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- Indigenous knowledge guides BPRA’s coca research and is considered foundational, not supplementary.
- Coca leaves offer balanced energy, altitude support, and digestive benefits—distinct from isolated cocaine.
- Environmental degradation is causing irreversible loss of medicinal plants in the Amazon every two years.
- Pharmaceutical extraction often ignores cultural origins and oversimplifies plant healing.
- BPRA’s ethical model resists capitalist speed to prioritize consent-based, slow research with Indigenous partners.
When most people hear “coca plant,” they automatically think of cocaine—a narrative shaped more by political fear than botanical truth. But to the Indigenous communities of the Andes, coca is a sacred, healing plant that predates modern pharmacology by thousands of years. Today, as psychedelic research expands and as changes in the weather become a bigger problem, experts are pushing to reevaluate the coca plant not as a criminalized substance, but as something with cultural, ecological, and medicinal significance.
The Revival of BPRA and Its Mission
The Beneficial Plant Research Association (BPRA) was originally founded in 1979, during a blossoming era for psychedelic and botanical research. The organization was built on a visionary foundation, merging the insights of ethnobotanist Tim Plowman and Dr. Andrew Weil, an integrative medicine icon. Their central mission: to uncover and preserve the medicinal properties of plants like the coca plant through cross-cultural, ethical research practices. However, this promising momentum would prove short-lived.
As the 1980s unfolded, so too did a new political chapter marked by rigid drug policy enforcement. The Reagan administration’s War on Drugs triggered a cultural and legal backlash that silenced multiple threads of research into plant medicine, including studies on coca. The BPRA's operations were suspended, and its work faded into obscurity along with broader psychedelic inquiry.
Fast forward more than four decades, and the BPRA is now being resurrected amid new cultural, ecological, and scientific awakenings. Under renewed leadership that includes Dr. Weil and renowned psychedelic researcher Dennis McKenna, the BPRA is repositioning itself for modern relevance. Their updated mission now emphasizes preserving biodiversity, facilitating ethical collaborations with Indigenous cultures, and revitalizing ancestral knowledge—especially as the changing weather tightens its grip on the planet (Carreón, 2024).
Redefining “Plant Medicine”: It’s Not Just Psychedelics
When modern audiences hear “plant medicine,” popular psychedelics like ayahuasca, psilocybin mushrooms, or San Pedro often come to mind. These consciousness-expanding substances have become synonymous with spiritual exploration, psychological healing, and even biohacking trends. However, this is only one note in a large and varied tradition of botanical healing.
From the perspective of Indigenous herbalists, anthropologists, and ecological scientists, plant medicine refers to a vast array of flora that support well-being—physically, spiritually, emotionally, and environmentally. Under this wider umbrella, everyday medicinal plants like lemon balm, cacao, and coca assume just as vital a place as their more psychedelic relatives.
The coca plant, in particular, defies classification as merely a stimulant or dangerous alkaloid source. Rooted in ancestral ceremonies, coca holds an integral function in digestion, improving mood, stamina enhancement, and spiritual attunement. It’s a plant woven into the very fabric of life in Andean cultures, used in rituals that extend across millennia. Unlike the synthesized drug derived from it, whole leaf coca plays a harmonious rather than disruptive role in health.
Understanding coca as plant medicine requires moving beyond the reductionist lens that isolates “active ingredients.” Instead, it demands a holistic view of plant synergy—the idea that a plant’s complete matrix, including nutrients, minor alkaloids, enzymes, and even its cultural context, contributes to its power.
Indigenous Knowledge as a Scientific Backbone
Modern psychedelic research is finally beginning to tip its hat to the Indigenous systems that discovered, nurtured, and safeguarded these plant medicines in the first place. In the case of the coca plant, this deference isn’t just a gesture—it’s a necessity.
Laura Ash, operations director of the BPRA and a clinical herbalist with decades of experience, explains that every research initiative begins by obtaining “free, prior informed consent” from Indigenous communities. More importantly, those communities aren't just informed—they lead the work. Their epistemologies, protocols, and spiritual systems guide how studies are designed, conducted, and interpreted (Carreón, 2024).
This isn’t merely an ethical stance—it’s also a deeply practical one. Indigenous people are estimated to manage up to 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. That makes their cultural knowledge indispensable for conservation and understanding complex ecological webs. They've not only preserved genetic seed banks and medicine forests, but also developed medical ways of thinking that Western science is only starting to grasp.
