Setting the Stage for Your Ayahuasca Journey

When you feel the call to sit with Ayahuasca, it’s often a deeply personal pull, signaling the start of a major chapter in your life. However, answering that call comes with a serious responsibility to prepare yourself with care and respect. The real work doesn’t begin when the cup is in your hand; it starts the moment you decide to go. Think of this preparation as a crucial first step in your transformation.

Imagine tending to a garden, preparing it for a special seed. This involves removing the weeds, akin to detoxifying your body, and enriching the soil, similar to achieving mental clarity. Ensuring a nurturing and supportive setting reflects grounding oneself spiritually. This effort creates a stable and welcoming container for the profound insights and healing that Ayahuasca offers.

Why This Preparation is So Important

Embarking on an Ayahuasca experience without adequate preparation can lead to a challenging or less impactful journey. Proper preparation is crucial for ensuring your safety and for fostering a deeper connection with the medicine.

The process involves the following:

• Physical Cleansing: Following the traditional diet, or dieta, is key. It purifies your system, making you more sensitive and open to the plant’s energies.

• Mental and Emotional Clarity: Establishing clear and sincere intentions gives your journey direction. This involves setting aside time for genuine self-reflection to determine what you wish to heal, release, or understand.

• Spiritual Receptivity: Approaching the ceremony with humility, respect, and surrender creates the sacred space needed for change to happen.

“The journey with Ayahuasca begins long before you arrive at the ceremony. The commitment to prepare is your first dialogue with the plant, signaling your readiness to engage in deep and meaningful work.”

Preparing for your Ayahuasca journey is an act of self-love and a sign of respect to the ancient traditions that have preserved this practice. Before you commit, it’s essential to seriously consider if this path aligns with you. For further insights, you can explore our detailed guide on determining if Ayahuasca is right for you.

The Three Pillars of Ayahuasca Preparation

Preparing for an Ayahuasca journey involves establishing a strong, reliable framework for what is often a profound experience. This preparation involves more than simply following steps or guidelines; it focuses on cultivating the right inner environment for deep insight and healing to happen. The entire process rests on three interconnected pillars: physical readiness, mental and emotional clarity, and spiritual openness.

By developing all three, you create a solid foundation for the work ahead. Think of it as a three-legged stool—if one leg is weak, the entire structure can become unstable. A comprehensive holistic approach ensures that you’re not only safe but also fully open to whatever the medicine has to reveal.

Pillar 1: Physical Preparation – The Ayahuasca Dieta

A well-known aspect of Ayahuasca preparation is the traditional dietary protocol, referred to as the dieta. This is much more than a diet; it’s a sacred practice of purifying your body to serve as a clean vessel for the medicine. The dieta helps to clear the physical and energetic “static,” which allows you to connect more deeply with the spirit of Ayahuasca.

There’s also scientific reasoning behind this tradition. Ayahuasca contains Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors (MAOIs), which can interact dangerously with certain substances. The primary concern is an amino acid called tyramine, present in aged, fermented, or cured foods. Combining tyramine with an MAOI can lead to a hypertensive crisis, a sudden and potentially life-threatening increase in blood pressure.

“The dieta is your first real act of commitment. It’s a signal to yourself, and to the medicine, that you are taking this healing path seriously. It creates a physical state of heightened sensitivity and respect for the process.”

The dieta represents your initial true act of commitment. It demonstrates to yourself and the medicine that you are sincerely engaging in the healing journey. It fosters a physical state of increased sensitivity and respect for the process.

Avoiding aged cheeses, cured meats (like salami), soy sauce, and fermented foods is a very important precaution. Traditionally, pork is also avoided because of its dense, heavy energy. Stepping away from alcohol, recreational drugs, caffeine, and spicy or processed foods helps calm your nervous system and gives your body a chance to purify itself.

To help you plan, here’s a typical timeline for the dietary and lifestyle changes:

Ayahuasca Dieta Timeline A Phased Approach

This table outlines the key adjustments to make in the weeks leading up to your ceremony, helping you transition into the dieta gradually and safely.

Remember, every retreat and facilitator may have slightly different guidelines, so always follow any specific instructions they provide.

Pillar 2: Mental and Emotional Readiness

While the dieta cleanses your body, this next pillar is about clearing your mind and heart. The core of this work is clarifying your intentions—the “why” behind your decision to sit with Ayahuasca. An intention isn’t a demand or an item on a wish list; it’s a heartfelt question you bring to the medicine, providing direction for your journey.

Your intention acts as an anchor. During a powerful and dynamic ceremony, it’s the focal point you can return to. While a general intention such as “I want to feel better” serves as a starting point, being more specific with “I want to understand the root of my social anxiety,” gives you—and the medicine—clearer guidance.

Consider the following practices to assist you in setting specific intentions:

• Journaling: Let your thoughts flow freely. Write about what’s challenging you right now. Ask yourself: what patterns do I want to change? What relationships need healing? What do I want to release?

• Meditation: Simply quieting the mind, even for five minutes a day, creates the space needed for your deeper wisdom to emerge.

• Contemplation: Spend some quiet time thinking about your life’s path. Where do you feel stuck? What are you truly hoping to invite into your life?

JOURNEY PREP TIMELINE

This simple timeline shows how each step builds on the last, creating a structured and meaningful approach to your journey.

Pillar 3: Spiritual Openness and Humility

The final pillar, spiritual openness, focuses on cultivating the right mindset. This aspect is not related to religion but is centered on nurturing a state of humility, respect, and surrender. In its indigenous origins, Ayahuasca is honored as a sacred teacher, a plant spirit. Approaching the ceremony with that same reverence is essential.

This means letting go of the need to control the experience. The medicine often shows you what you need to see, not necessarily what you want to see. If you try to resist the process or steer the visions, this can lead to a challenging and frustrating journey. Spiritual preparation is the practice of learning to trust the process and surrender to the flow.

Here are a few ways to cultivate this mindset:

1. Connect with Nature: Spending quiet time outside helps ground your energy. It’s a simple way to remember your connection to the Earth, which is the source of this medicine.

2. Practice Gratitude: A daily gratitude practice can shift your focus from expectation to appreciation. It opens your heart to receive whatever the journey brings, without judgment.

3. Learn About the Lineage: Taking time to understand the indigenous roots of Ayahuasca fosters a deep respect for the traditions and the healers who have carried this wisdom for generations.

By building these three pillars—a clean body, a clear intention, and an open spirit—you establish a strong framework for a safe, profound, and deeply meaningful Ayahuasca experience. This groundwork is the single most important step you can take on your path.

Navigating Medical Safety and Contraindications

Before discussing the dieta, intentions, or logistics of your journey, it’s important to address the most crucial aspect of your preparation: your physical and psychological safety. This goes beyond a simple checklist. Participating in an Ayahuasca ceremony calls for a sincere and thorough evaluation of your health, as this potent medicine interacts with the body in very specific ways.

Think of this as the foundation of your entire experience. Without a solid, safe foundation, everything else may become unsteady.

To understand the biochemical process, the traditional Ayahuasca brew contains the Banisteriopsis Caapi vine, which is a natural Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitor (MAOI). MAOIs prevent an enzyme in your body from breaking down certain chemicals, including the neurotransmitter serotonin. This enables the DMT from the other plant in the brew (usually Psychotria Viridis) to become active when you drink it. But this MAOI effect is also the reason why specific medical guidelines must be observed.

The Real Danger of Serotonin Syndrome

Combining Ayahuasca with certain medications, particularly antidepressants such as SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors), poses a significant risk. This interaction can trigger a dangerous and potentially life-threatening condition known as serotonin syndrome.

The brain’s serotonin system can be understood as a balance between production and breakdown. Serotonin levels are increased by SSRIs, which enhance production, while MAO enzymes break it down. In Ayahuasca, the MAOI component inhibits these enzymes, preventing serotonin breakdown. Combining both can lead to excessive serotonin accumulation in the body, potentially reaching toxic levels.

Symptoms may initially include agitation, shivering, and sweating, but can escalate to high fever, seizures, and even loss of consciousness. It is crucial to avoid this situation.

“It’s imperative to speak with your doctor before you consider stopping or tapering off any prescription medication. Quitting abruptly can be just as dangerous. Any reputable retreat center will insist on this and will turn away anyone who hasn’t safely tapered off contraindicated drugs with professional medical guidance.”

Medications and Substances to Avoid

While SSRIs are a main concern, there’s a broad range of substances that should not be combined with MAOIs. It’s important to fully disclose all medications and supplements, including herbal ones, to your retreat facilitator.

• Antidepressants: Includes SSRIs, SNRIs, tricyclics, and other pharmaceutical MAOIs.

• Stimulants: ADHD medications like Ritalin and Adderall, as well as many prescription weight-loss drugs.

• Certain Painkillers: Opioids, particularly tramadol, pose a significant risk.

• Some Over-the-Counter Drugs: Be cautious with common cough syrups containing Dextromethorphan (DXM).

• Recreational Drugs: Amphetamines, MDMA, and cocaine are extremely dangerous to combine with an MAOI.

For a more detailed list, refer to our guide on foods and medications to avoid with MAOIs to help ensure your safety.

Pre-Existing Health Conditions

The focus extends beyond the what you’re consuming; it also encompasses your overall health. Communicating opening and maintaining transparency with your facilitators is essential for ensuring a safe experience.

Physical Health Concerns:

• Cardiovascular Issues: Anyone with a history of serious heart problems—such as uncontrolled high blood pressure, heart disease, or arrhythmias—should not drink Ayahuasca. The medicine temporarily raises heart rate and blood pressure.

• Liver or Kidney Disease: The liver and kidneys play a crucial role in metabolizing everything you consume. In individuals with impaired function, the effects of the brew can become dangerously unpredictable and prolonged.

• Neurological Conditions: Individuals who have experienced seizures or have been diagnosed with epilepsy are strongly advised against using Ayahuasca due to potential health risks.

Psychological Health Concerns:

• History of Psychosis: If you or a close family member have a history of schizophrenia, bipolar I, or other psychotic disorders, consuming Ayahuasca is not advised. The intensity of the experience can trigger latent conditions or worsen existing ones.

While these warnings could cause apprehension, it’s important to consider the broader context. When taken in a properly screened, supportive setting, the traditional Ayahuasca brew is remarkably safe. A detailed analysis of fatalities linked to Ayahuasca between 1994 and 2022 found that no deaths could be attributed solely to the brew; other complicating factors were involved.

The medical screening process is essential for your well-being. It’s an act of profound self-care that allows you to step into the ceremony with confidence, knowing that you’ve taken all necessary steps to ensure a safe journey.

How to Choose a Safe and Reputable Ayahuasca Retreat

As Ayahuasca has spread from the Amazon to various parts of the world, the number of retreats offering ceremonies has grown rapidly. While this expansion has created more opportunities for seekers, it has also made discernment more important than ever. Choosing a safe, ethical, and experienced retreat is one of the most important decisions you will make on this journey.

This choice goes far beyond location, amenities, or pricing. It is about finding a space rooted in integrity, responsibility, and respect for the medicine and the traditions that surround it. A well-facilitated ceremony can support deep healing, clarity, and transformation. In contrast, poorly guided experiences can be confusing, destabilizing, or even unsafe. By understanding what to look for and asking the right questions, you empower yourself to choose a retreat that honors both your well-being and the sacred nature of this work.

Essential Questions for Vetting Retreat Centers

When researching Ayahuasca retreats, approach the process with the same care you would give any important life decision. You are entrusting your physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being to the people holding this space. Reputable centers not only expect thoughtful questions — they welcome them with openness and transparency.

Below are essential questions every participant should feel confident asking:

• What is the facilitator’s lineage and training? Ask directly about their background. Who trained them? How many years did they apprentice? Which tradition do they follow — such as Shipibo, Cofán, Santo Daime, or another lineage? Experienced facilitators have invested years, and often decades, in their training and will be clear and forthcoming about their path.

• What is your medical screening process? A thorough medical intake is a foundational safety requirement. Retreats should ask about your full physical and mental health history, as well as any medications, supplements, or contraindications. This step is not optional — it is essential for protecting participant safety.

• What are your emergency protocols? Preparedness matters. Ask what procedures are in place if a medical emergency occurs. Is there medically trained staff on-site? How close is the nearest hospital or clinic? Responsible retreats have clear emergency plans.

• What is the ratio of participants to staff? Ayahuasca ceremonies require attentive, personalized care. Smaller group sizes allow facilitators and support staff to properly monitor and assist participants. Ideally, there should be no more than five to seven participants per trained facilitator or helper to ensure adequate support throughout the ceremony.

These questions serve as your first layer of protection. The clarity, depth, and transparency of the answers you receive will reveal a retreat’s true commitment to safety, integrity, and responsible stewardship of this sacred medicine.

“The quality of the ceremonial container plays a vital role in the depth of healing that is possible. When a space is held with care, integrity, and responsibility, it allows you to relax into the experience and trust the process unfolding. In contrast, environments that lack proper structure or safety can create tension and uncertainty, limiting your ability to fully receive the benefits of the work.”

Critical Red Flags to Watch Out For

Understanding what to look for in a retreat is essential — and so is recognizing what to avoid. As Ayahuasca has gained global visibility, there has been an influx of individuals or groups who may not have the necessary training, ethical foundations, or adequate safety standards. While millions of people worldwide have now experienced Ayahuasca, only a small percentage of medicine keepers come from the Indigenous communities where this tradition was born. This rapid global expansion has created a complex landscape that requires heightened awareness and careful consideration.

Remain attentive to the following warning signs:

• Guarantees of specific outcomes: No facilitator can promise specific results, visions, or “miracle cures.” Ayahuasca is a deeply personal and unpredictable experience. Claims of guaranteed healing reflect a misunderstanding of the medicine and raise serious ethical concerns.

• High-pressure sales tactics: Be cautious of “last-minute deals” or any language that pressures you into making a quick decision. Choosing a retreat should be a careful and thoughtful process that feels aligned — not rushed or transactional.

• Lack of a thorough screening process: A reputable retreat will never bypass intake procedures. If a retreat accepts payment without conducting a thorough health and mental wellness assessment, this indicates a lack of commitment to participant safety and responsible facilitation.

• Combining plant medicines without clear intention: While some traditions work with multiple ceremonial plants, mixing powerful medicines requires deep experience and clear intention. New participants should be especially cautious of retreats offering Ayahuasca with other medicines.

• Evasive or vague answers: Transparency is essential. If a center avoids direct questions about training, lineage, safety procedures, or emergency planning, this is a strong signal to reconsider your options.

Above all, trust your intuition. If something feels misaligned or unclear, honor that awareness. Your journey begins long before ceremony — it starts with choosing a retreat that is rooted in safety, integrity, and respect for the medicine, which is one of the most meaningful decisions you can make on this path.

What to Pack and How to Prepare for Your Trip

Once you have chosen a retreat and confirmed your travel dates, your focus can shift toward practical preparation. Attending to these details is more than simple organization — it is an extension of your ceremonial readiness. When logistics are handled with care, you create space to arrive grounded, present, and emotionally prepared for the journey ahead.

Just as the dieta supports your physical and energetic preparation, thoughtful travel planning supports your ability to fully engage with the experience. When essentials are packed and travel arrangements are settled in advance, you reduce unnecessary stress and distractions. The intention is to arrive feeling steady, centered, and open — ready to meet the medicine with clarity and respect.

Your Essential Packing Checklist

Packing for an Ayahuasca retreat is guided by comfort, simplicity, and respect for the ceremonial space. Many retreats recommend light or white clothing, which is traditionally thought to hold cleaner energetic vibration and is visually less distracting during ceremony.

Below are essential items that can help support your comfort and readiness:

• Comfortable, Layered Clothing: Choose loose-fitting garments made from natural fabrics such as cotton or linen. Even in warm climates, evenings can become cool. Bring long sleeves, comfortable pants, warm socks, and a light jacket, shawl, or wrap that can easily be adjusted throughout the night.

• A Personal Journal and Pen: Journaling is a valuable part of the integration process. With a journal, you can record insights, emotions, and visions that come through. A simple notebook is one of the most powerful tools that you will have for integrating your experience after the retreat has ended.

• Reusable Water Bottle: Hydration is essential before, during, and after ceremony. Bringing your own bottle ensures easy access to water and supports environmentally conscious travel practices.

• Headlamp with a Red-Light Option: A hands-free light source is extremely helpful to find your way to the bathroom or your mat in low-light ceremony spaces. A red-light setting is strongly recommended, as it preserves night vision and minimizes disruption to others in a sensitive state.

• Personal Comfort Items: Bring a small, meaningful object or talisman from home. It could be a crystal, a photo of a loved one, or a symbolic item. Having a tangible link to something grounding can be incredibly comforting when you’re navigating unfamiliar territory.

“The intention behind packing is to create a small, supportive sanctuary for yourself. These items are not just practical; they are tools to help you feel safe, comfortable, and focused during a deeply vulnerable experience.”

Managing Travel and Logistics

Preparation extends beyond what you pack. Thoughtful planning around travel and logistics plays an important role in how you arrive — both physically and mentally. Beginning your retreat feeling rushed, overwhelmed, or exhausted can make it more difficult to settle into the experience. Creating space for rest and ease allows you to enter the retreat in a more grounded state.

Consider the following essential planning steps:

1. Book Flights with Buffer Days: Avoid booking your return flight immediately after your final ceremony. Allow at least one to two full days afterward for rest, reflection, and gentle reintegration before returning to everyday responsibilities and long travel days. This transition time supports both physical recovery and emotional integration.

2. Secure Appropriate Travel Insurance: Confirm that your travel insurance provides coverage in your destination country and includes medical care and emergency services. While reputable retreats maintain safety protocols, personal insurance adds an important layer of protection and peace of mind throughout your journey.

3. Check Visa and Currency Requirements: Research visa requirements well in advance to avoid last-minute complications. Additionally, familiarize yourself with the local currency and payment options. Many retreats are in remote locations where ATMs are scarce and credit cards may not be accepted. Planning ahead ensures that you arrive prepared.

The Importance of Post-Ceremony Integration

As ceremony comes to a close and the music fades into stillness, the experience may feel complete — yet in many ways, the most meaningful work is just beginning. Integration is the process of bringing what was revealed in ceremony into your everyday life. It is where insight becomes action, and where transformation takes root through conscious, sustained practice.

Integration is a bridge between the ceremonial space and your daily reality. During ceremony, you may receive clarity, emotional release, or powerful realizations. Integration is the ongoing process of applying those insights through choices, habits, and new ways of relating to yourself and others. Without intentional integration, even the most profound experiences can remain isolated moments rather than catalysts for lasting change.

Weaving Lessons into Your Daily Life

The days and weeks following ceremony are a particularly sensitive and meaningful period. During this time, your nervous system, emotions, and awareness are often more open and receptive as new insights continue to settle and integrate. This window offers a powerful opportunity to allow the perspectives gained in ceremony to take root and begin shaping your daily life.

The heart of integration is gently weaving the lessons from the medicine into the fabric of your life. This does not require dramatic or unsustainable changes. Instead, it is supported through small, mindful choices that honor the healing process you’ve started and by carefully nurturing the seeds that were planted in ceremony. Consistency, patience, and self-compassion are key as you adapt new patterns of thought, behavior, and self-awareness.

“The magic of Ayahuasca isn’t just experienced in ceremony; it unfolds in how you choose to live your life afterward. Integration is the sacred act of transforming insight into lived experience through action and by allowing wisdom to become embodied, not just remembered.”

Actionable Integration Practices

Integration is a personal process, and there is no single “right” way to approach it. What matters most is choosing practices that feel supportive, nourishing, and realistic within your daily life. Below are foundational approaches that many participants find helpful as they continue integrating their experience.

• Continued Journaling: Your journal remains an important companion after ceremony. Revisit your notes and continue writing as insights unfold. Pay attention to emotional shifts, recurring themes, dreams, and subtle changes in perception. This ongoing reflection helps bring clarity and deeper understanding to the integration process.

• Spend Time in Nature: Connecting with the natural world can be deeply grounding and restorative. Quiet walks, time near water, sitting beneath trees, or tending to plants can help regulate the nervous system and support emotional balance. These moments of presence allow space for integration to happen organically.

• Maintain a Clean Diet: Continuing the dieta for at least a week after ceremony can support both physical cleaning and energetic recalibration. Eating simply and intentionally encourages mindfulness and reinforces your commitment to caring for your body during this sensitive integration period.

• Seek Supportive Community: Be thoughtful about who you choose to share your experience with. Speaking with others who understand the nature of ceremonial work — such as retreat participants, trusted friends, or integration circles — can help you feel seen and supported. Protecting your emotional space is an important part of post-ceremony care.

• Work with a Specialist: If your experience brings up complex emotions or deep personal matters, professional support can be very beneficial. Integration specialists and therapists familiar with psychedelic-assisted work can help you process insights and translate them into practical life changes. You can learn more about psycho-spiritual integration techniques to determine if this is right for you.

Post-ceremony care is a vital part of the healing process. It helps ensure that the insights and shifts experienced in ceremony continue to unfold long after the retreat has ended. Research supports the importance of integration; a major international survey of over 10,800 people found strong connections between Ayahuasca use and improved psychological well-being — particularly for those who focused on self-reflection and community support.

