Psychedelics in the Pharmaceutical Industry
Aaron Eschenburg is an Ayahuascero and Astrotheologer. He is the Founder and creator of Ancestral Herbs, a natural plant medicine company, and MiTranscendance Entheo Religious Society. Through his work, he combines ancient wisdom, plant-based practices, and spiritual exploration to support personal transformation and a deeper connection with nature, consciousness, and the universe.
For thousands of years, humans have lived harmoniously with nature, it’s how we survived. Just like the Sumatran orangutan, which crushes plant sap to treat facial wounds, nature has a cure for every ailment. In 1806, just 220 years ago, German pharmacist Friedrich Sertürner isolated morphine from the opium plant, creating the first pure drug derived from a plant.
In the 1820s to 1850s, chemists began isolating other plant ingredients, such as codeine and quinine, with great results. The concentrated, purified doses seemed more precise than the unpredictability of consuming the whole herb. Around the same time, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. This was another shift from plants to microbes and mass production after World War One, which led the way for scientists to experiment with and chemically modify natural plant compounds to design entirely new synthetic molecules.
Natural herbs and plants cannot be patented, but synthetic, lab-made “medicines” can be. By 1899, Bayer introduced aspirin, which was synthesized from a natural willow compound. This truly marked the beginning of the commercial pharmaceutical industry.
At the same time this was happening, John D. Rockefeller earned the first half of his fortune by compromising the oil industry with railroad rebates and high-volume bargaining, manipulating and eliminating the competition. Rockefeller worked a deal with the railroads so that his competitors paid full prices for shipping oil barrels while he paid a fraction of the costs. Not only that, but he got a kickback percentage of every single barrel of oil that his rivals shipped.
This allowed Rockefeller to sell his oil at a fraction of the price to his competitors, allowing him to buy out and completely monopolize the industry, taking control of over 90% of all American oil-refining companies. He made millions, then he turned his attention to monopolizing the food and health industry. He figured out a way to manufacture synthetic drugs from oil byproducts that were cheap, could be patented, and highly profitable. The problem standing in the way was that we already had a working medical industry.
So, in 1901, John D. founded the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, which was the first major institution entirely dedicated to experimental biomedical science. This back-door Trojan Horse, disguised as “philanthropic” funding, shifted standard medical practices away from plants and natural remedies to petrochemical, laboratory-made drugs.
By 1903, the United States had passed the Elkins Act to ban the railroad rebate monopolies, but they had no idea what was about to happen to the medical field.
Rockefeller hired Abraham Flexner to travel and visit medical facilities across the United States to accumulate data for what we currently call the Flexner Report of 1910. His report expressed that the many practices of herbalism, homeopathy, chiropractic care, and holistic medicines that have healed humanity since the beginning of time were “quackery.”
The solution: give away hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to medical schools, only if they taught his new pharmaceutical curriculum. The schools that refused to be bought out were forced to close. The medical monopoly was now a pill-based treatment, as insurance companies stopped covering holistic practices, doctors stopped practicing, and the knowledge stopped spreading.
The next step was the language. Now, technically, no one owns the word “medicine,” but unless the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has evaluated what is claiming to be medicine, the word is flagged and technically illegal to use. Seriously. The words diagnose, prevent, heal, cure, treat, and remedy are all illegal unless the FDA allows you to use them. Seriously.
So, how does one get FDA approval? Great question. The research and development (R&D) trials are about 50 to 800+ million dollars. An extract labeled as a dietary supplement is only $25,000 to $250,000, but it’s still being claimed as a supplement, not a medicine, so the descriptive words are still restricted.
Now, the FDA is in place to create a medical standard so that every crook can’t sell us snake oil, but money rules the world. It’s the reason America uses high-fructose corn syrup and half of Hollywood is on Ozempic, looking ready for Halloween, like walking skeletons with their faces sunk in. Approved!
From 2010 to 2016, Dr. Siyram Pandey and Dr. Caroline Hamm conducted studies with dandelion root tea and leukemia patients, showing significant clinical improvements. Over 95% of colon cancer cells were killed when introduced to dandelion root concentrates in rats and in vitro. Yet, they lost funding for human trials in 2016. How? Why? Because they make more money off the disease than the cure.
We’re all in pain, we all need help. Those medical authoritarians are supposed to have the education to help, but the education has been compromised, and so is the help. The cascading effects of prescriptions can pile up and start to hurt when one prescription causes a side effect, and the solution is another prescription with another side effect.
Sixty-six percent of adult Americans take at least one over-the-counter medication regularly. Approximately 19% of women, 10% of men, and 39% of the trans community use selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). We turn to these legal drugs to help us through hard times and keep us sane. Approximately 60% to 73% of people who take SSRIs for a prolonged period experience serious sexual side effects, like decreased libido, difficulty achieving or maintaining an erection, and permanent genital numbness. This was supposed to help mental health, not numb us.
Almost 11% of the population is on pain medications. Some of these medications can lead to serious chemical dependencies and opioid addictions, resulting in smoke shop Kratom self-diagnosing. Fifty percent of the population over 70 years old are on arthritis pills, which create risks for high blood pressure, heart attacks, and strokes.
Having a hard time sleeping? So are 18% of Americans. We’ll prescribe you Ambien, and you can drive while sleeping, send that angry email, go shopping in your underwear, or rearrange your furniture with zero memory at all!
