Social Science & Medicine
August 31, 2019
Evgenia Fotiou, Alex K. Gearin
86 citations
Ayahuasca, a psychoactive plant mixture used ceremonially in Western Amazonia, has become popular among westerners traveling to the Peruvian Amazon for its healing effects. Drawing on a literature review and ethnographic data from shamanic tourism in Peru and neo-shamanic networks in Australia (227 people interviewed or surveyed between 2003 and 2015, including healers and participants), the authors demonstrate that purging is integral to ayahuasca's therapeutic use across and beyond Amazonia. Therapeutic approaches combine modulations of the gut and mind, and the bodily and social, expressed through healing discourse. Relating ethnographic evidence to scientific studies connecting gut and emotional health, the authors argue that ayahuasca purging should not be dismissed as a drug side effect or irrational belief but reconsidered for its potential therapeutic effects.
International Journal of Cultural Studies
June 9, 2021
Alex K. Gearin, Neşe Devenot
40 citations
Scientific research on psychedelic substances, though presented as objective, often embeds moral and political claims in public discourse. This article examines how popular media in the United States and the United Kingdom portray psychedelic medicine as naturalizing specific moral and political orientations—such as neoliberal and anti-authoritarian agency—as healthy and pharmacological. The analysis responds to scholarly debates about the overlap of scientific knowledge and moral discourse, tracing how psychedelics are framed as ego-dissolving medicines.
Neuroethics
March 16, 2024
Nicolas Langlitz, Alex K. Gearin
26 citations
Psychedelic therapy, which combines psychedelic drugs with psychotherapy, is re-emerging as a potential treatment for mood disorders and addictions. The ethics of this therapy involve not just how psychotherapies change when paired with psychedelics, but how the therapies are shaped by values, norms, and metaphysical commitments. Based on published literature and interviews with seven psychedelic therapists in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, and Australia, the article examines patient autonomy, mechanisms of therapeutic action, and which therapies pair best with psychedelic substances. It compares this emergent form of life with ayahuasca use in Amazonian shamanism.
The Australian Journal of Anthropology
July 14, 2015
Alex K. Gearin
23 citations
In Australia, the use of the indigenous Amazonian psychoactive beverage ayahuasca has been reimagined in alternative healing circles over the last fifteen years. Acts of vomiting and ecstatic trance-visions in these rituals involve heightened affective states and moral projects of healing. Aspects of everyday life are purged, rearticulated, and reconstituted through codes of conduct and discursive exchange that encourage personal evaluation and reflexivity, indexing ideologies of individualism. Ritual conventions define the individual as autonomous and responsible in relation to ecstatic trance and articulations of wellbeing, shaping sensory organization and social prohibitions.
Current Anthropology
April 1, 2021
Alex K. Gearin, Óscar Calavia Sáez
15 citations
Ayahuasca, an indigenous Amazonian shamanic brew, is being adopted by Australian neoshamanic practitioners who treat it as a medicine that provides personalized visions with clear moral meaning. This adoption reflects a new style of practice rooted in Western notions of individualism and visualism. In contrast, indigenous Amazonian approaches emphasize synesthetic and socially shared personhood, where visions are entangled in morally ambiguous everyday life. The article argues that neoshamanic ayahuasca use reproduces Enlightenment modes of property ownership by integrating visions as inalienable objects of healing, highlighting divergent forms of individualism between indigenous and Australian groups.
International Journal for the Study of New Religions
February 20, 2017
Alex K. Gearin
15 citations
New Age spirituality is often characterized as individualistic, prioritizing the self and personal interests. This article challenges that view through an ethnographic study of ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia. Thick ethnographic evidence reveals collectivist logics of social action in ritual practices of ecstatic purging and visions. The author argues that these practices are better understood through the anthropological concept of "dividualism," where the person is seen as multiple, partible, and exchangeable within social relations of obligation. This perspective, drawn from ethnographic theory, creates space for emic theories of social action and contributes to debates about individualism and collectivism in New Age spirituality.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
February 24, 2022
Alex K. Gearin
12 citations
At an ayahuasca tourism centre in Peru, Shipibo healing practices of curing and sorcery have adapted to international clients seeking primitivist healing. Sorcery does not target clients but operates among healers who capitalize on guests’ rejection of modern life while working in conditions of economic scarcity and poverty. Ayahuasca tourists generally do not believe in sorcery, yet their presence both generates and negates the local moral economy of sorcery in new ways. The article reveals a paradox: guests purge anxious desires for capital accumulation, the very desires healers fulfill when curing them.
Stanford University Press eBooks
June 11, 2024
Alex K. Gearin
9 citations
Anthropologist Alex K. Gearin examines how ayahuasca drinking practices in Peru, Australia, and China produce diverse visionary experiences shaped by local social and economic realities, rather than a single universal truth. Based on ethnographic research with Shipibo healers in remote Peru, alternative medicine groups in urban Australia, and entrepreneurs in mainland China, the book shows that ayahuasca visions range from urban disenchantment and capitalist mastery to competitive sorcery and ecological harmony. These plant-induced visions embody different attitudes toward capitalist modernity, revealing tensions, fears, and hopes of everyday modern life.
Social science & medicine (1982)
October 1, 2023
Alex K. Gearin
6 citations
Metaphors, analogies, and similes are common in narratives of drinking the psychedelic ayahuasca, forming a transcultural pattern. Based on survey and field research at a healing center in Pucallpa, Peru, the article examines conceptual metaphors in stories told by international guests. Bodily metaphors and visionary analogies appear in narrative plots that express the reappraisal, overcoming, and sometimes emboldening of psychiatric symptoms. Moving beyond the literal-figurative divide, the article explores the intrinsic metaphoricity of psychedelic experiences and advocates for literacy of conceptual metaphors in both clinical and non-clinical psychedelic narratives, which can broaden approaches in psychedelic psychiatry and social science research.