Above all, be patient and kind to yourself. Integration is not something to complete or perfect. It’s an ongoing process of learning, adapting, and gradually embodying the awareness revealed through the medicine. With time, care, and intentional practice, these insights can become lasting foundations for personal growth and emotional resilience.

Common Questions About Preparing for Ayahuasca

As your ceremony date approaches, it is natural for questions, curiosity, and even a sense of anticipation to arise. Preparing for this experience often brings both excitement and reflection, as you begin to orient yourself toward a deeply personal journey. Taking time to seek clarity and understanding is an important part of the preparation process.

Below are some of the most common questions participants ask as they get closer to ceremony. Exploring these topics can help you feel more informed, grounded, and confident as you walk forward on this path.

How Long Should I Prepare for My First Ayahuasca Ceremony?

Allowing adequate time for preparation is an important part of entering this work with care and intention. For most first-time participants, a preparation window of at least two to four weeks is recommended. This timeframe provides space to gradually adjust your diet, consult with healthcare providers about safely tapering contraindicated medications when appropriate, and begin to mentally prepare for the upcoming experience.

Think of a longer preparation as a sign of your commitment to the work. It allows for more physical cleansing, emotional awareness, and energetic sensitivity to help you be more open to what the medicine has to teach. While the strictest part of the dieta is usually recommended for at least a week, beginning earlier can deepen your sense of connection and presence during ceremony.

“The healing doesn’t start when you drink the medicine. It often begins the moment you decide to go, as you start to notice and work with the feelings that come up.”

What Happens If I Accidentally Break the Dieta?

If you have a small, unintentional slip in your preparation, begin by taking a breath. While the dieta is an important part of ceremonial readiness, minor mistakes do not automatically mean that your journey is affected. What matters most is transparency and communication.

Inform your facilitator as soon as possible and be completely honest about what occurred. Their training and experience allow them to assess the situation and guide you on the safest next steps. This information is essential for protecting your well-being and maintaining the integrity of the ceremonial space.

Not all deviations from the dieta carry the same level of risk. Accidentally consuming a restricted food is very different from taking contraindicated medications or substances that directly interact with the medicine. Regardless of the situation, it’s very important to be honest. Open communication ensures that appropriate adjustments can be made and that your experience remains as safe and supported as possible.

Is It Normal to Feel Scared or Anxious Before the Ceremony?

Yes, this is a natural and common part of the preparation process. Many people experience a mix of anticipation, nervousness, and emotional intensity as ceremony approaches. These feelings often reflect a deep awareness of the significance of the experience and a genuine respect for the inner work ahead.

Rather than trying to suppress these emotions, allow space for them to be present. Gentle reflection through journaling, meditation, or quiet contemplation can help you understand what is being stirred within you. Pre-ceremony anxiety often reveals important themes that are already beginning to surface, offering insight into areas of growth and healing.

If fear or uncertainty feels overwhelming, sharing these emotions with your facilitator can be deeply supportive. Open communication helps create a sense of safety and reassurance, allowing you to enter the ceremonial space feeling more grounded and held.

Disclaimer:The information provided on Ayahuasca.com is for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Ayahuasca is a powerful traditional Amazonian medicine and may not be suitable for everyone. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making decisions related to health, mental well-being, medications, or the use of Ayahuasca.

Understanding what you are paying for allows you to make an informed and aligned decision, one that balances budget with personal needs, comfort, and safety.

Understanding The Investment

Choosing to work with Ayahuasca is both a personal and practical decision. Retreat pricing is not simply a participation fee. It represents the framework established to support your experience, including trained facilitators, ceremonial spaces, medical screening, integration support, accommodations, and daily care.

Similar to other travel experiences, there are different tiers to choose from. Some retreats deep in the jungle offer basic accommodations with minimal amenities. Others provide modern, premium accommodations with on-site medical staff and structured wellness programs. Each option offers a unique type of experience, and understanding these differences helps you select the retreat that best aligns with your intentions.

To provide clearer context, it can be helpful to look at common pricing ranges. Globally, many week-long retreats fall within the $1,500 to $3,000 range. This typically includes ceremonies, accommodations, meals, and basic activities.

At the higher end of the spectrum, weekly programs are priced around $4,900. These retreats often offer additional layers of support, including medical oversight and structured integration programming. Prices can vary based on the level of care, infrastructure, and services provided.

For this reason, it is important to look beyond the advertised price alone. Taking time to understand what is included and how the retreat is structured can help you make a more informed decision. And before you choose a retreat, it’s important to take time to determine if this path is truly for you. If you’re still exploring, our guide on whether Ayahuasca is right for you may offer clarity.

“The cost of an Ayahuasca retreat often reflects the level of safety, support, and integrity of the container being held for you. Higher-priced retreats may offer more experienced facilitators, smaller group sizes, and additional layers of care—all of which contribute to a more supported journey.”

Below is a general overview of what participants can expect at different pricing levels for a typical one-week retreat.

Ayahuasca Retreat Costs At A Glance

While prices vary by location and center, most one-week retreats fall into the following general categories:

These ranges provide a starting point for comparison although individual retreat offerings can vary significantly.

What Determines the Price of a Retreat?

When researching Ayahuasca retreats, you’ll find that prices vary greatly. As outlined below, several key factors influence the overall cost.

Location and Setting

The destination you choose significantly affects the cost. A traditional center nestled in the Peruvian Amazon will differ in price compared to a modern wellness retreat in Costa Rica.

• Traditional Amazonian Hubs (e.g., Peru): These centers are often deep in the jungle, meaning the facilities are simpler. The price is often tied to the authenticity of the setting and the direct connection to the indigenous traditions that have worked with this medicine for centuries.

• Modern Wellness Destinations (e.g., Costa Rica): These center typically offer premium amenities—spacious rooms with air conditioning, a swimming pool, and gourmet food. Naturally, the higher operating costs is reflected in their pricing.

While comfort is important, being in the jungle provides a deep connection to the natural world where Ayahuasca comes from. Alternatively, a more structured wellness center may feel more contained and accessible, which can be comforting for those new to the medicine.

Retreat Length and Ceremony Pacing

Longer retreats with more ceremonies and rest days naturally cost more. A quick three-day retreat with two ceremonies is considerably less expensive than a ten-day deep dive with five ceremonies. However, the true value of longer retreats lies in the extra time to integrate.

Having a day or two between ceremonies allows additional time for your body and mind to rest, process the experience, and prepare for the next journey. Many people find this to be beneficial for doing deep, lasting work.

“A longer retreat isn’t just about drinking more Ayahuasca. It is about giving yourself the space to actually understand what you’re learning. Rushing through back-to-back ceremonies can be overwhelming and, honestly, a lot less effective.”

The People Holding the Space for You

Highly trained facilitators, indigenous healers with established lineages, medical professionals, psychologists, and integration specialists all contribute to safety and depth of care. Smaller participant-to-staff ratios significantly increase operational costs but also improve individualized support.

Start by considering the facilitator-to-guest ratio. A retreat with a 1:5 ratio—meaning one facilitator for every five guests—can provide a level of personal attention that a retreat with a 1:15 ratio simply cannot match. During challenging experiences, having that individual support can be incredibly valuable.

The expertise of the facilitators themselves is also a major factor as described below:

• Shamanic Lineage: Are the healers from a respected tradition, such as the Shipibo of Peru? Many have devoted their entire lives to this work, carrying knowledge passed down through generations. A portion of the retreat cost is an exchange for their expertise and the energetic safety they provide.

• Medical and Psychological Staff: Premium retreats often have doctors, nurses, and trained psychologists on-site. This adds a layer of safety, especially if you have any pre-existing health concerns.

• Integration Specialists: What happens after the ceremony is just as important. Having experienced staff to to assist in interpreting your visions and insights is key to transforming a profound experience into meaningful life changes.

Ayahuasca tourism has increased significantly. In 2019, an estimated 62,000 people traveled to approximately 232 locations in the Amazon and Costa Rica for Ceremonies. Since the pandemic, interest has continued to grow, along with a stronger emphasis on safety. Many reputable retreats now charge 50-100% more than they did before, primarily to cover the costs of enhanced medical screening and highly qualified staff. You can read more about these trends in this detailed report on Ayahuasca tourism.

Ultimately, the cost of an Ayahuasca retreat reflects the entire network of people, practices, and protocols in place to support participant well-being. From the shaman’s chants to the facilitator’s guidance, each individual and every detail plays a role in creating a sacred space for your journey.

A Cost Comparison by Popular Retreat Destinations

The location you choose for your Ayahuasca retreat plays a meaningful role in both the overall cost and the nature of the experience. Geographic setting influences ceremonial traditions, program structure, accommodations, and the level of support available. Understanding how location shapes these elements can help you make a more informed decision aligned with your preferences and needs.

Two of the most recognized destinations for Ayahuasca retreats are Peru and Costa Rica. Each offers a distinct approach, shaped by different cultural contexts, environments, and retreat models. Becoming familiar with these differences can provide helpful perspective when evaluating options.

The infographic below outlines the three key factors that affect your costs: location, duration of stay, and the depth of care provided.

While location plays a significant role, the duration of your stay and the extent of care you receive are equally important factors in determining the overall cost.

Peru: The Traditional Heart Of Ayahuasca

Peru, particularly regions near Iquitos and Pucallpa, is widely regarded as the historical and cultural heartland of this medicine. Many retreats in this region are rooted in indigenous traditions, mainly those of the Shipibo people, whose ceremonial practices have been passed down through generations and preserved over time.

An experience in Peru often involves a more rustic and authentic setting where participants are immersed in the natural surroundings of the Amazon. Typically, accommodations consist of simple jungle lodges known as tambos, where the sounds of the rainforest accompany you throughout your stay. For many visitors, being close to where the plants naturally grow is a significant and essential element of their journey. The rise in “shamanic tourism” has led to a variety of options, which you can explore further by reading about the complexities of shamanic tourism in Peru.

Peru offers options for nearly every budget. A basic week-long retreat with minimal amenities might cost around $1,000, whereas a high-end retreat with premium accommodations and comprehensive care services can cost over $4,000.

• Budget Tier ($1,000 – $1,800): Basic shared accommodations, ceremonies with larger groups, and fewer ceremonies, with limited facilitation and support.

• Mid-Range Tier ($1,800 – $3,000): More comfortable accommodations, smaller group sizes for more personal attention, experienced facilitators, and structured support for integration.

• Premium Tier ($3,000 – $4,500+): Private accommodations, thorough screening processes, medical or psychological support, and low participant-to-staff ratios for a deeply held and supported journey.

Costa Rica: Structured Wellness and Modern Comforts

Costa Rica has emerged as a prominent destination for retreats that combine ceremonial work with broader wellness practices. While many retreats are located in lush natural settings, programs are often structured with a focus on comfort, accessibility, and comprehensive care.

In Costa Rica, the emphasis is often on blending Ayahuasca ceremonies with holistic healing modalities, such as yoga, breathwork, somatic therapy, and bodywork. This approach generally provides a higher level of physical comfort, along with amenities such as private rooms with air conditioning, swimming pools, and gourmet, dieta-friendly food. It is also more common for these retreats to have guided integration sessions and medical staff on-site.

This combination of deep healing work and modern comfort naturally comes at an increased cost. Operating expenses in Costa Rica are relatively higher, and opting for an all-inclusive wellness package involves a larger investment. A one-week retreat generally starts at $2,500 and can exceed $6,000, depending on the specific services and accommodations chosen.

• Mid-Range Tier ($2,500 – $4,000): This tier typically includes comfortable accommodations, 3-4 ceremonies, and a well-rounded program with a strong team of facilitators.

• Premium Tier ($4,000 – $6,000+): You are investing in premium amenities, thorough medical and psychological support, and a comprehensive program that often includes additional support before and after the retreat.

Cost Comparison: Peru vs Costa Rica For A 7-Day Retreat

To provide a clearer overview, the comparison below details typical price ranges for week-long retreats in two of the most recognized destinations. Differences in cost often reflect their unique approaches, level of care, program structure, and overall retreat environment.

Ultimately, the choice between Peru and Costa Rica depends on personal preferences, priorities, and comfort level. Peru may call to those seeking a more traditional setting and deeper connection to the medicine’s roots. Costa Rica may be more appealing to those who prefer a structured environment with added amenities and greater support.

What Is Included in the Cost of an Ayahuasca Retreat

When reviewing retreat pricing, it is helpful to look beyond the initial number and consider what is included. The cost of a retreat reflects a coordinated system of support, safety, and expertise essential for guiding you through a deeply meaningful experience.

Think of it as investing in a uniquely personal and profound experience rather than simply buying a standard vacation package. Understanding what is included, and what may not be, can help you plan with clarity and avoid unexpected expenses.

What Is Typically Included

Most well-regarded retreats bundle the main elements into one price. While the specifics may vary from one retreat to another, the package generally includes the following:

• Accommodations: Costs vary depending on the level of comfort and privacy, ranging from shared lodging to private rooms with en-suite facilities. The type of accommodation is one of the primary factors influencing overall price.

• Dieta-Aligned Meals: The Ayahuasca dieta plays an essential role in preparation, as cleansing your body enhances your receptivity to the medicine. Retreats prioritize this by offering three nutritious, carefully-prepared meals daily, adhering to specific guidelines.

• The Ayahuasca Ceremonies: Central to the retreat experience, the fee includes the medicine itself, the ceremonial space (referred to as a maloca), and the guidance of shamans or facilitators who support the participants and ensure their safety. A week-long retreat often includes 3 to 5 ceremonies.

• Supportive Practices and Activities: Many retreats incorporate complementary practices such as guided meditations, breathwork sessions, gentle movement, or time in nature. These activities are intended to support emotional regulation, reflection, and overall well-being.

• Integration Support: Group discussions, sharing circles, or integration sessions are commonly included to help participants process insights and translate their experiences into practical understanding.

“The retreat fee is an investment in a carefully curated setting and safe container. From the food that nourishes your body to the facilitators who nurture your overall well-being, every element contributes to creating a space that supports deep, meaningful work.”

Common Expenses Not Covered by the Retreat Fee

In addition to the cost of the retreat, there are several additional expenses to consider. Planning for these in advance can help reduce stress and allow you to focus more fully on your experience. As a general guideline, many participants budget an additional $300 to $600 for a week-long retreat to cover incidental costs.

Below are common expenses that are often not included:

• Airfare: Flights to and from your destination are usually separate from the retreat fee and are often the largest additional expense.

• Travel Insurance: Comprehensive travel and medical insurance is strongly recommended and may be required by some retreats. This offers an added layer of assurance in case of unexpected medical or travel-related situations.

• Ground Transportation: Transportation between the airport and the retreat location is not always included. Many retreats are situated in remote areas, which may require additional travel arrangements.

• Optional Therapies or Complementary Practices: Some retreats expand their offerings to include additional services such as acupuncture, massage, or specialized bodywork. They may also provide supplementary plant medicines or therapies to complement Ayahuasca, including Kambo, a potent frog secretion used for detoxification, or Rapé, a sacred tobacco snuff, which may be available for an additional fee.

• Gratuities for Staff and Facilitators: Offering gratuity is customary and this is a thoughtful gesture to express your gratitude for the individuals who supported you during the retreat such as facilitators, support staff, and service teams.

• Personal Spending Money: It is a good idea to carry some cash for souvenirs at a local market, unique crafts, or other personal items. Consider bringing a small amount of extra funds for personal needs, local shopping, or optional items during your visit.

Understanding the services provided and any additional costs ensures a comprehensive financial overview. This clarity helps you budget effectively and begin your journey with peace of mind, allowing you to focus on what truly matters.

Why the Lowest Price May Not Offer the Best Value

When exploring retreat options, it’s natural to consider cost and search for affordable options. However, pricing alone should not be the primary factor in your decision. In the context of deep inner work, very low prices may reflect limited resources or lower standards of care and support. Viewing your journey with Ayahuasca as an important investment in your overall well-being offers a clearer perspective on cost.

During an Ayahuasca ceremony, participants often enter a vulnerable and sensitive state that calls for experienced guidance and attentive care. Choosing a retreat with appropriate safeguards and adequate support provides the stability needed throughout the process. Retreats priced significantly below typical ranges may be operating with fewer resources, which can affect the overall quality and integrity of the journey.

Approaching this decision with discernment and thoughtful consideration helps you prioritize the level of care and support essential for the journey.

How Levels of Care May Differ

Lower-cost retreats are not defined only by simpler accommodations. In some cases, they may lack the fundamental infrastructure which can affect the depth of care and overall quality of the experience.

Common areas where lower-cost retreats may fall short include:

• Medical Screening: Reputable retreats conduct thorough health and medication screening to identify potential risks and contraindications. The lack of proper screening may indicate inadequate preparation and care.

• Facilitator Experience: Retreats with fewer resources may rely on less experienced staff, which can affect the level of guidance and care provided. Truly skilled facilitators, who can hold space and navigate the complex energies of a ceremony, are an important investment.

• Group Size and Level of Support: To maintain profitability with lower prices, some retreats maximize the number of participants in ceremony. This can significantly reduce the level of personal attention provided, leaving you feeling lost in the crowd when you may need support the most.

The Hidden Costs Of A Inexpensive Retreat

While you might save money initially on a budget retreat, it’s important to consider the potential hidden expenses associated with a poorly organized retreat. A challenging journey without adequate support may lead to psychological distress, leaving you feeling more fragmented than when you arrived.

Rather than returning home with clarity and a sense of peace, you may find yourself needing to spend more in therapy and support services just to process the experience. The true value lies in a retreat that offers a framework for enduring, positive change.

“A well-planned retreat is structured not only for the ceremony itself but also for the essential days that follow. The integration process—understanding the experience and incorporating it into everyday life—is as crucial as the visions themselves. Inexpensive retreats often overlook this key aspect.”

This is why it’s important to understand the ethics behind a retreat’s pricing. The relationship between commerce and sacred practices is intricate. It’s essential to support centers that conduct themselves with integrity. For further insight, you can explore the principles of profit versus reciprocity in the Amazon.

Recognizing A Quality, Fairly-Priced Center

So, how can you tell if a center is worth the price? It comes down to looking for signs of professionalism, safety, and a genuine commitment to your well-being. True value is measured in expertise and care, not just the lowest number on a website.

Indicators of a Trustworthy Retreat:

1. Transparent Safety Protocols: They openly discuss their medical screening, emergency procedures, and staff qualifications. No secrets.

2. Experienced Leadership: The healers and facilitators have a verifiable lineage, extensive training, and a deep, long-term relationship with the medicine.

3. Low Guest-to-Staff Ratio: They prioritize individualized attention by ensuring there are more than enough experienced facilitators to support every single participant.

4. Emphasis on Integration: The program includes structured support, like group sharing circles and workshops, to help you make sense of your journey before heading home.

Ultimately, when you ask “how much is an Ayahuasca retreat,” the answer should be framed as an investment in your safety and personal growth. A fairly priced retreat invests in the people, protocols, and environment needed to guide you through this powerful work responsibly, ensuring the journey is healing, not harmful.

Answering Your Questions About Ayahuasca Retreat Costs

As you move closer to choosing a retreat, practical considerations naturally come into focus. Understanding the financial aspect is an important part of preparing for the journey. Below, we address some of the most common questions about the cost of an Ayahuasca retreat to help you plan with clarity and confidence.

We’ll explore how payment structures typically work, what to consider when evaluating value and quality of care, and how to prepare for expenses beyond the price of the retreat. Approaching this step with awareness supports a more grounded and informed decision as you prepare for your experience.

Are There Ways To Find More Affordable Ayahuasca Retreats?

Yes. With thoughtful planning and flexibility, there are ways to reduce costs without compromising the quality of care. Many reputable retreats offer early booking discounts if reservations are made several months in advance, which can provide significant savings while securing a space at a well-established retreat.

Some retreats also provide volunteer or work-exchange opportunities. In these cases, volunteers contribute to daily operations such as meal preparation, gardening, or general upkeep in exchange for a reduced rate. If considering this path, it’s important to ensure that screening, facilitation, and overall support remain consistent for volunteers as they are for full-paying guests.

And, of course, the simplest way to lower costs is to choose shared accommodations rather than a private room—that alone can lead to substantial savings.

Do I Have to Pay the Entire Retreat Cost Upfront?

In most cases, no. Many reputable retreats offer a clear and structured payment plan rather than requiring full payment in advance. This approach allows you to commit while managing your financial planning with greater ease.

Most retreats ask for an initial deposit, typically between $500 to $1,000, to reserve your space. The final balance is usually due somewhere between 30 to 90 before the retreat begins. This helps make the financial commitment more manageable. Before submitting any payment, take time to review the retreat’s cancellation and refund policies so you understand the terms clearly and can move forward with confidence.

How Much Extra Money Should I Budget For My Trip?

This is an important consideration, as the retreat fee itself rarely reflects the full cost of your trip. Planning ahead can help you avoid unnecessary stress and remain fully present during your experience. As a general guideline, many travelers budget an additional $300 to $600 for a typical week-long retreat.

What expenses does this additional amount cover?

• Comprehensive travel insurance: Most reputable retreats require comprehensive medical and travel coverage.

