Teen's quest for Amazon 'medicine' ends in tragedy (died to get high)

CNN ^ | Sat October 25, 2014 | CNN

[Dallas59]

(CNN) -- Kyle Nolan did his research -- his mother made sure of that. She didn't want her 18-year-old son heading to the Amazon jungle at all -- let alone, without learning everything he could about the supposed "medicine" with the bizarre name that he insisted would help him turn his young life around.

"I really tried to discourage him ... I kept telling him over and over, there are no easy answers in life," Ingeborg Oswald said.

But she knew she couldn't stop him.

Overshadowed by his "overachieving" triplet brother and sister, Oswald said Kyle "was going through this teenage crisis, not knowing what he wanted to do with his life."

He had dropped out of junior college and was living with his mother, when he somehow discovered ayahuasca, (pronounced "eye-uh-WAHS-kuh") a psychedelic brew that some believe can help users achieve a higher state of consciousness.

[Dallas59]

Sheer lunacy.

[Future Snake Eater]

Natural selection at work.

[rrrod]

normal Democrat..eff em.

[EEGator]

DMT is available in other places than the Amazon.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Misguided soul. RIP.

[varyouga]

Climbing a mountain or popping the hood comes with risks. Don’t do it if you can’t accept them

[GailA]

I agree and the herd of libtards is thinned by natural selection.

[If You Want It Fixed - Fix It]

Read article. Shook head. Mother must have dropped too much acid herself years ago.

[moovova]

Well heck...Lindsay Lohan approves of it. I’m in...

[wintertime]

No mention of a dad in the article.

[Flycatcher]

Read article. Shook head. Mother must have dropped too much acid herself years ago.

Yeah.

They make the Addam's Family look sane.

[Ditter]

J wish they had told more about where the drug comes from. My yard man is from Honduras and he said a plant that is growing in my neighbors yard and hanging over my fence is some he called floracunda. It is big bell shaped pink flowers that when boiled make a hallucinatory tea. He told me about doing it when he was young and it put him out for 3 days.

[madprof98]

"I just think it's become a fad, maybe it's like the LSD of the '60s."

Imagine that. And imagine a parent STUPID enough to let a kid go into the jungle in South America to figure it out.

[bert]

Ayahuasca (usually pronounced /aɪjəˈwæskə/ or /ˈaɪjəˈwɑːskə/), also commonly called yagé (/jɑːheɪ/), is a psychedelic brew made out of Banisteriopsis caapi vine alone or in combination with various plants. It is either mixed with the leaves of dimethyltryptamine (DMT)-containing species of shrubs from the genus Psychotria or with the leaves of the Justicia pectoralis plant which does not contain DMT. The brew, first described academically in the early 1950s by Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes, who found it employed for divinatory and healing purposes by the native peoples of Amazonian Peru, is known by a number of different names (see below).[1] It has been reported that some effects can be felt from consuming the caapi vine alone, but that DMT-containing plants (such as Psychotria) remain inactive when drunk as a brew without a source of monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) such as B. caapi. How indigenous peoples discovered the synergistic properties of the plants used in the ayahuasca brew remains unclear, however many indigenous Amazonian people say they received the instructions directly from plants and plant spirits.

[Lurker]

Morning glory seeds contain DMT as well. Don’t ask me how I know.

[outinyellowdogcountry]

I am speechless. Where did he get the money? A parent couldn’t squelch his plan to go to PERU, to the JUNGLE, to try a PSYCHEDELIC DRUG, pay a large amount of MONEY, to work with a SHAMAN?!! Goodness, these people need Jesus. They certainly seem lost and searching but no idea where to turn.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Should have just smoked some datura or licked one of those Sonoran Desert toads.

[Ditter]

The flowers on the floracunda plant have morning glory type flowers but they are huge, at least 6 inches long. This plant is the big brother to morning glories but I have never seen the seeds.

[X-spurt]

First question that comes to me is where the hell did the kid get the substantial funding to make an Amazon trip for the trip? Likely the stupid ex-hippie Mom. As others say, Natural Selection, Darwin hard at work.

[reformedliberal]

Sounds like Angel Trumpet or datura. They are lovely to look at. I think there are several varieties, some white, some pink. Decades ago, we knew some people who dried the leaves (perhaps the flowers, too??)and ingested them (not sure of the method). Caused massive paranoia and hallucinations. Up here, they are annuals. I grew some one summer. I recall a dark glossy foliage and big pink pendent flowers. I can’t recall, but I think they had a fragrance, too.

I think they are readily available with warnings on ingestion.