects); and mhlebe, believed to have somewhat prophetic qualities. People from the Congo region even have a creation story in which the separation of a divine cosmic mushroom led to the birth of existence, according to mycology educator Darren LeBaron.

The most illustrious “magic plant” of all is iboga, a powerful root-bark from Gabon that can conjure sustained autobiographical visions. The use of iboga has inspired a syncretic religion, Bwiti, that is said to count among its initiates the second president of Gabon, Omar Bongo, who ruled for decades and supported the community. Still, the misconception that plant psychedelics were born exclusively in Mexico and the Amazon (despite the prevalence of magic mushrooms across nearly the entire world) persists to this day, thanks to the whiteness of anthropology in Africa, and the lack of mycologists on the continent. That all may be beginning to change, though.

Two new psilocybin mushrooms were recently discovered in southern Africa, as detailed in a paper published in July after discoveries by citizen mycologists who submitted samples for testing. Psilocybe ingeli, found in South African grasslands, and Psilocybe maluti, picked from atop bovine manure in Lesotho, now join the ranks of more than 200 other psychedelic mushroom species, including 140 from the Psilocybe genus. “Although there are no studies on the origin of the genus Psilocybe, it is possible that the genus originates from Africa,” the paper’s authors go on to suggest.

One of the two mushrooms (which makeup the six Psilocybe species discovered so far in Africa) has a long history of indigenous use by Basotho traditional healers in Lesotho, the researchers discovered after interviewing locals who said the knowledge had been passed down through generations orally. What other psychedelic teachings might have survived thanks to word of mouth elsewhere in the world, the mind truly boggles. Whether Basotho healers can indeed “forsee the future” with psilocybin, and other medicinal plants, remains to be seen but what’s for sure is that it should not be for westerners to rule anything out.

In Lesotho, the healers have their own ways of holding psychedelic rituals. The maluti mushroom is typically consumed in a ceremonial fashion along with Boophone disticha, which has its own powerful visionary effects. The “patient” will relay their visions to the healers “who interpret these as answers to the patient’s spiritual questions,” the paper says. “This appears to be the only recorded firsthand report of hallucinogenic mushrooms being used traditionally in Africa.” Finally, scientists are doing their jobs.

“The recording of traditional uses of hallucinogenic mushrooms by the Basotho people adds to the understudied, often neglected understanding of the rich culture and traditions that exist on the African continent,” the authors say. There have previously been claims that mushrooms depicted in ancient murals in Algeria from some 8,000 years ago hint at a lost history of psilocybin worship. Theories that the ancient Egyptians also consumed mushrooms are rooted in a stone carving that appears to show a figure holding a bag containing foraged fungi.

“The pictorial evidence seems incontrovertible,” wrote Terrence McKenna, the ethnobotanist in his bestselling 1992 book, Food of the Gods. But Andy Letcher, a senior lecturer at Schumacher College and author of 2006 book Shroom: the Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom, maintains that it remains unclear whether “the ancients worshipped the holy spores of God.”

What we do know, now, is that there are yet more communities around the world which appear to have unbroken lineages back centuries, if not thousands, of years to a mushroom-consuming paradise that still exists today. Whether actors within the psychedelic space will devote sufficient resources to studying them further, or investing in reciprocity deals with the indigenous people whose forefathers safeguarded the knowledge in the face of violent persecution, remains uncertain. Either way, western psychedelic renaissance or not, the Basotho healers will continue as they were.