• Ground transportation: Transfers between the airport and the retreat location are not always included, especially when traveling to more remote areas.

• Gratuity: It’s customary to offer a gesture of appreciation to the healers, facilitators, and staff who support and care for participants.

• Optional therapies: Some retreats offer complementary services such as bodywork, acupuncture, private sessions, or additional healing modalities, which may involve extra cost.

Setting aside additional funds allows you to remain fully present and enjoy your experience, rather than being distracted by unexpected expenses.

“A higher price often correlates with better safety protocols, more comfort, and deeper support. However, it does not automatically guarantee a “better” spiritual or healing experience. The ideal retreat is one that resonates with your specific needs and intentions.”

Does a Higher-Priced Retreat Offer a Better Experience?

Not necessarily. While price often reflects factors such as facilitator experience, medical oversight, group size, and integration support, it does not by itself determine the depth or meaning of a person’s journey. These elements can contribute to a more structured and well-supported setting, yet the quality of the experience remains deeply personal.

Some individuals feel most aligned in a simple, traditional setting, while others benefit from a retreat that offers greater structure, comfort, and professional support. What matters most is choosing an environment that matches your level of readiness and allows you to meet the experience with calm presence, openness, and trust.

The key is to view price as just one part of your research. Consider it alongside reviews from past participants, the center’s screening and safety practices, and the experience and lineage of the facilitators. Together, these elements can help you choose a retreat that aligns with your needs, intentions, and personal path.

Disclaimer:The information provided on Ayahuasca.com is for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Ayahuasca is a powerful traditional Amazonian medicine and may not be suitable for everyone. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making decisions related to health, mental well-being, medications, or the use of Ayahuasca.

If this powerful medicine is calling to you, your first question is probably, “What is this really going to be like?” While each person’s journey with Ayahuasca is unique, there are a few core elements that shape the experience for everyone: your preparation, the ceremony setting, and the support you have.

Imagine preparing for a trek through the jungle. You wouldn’t set off without a plan. You’d learn about what you need to bring, study the terrain, and most importantly, rely on your guide. The same principle applies here.

The journey doesn’t begin the moment you drink the brew—it starts weeks, sometimes even months, beforehand. This preparation phase is a significant act of respect for yourself and the medicine. It’s when you set the groundwork for a meaningful experience by adjusting your diet, clarifying your personal intentions, and being completely honest about your medical history.

“The aim here is to offer a compassionate and respectful overview. With the right guidance, setting, and intention, the Ayahuasca experience can be a powerful catalyst for profound healing and self-discovery.“

This guide will walk you through each phase, from the diligent preparation and the ceremony itself to the crucial integration that follows. Understanding these stages provides insight into the process, showing you how to navigate every step with awareness and support.

The Three Phases of an Ayahuasca Journey

To gain a better understanding of what to expect, it’s best to view the Ayahuasca experience not as a single event, but as a complete process with three distinct, interconnected phases. Each phase is essential for a safe, grounded, and impactful journey.

The table below outlines this progression, from preparation in advance to integrating the lessons into your everyday life.

Seeing it this way—as a structured process—shifts the focus from a one-night event to a longer, more cohesive path of personal development. It highlights that what you do after the ceremony is just as important as what happens during it. When you fully commit to all three phases, you create the ideal conditions for healing and insight to truly take root in your life.

Preparing Your Mind, Body, and Spirit for The Ceremony

Embarking on an Ayahuasca journey involves more than just the initial sip; it requires preparation that may span weeks or even months in advance. Think of this as tilling the soil of your consciousness; the care you put in now creates fertile ground for the insights and healing you’re seeking.

This process goes beyond simply completing tasks. It represents a significant act of self-respect, demonstrating to yourself and the medicine that you’re genuinely committed to this journey. By purifying your body, focusing your mind, and opening your spirit, you actively engage in shaping the experience rather than being a passive observer.

The Mental and Spiritual Foundation

Your inner world is the landscape where this entire journey will unfold. Preparing this space begins with one essential element: your intention. This is your “why” for sitting with Ayahuasca, and it acts as a lighthouse—a guiding light you can return to when the waves of the experience feel overwhelming.

An intention does not have to be elaborate or poetic. It can be as simple and heartfelt as asking, “What is holding me back from true connection?” or expressing a clear desire such as, “I want to heal my relationship with myself.”

“To get into the right headspace, focus on two words: trust and surrender. Simple practices like meditation, journaling, or just spending quiet time in nature can help calm that over-analytical part of your brain. This builds a sense of openness to whatever the medicine may bring.“

This diagram helps visualize how this crucial preparation phase fits into the bigger picture of your Ayahuasca journey.

As you can see, preparation is the bedrock. It directly influences what happens in the ceremony and lays the groundwork for bringing the lessons back into your life afterward.

Physical Cleansing Through the Dieta

Next, let’s discuss the body. The traditional physical preparation centers on the ‘dieta,’ which is a specific diet intended to cleanse your system and enhance your sensitivity to the medicine. This extends beyond merely avoiding certain foods; it serves as a spiritual practice that purifies your physical vessel.

Although specific guidelines may differ slightly among retreat centers, the fundamental principle remains consistent: eliminate foods that are heavy, overly stimulating, or chemically complex. Such foods can generate distractions that disrupt the delicate process of Ayahuasca.

Generally, you’ll want to avoid these for at least one to two weeks before your ceremony:

• Pork and red meat: They are considered energetically heavy and are more difficult to digest.

• Salt, refined sugar, and spicy foods: These can easily overstimulate your nervous system.

• Fermented foods: Examples such as aged cheeses, soy sauce, and kimchi often contain high levels of tyramine, which can have a dangerous interaction with the MAOI component in Ayahuasca.

• Caffeine and alcohol: As potent psychoactive substances themselves, they can complicate your experience.

• Sexual activity: Many traditions advise abstaining from any sexual activity in order to conserve your vital energy for the journey ahead.

By simplifying what you put into your body, you’re quieting the physical static, which allows the medicine’s signal to come through much more clearly.

Mandatory Medical Screening

The last step, which involves medical and psychological assessments, is crucial. It is an essential safety measure, and being completely transparent with your facilitator about your health history is vital for your well-being.

Ayahuasca contains a Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitor (MAOI), which can cause dangerous, sometimes even fatal, interactions with certain medications and substances. You must disclose every medication you are taking, particularly antidepressants like SSRIs, SNRIs, and other MAOIs. Any reputable facilitator will insist on a thorough screening to keep you safe.

This also applies to your mental health history. Be upfront about any personal or family history of conditions such as psychosis, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder, as these are often serious contraindications. The purpose is to ensure your safety and provide a safe container for your experience.

You can learn more by exploring this comprehensive guide to preparing for your Ayahuasca journey, which delves deeper into these crucial steps. This entire process ensures that you enter the ceremony with the full support and awareness of the people holding space for you.

Inside the Ceremonial Circle: How the Experience Unfolds

When you step into the ceremonial space, often a round hut called a maloca, the shift is immediate. It feels like you’ve entered another world entirely. The air is usually still, fragrant with incense or the earthy aroma of sacred tobacco. A few flickering candles often provide the only light, casting long shadows and creating an atmosphere of deep reverence. This is the sacred container for your journey, held and protected by the shaman or facilitator who acts as the anchor for the entire night.

You’ll find your spot—usually a small mat or mattress with a bucket and some tissues nearby. As everyone settles in, a profound quiet often descends, a shared understanding that you’re all on the brink of a deep, personal journey. The energy is one of respect and quiet anticipation.

The facilitator’s role here is absolutely central. They aren’t just serving the brew; they are the energetic guardians of the circle. Their experience, their presence, and their deep connection to the plant spirits are what create the safe, supportive environment this vulnerable work demands.

The Ritual of Drinking the Brew

When the moment arrives, the shaman begins the ritual. One by one, they will call each person forward to receive their cup. The brew itself is an earthy and potent liquid—often thick, dark, and known for its distinct and challenging taste which is bitter, strong, and quite unique.

The shaman carefully pours a portion into the cup, often guided by their intuition for what each person needs. They may also blow sacred tobacco smoke over the cup or whisper a prayer into it. As you receive the cup, you have a moment to center yourself, silently state your intention one last time, and then drink. The best approach is to drink it down quickly and decisively.

After everyone, including the shaman, has consumed the brew, the candles are usually extinguished. Now, all there is to do is wait, breathe, and trust the process.

The Onset and the Physical Purge

Within 20 to 60 minutes, you’ll likely start to feel the first effects. The initial sensations are often physical—a warmth spreading through your body, a buzzing energy, or a feeling of pleasant heaviness. As the medicine takes hold, you might begin to see faint geometric patterns or fractals with your eyes closed.

Soon after, what’s known as ‘la purga,’ or the purge, often begins. This is the physical cleansing Ayahuasca is famous for, and it most commonly happens through vomiting or diarrhea. It’s incredibly important to reframe this: you are not getting sick, you are getting well.

“The purge is a powerful and deeply respected part of the experience. It’s seen as a release of not just physical toxins but also stagnant emotional energy, old traumas, and negative thought patterns that are holding you back. It’s a cleansing on every level.”

While it can be intense, the purge is almost always followed by a feeling of incredible relief, clarity, and lightness, as if a huge weight has been lifted. An extensive survey of over 10,000 Ayahuasca drinkers found that while 69.9% reported physical effects like vomiting, only 2.3% needed any medical attention afterward. This indicates that the process is typically very manageable and safe within a proper ceremonial context. You can explore more findings from this extensive study on Ayahuasca experiences.

Navigating the Visionary Realms

As the journey deepens, you may enter visionary states. These are not hallucinations; they often feel more real than everyday reality, like stepping into the living library of your own mind and soul. What you see varies immensely from person to person and even from one ceremony to the next.

Your visionary journey might include:

• Geometric Patterns: Intricate, kaleidoscopic visuals of light and color that dance and morph, often in time with the music.

• Symbolic Imagery: Encounters with animals, spirits, or archetypal figures that feel deeply personal and carry important messages.

• Biographical Review: Reliving significant memories from your life, but with a new perspective that brings profound understanding and resolution.

• Cosmic Journeys: Experiences of flying through space, exploring other dimensions, or feeling a direct, tangible connection to the entire universe.

These visions are the language of the medicine, offering insights and lessons that go far beyond your analytical mind. The key is not trying to control or decipher them in the moment, but simply observing with curiosity and an open heart.

The Deep Emotional Currents

Along with the visions, Ayahuasca often opens the emotional floodgates. This is where some of the most profound healing can happen. You might experience a cathartic release of long-suppressed grief, crying for losses you never truly had a chance to mourn.

You might also be guided to face difficult truths about yourself—your shadow aspects, limiting beliefs, or unhealthy patterns. As challenging as this can be, these encounters are always in service of your healing, bringing what’s hidden in the dark into the light of your awareness.

The experience can also bring moments of overwhelming love, bliss, and a strong sense of connection to yourself, others, and all of life. Many people report feeling a divine presence or an unconditional love wash over them, leaving them with a renewed sense of purpose and belonging.

Throughout this unfolding, the shaman’s voice and their sacred songs, known as icaros, serve as your guide. These songs go beyond music; acting as vibrational medicine, weaving a container of sound that can calm a turbulent journey, deepen a vision, or offer comfort when you need it most. The icaros are the rudder that helps you navigate through the vast ocean of the Ayahuasca experience, always guiding you back toward healing. In this sacred space, surrender is the universal key.

Navigating Safety And Choosing A Reputable Retreat

As Ayahuasca gains more attention worldwide, the need for careful discernment is increasingly important. Choosing where you partake is one of the most important decision you’ll make, because the safety and integrity of the people holding the space will significantly shape your experience. Prioritizing your well-being is essential.

The first step involves being completely honest about your health. It’s important to acknowledge that Ayahuasca may not be suitable for everyone, and understanding any contraindications is a key aspect of preparing responsibly. Some pre-existing health conditions can present serious risks, which could potentially be severe or life-threatening.

This includes any personal or family history of psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia, psychosis, or bipolar disorder. Similarly, serious heart conditions or uncontrolled high blood pressure are serious concerns. It is imperative to disclose these factors during the screening process with any retreat you’re considering.

Critical Medication Interactions

Just as important is being aware of the dangerous interactions Ayahuasca can have with certain pharmaceutical medications. The brew contains a powerful Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitor (MAOI), which can trigger a hypertensive crisis or serotonin syndrome when mixed with specific drugs—especially common antidepressants like SSRIs and SNRIs.

Abruptly discontinuing these medications can pose significant risks, so it’s essential to consult with with your healthcare provider and create a tapering plan well in advance of any ceremony. A reputable facilitator will require a full disclosure of all medications and supplements you are taking. To better understand these important protocols, you can find additional information on foods and meds to avoid with MAOIs.

“While media headlines can spark fear, it’s helpful to ground ourselves in the data. A comprehensive 2023 report analyzing 58 deaths worldwide associated with Ayahuasca found something remarkable: not a single autopsy attributed the fatality to acute intoxication from the traditional brew itself. This strongly suggests that in a properly screened and supervised setting, the risks are far lower than public perception might lead you to believe. You can find more details about these important safety findings on psychedelichealth.co.uk.”

This distinction highlights the importance of thoroughly evaluating your retreat options. A professional and ethical center is equipped to mitigate potential risks by implementing thorough screening processes and providing skilled on-site care.

How To Vet A Retreat Center

Knowing what to look for helps you separate a well-held, ethical space from one that may be compromising standards. Think of it as an interview. After all, you’re entrusting people with your well-being while you’re in a profoundly vulnerable state.

There are a few key areas to focus your questions on:

• Facilitator Experience and Lineage: How long have they been serving medicine? Who did they train with, and for how long? A clear, respected lineage often indicates deeply earned experience.

• Thorough Screening Process: A detailed medical and psychological intake form is a huge green flag. If a center is willing to accept your money without asking important questions, that’s a serious red flag.

• Facilitator-to-Participant Ratio: Having a smaller group with adequate support is ideal. For a ceremony with 15 people, having at least two or three experienced facilitators or dedicated assistants is advisable. This ensures that each participant receives the necessary attention, especially during more intense moments.

• Medical Support: What are their emergency procedures? Is there a doctor or nurse available on-site or on call? How close is the nearest hospital? A well-prepared center has these details clearly outlined and can respond confidently.

• Integration Support: The journey continues beyond the last song. Inquire about the support available after the retreat. Do they offer integration circles, individual consultations, or other resources to assist you in processing everything when you return home?

To help you organize your research, here is a checklist to guide your vetting process:

Retreat Vetting Checklist

Using a structured approach like this can help you feel confident and empowered in your decision.

Traditional vs. Neoshamanic Retreats

As you research, you’ll notice different styles, which can be broadly grouped into traditional indigenous-led ceremonies and more modern, “neoshamanic” retreats. Neither is inherently superior, but they offer very different containers.

Traditional ceremonies, often led by indigenous healers (like the Shipibo curanderos of Peru), are steeped in a specific cultural and cosmological worldview. The focus is typically on deep energetic cleansing and healing. These experiences can be more rustic, intense, and less focused on verbal processing.

Neoshamanic retreats, often run by Westerners, tend to blend traditional Amazonian practices with other modalities like yoga, meditation, or Western psychology. They might offer more comfortable accommodations and place a greater emphasis on psychological processing, which can be a helpful bridge for the Western mind.

Choosing the right option is a deeply personal decision. It’s based on what you’re seeking, the kind of environment you need to feel safe, and where you feel the most trust. By asking these important questions upfront, you empower yourself to find a setting that truly honors you and your journey.

Weaving The Wisdom Into Your Life Through Integration

The last icaro has faded, the candles are out, and the ceremony is officially over. But in reality, the real work is just getting started. An Ayahuasca journey doesn’t end when the sun comes up; it simply moves into a new, incredibly important phase. This is what we call integration—the conscious, deliberate process of taking the profound, often otherworldly insights from your ceremony and translating them into real, lasting change in your daily life.

Without this step, the insights you’ve gained can feel like a beautiful but fading dream. Integration is how you weave the threads of that experience into the fabric of who you are, ensuring the healing and clarity you found in the ceremony can truly take root and grow back home. It’s a journey that asks for patience, self-compassion, and gentle, steady effort.

Grounding Your Insights

For days, or even weeks, after a ceremony, you may feel incredibly open, sensitive, and raw. This is a sacred window of opportunity. Your usual mental walls and defenses are often lowered, creating the perfect conditions to build new, healthier patterns of thinking and being. The key is to start simple with grounding practices that bring you back into your body and into the present moment.

Imagine it as landing a plane. You have to gently guide the elevated insights from your Ayahuasca journey back down to earth. It’s not necessary to analyze every detail of your visions; instead, focus on nurturing the feeling and the state of being the medicine showed you was possible.

Here are a few practices you can being immediately:

• Journaling: Write everything down on paper without any filter or judgment. Note fragmented visions, feelings, memorable phrases, even physical sensations. This acts as an anchor, helping you remember and process the experience long after the initial intensity has passed.

• Time in Nature: Go for a quiet walk in a park, sit by a stream, or simply pay attention to the trees outside your window. Nature has an incredible ability to stabilize the nervous system and help you integrate deep energetic shifts.

• Mindful Movement: Gentle activities like yoga, simple stretching, or a slow walk can help you reconnect with your body. This physical grounding is absolutely essential after such a profound journey of the mind and spirit.

• Maintain a Clean Diet: Continuing the dieta for a few days or weeks after your ceremony supports your body as it continues its physical and energetic cleansing. Consuming simple, wholesome foods helps maintain the clarity and sensitivity you have cultivated.

The Power of Community and Support

Integration isn’t a path you have to walk alone. In fact, sharing what you experienced with people who “get it” can be one of the most powerful ways to make sense of everything. The visions and feelings from an Ayahuasca ceremony can be quite difficult to explain to friends or family who haven’t had a similar experience. Finding the right support system is crucial.

“The process of translating a non-ordinary state of consciousness into everyday life is a delicate one. Having a supportive container to hold your process can make the difference between a fleeting memory and lasting transformation.”

This is where finding your community becomes vital. Maybe it’s an integration circle offered by your retreat center, a trusted therapist who has experience with psychedelic work, or few of close, non-judgmental friends. Having a space to share your insights and be heard helps to make them feel real and solid. This practice, known as psychointegration, is a cornerstone of responsible plant medicine work. You can take a deeper look into the importance of psychointegration.

Ultimately, integration is an ongoing practice, rather than reaching a finish line. It’s a commitment to showing up for yourself with kindness as you slowly unpack the gifts from your ceremony. By dedicating time and intention to this final phase, you honor the medicine and, most importantly, you honor the deep healing journey you’ve so bravely undertaken.

Common Questions About the Ayahuasca Experience

As you near an upcoming ceremony, it’s entirely normal for both practical questions and deep-seated fears to surface. This final section addresses these common questions, providing you with clear, straightforward answers to help you feel more grounded and prepared for what lies ahead.

Interest in Ayahuasca has significantly increased in recent years. In fact, research indicates that over four million people around the world have sat in a ceremony. To illustrate the scale, in 2019 alone, an estimated 820,000 people took part in a ceremony. This practice has become a global phenomenon. You can review more of the data on the global consumption of Ayahuasca at ICEERS.org.

How Long Does an Ayahuasca Experience Typically Last?

After consuming the brew, the most intense effects are generally experienced for four to six hours, with the peak typically occurring around the two-hour mark.

But the ceremony itself is an all-night journey. It typically starts in the evening and concludes after sunrise, giving the medicine plenty of time and space to do its work.

Will I Lose Control of Myself?

This is probably one of the biggest fears people have, and it’s a valid one. The short answer is that a complete loss of control is incredibly rare, especially when you’re in a ceremony with a skilled facilitator.

You will enter an altered state of consciousness, but most people remain aware of who and where they are.

“A facilitator’s most important job is to hold a safe space for everyone. That feeling of ‘losing control’ usually comes from fighting the experience. This is where your preparation comes in—learning to surrender allows you to move with the medicine, not against it.”

What if I Have a “Bad Trip”?

In the world of Ayahuasca, the term “bad trip” is not commonly used. Instead, people refer to these moments as a “challenging journey” or a “difficult teaching.” It’s a subtle but important shift in perspective.

These intense experiences, though challenging, are often where the deepest healing happens. They bring up old wounds or heavy emotions so they can be acknowledged and released. A good facilitator is trained to guide you through these moments with music, gentle reminders to breathe, and energetic support, helping you remember that the intensity will pass and it has a purpose.

Is It Safe to Do an Ayahuasca Ceremony Alone?

Absolutely not. This is a strict rule within the community. Drinking Ayahuasca alone, particularly for newcomers, is strongly discouraged by all experienced practitioners.

The shaman or facilitator is more than a guide; they are your anchor, responsible for your physical and energetic safety. They manage the energy within the space, help people navigate through difficult moments, and ensure the well-being of the group as a whole. Consuming Ayahuasca without their support exposes you to significant psychological and physical risks. With their presence and guidance, participants can experience a safer journey that fosters personal growth and healing.

Disclaimer:The information provided on Ayahuasca.com is for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Ayahuasca is a powerful traditional Amazonian medicine and may not be suitable for everyone. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making decisions related to health, mental well-being, medications, or the use of Ayahuasca.

