This qualitative empirical study explores the ritual use of ayahuasca in the treatment of addictions. Ayahuasca is an Amazonian psychedelic plant compound created from an admixture of the vine Banisteriopsis caapi and the bush Psychotria viridis. The study included interviews with 13 therapists who apply ayahuasca professionally in the treatment of addictions (four indigenous healers and nine...
Objectives: The Santo Daime Church is a religious community originally founded in Brazil which has increasingly attracted followers in Europe and worldwide. An important element of the religious ceremonies is the ingestion of a psychoactive substance known as ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a psychoactive or visionary-state-inducing concoction of plants, which contains, amongst other substances,...
ABSTRACT Ayahuasca is a psychoactive beverage that is mostly used in ritualized settings (Santo Daime rituals, neo‐shamanic rituals, and even do‐it‐yourself‐rituals). It is a common practice in the investigated socio‐cultural field to call these settings “healing rituals.” For this study, 15 people who underwent ayahuasca (self‐)therapy for a particular disease like chronic pain, cancer,...