From dosage and synergistic pairings to ceremonial use and contraindications, Indigenous knowledge systems are robust, relational, and deeply insightful. They provide the experiential data that Western pharmacology so often lacks.
Coca Leaf Benefits: Much More Than a Stimulant
The narrative surrounding coca typically focuses on one notorious compound: cocaine. Yet this alkaloid is merely one of over a dozen present in the coca leaf—most of which work in harmony to energize, nourish, and protect the body.
In its raw form, coca has been used for centuries as a safe, daily supplement by Indigenous peoples in high-altitude regions. Chewed or brewed as tea, coca leaves offer a mild stimulant effect similar to—but far more balanced than—coffee. Rich in calcium, iron, and vitamins B1, B2, and C, the leaves also contain enzymes and trace elements that support digestion and stamina.
Individuals living in harsh mountainous areas often use coca to prevent altitude sickness, increase oxygen uptake, and reduce fatigue. Travelers to Andean regions are frequently offered mate de coca (coca tea) as a digestive and energizing tonic. According to Ash, “There’s one alkaloid in the whole coca plant that makes cocaine. The rest helps with digestive issues, supports energy, and helps at high altitudes” (Carreón, 2024).
Unlike cocaine, which spikes dopamine and inflates the ego before crashing energy levels, coca leaf offers a sustained and stable lift. In this way, it's far more aligned with adaptogenic herbs like rhodiola or eleuthero, which help the body adapt to stress rather than override its limits.
Ecological and Cultural Significance: A Keystone Species
Beyond individual health, coca plays a key role in the health of entire ecosystems. The BPRA categorizes plants like coca as “keystone species”—plants that hold together biodiversity in their local environments. Keystone species influence the balance, productivity, and resilience of the ecosystems they belong to.
In Amazonian and Andean areas, coca coexists with many different kinds of mycorrhizal fungi, pollinators, and interdependent flora. In many Indigenous agricultural systems, coca is intentionally grown alongside other medicinal and ceremonial plants, helping them grow well together and protecting them.
But this precious interconnectivity is under threat. The dual forces of the changing weather and extractive industrialism are rapidly degrading the Amazon and highland ecosystems. Without immediate protective legislation and Indigenous land rights, species like coca may disappear before their full stories are told.
Laura Ash underscores this urgency: “Every two years, we’re losing [plant] medicine in the Amazon because of environmental degradation” (Carreón, 2024).
Colonialism, Pharma, and the Extraction Mindset
Coca’s criminalization has less to do with pharmacology than it does with colonial geopolitics. Tracing back to the early 20th century and amplified in the 1980s, coca became a scapegoat in U.S.-driven anti-drug campaigns rooted in racialized fear and imperial control.
As the War on Drugs escalated, coca fields were eradicated through forceful, often violent military interventions. This devastated Indigenous livelihoods and spiritual life without offering sustainable alternatives or honoring the plant’s traditional uses.
Meanwhile, modern pharmaceutical companies have been quick to extract compounds from psychedelic and botanical sources, filing patents with minimal engagement with Indigenous contexts. This commodification of sacred knowledge continues to this day, as synthetic variations of ayahuasca, psilocybin, and yes, even coca-derived compounds, enter the market at record speed.
The BPRA takes a radical stance in resisting this extractive model. Their work is guided by the belief that no compound should be isolated, synthesized, or commercialized without free, prior informed consent and cultural reciprocity.
Synthetic vs. Natural: What’s Lost in the Lab?
Synthetic drugs offer logistical appeal. They're consistent, scalable, and easier to regulate. Clinical trials have shown promising results for lab-produced psilocybin in treating depression, PTSD, and addiction.
However, many ethnobotanists warn that synthetic versions often lack the depth and subtlety of natural medicine. This is due to what’s called the “entourage effect,” wherein the sum of a plant’s compounds produces more holistic impact than any one molecule alone.
Coca demonstrates this perfectly. While lab-produced cocaine wreaks havoc on the body and psyche, the complete coca leaf offers harmony and health. Isolating a single alkaloid removes not only the balancing compounds but also the plant’s cultural and ecological intelligence.