An Ayahuasca analogue is a brew made with a substitute for the B. Caapi vine to fulfill the function of MAO inhibitor. The Caapi substitute most often used is Peganum harmala (Syrian Rue).

Admixture plants vary widely in the Amazon (and not all contain DMT). The one constant is the Ayahuasca vine. Virtually all native names for the brew (Ayahuasca, Yage, Natema, Caapi, etc) are also names for the vine, and vice versa.

The following is excerpted from the 1976 book The Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants (out of print but posted in its entirety on Erowid) written by the late Richard Evans Schultes, the Harvard professor considered the father of modern ethnobotany. Schultes spent seventeen years exploring the Upper Amazon in the 1940s and 1950s, visiting more different Ayahuasca-using tribes than anyone ever has before or since and carefully observing and recording their use of Ayahuasca and other plants. (He also did fieldwork among entheogen-using cultures in Mexico.) He is considered the greatest authority in history on the cross-cultural use of Ayahuasca, and did more than any other individual to bring Ayahuasca to scientific attention.

AYAHUASCA and CAAPI are two of many local names for either of two species of a South American vine: Banisteriopsis caapi or B. inebrians. Both are gigantic jungle lianas with tiny pink flowers. Like the approximately 100 other species in the genus, their botany is poorly understood. They belong to the family Malpighiaceae.

An hallucinogenic drink made from the bark of these vines is widely used by Indians in the western Amazon — Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Other local names for the vines or the drink made from them are dopa, natema, pinde, and yaje. The drink is intensely bitter and nauseating.

In Peru and Ecuador, the drink is made by rasping the bark and boiling it. In Colombia and Brazil, the scraped bark is squeezed in cold water to make the drink. Some tribes add other plants to alter or to increase the potency of the drink. In some parts of the Orinoco, the bark is simply chewed. Recent evidence suggests that in the northwestern Amazon the plants may be used in the form of snuff. [Note: this is probably Anadenanthera, not Ayahuasca.] Ayahuasca is popular for its “telepathic properties,” for which, of course, there is no scientific basis.

EARLIEST PUBLISHED REPORTS of ayahuasca date from 1858 but in 1851 Richard Spruce, an English explorer, had discovered the plant from which the intoxicating drink was made and described it as a new species. Spruce also reported that the Guahibos along the Orinoco River in Venezuela chewed the dried stem for its effects instead of preparing a drink from the bark. Spruce collected flowering material and also stems for chemical study. Interestingly, these stems were not analyzed until 1969, but even after more than a century, they gave results (p. 103) indicating the presence of alkaloids.

In the years since Spruce’s discovery, many explorers and travelers who passed through the western Amazon region wrote about the drug. It is widely known in the Amazon but the whole story of this plant is yet to be unraveled. Some writers have even confused ayahuasca with completely different narcotic plants.

CEREMONIAL USES of ayahuasca are of major importance in the lives of South American Indians. In eastern Peru, medicine men take the drug to diagnose and treat diseases. In Colombia and Brazil, the drug is employed in deeply religious ceremonies that are rooted in tribal mythology. In the famous Yurupari ceremony of the Tukanoan Indians of Amazonian Colombia — a ceremony that initiates adolescent boys into manhood — the drug is given to fortify those who must undergo the severely painful ordeal that forms a part of the rite.

The intoxication of ayahuasca or caapi among these Indians is thought to represent a return to the origin of all things: the user “sees” tribal gods and the creation of the universe and of man and the animals. This experience convinces the Indians of the reality of their religious beliefs, because they have “seen” everything that underlies them. To them, everyday life is unreal, and what caapi brings them is the true reality.

CHEMICAL STUDIES of the two ayahuasca vines have suffered from the botanical confusion surrounding them. However, it appears that both species owe their hallucinogenic activity primarily to harmine, the major ,B-carboline alkaloid in the plants. Harmaline and tetrohydroharmine, alkaloids present in minor amounts, may also contribute to the intoxication. Early chemical studies isolated these several alkaloids but did not recognize their identity. They were given names as “new” alkaloids. One of these names — telepathine — is an indication of the widespread belief that the drink prepared from these vines gave the Indian medicine men telepathic powers.

PLANTS ADDED TO AYAHUASCA by some Indians in the preparation of the hallucinogenic drink are amazingly diverse and include even ferns. Several are now known to be active themselves and to alter effectively the properties of the basic drink. Among these are Datura suaveolens [now renamed Brugmansia suaveolens] and a species of Brunfelsia — both members of the nightshade family, Solanaceae, and both containing active principles.

Two additives, employed over a wide area by many tribes, are especially significant. The leaves (but not the bark) of a third species of Banisteriopsis — B. rusbyana [Note: now reclassified as Diploptrerys cabrerana, aka Chaliponga or Chagropanga] — are often added to the preparation “to lengthen and brighten the visions.” Called oco-yajé in the westernmost Amazon region of Colombia and Ecuador, the liana is cultivated for this purpose, along with B. caapi and B. inebrians.

Over a much wider area, including Amazonian Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, the leaves of several species of Psychotria — especially P. viridis — are added. This 20-foot forest treelet belongs to the coffee family, Rubioceae. Like B. rusbyana, it has been found recently to contain the strongly hallucinogenic N. N-dimethyltryptamine.

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DMT-containing plants are not the only plants used as admixtures to Ayahuasca. Two other common admixtures — although they are not recommended without expert shamanic guidance because of their danger or toxicity — are Brugmansia (also known as Tree Datura, Toe, Wanduk, Maikua, and Angel’s Trumpet) and Nicotiana rustica (Mapacho, a very strong species of Tobacco).

Many other plants are used as admixtures to Ayahuasca. Here is a partial list of Ayahuasca additives that we have compiled from various sources. Note that for many or most of these plants, the purpose of adding them to a brew is not for the plant to enhance the effects of Ayahuasca, but rather for the Ayahuasca to enhance the effect of the other plant, and to make it possible to communicate with the spirit of the other plant and understand its medicinal properties. Ayahuasca is considered the “mother of all plants” and the greatest teacher of plant medicines.

* ACANTHACEAE
o Teliostachya lanceolata

* AMARANTHACEAE
o Alternanthera lehmannii
o Iresine sp.

* APOCYNACEAE
o Himatanthus sucuuba
o Malouetia tamaquarina
o Mandevilla scabra
o Tabernaemontana sp.

* AQUIFOLIACEAE
o Ilex guayusa

* ARACEAE
o Montrichardia arborescens

* BIGNONIACEAE
o Mansoa alliacea
o Tabebuia heteropoda
o Tabebuia incana
o Tabebuia sp.
o Tynnanthus panurensis

* BOMBACACEAE
o Cavanillesia hylogeiton
o Cavanillesia umbellata
o Ceiba pentandra
o Chorisia insignis
o Chorisia speciosa
o Quararibea “ishpingo”

* BORAGINACEAE
o Tournefortia angustifolia

* CACTACEAE
o Epiphyllum sp.
o Opuntia sp.

* CARYOCARACEAE
o Anthodiscus pilosus

* CELASTRACEAE
o Maytenus ebenifola

* CYCLANTHACEAE
o Carludovica divergens

* DRYOPTERIDACEAE
o Lomariopsis japurensis

* DRYOPTERIDACEAE
o Erythroxylum coca

* ERYTHROXYLACEAE
o Erythroxylum coca

* EUPHORBIACEAE
o Alchornea castaneifolia
o Hura crepitans

* GNETACEAE
o Gnetum nodiflorum

* GUTTIFERAE
o Clusia sp.
o Tovomita sp.

* LABIATAE
o Ocimum micranthum

* LECYTHIDACEAE
o Couroupita guianensis

* LEGUMINOSAE
o Acacia hostilis
o Acacia tenuiflora
o Bauhinia guianensis
o Caesalpinia echinata
o Calliandra angustifolia
o Campsiandra laurifolia
o Cedrelinga castaneiformis
o Erythrina glauca
o Erythrina poeppigiana
o Mimosa apodocarpa var. hostilis
o Mimosa cabrera
o Mimosa hostilis
o Mimosa limana
o Mimosa maracasensis
o Mimosa nigra
o Mimosa ophthalmocentra
o Mimosa tenuiflora
o Mimosa verrucosa
o Pithecellobium laetum
o Sclerobium setiferum
o Vouacapoua americana

* LORANTHACEAE
o Phrygilanthus eugenioides
o Phtirusa pyrifolia

* MALPIGHIACEAE
o Anthodiscus pilosus
o Banisteriopsis ceduciflora
o Banisteriopsis cornifolia
o Banisteriopsis cristata
o Banisteriopsis ferruginea
o Banisteriopsis heterostyla
o Banisteriopsis inebrians
o Banisteriopsis laevifolia
o Banisteriopsis leiocarpa
o Banisteriopsis leptocarpa
o Banisteriopsis longialata
o Banisteriopsis lucida
o Banisteriopsis lutea
o Banisteriopsis martiniana
o Banisteriopsis metallicolor
o Banisteriopsis muricata
o Banisteriopsis nigrescens
o Banisteriopsis nitrosiodora
o Banisteriopsis nutans
o Banisteriopsis oxyclada
o Banisteriopsis padifolia
o Banisteriopsis peruviana
o Banisteriopsis pubipetata
o Banisteriopsis quitensis
o Diplopterys cabrerana
o Diplopterys involuta (=Mezia includens)
o Heteropterys argentea
o Lophanthera lactescens
o Mascagnia glandulifera
o Mascagnia psilophylla (var. antifebrilis = Cabi paraensis; Callaeum antifebrile)
o Stigmaphyllon fulgens
o Tetrapterys methystica
o Tetrapterys muconata
o Tetrapterys styloptera

* MARANTACEAE
o Calathea veitchiana

* MENISPERMACEAE
o Abuta grandifolia

* MORACEAE
o Coussapa tessmannii
o Ficus insipida
o Ficus ruiziana
o other Ficus sp.

* MYRISTICACEAE
o Virola surinamensis
o other Virola sp.

* NYMPHIACEAE
o Caboma aquatica

* PHYTOLACCACEAE
o Petiveria alliaceae

* PIPERACEAE
o Piper sp.

* POLYGONACEAE
o Triplaris surinamensis
o Triplaris surinamensis var. chamissoana
o Triplaris americana
o Triplaris poepiggiana

* PONTEDERIACEAE
o Pontederia cordata

* RUBIACEAE
o Calycophyllum spruceanum
o Capirona decoriticans
o Guettarda ferox
o Psychotria carthaginensis
o Psychotria horizontalis
o Psychotria leiocarpa
o Psychotria marginata
o Psychotria poeppigiana
o Psychotria psychotriaefolia
o Psychotria viridis
o Psychotria “amiruka”
o Psychotria “batsikawa”
o Psychotria “nai kawa”
o Psychotria “pishikawa”

o Rudgea retifolia
o Sabicea amazonensis
o Uncaria guianensis

* SAPINDACEAE
o Paullinia yoco

* SCHIZAEACEAE
o Lygodium venustum

* SCROPHULARIACEAE
o Scoparia dulcis

* SOLANACEAE
o Brugmansia insignis
o Brugmansia suaveolens
o Brunfelsia chiricaspi
o Brunfelsia grandiflora
o Brunfelsia grandiflora subsp schultesii
o Capsicum sp.
o Iochroma fuchsioides
o Juanulloa ochracea
o Nicotiana rustica
o Nicotiana tabacum

* VERBENACEAE
o Cornutia odorata
o Vitex triflora

* VIOLACEAE
o Rinorea viridiflora

Local names of some admixture plants:

Abuta
Chuchuhuasi
Cumala
Camalonga
Clavo Huasca
Remo Caspi
Renaco
Uña de Gato
Tahuari
Tangarana
Almendra
Cuma Ceba
Chiric Sanango
Cariñito
Larcarto caspi
Palo Sangre

The diet is about MAOI safety. Caapi and Rue are both MAO inhibitors, and as such can cause potentially dangerous interactions with many prescription drugs and with certain foods. (There is no record of a fatal interaction with food, but people have experienced severe headaches.) There is much information here in the Information forum and in the FAQ about this. If the MAOI safety diet is observed, Ayahuasca is completely safe physically.

Indians in the Amazon will not tell you about this safety diet, because almost nothing on the list of proscribed foods, except bananas, is in their traditional diet anyway, nor do they take the contradindicated prescription drugs. So MAOI interaction is not an issue to them.

Instead, in the Amazon, what they focus on is dieta.

Dieta is for spiritual purposes. It is intended to sensitize your body to the Vine. (Indeed, to sensitize your body to Plant communication in general.)

To the Indians, Ayahuasca is the Vine, and the admixtures are the Vine’s helpers, which help you to see what the Vine is doing more clearly. They consider sensitizing your body to the Vine to be at least as important as the admixtures.

There are three general forms of the dieta that I know of: the regular dieta, the dieta for an apprentice shaman, and the dieta for a person undergoing healing.

All of these dietas are similar. They all contain the basic prohibitions:

– no hot peppers (considered very antagonistic to Ayahuasca)
– no onions or garlic (considered to repel spirits)
– no spices in general, but most of all no hot spices
– no salt
– no pork
– no fried foods
– no sexual stimulation

There are many local/tribal variants. Some say no fats at all, while others restrict only pork fat. Some say no red meat. Some versions prohibit sugar. Some prohibit alcohol. Some versions restrict fruits; some prohibit acidic fruits. Some traditions place more emphasis on pre-ceremony dieta, other traditions stress post-ceremony dieta more. But these are variations on an overall common theme.

The Ayahuasca dieta is not merely healthy or cleansing. It may not even be the healthiest diet conceivable, since it is based on starches like manioc, potatoes, and white rice (brown rice is practically unknown in the Amazon) and small amounts of meat or fish for protein. It also permits plantains, a type of banana, which theoretically would be prohibited by the MAOI-safety diet.

Essentially, the dieta is bland and tasteless. A period of tasteless food and of avoiding sexual stimulation or excitement, during the meditative pre- and post-Ayahuasca period, is considered to help sensitize the body and spirit to Ayahuasca. (And beyond Ayahuasca, the dieta can be used to sensitize one to communication with other plants.)

Significantly, the sexual fast is a constant among every Ayahuasca-using indigenous culture I know of. Outside of the context of Ayahuasca, the sexual customs of different Amazonian groups are all over the map, but all groups I know of link sexual abstinence to Ayahuasca ceremonies and Ayahuasca shamanism. The Napo Runa, at least (the group that I live with) emphasize the importance of sexual abstinence more than the food aspect of dieta.

The shaman’s apprentice dieta, in addition to the basic restrictions, has no fruit or sugar and restricts the species of meat and fish that can be consumed. A shaman’s dieta might allow only wild meat, or meat only of certain kinds of wild fowl. Fish with teeth may be forbidden, as these are considered to be scavengers of garbage. The shaman’s dieta includes intermittent periods (sometimes ten days or more) of complete fasts on water only.

The dieta for a person being healed is prescribed by the shaman specifically for that person. It may include, besides the basic food and sex restrictions, one or more of the following: no hot (in temperature) foods or drinks; no bathing in hot water, or conversely, no bathing in cold water or shocking the body with cold; no jostling of the body, or no jerky movements of the body, only smooth, slow movement. This may be prescribed for a person to follow for two to seven days after a healing.

There is usually no set number of days for dieta before and after an Aya ceremony. The Indians seem to regard it as that the more days on dieta, the more results you will get, so how long you do it is up to you.

An apprentice shaman among the Napo Runa may spend two years or more on dieta (including a strict sexual fast), much of that time drinking Ayahuasca daily alone in an isolated power place. One apprentice shaman explained to me that you are living in the spirit world, and sensory stimulation would pull you back into your body. This may give a clue as to the meaning and purpose of the regular dieta as well.

The Indians usually fast on the day of the ceremony, although it is not a very strict fast and they don’t seem to care if someone nibbles fruit. In the fasting period before an Ayahuasca ceremony, they drink Wayusa (Ilex guayusa) a rainforest cousin of Yerba Mate. Wayusa is often drunk before sleeping in order to have clearer dreams, and is drunk upon awaking very early in order to have clearer dream recall. Drinking it before an Ayahuasca journey helps promote greater clarity in the journey. Wayusa also helps somewhat to quiet hunger pangs.

For a person from the “modern” world preparing for an Aya journey on their own, an adaptation of the traditional Amazonian dieta might be boiled rice, potatoes, or manioc (aka cassava or yuca) and boiled organic free-range chicken or fish, all prepared without salt, spices or other flavoring. Food on the dieta should be bland and tasteless. (The Napo Runa call the dieta in their language sasina or fasting, even though
food is consumed; it is conceived of as a type of fast.) Sexual stimulation should be avoided during this time, even physical contact with the opposite sex. The fasting from flavorful food and sexual stimulation is considered to help make one “transparent” to plant communication in general and to the healing action of Ayahuasca in particular.

And although this is not an issue to the Indians, for people in the modern world, I feel certain that dieta also includes fasting from television and radio. It is taken for granted by the Indians that the dieta is a time of meditation, reflection and quiet. The Indians don’t emphasize that aspect because they have abundant opportunity for quiet and meditation in their everyday lives. Quiet moments for them are not in precious short supply the way they are to most modern people. But if you are going to follow the dieta, the days on dieta should be days of quiet, meditation, and reflection.

In reality, this fact has been well known in the archaeological community for decades. But the general public still knows little about it, so the media continues to treat each new discovery of ancient civilizations in the Amazon as a surprise.

New discoveries continue to be made.  Since the original version of this article was written in 2006, major discoveries have been made in Santarem, Brazil, on the lower Amazon,  in the upper Purus River region of Brazil and Bolivia, in Chachapoyas, Peru, and in San Martin de Samaria in Peru.

Archaeologists today estimate that the pre-Columbian population of the Amazon Basin was as high as 20 million – far more than live in the Amazon today, even including the large cities such as Belem, Manaus, and Iquitos.

Yet these dense and organized populations had a very different relationship with the natural world than most recorded civilizations.

There are four major types of ecological zones in the Amazon.  Each one has given rise to a way of life adapted to it.  The four zones are the varzea, or fertile floodplains; the upland forests that lie above flooding; the savanna; and the blackwater ecosystems.   All of these zones except the blackwater ecosystems have given rise to civilizations.

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The Varzea: land of river cities

The varzea is also called the whitewater floodplain. (“Whitewater” rivers in this context means nutrient-rich rivers, washing down soil from the Andes.)  These rivers seasonally flood and leave silt upon the land.   

These river-fertilized soils are the most fertile in the Amazon Basin, but because of the seasonal flooding, have the shortest growing season.  The crops that were grown on the river-fertilized soil were varieties bred to mature during the half year of dry season.  As much manioc was produced in four to six months as could be produced in a year and a half on the terra firme.

Not surprisingly, the combination of the most fertile soils with an abundance of aquatic resources made the shores of the Amazon River and its major whitewater tributaries the most densely populated zones of the regions.  The Amazon and its major tributaries were also major trade routes; pottery shards testify to the widespread trade conducted by the Omaguas in particular, who lived at the headwaters of the Amazon but had trade networks stretching for thousands of miles. (Lathrap 1974)

However, the cities along the Amazon were actually seen and recorded by the chroniclers of the first European expedition, which was led by the conquistador Francisco de Orellana in 1541.  Orellana described the Amazon as a busy waterway which had, on both sides of the river, populous towns with elaborate temples, plazas and fortresses.  His chronicler, Fray Gaspar de Carvajal recorded cities that extended for miles along the banks of the major rivers of the floodplain. He relates that, for one stretch of 80 leagues (275 miles) they found people “all speaking one language and densely populated with towns and villages with scarcely more than a crossbow shot between them. Some of the towns extended for five leagues (17 miles) without any separation between the houses.”   

Many roads led to the interior.  A few settlements were located on the flood plain where during rainy season they were accessible only by canoe.  In one place “inland from the river, at a distance of two leagues, more or less, there could be seen some very large cities that “glistened in white.”  Villages were composed of communal houses each occupied by an extended family. The towns and villages were organized into confederations which traded and fought with another.

The Spaniards’ accounts describe a superabundance of food.  Carvajal wrote that, in one village, they found enough meat and fish and cassava bread “to feed an expeditionary force of a thousand men for a year.” Turkeys, ducks, and parrots were raised in the villages, and ducks were hunted by the thousands using nets.   Fish were obtained in great abundance, and manatees were a favorite prey.  Turtles, each “larger than a good sized wheel,” were raised in corrals, estimated to contain sometimes six to seven thousand animals. Turtle and cayman eggs were eaten.  Wild rice and water lily seeds and tubers were harvested.  Carvajal added that “what is more amazing is the slight amount of work that all these things require.”

The Omagua people produced arts and crafts of a very high level, especially pottery, described by Carvajal: “plates and bowls and candelabra of this porcelain of the best that has ever been seen in the world… all glazed and embellished with colours, and so bright that they astonish, and, more than this, the drawings and paintings which they make on them are very accurately drawn just as with the Romans.”

This was primarily the land of the Omagua, who were a well-organized and apparently an aggressive and expansionist power along the western length of the Amazon River.

