The revival of psychedelic medicalization is often narrated as a story of scientific legitimacy and neurotherapeutic promise, yet the unusual sensitivity of psychedelics to environmental conditions has encouraged research on music, therapy, setting, and other contextual factors. Treating setting and context as the building blocks of felt atmospheres, this article examines how regulation...
IMPORTANCE: As psychedelic-assisted therapies gain clinical legitimacy, their cultural portability remains underexamined. While promising results have emerged from trials on existential distress in life-limiting illness, most protocols reflect Euro-American values. The expansion of these therapies calls for a pivot toward cultural humility and renewed attention to what constitutes a "good...
Abstract Objectives This exploratory study examined how meditators’ orientations (e.g., motives, expectations, beliefs) are associated with experiences, perceived benefits/risks, and practice patterns in Hong Kong, with the aim of informing safer meditation. Method We conducted a cross-sectional online survey with 164 adults. Participants ranked nine possible motives for meditation and reported...
The spaces where psychedelic experiences unfold are never neutral. Whether in dense forests, urban retreats, or clinical settings, these environments shape how psychedelic senses and emotions are experienced. I propose “psychedelic atmospherics” as a concept to explore the affective and perceptual experience of different settings of psychedelic usage. Psychedelic atmospherics offers a lens for...
Shamans, neo-shamans, atheists, and others describe gaining special knowledge from drinking ayahuasca, supporting the cross-cultural idea of ayahuasca as a plant teacher. While secular enthusiasts interpret this metaphorically, animists and others take it literally. This article examines ontological collisions at a healing retreat in the Peruvian Amazon, considering Shipibo shamans and their...
Surveying contemporary networks and practices in Peru, Australia, and China, anthropologist Alex K. Gearin explores the visionary marvels, wonders, and diversity of ayahuasca drinking today. Ceremonies of drinking the psychoactive brew ayahuasca have flourished across the planet in recent decades. Emerging from Indigenous roots in the Amazon rainforest, the brew is now envisaged by many as the...
Abstract In the historical context of a crisis in biological psychiatry, psychedelic drugs paired with psychotherapy are globally re-emerging in research clinics as a potential transdiagnostic therapy for treating mood disorders, addictions, and other forms of psychological distress. The treatments are poised to soon shift from clinical trials to widespread service delivery in places like...
Psychology research frequently portrays the epistemic emotion of wonder as an intrinsic good. However, anthropologists highlight that social contexts shape its ambiguous political and moral potential. This concise article explores the awe‐inspiring DMT experience of a Chinese psychedelic user, which involves a humiliating encounter with a cosmic surveillance state. Analogous to the mood of...
Metaphors, analogies, and similes commonly appear in narratives of drinking the potent psychedelic "ayahuasca", presenting an intriguing transcultural pattern. Based upon survey and field research at an ayahuasca healing center in Pucallpa, Peru, the article investigates conceptual metaphors in narratives of ayahuasca experiences made by the visiting international guests. Bodily metaphors and...
Abstract Analysing healing practices at an ayahuasca tourism centre in Peru, this article illustrates how Shipibo practices of curing and sorcery have adapted to the demands of international clients searching for primitivist healing experiences. At the core of this adaption is the thorny issue of occult power and its relation to capital accumulation. Sorcery here does not serve clients but is...
Emerging from a diverse and long history of shamanic and religious cultural practices, psychedelic substances are increasingly being foregrounded as medicines by an assemblage of scientific research groups, media institutions, government drug authorities, and patient and consumer populations. Considering scientific studies and recent popular media associated with the medicalization of...
Notions of visualism and individualism have long been employed to elucidate the contours of Western subjectivity. It is therefore not surprising to find the indigenous Amazonian shamanic brew ayahuasca being adopted by Australian neoshamanic practitioners as a medicine that provides personalized visions delivering unambiguous moral import. While this adoption represents a radically new style of...
Ayahuasca is a psychoactive plant mixture used in ceremonial contexts throughout Western Amazonia. Its use has expanded globally in recent decades and become popular among westerners who travel to the Peruvian Amazon in increasing numbers to experience its reportedly healing effects. Through a review of relevant literature on Amazonian shamanism, combined with the authors' ethnographic data...
This chapter undertakes an unorthodox approach and investigate dietary and behavioural restrictions in the practice of Western ayahuasca drinking in comparison to indigenous Amazonian practices of dieting often believed to be the source of the "Western ayahuasca dieta." Combining readings of Amazonian ethnography with the authors' ethnographic research in neoshamanic contexts of ayahuasca...
There has been ongoing scholarly debate concerning whether New Age spirituality may be defined by individualistic more than collectivistic values, beliefs and behaviours. Most scholars have answered in the positive and indicated how New Age beliefs and techniques emphasise the importance of the self and self-interests of the practitioner. This article contributes to debates on New Age...
Introduction This chapter investigates the practice of ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia and the ways in which narrative accounts of ecstatic healing are inscribed with forms of "cultural critique" (Marcus & Fischer, 1986) against urbanization, materialism, environmental destruction, and consumer capitalism. The ecstatic healing practices are centered upon ritualized styles of consuming the...
Over the last fifteen years the use of the indigenous Amazonian psychoactive beverage ayahuasca has been reimagined in alternative healing circles of Western countries. This paper explores the practice of ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia and examines ways in which acts of vomiting and ecstatic trance‐visions involve heightened affective states and moral projects of healing. Aspects of...