Ketamine has evolved from being an anesthetic dissociative to an anti-anxiety medication, just like Ozempic evolved from a diabetes drug to starring in a weight-loss epidemic. Yet, ivermectin was looked down upon during COVID-19 when it had shown real signs of combating the virus, and doctors were discredited, similar to the propaganda at the start of the Flexner Report. It’s not about your health, it’s about your money.
History repeats itself. We learn, we do it again and again until we figure it out. It’s been interesting to watch big pharma get into the world of real plant medicines, and ibogaine get that FDA green light overnight. Helus Pharma and Eli Lilly have spent millions and billions on psychedelic mushroom medicines, not to make them legal, but to extract parts from them to sell to consumers.
Texas has approved up to $100 million in funding to advance clinical trials for psychedelic alternatives to current antidepressants and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatments, but marijuana is considered illegal. The plant medicines themselves are still illegal. The ceremony is still illegal.
I have been in the plant medicine world for over 20 years, working with natural plant medicines as well as psychedelic plant medicine ceremonies. I work alongside the indigenous Peruvians and have been leading ayahuasca ceremonies and singing songs for many years. I’ve heard multiple people in ceremony share that 25 years of therapy can’t touch what they’ve just experienced.
The understanding, the healing, the teachings, and the humble surrendering that comes with the ceremony are the medicine. The companies coming in to extract some part of the mushroom or plant to achieve a 24/7 bliss state are bypassing the ceremony itself. It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a broken bone.
The ceremony can be the reset that is so needed instead of masking the pain with more medications. Sometimes people need to go outside and eat some mushrooms to reconnect with the external beauty of nature, and that journey is exactly what is needed. Sometimes we need to go internally and connect with ourselves in an ayahuasca ceremony.
These explorative, higher-dose experiences have a longer sustained response time without needing daily supplements, allowing us to break a habit-forming pattern. There are plenty of safe facilitators out there, but it’s hard to find them, as these mushroom or ayahuasca ceremonies are underground, taboo, and illegal without the expensive, proper legal documents.
So, the plants, the mushrooms, and the ceremonies are all illegal, just like using the words heal, medicine, cure, prevent, and remedy alongside plant medicines and herbal elixirs used to describe their effects on the body when consumed.
We shouldn’t have a monopoly on health. The word medicine shouldn’t be illegal unless the FDA is paid millions of dollars. Safe, original alternatives are necessary that don’t have the same harmful side effects as the oil companies’ pills.
Personally, I always work with the plants and am grateful to my predecessors in the jungle who have continued to teach about the plant kingdom and its knowledge. After a particular ayahuasca ceremony, the message was to serve these plants and make them available for people, just as a pharmacy.
So, I started a high-grade natural plant medicine company, and I actually use them. When I have brain fog and need a natural SSRI alternative, I reach for Pure Being (B. Caapi vine). If I have joint pain, arthritis, or back pain issues, I reach for Pure Vitality, and it’s amazing.
If I start to get sick and feel off, I reach for Pure Immunity (Peruvian catsclaw). If I need to wind down and relax my bones at the end of the night, I reach for Pure Heart (Bobinsana) or Pure Dreams (Piñon Colorado extract). They’re not going to knock me out like Ambien, but staying conscious of blue light intake, eating late, and several other factors help with restful sleep.
When I need to cleanse my gut and mind, I reach for Pure Clarity, and Pure Moon (Uvos Colorado extract) helps with muscle spasms and is the best for the ladies out there with painful cramps.
I personally take these over anything, and so does my family, from young to old. It’s not the McDonald’s bite of the burger here. Even Rockefeller didn’t take his own pills but preferred holistic treatment until his death at 97. One thing we agree on.
We are at interesting times with the health of humanity, as our current medical system is just over 100 years old. Architecture from over 100 years ago is breathtaking compared to today’s standards.
Chinese herbal medicine dates back more than 5,000 years, and the government implements a state-supported dual system where both herbal medicine and Western petrochemical pills operate alongside each other at every level of healthcare.
The pre-Inca Empire of Peru has a history of using plant medicines for thousands of years, and the Peruvian government and medical system work together with modern and traditional plant medicines and ceremonies. Getting our priorities back to basics.
Certainly, technology and surgery have improved and are truly the crowning achievements of modern medicine, but sunshine is medicine too. We need to integrate plants with pills. Ask for and prescribe a day at the beach or a day in the woods for mental health. Prescribe the gym for weight loss.
One day, potentially prescribe an ayahuasca ceremony or guided mushroom trip as therapy. We are making baby steps, slowly but surely making progress.
One hundred seventy of the 195 countries can legally prescribe plant medicines, and it is my goal to help spread information and education where necessary.
Creating the Center of Spirituality and Ancestral Herbs, it is my goal to work alongside the progressive psychedelic pharmaceutical industry as an ally to help reintegrate some of the old ways with the new, while educating people about the plants that the pills are derived from.
If you are inspired, an ally, and you want to donate to the cause, humanity needs all the help we can get! Follow along for upcoming retreats to Costa Rica and Peru.
Read more from Aaron Eschenburg
Aaron Eschenburg, Ayahuascero & Astrotheologer
Aaron Eschenburg is an Ayahuasca Shaman and creator of the natural plant medicine company Ancestral Herbs. Being hit by a drunk driver at 21 spiraled him into a journey of exploring alternative medicines to get away from the side effects of pharmaceuticals. Astrotheology and plant medicines then came into his life at the same time, creating a better understanding of humanity's relationship with our living planet, solar system, and the universe. He now dedicates his life to helping others explore the options of natural healing, entheogenic practices, and embracing the Aquarian Age.