At the other end of the Amazon River, where it meets the Atlantic Ocean, an island larger than the country of Switzerland lies in the river’s mouth: the island of Marajo.  On this island, archaeologists have found evidence of a large-scale but decentralized civilization. In a huge cave called Painted Rock Cave, signs of human culture have been found dating back as far as 13,000 years.  Ceramic bowls found in Painted Rock Cave and other places in the area are the oldest known pottery in the Americas, and there is evidence that four thousand years ago, the Indians of the lower Amazon were growing at least 138 crops.  There are mounds 1,800 years old, elaborate road systems, and artificial ponds and canals. Anna C Roosevelt, curator of the Field Museum in Chicago, who has excavated the site, says that the mound-building culture lasted well over a thousand years, had possibly well over 100,000 inhabitants and covered thousands of square miles.  “They have magnitude. They have complexity. They are amazing, and they are not primitive,” says Roosevelt.  Amazonia, Roosevelt says, “was a source of social and technological innovation and continental importance.”

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Upland Forests: the land of Ayahuasca

The upland or terra firme forests of the Amazon (meaning areas above flooding, not a contiguous zone) are extremely heterogeneous, an extremely diverse range of microecosystems.   They have the greatest number of species and the greatest accumulation of plant biomass on the planet” (Moran 1993:58).  The region (known as the “eyebrow of the jungle”) where the rainforest meets the foothills of the Andes, from Colombia to Bolivia, is the most biodiverse region on Earth.

The Upper Amazon was the cradle of horticultural diversity for both the Andes and the Lower Amazon.    It was a natural laboratory for developing the science of breeding diverse varieties of plants adapted to microecosystems. This science, highly developed and systematized much later by the Incas, made it possible to develop crop varieties adapted to the extremely varied growing conditions and made  highland Andean civilization possible.  There is, in fact, credible evidence that the civilizations of the highland Andes, as well as the other civilizations of the Amazon, had their original roots in the Upper Amazon.  (See Lathrap, The Upper Amazon, 1970.)

This is the home of such famous groups as the Shuar (the “Jivaro headshrinkers”), the Shipibo, and the Ashaninka.  Most of the ancient cities of the region (such as Puyo, Ecuador, ancient capital of the Puyo Runa or “Cloud People”) were made of biodegradable materials and have disappeared.  One city whose stone ruins still exist is Kuelap, ancient capital of the Chachapoyas culture of northern Peru.

The Quechua- or Kichwa-speaking peoples (Runa) have a key place in Amazonian as well as Andean history.

Quechua is most famous as the “language of the Incas,” because it was the official language of Tawantinsuyu, the Inca Empire. It served as the shared second language of communication in the

Andean highlands, among many different peoples who spoke many different native languages. And  the Amazonian Kichwa or Quechua speakers collectively comprise probably about 1% of the Quechua-speaking population.

The popular assumption (mentioned as fact in some tourist guides) is that Amazonian Kichwa speakers (since they speak an “Andean language”) originated as post-Inca or post-conquest migrants from the Andes.  However, the linguistic evidence is conclusively strong that Kichwa was not first introduced to Ecuador by the Incas, but that it was already being used in Ecuador and nearby parts of Peru long before the Inca Empire arose — as a trade language along the Napo River.

Linguistic evidence suggests that Kichwa was first used in Ecuador, including both the Amazon region and the highlands, at least eight centuries before the arrival of the Incas in Ecuador — that is to say, Kichwa may have been spoken in the Amazon as long as fourteen hundred years ago.  The Incas arrived in that region less than five hundred years ago.

The Puyo Runa, or Cloud People, remember their ancient capital of Puyo on the upper Pastaza River, where today lies the present-day city of Puyo, the capital of the present-day province of Pastaza, Ecuador.

In present-day Ecuador, there is a mountain pass called Papallacta where highland Indians and lowland Indians.  Its name translates as “potato town” because potatoes were the major trade item brought by highland Indians.  The Napo River begins below Papallacta Pass and flows down to finally join the Amazon River near present-day Iquitos. Thus, the Napo River connects the highlands with the Amazon River. This appears to be the region of the most active contact and cultural interflow between the Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands.  Highland influence is conspicuous on the music of the Napo Runa and on the women’s traditional dress.   The highland curanderos of Ecuador, for their part, incorporate many elements of Ayahuasca shamanism into their curing rituals, without using Ayahuasca itself.

The Napo River, by all evidence and scholarly consensus, appears to be the original home of the Ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) and of the cultural form known as Ayahuasca shamanism that is now widespread in the Upper Amazon.  However, it does not appear to the the place where DMT-containing admixture plants (Psychotria viridis and Diplopterys cabrerana) were first combined with the Ayahuasca vine.  (Highpine 2013)

Yet, collectively, the Indian peoples of the Upper Amazon (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and far western Brazil) seem to have been much more resilient than groups in most other areas of the Amazon.  This region coincides with the use of Ayahuasca, and with the deepest plant shamanism in the world.  There may be no connection between this and the survival of the Upper Amazonian peoples…. or there may be.

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The Savanna: earthworks and forest islands

In the savannas of the southwestern Amazon Basin — the Beni province of Bolivia and nearby regions of Brazil – are some of the richest discoveries of what is possible through traditional sustainable horticulture.

Beni

In the Llanos de Moxos region of the Beni, indigenous peoples built a vast infrastructure of earthworks that enabled their culture to flourish over several thousand years. (Erickson 2000). Archaeologists have uncovered  massive raised field systems, elevated causeways, transportation canals connecting river systems, pyramid-like mounds, clusters of odd,  zigzagging ridges scattered through the savanna that may have been fish farms, and other earthworks.  Raised fields are connected in groups of islands, aligned in a north-south direction. Mounds, as high as nearly 60 feet, rise above the floodwaters.  (Mann 2000a)   Trees grow on the causeways and mounds, protected from the savanna’s seasonal fires and floods. Soils were enriched by burning, mulching, and depositing wastes, and are filled with fragments of pottery.

Although these peoples abandoned their earthworks from four hundred to seven hundred years ago, Erickson and others argue that the process of ecological change begun by the Beni mound builders continues to this day.   They permanently transformed regional ecosystems, creating “a richly patterned and humanized landscape” that is “one of the most remarkable human achievements on the continent.”  They grew crops on raised fields; practiced agroforestry, planting groves of palm, nut, and fruit trees; and raised fish and apple snails..

Erickson estimates both from the amount of labor that had to have gone into these works and from the potential crop yields on these permacultured mounds that the population just of this corner of Bolivia would have been in the hundreds of thousands. “The quantity and mass of material deposited indicates that a lot of people were responsible, creating the mounds over a period of at least 2000 years,” beginning 3000 to 5000 years ago.

Pottery shards — the only artifact not subject to decay — show that the villages were linked by trade networks that stretched over thousands of miles and reveal a complex mosaic of societies linked by networks of communication, trade, alliance, and perhaps warfare.

Xingu

In 2003,  the upper Xingu region of the southern Amazon in central Brazil archaeologists discovered an ancient network of large villages linked by roads in a carefully organized, gridlike pattern..The villages were built around large, circular central plazas, and were defined by curbs, moats and ditches  up to 1.5 miles  long and 16 feet deep.

The villages were evenly spaced two to three miles apart in in a “galactic” pattern around a hub. Straight roads  — as wide as 165 feet in some places, the width of a modern-day four-lane highway — lead out from them at specific angles, repeated from one plaza to the next. described by Heckenberger (2003) as “gridlike or latticelike organization of nodes (plazas) and connecting thoroughfares.” “This kind of  elaborate regional plan would have required the relatively sophisticated ability to reproduce angles over large distances.” “The sophistication of the layout bespeaks a knowledge of mathematics, architecture, astronomy, and engineering.”

Where the villages converged on wetlands,  bridges, moats, canals , causeways and artificial ponds were found, many of which are still in use today. The biggest villages had residential areas as large as 200 acres. Between the villages were open parklands and working food forests. .  Heckenberger estimates that each cluster of six to twelve villages supported between 2500 and 5000 people, and the complex, geometrically patterned set of interlinking roads radiating out of the plazas show that there must have been a great deal of social interaction among the villages, which implies that all of the villages were occupied simultaneously. Having mapped all of the sites within a 15 mile by 15 mile square, Heckenberger and colleagues tentatively estimate that the population of the region numbered in the tens of thousands.

Heckenberger characterized the areas between the villages as “saturated anthropogenic landscapes.”  They had great fortified cities —  according to Heckenberger — “with a complicated plan, with a sense of engineering and mathematics that rivalled anything that was happening in much of Europe at the time.” … “The Xinguano people built their villages according to a very clear plan, at a very large scale, and all of them are interconnected with one another.

The Kayapo

The Kayapo, a group about a hundred miles north on the Xingu River studied by Darrell Posey, still practice a related system:

The Kayapo recognise ecosystems that lie on a continuum between the poles of forest and savanna. They have names, for example, for as many as nine different types of savanna – savanna with few trees, savanna with many forest patches, savanna with shrub, and so on. But the Kayapo concentrate less on the differences between zones than on the similarities that cut across them. Marginal or open spots within the forest, for example, can have microenvironmental conditions similar to those in the savanna. The Kayapo take advantage of these similarities to exchange and spread useful species between zones, through transplanting seeds, cuttings, tubers and saplings. Thus there is much interchange between what we tend to see as distinctly different ecological systems.

Kayapo agriculture focuses upon the zones intermediate between forest and savanna types, because it is in these that maximal biological diversity occurs. Villages too are often sited in these transition zones. The Kayapo not only recognise the richness of these zones, but they actually create them.  They exploit secondary forest areas and create special concentrations of plants in forest fields, rocks outcroppings, trail sides, and elsewhere.

The creation of forest islands, or Apêtê, demonstrates to what extent the Kayapo can alter and manage ecosystems to increase biological diversity…. Apêtê look so “natural”, however, that until recently scientists in fact did not recognise them as human artifacts.

Purus River and Santarem

New discoveries continue to be made. In 2010, in the Purus River region that stretches from northern Bolivia to the state of Amazonas in Brazil, as described here and here, scientists have documented more than two hundred and ten geometric structures, some of which may date as far back as the third century A.D. They are spread out over an area that spans more than two hundred and fifty kilometers.

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Blackwater ecosystems:  the fish forest

The blackwater ecosystems  the most barren and nutrient-poor ecosystems in the Amazon.  Unlike the “whitewater” rivers that that bring nutrients from the Andes to fertilize the floodplains, “blackwater” rivers are nutrient-poor, and flooding does not enrich the soil as it does in the varzea.

In the blackwater ecosystems, the primary food source is fish.  And the fish depend on the forest for their food supply.  River margins provide food for fish — leaves, fruits, flowers, seeds, insects, insect larvae, arachnids, crustaceans, and worms.  At least fifty fish species feed almost exclusively on fruit that falls into the river. Other fish feed on insects which, attracted by the fruit, fall into the river. During flooding cycles, waters overspill their banks and allow fish into the flooded forests to feed. Fruit trees are planted to feed the fish and forests along the rivers are protected. Instead of the rivers replenishing the land through flooding, the forest replenishes the river.  In effect, the forest is maintained as a grazing ground for fish.

The Uananos of the Uaupes River of Brazil are acutely aware of the importance of food sources from the adjacent forest in maintaining fisheries:

The Uanano describe fish spawning as a fruit-exchange dance. Any interruption of these dances or interference in the supply of fruits requisite to them is severely punished by retribution of the fish elders. While the adult fish are caught as they swim back from the “dances,” in exchange, the Uananos protect the offspring and preserve their food source — the forest. The Uanano depend upon the generosity of the fish and the forest and avoid offending them.   (Chernela 1982)

Writing of the Makuna of Colombia, who live farther upstream on the Vaupes River (called Uaupes in Brazil)  says:

In the Amazon, forest and river are closely linked. In an environment where considerable tracts of land are permanently or periodically inundated, it is difficult to tell where the forest ends and the river begins. The rain-forest with its myriad of waterways is thus very much an integrated whole, to which its animal inhabitants have adapted. Tree-dwelling species stay in the upper layers of the forest to escape flooding, while ground living animals have developed an amphibian capacity to move freely between land and water. The jaguar and its principal prey — tapirs, peccaries, and large rodents — are, for example, excellent swimmers, while other predators such as anacondas, caymans, and otters, live most of their lives in the rivers.

This close interdependence between the life worlds of the river and the forest is reflected in the peculiar Makuna idea that fish and game animals may transform into one another. In their hunting tales fish at will walk up on land to feed on the fruits and seeds of the forest. Conversely, game can turn into fish and disappear into the depths of the rivers to escape the hunters. Therefore, they say, fish never have empty stomachs, and hunters often fail to track down game along the river beds.

In the words of a Makuna shaman:

When the fish travel along the river they visit the fish people of other houses, just like people visit one another in this world. The fish people go to drink and dance in each other’s houses. As they leave one house and enter another they take off the old dresses and put on new ones; each house is different, with its own name and history. The fish change accordingly. Even the river changes from one place to another; the water is here bitter and heavy, there light and sweet like the juice of sweet fruits. The fish also change with season; in the appropriate season they perform forest fruit rituals, make dabucurí feasts, and play their Yuruparí instruments. Therefore the fish has to be blessed differently according to season and place, depending on when and where it was caught.   (Arnhem 1996:29)

The main horticultural crop in blackwater ecosystems is bitter manioc. Bitter manioc cultivation solves one of the great problems of Amazonian populations: how to cultivate soils extremely poor in nutrients, extremely acid, and with toxic levels of aluminum.  Manioc, a plant that appears to have evolved in just such areas of  South America, can produce impressive results where nothing else will grow.  Manioc is even adapted to drought, during which it loses its leaves and goes into dormancy, gaining its leaves again with the return of soil moisture.

More than a hundred varieties of bitter manioc have been reported among blackwater populations. Bitter (toxic) manioc has been developed through selective breeding from the sweet (nontoxic) varieties. The toxic chemicals in bitter manioc (which must be processed out for human consumption) help to protect against insects and herbivores, so in the blackwater ecosystems, conscious selection favors the more toxic varieties.

Blackwater ecosystems are the classic “counterfeit paradise” of the Amazon, fragile ecosystems that place severe limits on human population.  They are drained (and flooded) by “blackwater” rivers that carry no fertilizing agents. Garden sites in blackwater regions cannot be used more than a single year without yields declining dramatically, and a garden clearing cannot be more than an acre or so in size, or it may not reforest itself.  Thus, the spaces cleared for gardens must be small or the area cannot revegetate, because it needs the leaf litter from the surrounding forest in order to reforest.  Without the leaf litter the surrounding intact forest, the soils would become either white sands (podsols) or brick-like laterites. Then the deforestation would become permanent. And when the forest cover is removed, these soils quickly erode, altering the river channel and depositing silt in the river.  So the garden remains small and is moved every single year.  And in blackwater ecosystems, it may take over a hundred years for the cycle to complete itself and the primary forest to return  Thus (outside of areas of terra preta, see below) human populations in blackwater ecosystems must remain small and nomadic.

Terra Preta

Terra preta  is a phenomenon found across all four types of ecosystems, although it is rare in the upland forests closer to the Andes.   Terra preta  (“black earth”), also called Terra Preta do Indio (“Indian black earth”) is the Brazilian name for certain highly fertile dark earths in the Amazon region created by indigenous peoples. Terra preta soils exist across a wide range of  parent soil types — red or yellow kaolinite ferralsol, acrisol, sandy podzol, and terra preta is distributed throughout a wide range of Amazonian environments — black and whitewater ecosystems, bluff edges and headwaters, floodplains and terra firme. It is estimated that 10% of the Amazon Basin is terra preta. The area of terra preta already mapped is immense — twice the size of the UK.

The properties and behavior of terra preta defy scientific understandings. Terra preta does not form naturally out of compost, even where composting is intentional. Contemporary settlements, even indigenous ones, do not create terra preta.

Yet, terra preta seems to continuously regenerate itself.  In Brazil, there are sites where prehistoric terra preta has been intensively farmed for nearly forty years with no addition of any fertilizer. Some scholars suggest that terra preta essentially represents a “living organism” because of its capacity to regenerate itself.   

Archaeologists have surveyed the distribution of terra preta and found it correlates with the places in which conquistador Francisco de Orellana’s chroniclers described seeing cities. Radiocarbon dating shows that the terra preta seems to start around the time of Christ, perhaps a few hundred years earlier. This is the same time that archaeologists first see complex polychrome pottery and evidence of mound building in the Beni and on Marajó Island. The abundance of pottery shards found in every deposit of terra preta, and the traces of ancient roads connecting them, demonstrate that terra preta correlates with intensive human occupation.

Organic matter in terra preta averages 40 to 50 cm deep, but may be as deep as one to two meters (!)  Radiocarbon dating demonstrates the extremely fast rate of terra preta formation — a meter of soil produced in just a few decades.  It is calculated that 24500 tons of silt and algae or 9000 tons of mulch would be required to cover one meter of topsoil over one hectare, so this which implies high labor investment and complex social organization.

In the modern world, intensive agriculture and population growth are associated with ecological destruction and soil decline – but in the Amazon, as a result of farming and as a result of population growth, the soils grew richer, not poorer.  Terra preta today also appears to be preserving plant species that cannot survive elsewhere in the Amazon, thus helping to preserve and promote biodiversity.

Besides creating continuing soil fertility, terra preta has another benefit that its creators cold not have foreseen: it helps to sequester carbon dioxide.

The technology for creating terra preta seems to have been lost by present-day indigenous populations of the Amazon. Special inoculations of microorganisms were involved, but those bacterial cultures and the technologies for using them are today lost.   But when the mystery of creating terra preta is solved, it may be one of the greatest gifts of the Amazonian native peoples to the world.

The Times of Destruction

The Pastaza Runa refer to the “Times of Destruction,” when they experienced the most severe population crash.  accessibility, the density, and the networking of these civilizations made them extremely vulnerable to both epidemics and European slaving.

The first epidemics quickly swept up and down the major rivers, where populations were most concentrated; the Amazon River itself, once the most densely populated zone of the Amazon Basin, had 100% population loss. The indigenous populations of the varzea became virtually completely extinct; their cities, made entirely of biodegradable materials, vanished into the earth without an archaeological trace.   No indigenous populations remain along the Amazon River proper, and the impression passed down in the last few centuries was of a thinly populated river.   

The Zaparos, once a major power on the Pastaza River of Ecuador and Peru, are today reduced to about five Zaparo speakers.  The Omaguas are today reduced to about ten speakers of the language living near Iquitos, Peru.

The settlements found in the Xingu had thrived for eight hundred years, from 800 CE to 1600 CE, when the population crashed due to European epidemics.  These epidemics wiped out the population before Europeans ever set foot in the Xingu.  The Upper Xingu region is so remote that Europeans did not reach the area until more than two hundred years after the first colonists arrived in Brazil.  By then, the villages were mostly abandoned, the people long since decimated by the spread of European diseases such as smallpox, measles and influenza.

The Napo River is the most accessible part of the Amazon Basin.  In fact, it was the first area penetrated by Europeans, and the first area hit by epidemics, that even preceded the Europeans themselves (the banks of the Napo River were already depopulated by the time Orellana saw it).

The indigenous peoples who survived the epidemics are for the most part those were in the “boondocks,” on the fringe of the major Amazonian civilizations. Since then, tribes and communities have continued to be shattered by various destructive forces, from epidemics to missionary disruption to virtual enslavement on encomiendas or land grants, the Rubber Boom, and, in recent decades, massive colonization, deforestation, land losses, and the poisoning of rivers by petroleum companies.

Conclusion

The stereotypical picture of the Amazonian Indian is of a naked hunter in the jungle, shooting poisoned darts at monkeys from blowguns.  This picture is not inaccurate:  indigenous Amazonians traditionally were, and as much as possible continue to be, hunters and gatherers, traditionally didn’t wear clothes, and many did and do hunt with blowguns and poisoned darts.

The indigenous peoples of the Amazon are hunters and gatherers, but they are not only hunters and gatherers; they are not even mainly hunters and gatherers.  They are mainly gardeners of the forest, but practitioners of a kind of gardening that obscures the distinctions between “wild” and “cultivated.” They practice a kind of horticulture that is not only sustainable, but has proven to be the only sustainable way of cultivating in a tropical rainforest environment, and that has actually helped to increase biodiversity.    The modern Amazon rainforest is only 15,000 years old (having largely dried up during the Ice Age) and humans have been active participants in this ecosystem since the beginning.  Humans have actively participated in creating the most biodiverse region in the world.

All of the Amazonian countries today  have aggressively promoted “colonization programs” in the Amazon, as a solution for their landless peasant problems, and envisioned the rainforest as supporting large-scale commercial agriculture, both cultivation and cattle raising.  But traditional western agricultural practices – including permanent clearing and monocropping – has proven an ecological disaster, resulting in permanent deforestation that continues to spread as poor colonists move from exhausted lands to new areas

The rainforest conservation community has responded for decades by stressing that the soils of the Amazon are so poor that the Amazon could only support a small population.  The discovery that Amazonian Indians had large populations in the past was resisted for a time because it is believed that this could give the green light to even more intensive colonization of the Amazon. But colonization has been destructive because it is based on agricultural practiced completely unsuited to the rainforest.

