In a jungle lodge near the Tambopata River in Peru's rainforest, the vine of death—ayahuasca—wrapped itself around me. Black velvet tentacles gripped me, a hum rose, colors appeared—I tripped like a high schooler.

Only people that have traveled to the Amazon River basin are likely to have heard of ayahuasca. It isn't a popular drug in America and may never be. The purging process involves vomiting, which limits its appeal as a party drug. Despite the badass nickname, "the vine of death," ayahuasca is an integrated and respected part of Amazonian culture.

They call it a medicine in Peru, not a drug. There are three drugs/medicines in Peru that locals manage to use safely—drugs that American authorities would never allow Americans to use... legally.

Growing up in the United States, it was easy to think of our drug war as normal—the natural order of things—rather than something Richard Nixon created 35 years ago. Then I went to Infierno, Peru (yes the town is called hell in Spanish), where I met a shaman with a rattle. This shaman, Don Ignacio, has been taking and giving ayahuasca for longer than America's drug war has been raging. He appears closer to 40 than 80. Don Ignacio said that people come from all over the world so that he and the medicine can cure their mind or body. His community respects him as an elder.

With me that night were two young French poets and a middle-aged Peruvian housewife. Don Ignacio blew out the candle in his shack by the river—and I saw dragons, then mermaids. The plant purges and heals, according to locals, but I mostly went to trip.

A few weeks later, in the tiny city of Cusco, a Peruvian drug dealer flashed me a little bag of green powder.

"Hey, do you want to buy some San Pedro?"

San Pedro, a hallucinogen made from powdered cactus, wasn't being sold by a thug in some back alley, but in Cusco's Pike Place Market. And the drug dealer? A professional-looking woman who placed an eight-foot San Pedro cactus by her booth to advertise her goods.

In Cusco, people also chew coca leaves, a plant that makes it to the U.S. in its refined form of cocaine. Chewing on a few of the unprocessed leaves won't give you the jittery high familiar to Americans. It will, however, help dispel altitude headaches and give a little boost of energy. I enjoyed the leaves in a mud-brick Cusco pub along with the local corn beer. I offered some to a gray-haired man sitting nearby. He put out his hand and I poured. One large and handsome leaf landed straight up in his palm. The man gasped. He showed everyone in the entire bar, and stared at his hand for 10 minutes.

"Buena suerte," he said. Good luck.

Currently, you can't find coca leaves in Seattle, just as you couldn't find khat once, either. But someday, Northwest backpackers are going to discover that chewing coca leaves relieves high-altitude headaches and a black market will flourish in the parking lot of REI.

It's inevitable. All over the world, drugs that are an integral part of the local culture flourish. As more immigrants reach our shores, we're going to have to rethink our approach to recreational drugs. We have spent billions of dollars waging an unsuccessful war on pot—a war lost long ago. Marijuana is now America's number-one cash crop. If we couldn't defeat pot, we will not be able to defeat khat, or San Pedro, or coca leaves.