Chilean Holly: Mysterious & Powerful Entheogen
Chilean Holly (Desfontainia spinosa) is an evergreen shrub native to South America. Its leaves look similar to common holly and it has orange, trumpet-like flowers.
Chilean Holly contains spinosides which are cytotoxic chemicals (toxic to cells) and can cause confusion and death if enough is consumed. Little else it known of its chemical constituents.
Despite its toxic attributes, the plant is sometimes employed by shamans or medicine men to induce altered states of perception, to induce visions and diagnose illness. A strong tea is brewed and drunk while smoking a cigar filled with leaves. It is said that one can truly go crazy with this plant, much like with Datura, another powerful plant medicine.
Sometimes chicha (an alcoholic beverage) is brewed from the fruit of Chilean Holly. It is also used as an Ayahuasca admixture which is a DMT containing, medicinal brew.
It is not widely used due to its dangers and the fact that its not cultivated so must be harvested from wild growing plants.
There is not a whole lot of information about this plant. There are accounts of travelers attempting to learn about the traditional use from shamans of native communities but the shamans were not willing to speak of it. Perhaps this is because it is a plant for psychonautic professionals, not for experimentation or for casual ingestion.
Personal Experience with Chilean Holly
I've yet to make a tea from Desfontainia Spinosa but have smoked the leaves on many occasions, usually mixed with tobacco because the smoke is very harsh by itself. To the best of my knowledge, the spinosides are destroyed by high heat. The most notable effects of smoking this plant include a mild, marijuana like high but with no anxiety or other side effects. I feel that my head is cleared of confusion and brain fog, and my mind and vision becomes sharper, cutting through situations with great clarity. My dreams are lucid and meaningful after smoking Chilean holly.
Recently, I made a 15x extract by simmering the leaves in water for about 90 minutes until most of the water was evaporated. I then strained out the leaves and put the remaining few ounces of water into a pyrex glass dish and slowly evaporated the water until a dark brown, sticky resin was left behind. I scraped the resin and dried it in the sun for a day. I smoke this resin on a bowl of tobacco, it has a pleasant taste and strong effect. Yesterday, I was feeling a lot of brain fog for some reason and after smoking a few hits of Chilean holly, I became mentally as sharp as a tack within 60 seconds.
I have a lot of experience with psychedelics and plant medicines in general so I trust my judgement in smoking Chilean Holly. I don't know if I'll ever drink the tea since I have access to other medicinal plants that are not dangerous. That being said, this article is not a recommendation and is for informational purposes. If you decide to work with Chilean Holly in any way, please do in depth research beforehand.
It is interesting to note the use of toxic substances across the world to induce visions or to heal. Some Native American tribes would drink the fresh juice of tobacco leaves and go into temporary comatose, on the verge of death. I suppose visions come to you when you're about to die. Another interesting medicine is Kambo, the poisonous skin secretions of a rainforest tree frog. The secretion is placed on small, shallow, self induced burns and causes one to vomit and defecate for an hour. However, the following days are marked by increased sense of smell, hearing, quick reflexes, relief of pain and healing of deep illness.
Overall, I feel that Chilean holly has its place in my medicine cabinet, used with clear intentions and with caution.
There is nothing beautiful than nature
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Wow cool, I'd never heard of this plant. Ever tried Calea Zacatechichi AKA dream herb? That was interesting - super intense lucid dreams. So much so that I woke up feeling unrested though, like I'd been busy all night instead of sleeping lol
Yes, I use Calea but infrequently because of the same thing you mentioned, feeling unrested. Any dream herbs I take like mugwort or silene capensis leave me feeling unrested too but also offer a powerful dreamtime experience, which makes it worthwhile. Calea has given me some of the most profound closed eye visuals and very long adventures in the dream realms.
I tend to dream quite intensely as it is, so I don't generally use dream herbs at all. The Calea was so intense, it was like having a whole other life. I should have written down some of it,I forget most if it by now.
I had never heard of that one before.
Mysterious indeed :)
I ordered some Chilean Holly a few years ago and I spent a few days experimenting with it, making a tea out of it, without any interesting effects.
You're so right, there's almost no information about this plant, in fact, this post is the most informational piece I've ever found about it, so thank you for that!
I think I'm gonna reach into my herbs cabinet to find it and try to make a resin out of it, who knows, some plants' active compounds can remain viable for years.
I appreciate the info man!
Cheers
About how many grams of leaf did you consume as tea? I'm hesitant to drink the tea after reading someones horror story. I think they drank 1/2 oz worth of leaf as tea though.
Its true, the active compounds may still be active, let me know what happens.
I don't remember how much herb I used for the tea, but I'm pretty sure it was less than 1/2 Oz.
I agree with you though, we have no shortage of fascinating plants with great benefits that are safe, and those are the ones I'm the most focused on cultivating, sharing and using.
I'm curious, what are some of your favorite plant allies? Both for everyday use and for ritualistic purposes?
Yeah, it might be better to leave certain plants alone or work your way up using them after learning from other less intense plants first.
I consume a large amount of herbs on a daily basis, some of my favorites are green tea, mushrooms (reishi, turkeytail) and various other herbs. It depends on the day and what feels right but I have a large herbal collection. I'm slowly honing it down and figuring out what does what, and also what is not helpful to my particular composition.
Also with power plants, it depends on whats going on phsyically/emotionally/etc. At one point in my life Kambo was very helpful. Cactus and tobacco are probably my favorites.
What are some of the plants to work with? I am on steemit.chat if you want to find me there.
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Hi, thanks so much for this information, probably the most useful and reliable source about the use of D. Spinosa I've found to date.
I live in a pretty wild area in Patagonia, Argentina, and I'm basically surrounded by D. Spinosa, among other endemic species. I think I probably have hundreds of wild specimens in my little piece of land.
I knew for some years of its use thanks to the Internet, and also through the local native people, the Mapuche, who are pretty secretive about, but they always admitted the use.
A very interesting fact is that they also mention that it's similar to Cannabis, and they also say they traditionally smoke it mixed with another native species, which I couldn't find yet which one is it.
I suspect it could be Berberis darwinii or Berberis congestiflora, both almost identical plants containing several alkaloids but little or none is known of its ritual use.
I think your information will be my starting point for finally trying it in a proper way (loved the idea of making and extract of it and smoke it with tobacco), as I've only smoked a few dried leaves some years ago but no effect was perceived.
Let me know if I can help you in any way with your own research on this plant! Best