The sustainable practices used by the Indians, conscientiously applied, could support millions of people sustainably and without destroying biodiversity — but the greater the population, the more conscientiously the practices must be followed.

Indigenous wisdom remains vital to our world.  It is a living part of the human cultural wealth and can help to guide humanity in re-aligning its way of living with the world.

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Ayahuasca, is a word from the Quechua linguistic family of Andean-Equatorial South America. It means “vine of the soul” and refers both to a large forest liana (Banisteriopsis caapi), and a strong infusion (tea) made from its woody parts, or with one or more other plant admixtures. The most usual addition to the brew are leaves from the shrub Psychotria viridis. These plants are endemic to the Amazon Basin, where they are part of a much larger plantas maestras or “teacher plants” tradition native to that part of the world. Such plants – many of which have emetic, purgative, cathartic, dream-inducing and/or visionary effects – are used to facilitate states of consciousness that are believed to open into the worlds of spirit.

In many cultures, the relationship between ayahuasca and Religion plays a crucial role in shaping spiritual beliefs and practices.

In the typical ayahuasca preparation, the molecular basis for this lies in the betacarboline complex (harmine, tetrahydroharmine, etc.) and the indole dimethyltryptamine (DMT). These are part of a structural group that includes neurotransmitters, molecules used to effect internal communication in the human body. In ayahuasca, these dialogues are deepened and expanded to include all manner of elemental, plant, animal, ancestor, and deity. These then appear less as an “other,” and more as participants in the metabolisms of yet larger bodies, such as regional ecosystems, or the earth itself.

Such organismic cosmologies are common to many indigenous peoples. These often suggest the existence of a reality a priori to material existence, one of mythic causality in which all beings are mutually transformative and exist as ontological equals, as “persons”. Dialogues with such a world are effected through imaginal exchanges (dreams and visions), dance, prayer, song, and their attendant feeling states and sensory awareness. These describe the body’s innate capacity to converse with what is presumed to be the affective life of the natural world. Ayahuasca allows access to this generous bandwidth of communication, and its repeated use cultivates familiarity with the ecology of souls which inhabit it.

Sophisticated eco-cosmologies have therefore evolved among Amazonian peoples around the use of ayahuasca and other plantas maestras. These tend to order such practical activities as healing, divination, procreation, and hunting within the concept of an all-encompassing fertility circuit. This view understands the world to be nourished by a finite supply of vital force that must be equitably shared. Human greed, waste, and disrespect can easily disrupt this flow, and the repercussions are thought to express themselves in personal and social ills. Spirituality and medicine are thereby integrated into various social norms which tend to preserve ecosystem integrity. Examples include food, sex, and hunting taboos, and the cultivation of kinship relations with plants and animals.

The world of nature as revealed by ayahuasca typically appears as a society, a culture of spiritual relations. The teachings of ayahuasca are acts of healing, remediations in energy flow and balance whereby one “becomes” the lessons. One so healed may then enter into transformative relations with larger organizing forces, with greater ecosystemic intelligences, which in turn tend to increase human self-consciousness, inspiration, revelation, and sense of mission. When these traits are understood within the context of spiritual evolution, ayahuasca takes on a religious significance.

The idea of healing body and soul has formed the essence of religious beliefs of peoples the world over. Similarly, one can conjecture that the supplication of humans to the healing power of nature is the source of much of what we know as religious thought. In this regard, the role of plants and fungi in the origins of religions has been explored by a number of authors. Perhaps the most well-known example is Soma, the mysterious plant (or fungus) recounted in the Hindu Rg-Vedas as a vehicle of religious ecstasy.

Plant-inspired religions can be understood as acts of guidance by an elder community of species to a younger one, the human. They are concerned with successful co-creative relations within the community of nature and the organismic and spiritual growth that these bring about. Such religions allow the initiate to cultivate an expanded sense of self, whereby one’s actions in the world are reviewed in experiences of right or wrong, heaven or hell. This often results in a greater awareness of, and respect for, the spiritual ecologies that govern the world.

These understandings have been lost to much of religious life as humanity civilizes itself into increasingly mono-species (exclusively human) social arrangements and dialogues. Politicizing, intellectualizing, and influences that move divinity off-planet have all played their roles in denaturing the religions that have co-evolved with Western industrialism.

However, a reformation of plant-inspired religions has been occurring since the late 1800s. These often come of syncretizing influences in places of sudden and disruptive culture change. Examples include the evolution of the use of peyote (Lophophora williamsii ) into a pan-Native American religion; and the creation of churches that employ iboga root (Tabernanthe iboga) in colonized central west Africa. Similarly, ayahuasca-based churches were born in the Amazon basin with the influx of colonists and forest extractivists.

In the late 1920s, a rubber tapper named Raimundo Irineu Serra, or Master Irineu as he came to be called, had a series of visions in the forests near Acre, Brazil brought on by his use of ayahuasca. In these he was visited by the Queen of the Forest in the guise of the Virgin of Conception. Through her he received the doctrine of a new religion based on spiritual healing. Ayahuasca took on the name of Daime, after the invocation Dai-me Amor, Dai-me Luz. . . (“Give me Love, Give me Light”), and the religion became known as Santo Daime. Master Irineu moved to the nearby town of Rio Branco in 1930, and there began to cultivate this religion with a small group of adherents.

A number of hymns began to be received by church members in the form of “singing murmurs,” considered to be gifted from higher worlds. They invoke an eclectic pantheon that includes Old and New Testament figures and various saints, spirits of sacred plants, forest animals, devic presences, and heavenly bodies. These, along with accompanying musical instruments and formalized dancing, became an important part of church ceremonies and source for doctrinal development.

As the religion grew in Brazil, it spread from rural caboclo (mixed-blood river dwellers) communities into new settings and populations. These include the urban middle class, health professionals, and intelligentsia, as well as more marginalized groups, such as drug addicts (the churches have become well known for their work in helping people to overcome addictions), counter-culturalists, and the urban poor. This growth stimulated the formation of sects. For example, the Barquinha (“little boat”) group emerged in the 1950’s; it accommodates aspects of the very heterogeneous Umbanda (mediumist) spiritualism.

Yet another rubber tapper, Jose Gabriel da Costa, encountered the use of ayahuasca with native Indians in the forests bordering Bolivia and Brazil. In 1961 he founded the U.D.V. (União do Vegetal) which soon spread into the urban south of Brazil. Among the more hierarchical and organizationally sophisticated of the ayahuasca religions, the U.D.V. stresses a less “active” service, with long periods of silence interspersed with conversational sharing.

Despite differences, all churches share similarities that derive from the integrative nature of ayahuasca itself. It is considered a sacrament, and like its predecessor soma, a divinity, both “Christ’s blood,” and a forest spirit. The replacement of the bread and wine Eucharist with ayahuasca brings an eco-spiritual force into communion with Christian saints and their prescriptions of love, peace, charity, and fraternity. By unifying the naturalized and the civilized, it appears to work as a bridge over the 500 years of culture clashes wrought by the colonialist enterprise. In this way it births new cultural forms of indigeneity, ways of belonging to the land that reflect the needs of the various peoples brought to it.

A notable example is the 1982 founding of a community called Vila Céu do Mapiá (Mapia) by Santo Daime church members. Located in a large forest reserve in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, Mapia is intended as an ecological-communal “social laboratory” where the teachings received through the Daime can be practiced in daily life.

The world affirmed by ayahuasca, and in fact all teacher plants, tends to run contrary to that enacted by industrial-growth cultures. Hence those individuals that convert often become less amenable to mainstream mores, values, and ways of life. The media in Brazil and elsewhere have observed this, and in recent years have accused the churches of contributing to the breakdown of society; this by inducing its followers into acts of fanaticism, such as leaving one’s city life and disappearing into the forest.

Antipathy to the forces of change unleashed by sacred plants is likewise reflected in the modern War on Drugs. Under international pressure, Brazil added B. caapi to its list of controlled substances in 1985. Following a series of appeals and investigations it was removed from the list with provisions in 1987, and fully exempted in 1992. In that year its legitimacy was celebrated with ayahuasca ceremonies featured as part of the inter-religious vigil of the Global Forum section of the Earth Summit conference in Rio de Janeiro.

As the use of ayahuasca spreads outside of Brazil, it continues to run into prohibition policies. In recent years the churches in Europe and the U.S. experienced a number of seizures and arrests. Many court cases are pending, though a decision on May 21, 2001 in the Dutch court acquitted the Santo Daime church under the constitutional right to freedom of religion.

Modern ayahuasca religions are born both of the sylvan cosmos and a humanity sundered from that world. They therefore have great implications during this era of ecological crisis. To reestablish communicative relations with medicinal plants is to reconnect with a perennial source of assistance to humans. What such plants can do for individuals, they can do for communities; in this way they engender healing cultures. This process continues in Brazil (e.g., the Centro de Cultura Cósmica has recently sprouted from both Santo Daime and the U.D.V. influences) and in other areas of the world, where such movements are more covert.

These religions are prophetic in considering themselves microcosmic realities of a future-healed earth, yet for them, the future is now. They presume that as more people awaken to this reality, a relational indigeneity appropriate for the times will become increasingly accepted as a new cultural norm, and the planetary crisis will then pass. This vision is millenarian in scope, and suggests the inevitable evolution of a heart-opening ecotopia. To this end, a Daime hymn sings of a “new life, new world, new people, new earth.”

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1996 “Healing Power”: Cultural-Neurophenomenological Therapy of Santo Daime. (In) Yearbook of Cross-Cultural Medicine and Psychotherapy 1995. Michael Windelman & Walter Andritzky, eds. VWM – Verlag fur Wissenschaft und Bildung.

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This is an edited transcript of a series of conversations between Howard G. Charing, author of The Ayahuasca Visions of Pablo Amaringo, and Steve Beyer, author of Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon. These talks took place during the summer of 2010, at the kitchen table and on the front stoop of Steve’s house in Chicago. Some drinking and cigar smoking was involved.

Howard: I read Singing to the Plants several times, and I found it not only an extremely well researched book but also inspirational; it came through to me as a true labor of love. I understand that you originally envisioned the book to address more of an academic, anthropological audience, which is the reason that you wanted it to be published by the University of New Mexico Press; but you have created much more than an academic work. When you talk about your teachers, doña María and don Roberto, your warmth, humanity, and respect for them shines through.

You asked them to describe their history, how they perceive their lives, as a personal mythology in which their stories are portrayed not as a continual flow but as consisting of events and turning points in their lives. You have lived and studied in Tibet, written books about Tibetan Buddhism, had a career as a partner in a major Chicago law firm, and finally worked with medicinal plants, shamanism, and a blog and book of the same title. So my question is: how would you mythologize your life?

Steve: Some people don’t mythologize their lives. Don Roberto didn’t, but doña Marie did see her life as a series of major episodes. I tend think that lives actually go in spirals — at least it seems that mine has. My interest in Buddhism, and in Tibetan Buddhism in particular, was an attempt to understand what it was like… I have a lot of trouble articulating this, because the vocabulary available to me has gathered so much baggage. I want to say that I’ve always been interested in altered states of consciousness.

Howard: That’s an important starting place.

Steve: But the term “altered states” seems to me to be wrong. And it has accumulated so much baggage that it’s very hard to use.

First of all, if you talk about altered states of consciousness, you’re immediately making the assumption that there are ordinary states of consciousness that are somehow in opposition to altered states. I have simply never seen this as an opposition. Let’s think about human experiences. You have the experience of doing mindfulness meditation, climbing a mountain, writing poetry, falling in love, giving birth to a child, or watching someone you love give birth to a child. Human life is so filled with important experiences that grouping them into just two classes, ordinary and altered, is artificial, and filled with built-in value judgments. For example, I can see what a life-changing experience it can be for people to witness the birth of their first child. Then to say that’s somehow an ordinary state of consciousness, as opposed to taking LSD, which for many years has been the paradigmatic altered state of consciousness, is, I think, artificial and misleading.

So, to rephrase what I started to say before, I have always been interested in the range of human experience, including those experiences that are less common in North America. That was one of the reasons I became interested in Buddhism and in Buddhist meditation in particular. At the time I wrote my first book, The Cult of Tara, in 1973, Tibetan meditation had not yet really been explored by Western scholars, and what I wrote about — how Tibetans actually performed meditation, what was going on internally when one performed ritual meditation in the Tibetan tradition — was pretty much new. So this was one of the first books to talk about what it was like to perform Tibetan ritual meditation and the ways in which meditation coordinated with ritual in the context of monastic practice.

And when I first started to think about Amazonian shamanism, that was the model that I was using. I wanted to understand how it worked, what it was like, what the cultural context was.

Howard: I think there’s an important point here; there are two ways to look at this. One way, for example, would be a traditional anthropological perspective — that is, you sit outside and you describe your observations. Then there is another method where you actually participate, so it does not become a scientific Western objective perspective, but rather a subjective experience. And when you write about these things, you’re writing about your personal altered experience.

Steve: I think there’s a trap there. If you follow that path, it’s very easy to come to the conclusion that you are more important than the people you’re writing about. If you approach it from this — let’s call it postmodern — perspective, it’s very easy for the investigator to think that the investigator’s thoughts, reactions, emotional involvements are all much more interesting than the people the investigator is trying to understand. The book is not about me; the book is about my teachers.

And, in particular, about doña María and don Roberto. I tried very hard to use my own very limited kinds of experiences to illuminate something about them and about the kind of shamanism that they practice. Erik Davis, the social historian and cultural critic, in his review of the book, said that I resisted the temptation to turn it into a memoir, which I thought was very astute. I take that as a compliment.

So there is kind of a narrow path you can walk, which I tried to walk, where you use your own experiences to illuminate the people and practices you’re trying to understand, without turning it into a book about yourself.

Howard: Your relationship with doña María and don Roberto does come through without a doubt, and their teachings are central to the book. You have been explicit regarding this. I just want to underscore — without implying that this book is anything resembling a memoir — that your relationship and personal dynamic with them are an essential component of the book. This certainly makes the book more engaging, richer, more textured. Although you resist this point, your role as narrator, their communicator and pupil, makes you part of it, and the vignettes — how at times they treated you as a confidant and other times admonished you like an errant pupil — in my view has really successfully augmented the academic text.

Steve: Well, I really appreciate that. That’s very kind of you.

There is a tendency — and I talk about this especially in relationship to María Sabina — to romanticize and to spiritualize shamans generally, and shamans in the Upper Amazon in particular. I think that does them a disservice. It takes away the depth of their humanity.

Howard: And their suffering, too. This is another important aspect of Singing to the Plants. You show that life in the Amazon is harsh, and in no way is it a soft and easy reality. The tragic death of doña María illustrates this. It is candid and direct, and no attempt has been to make the Amazon world romantic or “cosmic.” In my experience the shamans are not cosmic. They work to help everyday people in their suffering, their illnesses, and their protection. It is about the nitty-gritty of survival, and that’s one of the impressive aspects to your book.

Steve: Shamans are people who are engaged in dealing with envy, resentment, jealousy, disease, sickness, marital problems, business failures, interpersonal conflict. These are people whose job it is to deal with mess.

And they have their own sometimes messy lives. They have the dirty, difficult, and dangerous job of trying to make sick people better. And I think we do them a disservice when we spiritualize them, romanticize them, and try to turn them into some kind of religious icon. They deserve better than that.

Howard: I found your description of your first ayahuasca session and its effects to be something I can relate to. It was amusing and messy, very real. You are not saying “I had this transcendent experience.” You describe the reality of the whole thing: “I was sick as a dog.”

Steve: The unique healing culture of the Upper Amazon is centered on making sick people better; but their concept of what constitutes sickness is, I think, broader than in biomedicine. For example, an unfaithful spouse, a failing business, the patient’s own acts of selfishness and betrayal are all forms of sickness that need to be healed. And sickness in the Upper Amazon is always social. The only reason you get sick in the Upper Amazon is because there has been a breach of the social bond among people. The patient has behaved in a way that violates the norms of generosity, mutuality, and trust to such an extent that envy and resentment on the part of the other person results in this social disruption embedding itself in the body of the patient in the form of a dart. And this dart could be a monkey tooth, a parrot beak, a scorpion, a razor blade, a snake. It is a physical manifestation of a breach of confianza — a breach of the relationship of trust and mutuality that ought to inform all human relationships.

Howard: What you’ve been describing, and putting into a good perspective, is a self-regulating social anarchy system. There’s no form of institutional authority involved in regulating people’s behavior. It certainly for me puts the use and purpose of sorcery in another light. In the Western world, where anarchy is frowned upon, the authorities control our social behavior.

Steve: Right. Sorcery has been said to be a weapon of the weak. It is a way of enforcing social norms of generosity and mutuality. It is a way of subverting hierarchy. It is a way of making sure that people interact in ways that are socially acceptable.

Howard: Westerners treat sorcery or brujería dismissively as a superstitious belief: if you don’t believe in it, they say, it cannot harm you. This is a mistake. There are powers outside of the everyday human intellect which do have an effect, which can heal people and which can harm people. And I think it’s a weakness for a Westerner to go to the Amazon and believe that this kind of sorcery is just some kind of illusion.

Steve: But at the same time I have seen Westerners get caught up, for example, in the sorcery craziness in Iquitos. Part of mestizo culture is the assumption that life is a zero-sum game — that if I get something that you don’t have, I have in some sense deprived you of it. There are constant undercurrents of suspicion. If anything goes wrong, it’s not attributed just to bad luck, it’s attributed to the malevolence of another person. So, sorcery has both positive and negative aspects within mestizo culture. On the one hand, it is the enforcer of norms of generosity, a subverter of hierarchy, and at the same time it creates currents of gossip and speculation about who is using love magic on someone else’s wife, and who is using evil magic to make sure someone else’s business fails. This is constant conversation in Iquitos.

I have seen westerners get caught up in this. If they have a bad experience with ayahuasca, they say, “Oh, it must be brujería.” Or if they almost get hit by one of those motorcycle taxis, they say, “Oh, somebody’s out to get me.” So between these extremes, I think there somehow must be a way for foreigners to understand these cultural assumptions without themselves getting all caught up in paranoia about brujería.

I was once asked how I protected myself from sorcery, and I gave several answers. I said, first of all, that I have the phlegm of my master, which gives me a corazon de acero, a heart of steel, and protects me. The second is that I am, however remotely, an apprentice of my maestro ayahuasquero, so that my teacher is able to protect me and to take vengeance on my behalf. But my most important protection against sorcery is my insignificance. I think that if you are trying to navigate these currents in ribereño culture, you conform to the social norms that sorcery is intended to enforce. In other words, the lesson of sorcery is that you should strive to be in right relationship with everyone you can. You don’t pick fights, you act generously, and, if somebody offends you, you try to work it out. You don’t attack back. Basically, you behave the way a real human being is supposed to behave, and that’s your best protection against sorcery.

Howard: I go along with that. You don’t want to make enemies in the Amazon. I remember being told, “If someone sticks a knife in your back, take it out, and move on.” The message is clear not to get sucked into all this.

Steve: I think that’s what ayahuasca teaches, too. In the Amazon, as you know, you cannot separate out sorcery and healing. There is no bright line that separates them.

Howard: In my experience it is more of a faint boundary. Where does one begin and where does one end? For example, the use of pusangaría, love magic, which often raises an ethical dilemma for a Westerner.

Steve: The same practices are used for sorcery and healing. The same plants are used. The brujo plants are the very ones used for protection against sorcery. The spiny palms are used as offensive weapons by sorcerers, but they are used as protection by healers. And at the same time, the difference between a sorcerer and a healer has a conceptual basis — the difference between lack of control and self-control.

So, I think again what we see is a lot of ambivalence and a very tragic view of human life. Healing and harming, disease and health, life and death are all bound up together. There are no sharp lines between them. For example, in many indigenous cultures in the Upper Amazon, it is impossible for a shaman to heal one person without making another person sick, because the dart has to go somewhere. You can throw it away, but it’s still there where somebody can trip over it, get hurt by it. Most often the shaman will take the dart and project it back at the person who sends it. Is that healing or is that sorcery?

Howard: That’s the ambiguity of the whole thing.

Steve: Don Roberto told me that he never sent back a dart to the person who sent it. He would always simply put it into his phlegm and make it part of his own armamentarium, his own protection. But that’s unusual. The more common course is to send it back.

Howard: Eye for an eye… It can be very raw and harsh.

Steve: As you know, and as Pablo Amaringo has illustrated, this leads to great battles between shamans, and the line is not easy to draw — as in most human life whenever there is a conflict — and say that one person is perfectly right and one is perfectly wrong. Shamanic battles symbolize human conflict, just as the healing shaman takes onto himself a conflict between two people that has caused the sickness to occur.

Howard: Shamans have to be very careful about who they return the darts to, because they might make another enemy for themselves.

Steve: That’s exactly right. Being a shaman, sucking out a dart, is a dangerous thing to do, for all sorts of reasons. In fact, part of shamanic performance in the Upper Amazon is to dramatize the danger and difficulty of doing this. The darts are perceived as being putrid and nauseating and terrible. The shaman — don Roberto was great at this — spits them out on the ground and makes horrible noises, horrible gagging noises, to show that the dart that’s being sucked out is repulsive, and this dreadful thing has to go somewhere. You can throw it on the ground, but still someone may step on it and be hurt by it.

