Alarm at Ayahuasca

Incautious use of ayahuasca has claimed yet another life. Claims for the South American drug are numerous – and contradictory. It has been suggested as a hallucinogenic tea for calming Brazilian prisoners and as a “jungle brew” that could help drug addicts. However, it is said to taste “as acrid as battery acid” while causing both visions and vomiting among the “loonies in lotus land” who indulge. Scientist and expert on hallucinogenic plants Richard Evans Schultes explained in 1976:

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Effects of drinking ayahuasca range from a pleasant intoxication to violent reactions with sickening after-effects. Usually there are visual hallucinations in colour. In excessive doses, the drug brings on nightmarish visions and a feeling of reckless abandon. A young New Zealand traveller died last month after taking part in an Amazon “cleansing ceremony.” Matthew Dawson-Clarke, 24, was holidaying in Peru when he joined a seven-day ayahuasca retreat claimed foster a spiritual awakening and bring inner peace. He was not the first to discover the “peace of death.” Such “retreats” have gained much popularity – and notoriety – among adventurous vacationers. They exist in Peru, Ecuador, Columbia, Venezuela and Brazil but have also emerged elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere. Jeffrey Bronfman, an offshoot of the famous family of distillers, heads the American offshoot of the Barzilian O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal (Portuguese for The Central Beneficial Spirit United in the Plants), founded in 1962. Followers drink the psychedelic tea believing it brings them closer to God. This has not gone down well with New Mexicans in the Santa Fe region where the grandnephew to the family patriarch Samuel Bronfman established a ‘temple.’ And according to Noah Richter, writer son of the famous Canadian author, he discovered it being offered at “a small lakeshore village, now more or less a suburb an hour north of Toronto.” The experience cost him $175, he reported in Maclean’s magazine 3 August 2010. A year later, British Columbia Dr. Gabor Maté, who was using ayahuasca to help drug addicts was ordered to cease and threatened with criminal prosecution by Health Canada, CBC News reported. Little wonder this was cause for alarm: Ayahuasca, said to mean “vine of the dead,” contains the psychoactive compound dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Listed as a prohibited substance, possession is illegal in Canada, carrying a three-year sentence. Botanically first recognized in 1851 by Richard Spruce, an English explorer in the western Amazon, Banisteriopsis caapi and B. inebrians may also be known locally as caapi, daime, dapa, hoasca, natema, pinde, and yagé or yaje. They are enormous liana vines whose bark is harvested, perhaps along with those of other indigenous plants, to prepare the concoction. One researcher has even claimed Moses was high on Mount Sinai from a similar hallucinogen. Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem suggested in Time and Mind, a peer-reviewed British journal (2008). He compared his own experience with using ayahuasca “over 100 times” and claimed that they were similar to substances prepared from acacia trees. Suffice to say that biblical scholars remain skeptical. And if one needs any further discouragement, Lindsay Lohan claimed ayahuasca ‘changed her life,’ as she opened up about finally completing her probation, and her method of relieving stress.

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