We don’t have to drink alcohol. I mean, we don’t have to drink alcohol to get drunk. Drinking is only the most obvious and comfortable option for those of us who wish to ingest the inebriant. More adventurous souls can opt for absorption into the bloodstream via the nostril by snorting, the lungs by inhaling, the mouth by absorption, or the rectum by enema.
These methods are less common for obvious reasons, including increased risks to our health. While the cons outweigh the pros for most, there are still some who endeavor to try them. The last of these methods, politely referred to here as an enema, has received certain attention in pop culture in the last decades. College students are rumored to boof liquor in order to absorb the alcohol more quickly through the blood vessels in their sophomoric rectums. While their slang may be new and frightening, most people would be surprised to hear that they aren’t doing anything new. In fact, they are following in the footsteps of the Ancient Mayans.
The Mayans had access to a variety of different kinds of alcohol. They had pineapple wine, corn beer, agave wine, and some version of mead. The last two, agave wine and mead, were the most common of the Mayan inebriants and were known as chih and balché respectively. Chih was made from the fermented sap of the agave plant, which could be mixed with various barks or roots to instigate a fermentation. This drink was common throughout ancient Mesoamerica. Balché, on the other hand, was more uniquely Mayan. It was made from water, the bark of the balché tree, and honey that was either wild or harvested from famous domesticated bees of the Yucatán (which make pricey Melipona honey).
These alcohols were not just a social lubricants for the Mayans, they were also social glues. Mayans lived in an increasingly more complex civilization starting around the year 200 CE. Alcohol built ties between royalty and elites who drank in rituals together and reinforced hierarchy when the elite provided the peasantry with drinks. These beverages also served spiritual purposes. The collective worldview of the Mayans was important to societal cohesion and religion helped to describe it. The god Ahkan ruled over intoxication, agony, and violent death. Drunkenness represented a form of communication with the divine. Meanwhile, the deity known as God N or Pahuatun, who controlled many things in Mayan life, also moonlighted as a god of vomit and enemas. If drinking meant commune with the gods, what did an enema mean?
The alcoholic enemas of the Mayans have only recently been accepted in Mesoamerican scholarship. In the 1970s, one vase was finally shown to conclusively depict enemas. It captures a surprisingly domestic scene with men, their wives, and even babies. Two rows of men and women sit around vats with some men inserting tubes into their butts and other with identical tubes tucked into their waists. It is unclear why such an obvious scene took so long to understand. Perhaps scholars were too square to acknowledge it. Since then, the unmistakable signs of enema use in Mayan art have been well recognized. Most depictions of bubbling vats of chih also show a tool dubbed an “enema syringe” resting on top of the booze.
Although overly polite, the term enema syringe is fitting seeing as the Mayans used it to take shots in their buttholes. They may not have been recognizable as syringes though. These objects were likely hollowed gourds or bones and may have been made up of two pieces: one bulbous reservoir and a second tapered nozzle. Certain scenes show Mayan men giving themselves enemas and using a finger to cover what might be a vent hole to control the flow of liquid. First hand accounts by Spanish conquistadors describe the Mayan-speaking Huastecs of the northern coast of Mexico performing enemas. The tool they used was said to be a hollowed cane or reed. While some hollow bones have been recovered, nothing conclusively recognized as an enema syringe has been found in archeological digs. Too bad.
Artifacts aside, the surviving pictorial evidence suggests that enemas were in use from the early years of the Mayan empire up until the arrival of the Spanish along the Mexican coast. That makes a millennium of Mesoamerican butt chugging. Two first hand colonial accounts exist of this practice, both of which condemn it. The conquistador, Bernal Diaz de Castillo, wrote, “so many obscenities take place among them; I wish to note only one here which we found in the province of Panuco; they make an injection by the anus with some (hollow) canes and distend the intestines with wine, and this is done among them in the same way as among us an enema is applied.” On the same topic an anonymous Spaniard said, “The men are great sodomites, cowards, and, bored with drinking wine with their mouths, lie down and extending their legs, have the wine poured into their anus through a tube until the body is full.”
The Spanish were judgmental and sanctimonious, but let us ask the question why. Why did the Mayans and Huastecs fill their bowels with fermented agave sap? Clearly they enjoyed it enough to memorialize it in their paintings and carvings. The answer is perhaps threefold.
Butt chug for health! Scholars have suggested that the enema process provided Mayans with a microbiome boost! Chih would have had a flourishing community of bacteria and yeast in it at the time of anal uptake. Microbiologists have shown that the probiotic lactobacilli is present in fermented agave sap. This bacteria is commonly used to treat gastrointestinal issues like diarrhea or IBS. While not conclusive, it is possible that Mayans had casually stumbled upon this healthful use of their boozy drink and continued to do it. The same wine was also used as an oral medicine in the rest of Mesoamerica.
A second reason is far more cultural. The Mayans believed in ch’ulel, or sacred body fluids. Rather than being disgusted by their excretions and juices, the Mayans understood how necessary they were for life. As these alcoholic beverages already had religious meaning for the Mayans, their eventual excretion also had significance. Even vomit was sacred. The god of enemas wore a particular bib that appears in most enema scenes, apparently used for vomiting. Blood, vomit, water, and chih were all tied up in this belief in sacred bodily substances, and the wine seems to be used for ritual cleansing with both enemas and purges. The Madrid Codex shows the gods themselves performing boozy enemas. The Mayans may have performed enemas as a religious rite. In this case, we can more easily understand why it was a priority to depict the act in art.
Finally, they might have used enemas just to get drunk. There is some evidence that alcohol uptake into the bloodstream is quicker via the rectum. Chih was not particularly alcoholic, so large quantities would have to be drunk in order to bring on inebriation. Opting for anal absorption may have reduced the quantity of chih needed to reach the desired state of intoxication . In this regard, enemas optimized Mayan inebriation. Scenes of some enemas show the user smoking tabacco, perhaps heightening the enjoyment of the experience. Enemas, by this logic, were strictly hedonistic.
Aside from the Mayans and the related Huastecs, no other Mesoamerican culture is known to have practiced such enemas. The Aztecs did associate their version of chih, called octli in Nahuatl, with filth and defecation as well as blood and breast milk, but we have no evidence that they actually put it in their butts. How the Mayans came up with the idea is a mystery, but the stylized depictions of the affair in art and the commonness of enema syringes in Mayan imagery suggests that boozy enemas were an important part of Mayan life and religion. And why shouldn’t they have been? After all, it is just another way to absorb alcohol into the bloodstream…
TITLE PHOTO FROM: Justin Kerr, http://research.mayavase.com/kerrmaya_hires.php?vase=1550
Fuentes, Enrique Lemus. “PREVIOUS USE OF PROBIOTICS IN PREHISPANIC TIMES.”
Henderson, Lucia, 2008, “Blood, Water, Vomit, and Wine: Pulque in Maya and Aztec Belief ”, in Palka, Joel (ed.), Mesoamerican Voices 3, Chicago, Chicago Maya Society, pp. 53-76.
Smet, Peter De, and Jennifer A Loughmiller-Cardinal. “4P-9a: Drink/Enema Rituals in Ancient Maya Art. Part One: Text.” Ancient Maya drink/enema rituals (2020): n. pag. Print.
Vela, Enrique. “El Pulque Prehispanico: REGALO DE LOS DIOSES. .” Arqueologia Mexicana. Edicion Especial, no. 78, Feb. 2018, pp. 8–47.
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