Howard: And the person being healed can see the disgusting or noxious thing removed. They are then engaged in what’s being performed as well. It’s the drama of the show — a performance, like an art. It’s also for the person that’s being healed. They can actually see it, and the healing becomes tangible.

Steve: Although doña María — this is so typical of her — said that sometimes when you suck it out, it’s very sweet, you have a great temptation to swallow it, and then it’s going to get you. So if you suck something out and it’s sweet, you have to be particularly careful to resist it and to spit it out.

Howard: Did doña María or don Roberto use plants such as camalonga or other roots in their mouths as an additional barrier to prevent them from swallowing the noxious virote?

Steve: What they told me was that this barrier was primarily the mariri, the phlegm that rises up in the throat and becomes like air to protect them from the dart going into their body, but instead gets stuck and dissolved into the mariri.

Howard: Right, then they master this power.

Steve: Yes, and then they can project it out. They can put it into their own phlegm for further protection, or they can use it for attack.

Howard: The use of tobacco; that is so interesting. I know you wrote a whole chapter about it. And it’s particularly important in situations of healing.

Steve: I talk about what I call the Big Three. There are three hallucinogens that are of primary importance in mestizo culture. There is ayahuasca; there is toé, or various species of Brugmansia; and there is mapacho, or tobacco. I should add that there has been so much emphasis on ayahuasca that people have lost sight of the fact that ayahuasca is embedded in a whole pharmacopeia of healing plants, each with a different function. The function of ayahuasca is to give you information. The function of toé is to harden your body and make you immune from sorcery. The function of tobacco is to protect you, because it is the paradigmatic strong sweet smell, and strong sweet smells are protective — that means tobacco, agua de florida cologne, camphor. And mapacho is used by tabaqueros and others as a hallucinogen. It’s hard for a North American to think of tobacco as being hallucinogenic.

Howard: Given the fact that tobacco…

Steve: The fact that, one: Our tobacco is very weak. And two: The reason that people smoke tobacco in North America is as a mood stabilizer. If you’re feeling down, tobacco helps you focus, it increases your attention. If you’re stressed, it can calm you down. So people smoke until they’ve ingested enough nicotine to achieve that effect.

Howard: And there’s very little nicotine in commercial cigarettes compared to mapacho, which has a high level.

Steve: That’s right. That’s why if you’re simply seeking mood stabilization, you don’t have to inhale mapacho, because the underside of the tongue is heavily vascularized, and you can ingest enough nicotine for mood stabilization from mapacho just by holding it in your mouth. But tobacco has all kinds of physiological effects in addition to being a hallucinogen. As you know, it’s smoked during the ceremony and has an effect of — how can I put this? Let me take a step back. Schizophrenics smoke a lot. One reason schizophrenics smoke a lot is because nicotine reduces the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. It helps you concentrate, it helps you focus, it keeps you from getting scattered, while it has no effect on the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hallucinations. So tobacco, when used in conjunction with another hallucinogen such as toé or ayahuasca, helps focus, helps calm, without having any effect on the visions.

What’s interesting to me is, as far as I know — and I could be wrong about this, I’m still waiting for someone to come forward with an example — tobacco is one of the most sacred plants in North America, as well as in South America; yet I know of no indigenous people in North America that has used tobacco as a hallucinogen.

Howard: Let’s talk more about tobacco. This is s very interesting and important part of the Amazon world. It is not only the leaves; you talk about how the smoke is used, and the purpose of drinking tobacco in water as well.

Steve: Yes, a cold infusion of tobacco. Shuar drink tobacco the same way. You have to drink green tobacco to keep your tsentsak, your darts; you have to feed your darts with tobacco. Tobacco use is ubiquitous. It’s everywhere.

Howard: What did doña María or don Roberto say about tobacco? Did they discuss any sort of spiritual aspect to the tobacco or some kind of energy or force associated with it?

Steve: I was told by both that I needed to smoke mapacho every day to nurture my phlegm. But they understood that in North America it was hard to get mapacho and it was hard to drink ayahuasca.

Let me step back a minute. When shamans get together, what do they talk about? They do not, as far as I know, talk about great cosmic symbolic metaphysical ideas. They talk about practical things — how much you should charge your clients, how to deal with clients who don’t pay what they promise to pay, what kind of animal skin makes the best drumhead: “Have you heard about this plastic drumhead they use in North America? Have you tried that?” And what plant medicines to use: “I have a patient with this condition, I’ve used this plant and it doesn’t seem to work. Do you have any idea what other plants I might use?” Or in the Upper Amazon shamans will drink ayahuasca together in order to solve a problem or see if they can get some insight into a difficult social situation. They don’t talk metaphysics any more than biomedical doctors at a medical conference are going to talk about the philosophy of medicine. They’re not going to talk about how the AIDS virus symbolizes social disjunction. They’re going to talk about, “Gee, have you tried this new x-ray machine?”

So, as a general rule, I got very little philosophy from either doña María or don Roberto.

Howard: It was pragmatic?

Steve: Very pragmatic. And what was interesting about doña María was that, unlike most shamans, she had started out as an oracionista, a prayer healer. She had a close relationship especially with the Virgin Mary. Much more than don Roberto, she had incorporated folk Catholicism into her practice. Her arcana, her protective song at the beginning of an ayahuasca healing session, was the Ave Maria. She had, on her own, come up with a metaphysics that explained the relationship between the Virgin Mary in Heaven and the work that she was doing on Earth. She had developed a schematization that was satisfactory to her in making sure everything fit together.

Howard: You know, this is interesting. I’ve never seen a group of shamans get together and talk about their practice. They are very protective. Because when I asked them about this, about sharing their use of medicinal plants or an icaro with a fellow shaman, how they use it, and other things, the general response is that to reveal it would weaken the power for them.

Steve: On the other hand, shamans are part of a whole shamanic information network, reinforced in the Upper Amazon by an apprenticeship system that encourages apprentices to study with other shamans, especially shamans in another indigenous people. There is a tradition that mestizo shamans should go study with indigenous healers, because indigenous healers are masters of shamanism. Just as there are traditions of exogamous marriage among indigenous people in the Upper Amazon, where you are supposed to marry somebody from a village that speaks a different language, there is a tradition that the more foreign shamans you study with, the more powerful you become.

Howard: Absolutely. Artidoro, a mestizo shaman, offers a good example. What he said about the power of icaros was interesting: the ones in Spanish are deemed to have less power, the ones in Quechua have more power, but the ones in the indigenous languages, he says, have the most. He told me a great story of his quest to learn the chants from the Asháninca. The Asháninca are hard-line and war-like, and the men are naked. Artidoro had to be naked with them in order to be accepted. It is not as if you can simply say, “Can I come along with you?” They have to accept and trust an outsider.

So it’s a long process to do this, and though it may be tradition, it’s not something that every shaman, or every single ayahuasquero, can or will do. The apprenticeship takes a long period of time. And so, when Artidoro chants, he chants Asháninca icaros, and they’re so exquisite, they have, so to speak, a very different vibration. And this power and sublime nature of the icaros is something that many people do not appreciate.

Steve: There is a tradition that icaros you have brought from a long distance are more powerful than those you have learned locally. Now, doña María, once again, was contrary. She sang mostly in Spanish, she sang loud, and she said, “I don’t hide anything. I let everybody know exactly what I know.”

Howard: That’s different.

Steve: That’s doña María. She was a feisty lady. There is also a tradition that it is difficult for a shaman in one indigenous group to suck out darts that belong to a different indigenous group. So unless I have, say, Shuar darts myself, I can’t suck out Shuar darts from somebody else.

Now that has a couple of functions. One function is that it’s a good excuse if someone being healed happens to die, and the healer has a concern that he might be accused of sorcery, of having himself killed the patient. He can say, “You know, it was a Shuar dart. There was nothing I could do.” But more important, it means that there is dart trading. There is a market in darts; you go and you get darts from as many different people from as far away as you can.

There are some really interesting things about this shaman network. One is that one of the places where shamans from many different parts of Peru come together is in the Peruvian Army. Another is that Protestant missionaries give people rides in their airplanes to these big tent revival meetings. So people from a wide area all come together for the Protestant revival meetings, and that’s where shamans from different regions of the country get together and share information: “How do you do this where you come from?”

There are lots of reasons for a shaman to be part of a network of shamans. I might have a healing problem that I can’t solve. Maybe the brujo who has afflicted my patient is much more powerful than I am. It is important for me to have access to other shamans who are even more powerful than the brujo. People who might attack me need to know that I have powerful friends, and that if they succeed in killing me, at least I will have the satisfaction of knowing that my friends will take revenge on my behalf.

Howard: And that’s a good thought, isn’t it?

Steve: So, yes, there is this combination of secretiveness and trying to protect your proprietary knowledge, while at the same time there is a lot of sharing going on, not only among the mestizo shamans but among mestizo shamans and Shipibo, Huitoto, Asháninca shamans, all these other peoples.

We started out talking about the fact that most Upper Amazonian shamans are not philosophers of shamanism, and that when they get together — just as when biomedical doctors get together — they talk about practical things. Doña María was, in part, an exception, because her path to being an ayahuasquera began when she was very young and was a prayer healer. Pablo Amaringo is a good example of somebody with an intense curiosity and, because of the popularity of his paintings, with the opportunity to meet and interact with all kinds of people. He had a remarkably absorptive mind. He was unusual, I think, in the way that he became a philosopher of mestizo shamanism.

That’s one of the things that made him important, because he was doing something that other people were not doing. And I think in Pablo Amaringo we have somebody who was deeply immersed in his own tradition, but had both the capacity and the opportunity to be able to apply all kinds of other things to this tradition — to express a philosophy of shamanism and how it works, how it can be read cosmologically.

Howard: Absolutely. Pablo is an authority; he not only paints but describes the structure of subatomic particles and how matter is formed. He shows the influences of sound and vibrations, and ultimately he says that everything is just one, massive, eternal sound, one vibration. His mastery of communicating the underlying nature of existence is unique, his paintings inform where linguistics cannot.

Steve: He talks about the Hindu gods, samadhi meditation, the king of the Sakyas — that is, Buddha. He remembers everything he’s ever heard, and he works it into a philosophical system of Amazonian shamanism.

Howard: And beyond. Well beyond.

Steve: I am sometimes asked — because I wrote the book and not because I know anything — in effect to philosophize on behalf of my teachers. Somebody will come up with something, you know, sort of cosmic, and they ask me what I think about it. And I have to answer, “I don’t have a clue.” I would guess that certainly my teachers, and probably most Amazonian shamans, never thought about it at all.

Howard: It’s not in their world at all. It just falls outside their domain. Absolutely, practical matters, you know, “Is my boyfriend cheating on me?” “Why can’t I get a job?” “Why aren’t plants growing properly on my farm?” Practical, everyday matters of life.

Steve: That’s absolutely right. The mess of life.

Howard: One of the things that has come up in this type of discussion, it was about two years ago, at the conference in Iquitos, and the first few days the shamans were introducing themselves, describing what they do so the gringos could decide who they would like to drink ayahuasca with — a sort of “shaman market.”

I recall one shaman talking about how he heals, about his plant mixtures, resins, and so on. But basically, he was saying, “My work is proprietary. It works for me. I heal people.” He was saying this his healing comes from a personal relationship with the plants, with the medicine, and that is the source of his power. A couple of Westerners couldn’t appreciate this. They stood up and said, “Well, if your medicine is so powerful, why don’t you share it with everybody? Why don’t you give it to everybody?” The shaman was literally lost for words. In the West, medicine is pharmaceutical; there is no relationship between the doctor and the medicine. In the shamanic paradigm, healers undergo the discipline of la dieta, and they learn directly from the plants how to heal. So I can really understand that a shaman can say, “I can’t share this with anybody else because it wouldn’t work for anybody else.”

Steve: I think one of the things that we need to think about is whether, in fact, when we say heal or cure we’re talking about the same thing that an Amazonian shaman is talking about when he uses the words heal or cure.

Here is a story. I was with don Roberto in his hut when a boat pulls up by the bank of the river. Two men come up the bank, one helping the other. The man being helped is doubled over, and the man carrying him tells don Roberto that the man is his cousin who has terrible pains in his stomach. Can don Roberto do something about it? So don Roberto does what I came to think of as his ten-minute healing. He shakes his shacapa, his leaf-bundle rattle, all over the man’s body, especially in the area where it hurt. He blows tobacco smoke into the top of his head, all over his body, and onto the place where it is hurting. He sucks the place and spits stuff out and shakes the shacapa some more, and the man said he was feeling a little bit better.

And I was sitting there the whole time, thinking to myself, “My god. What if this guy has acute appendicitis?” So I ask permission from everybody if I can touch him, they say okay. There’s no fever, no rebound tenderness or guarding, no pain on the right side when pressing on the left, nothing special in the lower right quadrant — all the things you look for to see if someone has appendicitis. So I was very relieved, but that only postponed the real question: Here is don Roberto, my maestro ayahuasquero, a man I admire and respect and love. Do I or do I not believe that don Roberto can heal acute appendicitis? If I had acute appendicitis in the jungle, would I want to have don Roberto sucking at it, or would I want to be on a plane to the University of Chicago Hospital?

Howard: Yeah, but that is not a valid question or situation for an average guy in the Amazon. They don’t have that choice.

Steve: Absolutely right. But it raises, I think, in stark personal terms, the question of what is going on when healing is taking place in the Upper Amazon. There is question I ask people. Some Amazonian shamans are very humble, some are very bold. There’s one who says he can cure cancer, he can cure AIDS, he can cure obesity, and he’s got a whole list of things that he claims to cure. It strikes me that if he can do even a fraction of what he says — if he can cure breast cancer, for example — then there ought to be hundreds of doctors studying what he does to find out how it works and to see if it can be reproduced; he should be immensely wealthy and should be teaching in medical schools and hospitals all over the world. And yet this doesn’t happen.

Howard: I’m not sure that I would trust someone who made those claims. As you say, if those claims were proven, he would indeed be world renowned, a shaman to the stars and the wealthy.

Steve: Now, two things occurred to me. One is when Amazonian shamans who deal with a gringo clientele make claims like that about what they can heal, the claims always involve diseases that are socially salient in gringo culture. They always involve the diseases, such as AIDS and cancer, that gringos are most concerned about, that have almost mythic significance.

So I would ask that shaman, “Can you cure gingivitis?” And if he could cure gingivitis, that would mean that all of the old people in his village would have all their teeth. And if he can’t cure gingivitis — if, like everywhere else in the jungle, people have lost most of their teeth by the time they are in their forties — should I think he can cure cancer?

Howard: But we’re talking two completely different paradigms here, and the two just don’t work together. When a Westerner talks about AIDS or cancer, that is a disease from our perspective, but maybe that’s not what they regard as a disease. As you said before, they deal with the results of social imbalance, an illness caused by envidia, the envy of others, or susto, a fear caused by contact with a tunchi or ghost. There are many different factors involved; they can heal the imbalances within their own paradigm, many of which are caused by an external source. Shouldn’t we keep these different domains separate? When we talk about disease from a Western view, doesn’t that that confuse and in some respects contaminate the shamanic paradigm?

Steve: Well, let me respond. Anthropologists have made a distinction between healing and curing. The idea in this distinction is that you cure things like a duodenal ulcer. But when we talk about healing, we’re talking about the making better of a whole person, not only individually, but socially and spiritually. So that the distinction is drawn that if you cure cancer, then there are objective measures by which you can determine whether the cancer has gone away or not. But if you heal cancer, you’re talking about something different. Even if the cancer is not cured, perhaps the person has now accepted the cancer, or the person is able to live with a better quality of life without anxiety over impending death.

But I reject this distinction for a couple of reasons, particularly in the context of healing in the Upper Amazon. One is that if you speak to the shamans, they will claim that they can, and certainly claim that they want to, cure physical diseases. If you had a duodenal ulcer, they will say, “Yeah, we can cure this in exactly the Western sense. It will go away if you use our treatment.” I think that this distinction is a Western imposition, and it is political. Because when a biomedical doctor sets up shop in the jungle, he wants to make a political deal with the shaman, saying, in effect, “I’ll do the curing, you do the healing” — which is the doctor’s way of saying, “You’re not going to do anything at all.”

Howard: But this isn’t just about the individual shaman. We’re talking about plants, about medicinal plants that have healing properties. So traditions and taboos and must have some truth to them, some factual, pragmatic evidence that this healing works, even among people who have no formal education; otherwise they wouldn’t have been there for such a long time. There must be a body of evidence to support the belief that the plant can heal physical illnesses. There are certainly some plants that I would take if I had a physical illness, for example uña de gato, cat’s claw, which is also well known in the West.

Steve: One consideration is that most diseases are self-limited; they get better by themselves. Another consideration is that many even serious diseases are cyclical. Arthritis, for example, can go through a period of getting better, and then go through a period of getting worse. And so the question is: if we’re looking at whether shamans actually heal or cure, we have to separate out the effect of the plants from the effect of a disease being self-limiting or cyclical. We have to have some kind of a metric for deciding when something is healed and when it isn’t. And as far as I know, certainly in the Amazon and for just about every shamanic practice in the world, there has been no study that has done long-term follow-up. I think this is different from trying to understand from within the culture what kind of healing or curing is really going on.

Howard: In some respects we are touching on the allopathic versus holistic systems of healing. In the Amazon, an external influence or “energy” such as malaire —literally bad air — is regarded as a common source of illness. This condition would not be recognized in the allopathic model.

Steve: And malaire is associated with tunchis, the spirits of dead people.

Howard: That’s right, and according to Pablo there are certain plants that create malaire when they decompose. The closest approximation we have to malaire is the term “bad energy.”

Steve: One of my goals in the book generally has been to try to understand this healing system in the Upper Amazon on its own terms, and I have tried to step away from trying to explain it in my terms.

People use terms like energy; just about everybody who is involved in this work at some time or another has used the word energy. But I don’t know what Shipibo term, for example, would be properly translated as energy. Even if I were fluent in Shipibo, I don’t know how I would go about trying to explain the Western concept of energy to them. Even if I tried to explain energy to a mestizo shaman in Spanish, I don’t think I would be able to explain the whole complex of ideas that accompany our concept of energy, its relationship to concepts such as vibration in nineteenth century science, or its relationship to quantum physics. At the same time I am not sure that there is any word that I have heard mestizo shamans use regularly — except perhaps words like energía that they have borrowed from gringos — that I would feel comfortable translating as energy.

So, one of the questions that fascinated me was trying to understand this kind of healing shamanism on its own terms. Now, I say one of the things I was interested in. One of the other things, of course, was trying to understand my own experience and trying to come to grips with the things that I had experienced and seen and participated in, and to see how that related to my own life. But that was not something that I wanted to be in this book.

Howard: Yes, you make that very clear in the book. and it’s a very difficult thing to do, what you described. I know how great a challenge it is, because when I have spoken to a shaman, automatically I’m trying to understand — trying to put my own influences on it, to put it into my way of thinking.

So although a shaman is talking to me about his world, how he understands things, I have to do some kind of translation, some kind of processing to incorporate it. So it takes a lot of care to avoid getting your own personal perspective and comprehension tied up in this. It is a challenge to step outside your own subjective framework of ideas, and try to see it from the other’s perspective. That’s one thing I think you definitely achieved in that book.

Steve: Well, thank you. I was trying to understand what was going on, to take my teachers and place them in a social, cultural, and historical context, and to understand them on their own terms to the extent that I could.

Another reason for writing the book was that there are now a lot of people going down to the Amazon to drink ayahuasca, and they go down there in a state of ignorance. They know nothing about the culture. They may have heard a few things, and they may have heard about sorcery in one of the online ayahuasca discussion groups, but they know nothing about indigenous mestizo culture. They are divorced from the cultural and political struggles of the mestizo and indigenous communities. They are often afraid of the jungle, and will do just about anything to insulate themselves in concrete buildings, because they don’t understand the jungle and they have heard stories about how dangerous the jungle is.

My jungle survival instructor told me that you are safer in the jungle than you are in Lima, because there is virtually no animal in the jungle that will attack you without warning you first. Usually the animal will warn you because you are doing something stupid — you’re getting too close, say, to a wild sow’s piglets. The tourists go to a lodge and food is put in front of them; there are fruits and vegetables and fish and chicken, and they have no idea where this food came from. They have no idea how the people in the jungle fish, or of the kind of sophisticated forest management skills that mestizo and indigenous people use to make sure that they have plantains to eat. So, one of the reasons I wrote the book is to be a sort of guide, because I wanted people to have in their hands something about the culture, the background, so that they could, to some extent, be involved in the culture from which they are taking the medicine.

Howard: That is something which is needed, and is very informative.

Steve: A lot of people go down there for very self-centered reasons. “It’s about me. I am going down for my enlightenment. I am going down for my healing. I am going down there for my very own transformative transcendent experience. I am going down for my epiphany.” And they go down there without any sense of this rich, deep, profound culture that is giving them the medicine that they are taking for their own private purposes.

Howard: I’m not saying that these people are wrong in any way, but they are uninformed about the wider aspects of that world. Most of the literature and Internet material seems to be focused on the more cosmic, transformative, Western perspective on this.