February 15, 2018
Alex K. Gearin, Beatriz Caiuby Labate
4 citations
Western ayahuasca drinkers adopt dietary and behavioral restrictions from indigenous Amazonian practices, but strip them of their original cosmological context. Indigenous dieting is embedded in systems of reciprocity and predation that regulate human-environment relations through shamanism. In Western neoshamanic settings—observed in Australia, the United States, and Peru—these restrictions become sanitized techniques aimed at individual psychological and spiritual growth, such as self-healing and personal development. The chapter contrasts indigenous food shamanism with Western explanatory models, including prescriptions to drink ayahuasca and the concept of "integration." This comparison reveals contradictions and limitations that arise when spiritual beliefs from radically different social, economic, and cosmological environments are appropriated and reinvented.
September 1, 2016
Alex K. Gearin
3 citations
Ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia extends earlier neoshamanic traditions by framing ecstatic healing as a form of cultural critique against urbanization, materialism, environmental destruction, and consumer capitalism. This practice involves ritualized consumption of the Amazonian psychoactive beverage ayahuasca, distinct from Brazilian ayahuasca religions like Santo Daime and União do Vegetal. Neoshamanism, rooted in 1960s counterculture and Euro-American history, is defined by practitioners as a spiritual path for personal empowerment, aligned with nature and opposed to institutionalized Western religions and political-economic order. In Australia, it represents a novel reinvention of neoshamanism's ethos of cultural opposition.
The International journal on drug policy
July 1, 2026
Alex K. Gearin, I Glenn Cohen, Albert Garcia‐romeu
1 citation
The revival of psychedelic medicalization is often presented as a story of scientific legitimacy and neurotherapeutic promise, but the sensitivity of psychedelics to environmental conditions has encouraged research on music, therapy, setting, and other contextual factors. This article examines how regulation actively shapes atmospheres of consumption for substances that alter affective and sensory perception. Debates over drug-centric versus therapy-centered models are situated within the broader issue of how law shapes contexts and settings of psychedelic consumption.
Translational Psychiatry
February 27, 2026
Alex K. Gearin, Jennifer Docherty, Xiaofan Sun et al.
1 citation
Psychedelic-assisted therapies show clinical promise for reducing depression and anxiety in patients with life-limiting illness, but most protocols reflect Euro-American values. Using Chinese palliative care as an example, the commentary argues that cultural factors such as family-centered decision-making, spiritual beliefs, and stigma will shape how these therapies work in different settings. Cultural humility—ongoing self-reflection, sensitivity to power dynamics, and openness to diverse worldviews—is essential for psychedelic therapy, where patient experiences depend on context and meaning-making. Efficacy is not solely biochemical but also cultural; addressing this translational gap requires humility toward how situated beliefs, norms, and practices interact with psychedelic pharmacology.
Medical Anthropology
October 2, 2024
Alex K. Gearin
1 citation
People who drink ayahuasca, including shamans, neo-shamans, and atheists, often report gaining special knowledge, supporting the cross-cultural idea of ayahuasca as a plant teacher. Secular enthusiasts interpret this metaphorically, while animists and others take it literally. This article examines ontological collisions at a healing retreat in the Peruvian Amazon, focusing on Shipibo shamans and their international clients. It explores how embodied experiences like purging and visions inform both literal and metaphorical views of healing and illness. By addressing incommensurable ontologies, the article highlights how a polyontological framework approaches ontological collision without necessarily privileging specific ways of knowing.
Anthropology Today
December 1, 2023
Alex K. Gearin
1 citation
Wonder is often treated as an inherently positive emotion in psychology, but its effects depend on social context. This article examines a Chinese psychedelic user's DMT experience involving a humiliating encounter with a cosmic surveillance state. The ambiguity of psychedelic states, like wonder, arises from existential vulnerability, which can enable diverse social, moral, and psychological outcomes.
Mindfulness
November 1, 2025
Alex K. Gearin, Chantelle W. M. Suen, Frances K. Y. Ng
A survey of 164 meditators in Hong Kong found that 21% reported negative effects from meditation, yet 63% believed the practice is entirely risk-free, revealing a gap between experience and perception. Two motivational profiles emerged: "Utilizers" meditate mainly for stress and anxiety relief, practice fewer hours, expect immediate benefits, and view thoughts and feelings as private; "Cultivators" prioritize self-awareness and spiritual growth, practice longer, have lower expectations of immediate improvement, and more often perceive nature as healing. Qualitative responses described learning difficulties, technique confusion, and physical, psychological, and spiritual distress, though some participants reframed these as growth opportunities. The findings suggest tailoring meditation programs to different motivational profiles may enhance safety and effectiveness.
Psychedelic Intersections
January 17, 2025
Alex K. Gearin
The spaces where psychedelic experiences occur are not neutral; environments like forests, urban retreats, or clinics actively shape the affective and perceptual dimensions of the experience. The concept of "psychedelic atmospherics" is introduced to examine how materialities, spaces, and environments intertwine with cosmological and cultural realities to influence psychedelic sessions. Atmospheric elements can guide, amplify, or challenge the visionary and affective qualities that emerge. Recognizing this opens new avenues for ethnographic study and practical considerations in therapy, spirituality, and research.