The same can be said for cannabis, mushrooms, and ayahuasca. In botanical medicine, context is chemistry. Without it, synthetic replicas become echoes that lack soul.
Morning Glory, Mushrooms, and Ancient Psychedelic Contexts
Coca joins a pantheon of misunderstood sacred plants. Morning glory seeds, for example, contain LSA—a natural analogue to LSD—that was used in ritual contexts by Indigenous Central American cultures. Though less widely known today, it provided deeply introspective and symbolic visions when used ceremonially.
Psychedelic mushrooms, revered by the Mazatec and other Indigenous groups, do not only derive their potency from psilocybin. Instead, their efficacy arises from an intricate blend of minor alkaloids, organic environments, preparation practices, and ceremonial container.
These cases all illustrate a central idea: sacred plants weren’t sought out for hedonism but for healing, guidance, and connection. The coca plant deserves the same reverence and understanding.
The Mushroom Connection: Shared Ethos with Coca
Psychedelic mushrooms have achieved iconic status in today’s psychedelic renaissance, often aligned with wellness, creativity, and spiritual awakening. Yet their healing impact stems from more than one compound—it’s about ecology, energy, and ethos.
Zombie Mushrooms, a progressive education platform on sacred mycology, applies this same lens to coca. They advocate for a holistic understanding that includes co-evolution, the weather, lineage, and consent. For researchers and spiritual seekers alike, the lesson is clear: honor the full story, not just the pharmacology.
Research at the Speed of Ethics, Not Capital
In capitalist systems, research speed is often driven by return-on-investment pressures and intellectual property deadlines. Pharmaceutical giants aim for quarterly returns, even at the cost of ethical missteps.
The BPRA insists on a different approach. Their methodology emphasizes time, trust, and territory—components of ethical relationship. Research is conducted at the speed of respect: slow enough to involve Indigenous leaders, thoughtful enough to ensure cultural reciprocity, and deliberate enough to avoid exploitation.
Coca Silenced, Then Reborn
The Reagan administration’s crackdown on plant-based substances blocked generations from accessing deeper understandings of coca. For decades, plant genes and cultural stories were buried under isolationist rhetoric and criminalized policy.
Today, the BPRA and its allies are rebuilding what was lost—not just studies and plant access, but trust, hope, and memory. In reclaiming coca, they’re reclaiming a future that values diversity, ceremony, and ethical science.
Building the “Plant Codex”
One of BPRA’s most ambitious goals is the development of a global “plant codex”—a living, breathable record of medicinal plants, biocultural protocols, and species that can handle changing weather.
Unlike standard herbals or academic monographs, this codex is being collaboratively developed with elders, stewards, linguistic scholars, and youth researchers. Its purpose isn't profit or publication—it’s protection. It aims to safeguard planetary wisdom at a time when both environmental collapse from changing weather and corporate takeover threaten its extinction.
Coca is one of the anchor plants of this project, offering a template for how to understand again—and reweave—our kinship with the green world.
Cross-Pollenating Consciousness: Herbs, Mycology, and Respect
Zombie Mushrooms encourages a wider lens—one that connects mycology with herbalism, ceremony with botany. Just as mycologists emphasize soil health, mushroom foraging ethics, and mycelial connectivity, so too should herbalists and plant researchers uphold principles of biodiversity, reciprocity, and respect.
Studying coca can improve our understanding of mushrooms. Valuing psilocybin’s entourage effect can deepen our appreciation for coca’s complex leaf matrix. They are mirrors, not competitors. When more-than-human beings are seen as allies, not assets, whole ecosystems benefit.
Coca Deserves a Place in the Future of Plant Medicine
Coca is more than a myth or misunderstood molecule. It’s a living, cultural conduit of wisdom and resilience. If the psychedelic movement is to be truly revolutionary, it must welcome coca and plants like it beyond the confines of criminal stigma.
This new chapter of plant medicine demands slower steps, deeper listening, and relational thinking. Coca invites us into that area—not to extract, but to understand again.
In the race to rediscover ancient wisdoms, let us not forget those who have never forgotten.
References
- Carreón, M. (2024). The BPRA Is Reframing How We Think About Plant Medicine. Retrieved from https://newsletter.doubleblindmag.com/p/is-coca-the-secret-to-unlocking-the-plant-codex