Steve: I would hope that somebody would read this book and say, “Damn. This is really interesting.” These are creative people with a culture that is worth preserving, people who are engaged in long-term struggles for their own culture, for their own land.

Howard: Against the oil corporations and mining companies…

Steve: And are being assaulted from all sides.

Howard: The government, for sure.

Steve: I would hope my readers would say, “Maybe I should go down with an open heart, rather than with a set of motivations that all center on me.”

Howard: There certainly is a self-centered aspect to this. I’m occasionally asked, “How do I become a shaman, who can I apprentice with?” I respond by suggesting that they go there and initially check things out, get in the groove, make some connections with the shamans and so on, but of course that is not what they want to hear. You know, some do go, and if they last three or four weeks, then I’m impressed. But many give up earlier than that, discomfort with insect bites, or basically they couldn’t make friends with the jungle. It’s a very beautiful environment, a total change in the rhythm of life, just day and night.

Steve: Rhythms do change in the jungle. Your sleep patterns change in the jungle because, for people from the temperate latitudes, there’s no twilight. The sun just goes straight down: one minute it’s light and the next minute it’s dark. The darkness comes on very fast. Then you have twelve hours of darkness, which usually changes your sleeping habits — unless you resist the rhythm of the jungle by setting up bright lights to keep you up late.

And, to bring it back around to what we were discussing earlier, there’s a third reason I wrote the book. I wanted to get these ideas out there. Even in just the time since this book was published, there have been all kinds of really interesting discussions, especially online, where people say, “Oh, well, you say this. Here’s my experience.” And the experience is the same, or maybe different. People have corrected some errors I made in the book, which is terrific, and people have challenged some of the ideas I put forward. If we’re lucky, in five or ten years, this book will have been entirely superseded. Hopefully by then people will have read this book and said, “Oh, well, I disagree with Beyer here,” or, “I agree with Beyer, but I can add something here.” I wrote it because there was no book out there like it, where the information was all in one place, and people could add to it, debate it, and correct it.

Howard: You write about the wider popular culture, the unique foods, the drinks, where it all comes from, how it’s made, how it’s transported and so on. It was a pleasure to read, in those informative shaded boxes that feature in the book, about the local cumbia amazónica music that you hear blaring from many bars in Iquitos and Pucallpa.

Steve: Sidebars.

Howard: The sidebars really add the flavor and texture of Amazonian life, and even the dancing girls get a mention — it’s great.

Steve: That was really fun to write. I was very happy because it was the first time in my life I was able to use in a sentence the word callipygian, which is classical Greek for “having a beautiful butt.”

Howard: You do use some words I’ve never seen before. I had to look it up, and, yup, it means “well-shaped buttocks.” By the way, the callipygian dancing girls are called vedettes — just mentioning that to give some texture.

Steve: And not just cumbia amazónica but cumbia music generally is like the hip-hop music of Peru. It’s countercultural underground music. It’s the music of the people.

Too late to get it into the book, there was an art show in a gallery in Lima called Poder Verde, “Green Power,” which is one of the words that they use for the music, cumbia amazónica, but this was an art exhibition, mostly by local artists in Iquitos, the guys who paint murals on the sides of restaurants, who paint pictures of large-bosomed women on the walls of brothels. They had an exhibit of this colorful, exuberant art from the Amazon.

Howard: Have you seen the work of Christian Bendayan?

Steve: Yes! He was one of the people who organized the exhibit and exhibited in this gallery.

Howard: I regard Christian as kind of the founder of that sort of outsider folk art in Iquitos. His work is brilliant and vibrant.

Steve: It’s very powerful, it’s colorful. It’s filled with spirit and sensuality, and the elite in Lima and in Cusco couldn’t care less. They still see the jungle as an arena of exploitation. For example, there was a gastronomy fair in Lima, which featured famous chefs preparing the food of the Amazon. But they did not have the real food of the Amazon. They did not have boiled monkey.

Howard: Or suri, palm beetle grubs, for sure.

Steve: Or suri, absolutely right. What they had was exotic fruit from the jungle, which was made into Western-style desserts. There were, as far as I know, no actual Amazonians there, and the refrain was, “Oh, this grows wild in the jungle for our taking.” There was no understanding of the fact that mestizos and indigenous people are cultivators of the forest with a sophisticated understanding of forest succession, of the ways in which the chacras, even when they are no longer being harvested, provide shelter for animals that they can hunt. There was no mention of the sophisticated jungle management skills that produce these fruits, only the assumption that they are somehow magically there for us to take away.

Howard: The people from the jungle are looked down upon as unwashed and uneducated by the urban bourgeois class in Lima.

Steve: It is racial.

Howard: The natives are not even citizens. They are regarded as being just one step above animals. And the people of Iquitos in their turn look down and discriminate against the river people.

Steve: That’s right. And you hear people say that the wild Indians don’t wear clothes, they eat raw meat, they don’t have salt — and therefore they’re not really there. And so the jungle becomes an area open for exploitation.

Howard: The concept of Manifest Destiny is alive and kicking…

Steve: So people go down to the jungle, and they know nothing of this background. Like the elite in Lima and Cusco, fruits and vegetables appear magically on their plates, and they have no idea where this came from or how it fits into the culture of the Upper Amazon.

Howard: This is the conquistador culture. They just came there, and they just took what they wanted, without any regard for how it’s produced or how it’s made. And that mentality has filtered down through the social structure.

Steve: I talk about this in the book. There is a long, troubled history between mestizos and indigenous people, because, during the rubber boom, not only were mestizos used as itinerant rubber tappers, but they were also used as enforcers by the rubber barons to maintain the servitude of the indigenous people. And of course my belief, for whatever it’s worth, is that the mestizo ayahuasca shamanic tradition is just a hundred years old or so — not much older than that — because it’s a product of the rubber boom.

Mestizos lived by the rivers and used rivers for transportation and or commerce and offered them the opportunity to make a lot of money, supposedly, by chopping down rubber trees and tapping rubber. And they became itinerant rubber tappers, itinerant rubber workers who very quickly became enmeshed in the debt peonage system, because they had to buy their supplies from the company store.

But what it did was to bring these ribereños away from their beloved rivers and move them all east into the jungle, where they came in contact with indigenous people. When they became sick, there was nobody who could look for them because, as itinerant rubber tappers, nobody knew where they were. So they went to indigenous healers, and some of them then studied under the indigenous healers and became healers themselves. When the rubber boom ended, they moved back west and they brought this tradition with them.

Howard: Yes. I think that’s a very important point. For example, we can talk about the barco fantasma, the phantom ship, and how this became incorporated in their world. They were overawed by this invasion of nineteenth-century technology. Steam ships, with their coal burning furnaces producing huge volumes of smoke, making an enormous noise, not just a different noise but one they had never heard before. Up until that moment, the jungle had a whole different sound, and suddenly that had all changed. It’s hard to imagine the impact that the invasion of the rubber barons had on the native world, and how they had to come to terms with it all.

Steve: But look what they did. They incorporated it into their shamanic mythology, the same way they incorporated metaphors of electricity, electromagnetic waves, the way they incorporated flashlights, the way they now have incorporated laser beams and biomedicine. Perfect example: doña María drinking ayahuasca dressed in a long, white coat, like a doctor’s coat, and don Roberto wearing a hat with beads and feathers and Shipibo designs on it and a shirt with Shipibo designs — in effect, symbolizing were two different modes of eclecticism.

Some of the plant spirits who came to don Roberto and doña María would be dressed in hospital scrubs and wearing surgeon’s masks. When they left their bodies and went on journeys through the galaxy, they would visit great spiritual hospitals on other planets and watch the procedures. Remember that to the mestizos, the source of all shamanic wisdom is the indigenous people. It’s hard to think of a mestizo shaman who does not claim somewhere to have been taught by indigenous people.

For example, don Manuel Córdova Ríos, who was a mestizo shaman in Iquitos, told this story about how he had been kidnapped and taken to live with an indigenous people — in effect to where the wild things are. He claimed to have learned the native language through group telepathy sessions when they drank ayahuasca. Eventually he learned all their healing techniques, became their chief, and finally escaped. This is kind of an archetypal story — the civilized person who gets captured by the wild people, learns their language, and comes back and teaches their redemptive secrets to other civilized people. This is a myth that is not only current in the Upper Amazon among mestizos, but this myth is being reenacted by the gringos who go down to the jungle to drink ayahuasca. Here the civilized people go down into the jungle, meet the wise wild people who live there, learn their redemptive secrets, and come back carrying this redemptive wisdom to civilization.

Howard: Joseph Campbell, the myth of the hero.

Steve: That’s right. And this myth of bringing back the healing secrets of the jungle is not only circulated among mestizos, but is now being reenacted by gringos who are going down to the jungle.

Howard: Bring back the gold, bring back the treasure.

Steve: But of course, as you said, this is an ego-feeding kind of thing, because you can say to yourself, “Oh, I’m selected. I’m the gringo to whom these wild people chose to reveal their secrets. That must mean there’s something special about me.” And all of this is divorced from the reality of the jungle, and it’s divorced from the lives of the people and their shamans. It’s divorced from the culture from which these foreigners seek their healing.

Howard: It is important that this way of life be documented in detail, before it goes under the weight of romantic and divorced-from-reality bullshit.

Steve: I think that is another reason. I am very pessimistic about the survival of this tradition.

Howard: Me too.

Steve: I think this rich, deep, profound healing tradition is going to disappear, because there are no apprentices. On one of my podcast interviews we were talking about the loss of this tradition, and I was asked: What about the gringos who have become shamans? I thought that was a really good question, so I gave it a lot of thought, and I said: Well, first, there are very few. Second, they are concentrated in very few places, primarily around Iquitos. And third — and I’m happy to be corrected about this — I do not see these gringo shamans going into mestizo and indigenous communities in order to serve those people. The people they are serving are overwhelmingly gringos.

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Outside the Amazon, artists not born into or raised in indigenous or mestizo ayahuasca-using cultures, including such well-known visionary artists as Alex Grey, Robert Venosa, and Martina Hoffmann, have also rendered visual experiences attributed to the ingestion of ayahuasca or DMT. For want of a better term, I will call this body of work DMT art.

There are some remarkable convergences between DMT art and the abstract representations of the ayahuasca experience in indigenous Amazonian art. The indigenous work on the left, below, by Cashinahua artist Arlindo Daureano Estevão, represents the different worlds of the ayahuasca vision as houses with doors to be entered and paths linking the different contained spaces. This type of design is called nawan kene pua, or stranger’s design, since it is a map that keeps one from getting lost in the ayahuasca world. This abstract representation is strikingly reflected in the work on the right, below, entitled DMT, by photographer Peter Kosinski. It is difficult to say whether such convergences are due to acquaintance with indigenous art or to similarities in the visionary experience.

Similarly, on the left below is a traditional Shipibo woven cloth, whose design represents a sacred pattern derived from a cosmic anaconda whose skin embodies all possible designs. Shipibo shamans employ these patterns to reorder the bodies of persons who are sick. Certain diseases are thought to be caused by harmful, messy designs on the wsick body, which the shaman must magically unravel and replace with orderly designs. After drinking ayahuasca, the Shipibo shaman sees a luminous design in the air. When this design floats down and touches the shaman’s lips it becomes transformed into a song the shaman sings. Different elements of the song relate to different elements of the design; for example, the end of each verse is associated with the end-curl of a design motif. When the patient is cured, the design has become clear, neat, and complete. Again, this abstract representation is strikingly reflected in Vibrata Chromodoris’s Emergence, below on the right.

However, most DMT art is representational rather than abstract, and taps into the work of mestizo Amazon visionary artists. The first painting below is by mestizo artist Pablo Amaringo; the remaining pieces are DMT art by artists from outside the Amazon, all working with content recognizably similar to that of Amaringo, although not necessarily in the same naïve outsider style.

But even more striking, I think, are two motifs that appear with some frequency in DMT art but not in the indigenous or mestizo artistic traditions. The first of these I will call The Face — that is, a recognizably humanoid face with eyes, a nose, and a mouth, often filling the entire frame, and often constructed from smaller units, either geometric figures or dots. These figures are often described as a being, an entity, or a visitation. For example, Robert Essig says of his painting DMT Entity, below on the right, “This image was inspired from my first unnatural encounter with the spirit molecule. An Entity that seemed extremely real and intelligent appeared before me with terrific precision and speed. It dissipated as soon as I imposed my will upon it.”

Indeed, The Face often appears in works that are not conceptually about The Face. In Luke Brown’s Pineal Feline, for example, below on the right, the titular face is that of a cat, at the bottom center of the painting; what then makes up The Face are floral arabesques and ornamentation of the cat’s face, almost entirely buried within — indeed, reduced almost to a decorative adornment of — The Face. Similarly, in Martina Hoffman’s La Chacruna, below on the left, The Face decomposes, upon closer inspection, into arabesques, including snakes and elephant heads, elaborated upon the relatively small face of the goddess, in the upper middle of the painting.

Sometimes The Face is deconstructed to simpler, rather than more complex, elements. At that point, we can begin to see the basic patterns from which complex Faces are constructed.

What is interesting here is that underlying The Face is a relatively simple symmetric pattern, not unlike the abstract patterns of indigenous Amazonian ayahuasca art, but here cognitively assembled into a recognizable human face. Perhaps that is why Essig’s Face dissipated as soon as he imposed his will upon it; attempting to control the image distracted the perceiver from its imposed structural coherence.

Another recurring motif we can call the wingspread. This is a pattern very similar to the wings of a moth or dragonfly. Below, for example, is a more or less typical moth — actually, the tobacco hornworm moth (Maduca sexta):

We can see this wingspread motif reproduced with increasing elaboration in the following pictures:

Strikingly, this wingspread pattern is often hidden rather than explicit, providing a formal structure rather than any content; look, for example, at the wingspread position of the hands in Alex Grey’s Light Weaver, especially in conjunction with, say, Robert Venosa’s Yagé Guide, above. The wingspread pattern underlies the purely formal similarity between Mariela de la Paz’s Ayahuaska at the Gates of San Pedro and Alejandre Segrégio’s Presente Divino. Indeed, sometimes this structure is so deeply embedded as to be difficult to discern, until the pattern suddenly emerges, as with the darker rock formation in Olga Spiegel’s Rendezvous.

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Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic drink made from the stem of the ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi). The ayahuasca drink is sometimes, but rarely, made from the ayahuasca vine alone; almost invariably other plants are added. These additional ingredients are most often the leaves of any of three compañeros, companion plants — the shrub chacruna (Psychotria viridis), the closely related shrub sameruca (Psychotria carthaginensis), or a vine variously called ocoyagé, chalipanga, chagraponga, and huambisa (Diplopterys cabrerana).

Additional plants may be added to this basic two- or three-plant mixture. One report lists 55 different plant species that have reportedly been used as ayahuasca “admixture plants,” and another lists more than 120. Whatever plants the drink may have in addition to ayahuasca, the drink is still called ayahuasca.

The term ayahuasca is in the Quechua language. The word huasca is the usual Quechua term for any species of vine. The word aya refers to something like a separable soul, and thus, also, to the spirit of a dead person — hence the two common English translations, “vine of the soul” and “vine of the dead.” The word ayahuasca can apparently have either connotation, depending largely on cultural context. Quechua speakers in Canelos or on the Napo, as well as the mestizo shamans with whom I have worked, translate the word into Spanish as soga del alma, vine of the soul; people on the Bajo Urubamba often translate the word as soga de muerto, vine of the dead, based on a local association of the jungle generally, and ayahuasca in particular, with a malicious ghost called a bone demon, which seeks to eat people, or kill them through violent sexual intercourse.

The Quechua term ayahuasca is used primarily in present-day Perú and Ecuador; in Colombia the common term for both the vine and the drink is the Tukano term yagé or yajé. There are many additional words for ayahuasca in other indigenous languages; Luis Eduardo Luna has listed 42 of them.

The ritual use of ayahuasca is a common thread linking the religion and spirituality of almost all the indigenous peoples of the Upper Amazon, including the mestizo population; it seems probable that the shamanic practices of most of the Upper Amazon — Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, Bolivia — form a single religious culture area. Ayahuasca use is found as far west as the Pacific coastal areas of Panamá, Colombia, and Ecuador; southward into the Peruvian and Bolivian Amazon; among the Indians of Colombia; among the Quichua, Waoroni, Shuar, and other peoples of Ecuador; and in Amazonian Brazil. Luis Eduardo Luna has compiled a bibliography of more than 300 items and has enumerated 72 indigenous groups reported to have used ayahuasca.

This Upper Amazonian religious culture area is characterized by a number of common features — the use of psychoactive plants; the presence of magical substances kept within the shaman’s body; notions of sickness as caused by the intrusion of pathogenic objects projected by an enemy or sorcerer; the ambiguity of shamanic ability to do both good and evil; the central sacrality of tobacco; the acquisition of songs from the spirits; the use of songs for the creation of both medicines and poisons; a focus on healing with the mouth through blowing and sucking; and the importance of sound — singing, whistling, blowing, and rattling — in both healing and sorcery.

The ayahuasca drink has several primary actions: it is a hallucinogen, emetic, purgative, and vermifuge. In fact, there is reason to think that the ayahuasca vine was first used for its emetic, purgative, and vermifuge activities. Even today, the ayahuasca drink is often called, simply, la purga, and used to induce violent vomiting, with hallucinations considered side-effects; indeed, ayahuasqueros are sometimes called purgueros. But the emetic effect of the ayahuasca drink has spiritual resonance as well; vomiting shows that the drinker is being cleansed. La purga misma te enseña, they say; vomiting itself teaches you.

Interestingly, given the emetic effect of the ayahuasca vine, the term used by mestizo shamans to describe the hallucinatory mental state induced by ayahuasca is mareación, from the verb marearse, feel sick, dizzy, nauseous, drunk, seasick. When the ayahuasca has taken hold and one is hallucinating, one is said to be mareado; it is a good thing to be buen mareado after drinking ayahuasca. The term has been extended to include the effects of psychoactive plants such as toé (Brugmansia spp.) which have no emetic effect.

It is undoubtedly harmaline, one of the β-carboline components of the ayahuasca vine, that provides its emetic and purgative properties. Harmaline is also found in Syrian rue (Peganum harmala), from which it was first isolated and after which it was named; like the ayahuasca vine, Syrian rue has been used as an emetic and vermifuge. Doses of harmaline as small as 200 mg orally produce nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea in human volunteers. Five grams of Syrian rue seeds produce mild nausea and vomiting; higher doses produce both vomiting and diarrhea, in some cases serious enough to be incapacitating. These gastrointestinal effects appear to be related to the ability of harmaline to inhibit peripheral monoamine oxidase-A (MAO-A). It also appears that there is habituation to the emetic and purgative activity of harmaline: shamans, who have drunk ayahuasca hundreds or even thousands of times, seldom exhibit its emetic or purgative effects.

Rather, for the shaman, ayahuasca is a teaching plant; it is through the hallucinogenic power of the ayahuasca drink that the hundreds of healing plants, including the plants used for magical attack and defense, reveal their appearance and teach their songs; it is through the power of ayahuasca that the shaman can see distant galaxies and planets, the wellbeing of distant relatives, the location of lost objects, the lover of an unfaithful spouse, and the identity of the sorcerer who has caused a patient to become sick. It is the ayahuasca drink that nurtures the shaman’s phlegm, the physical manifestation of shamanic power within the body, used both as defense against magical attack and as a container for the magic darts that are the shaman’s principal weapon.

It is in fact the companion plant — chacruna or ocoyagé or sameruca — that contains the potent hallucinogen dimethyltryptamine (DMT). But, while DMT is effective when administered parenterally, it is, when taken orally, inactivated by peripheral monoamine oxidase-A (MAO-A), an enzyme found in the lining of the stomach, whose function is precisely to oxidize molecules containing an NH2 amine group, like DMT. There are thus two ways to ingest DMT or plants containing DMT — by parenteral ingestion through nasal inhalation, smoking, or injection; or by mixing the DMT with an MAO inhibitor that prevents the breakdown of DMT in the digestive tract. In fact, that is just what the ayahuasca vine contains — the β-carbolines harmine, harmaline, and tetrahydroharmine, which are potent inhibitors of MAO-A. Combining the ingredients of the ayahuasca drink allows the DMT to produce its hallucinogenic effect when orally ingested — a unique solution which apparently developed only in the Upper Amazon.

It is probably worth noting that the ayahuasca drink tastes awful. It has an oily, bitter taste and viscous consistency that clings to your mouth, with just enough hint of sweetness to make you gag. There are also significant differences between parenterally administered DMT and the ayahuasca drink. The effects of parenterally administered DMT appear with startling rapidity; as one user colorfully put it, “The kaleidoscopic alien express came barreling down the aetheric superhighway and slammed into my pineal.” In addition, these effects are short-lived — not much longer than thirty minutes — which at one time earned DMT the street appellation businessman’s lunch. On the contrary, the effects of the ayahuasca drink appear slowly, even slyly, in thirty to forty minutes, and then last approximately four hours, depending on the strength and constituents of the particular mixture.

Remarkably, while tolerance to the emetic and purgative effects of harmaline develops over time, consistent users of DMT, such as shamans, do not develop tolerance for its hallucinogenic effects.

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