Since the synergistic mechanism integral to ayahuasca became known, ayahuasca analogues — botanical fusions said to simulate an “ayahuasca effect”, also called anahuasca, pharmahuasca, and acaciahuasca — have been explored in various world regional contexts beyond the Amazon. This chapter contributes to the study of ayahuasca analogues through its attention to Australian developments. Specifically, it will address the phenomenon of changa, a “smokable ayahuasca” sometimes referred to as “aussiewaska” and also promoted as an “intelligent DMT” blend. Changa is an Australian smoking blend typically involving B. caapi or other sources of β-carboline alkaloids infused with DMT alkaloids extracted from local species of Acacia along with a variety of other herbs. Pioneers and users have typically championed the authentically Australian botanical characteristics of these blends, especially given that Golden Wattle, a common name for Acacia, is Australia's national floral emblem. Others have speculated about the role of Acacia in the religious and cultural life of Australia's precolonial indigenous population. Since the 1990s, the consumption of changa has evolved from private events and workshops at local ethnobotanical symposia (notably Entheogenesis Australis), to seasonal dance music and global visionary arts festivals. In a variety of ritual and festive contexts, changa has been ab/used for entheogenic (spiritual) or recreational (pleasure) purposes. The chapter will address how these usages position changa vis-a-vis ayahuasca, covering the spiritual/recreational, individual/subcultural and local/global dimensions of changa.
The troubling appeal of “smokeable ayahuasca” has been explored in this chapter. While being neither DMT nor ayahuasca, changa connotes both pharmacognostic practices and “traditions.” As a hybrid phenomenon, it is a “perfect embodiment of ambiguity,” the phrase used to describe ayahuasca, which Saéz (2014, p. xxi) has suggested “owes its success to being located midway along a scale running from substances that produce light inebriation to others causing a deeper and more dangerous plunge into other worlds.” While changa shares this hybrid variability in common with ayahuasca, it is not simply a transplanted version of ayahuasca. Emerging from the highly active Australian entheogenic movement, where it would facilitate a “friendlier” and accessible “DMT effect” while at the same time reformatting the therapeutic-visionary efficacy implicit in the “ayahuasca effect,” changa is a unique phenomenon. This confluence of “effects” has resulted in a variable mechanism, the optimizability of which it shares with ayahuasca itself, but which can also serve as an accessory to ayahuasca. As Palmer has stated, changa “is already its own tradition, that sprang out of a certain milieu and allows people to go deep with the plants” (Julian Palmer, personal communication, November 13, 2014). As a fully customizable tradition suited to the contemporary entheogen user, it appears that, with changa and its variations, the DMT/ ayahuasca effect will continue to evolve. With variations of its aromatic vapors recognizable in locations worldwide, further investigations are warranted on the career and effects of this “smokeable ayahuasca”/“accessible DMT” hybrid.