Ayahuasca, a traditional medicine used in Latin America, shows promise in enhancing mental health. In a sample of 100 participants, 70% reported significant reductions in anxiety and depression after ayahuasca ceremonies. The blend of cultural heritage and psychedelics highlights its potential therapeutic benefits. Additionally, comparisons with cannabis and cannabinoid research suggest that substances rooted in religious practices can foster healing. This intersection of religion and society emphasizes the importance of understanding these ancient traditions in contemporary drug studies for mental wellness.
Commodification in spiritual tourism has ambivalent effects: it can widen access and support experiences of awe, mindfulness, meaning-making, and spiritual well-being, but also foster performative spirituality, expectation inflation, fragile authenticity, decontextualization, symbolic extraction, unequal value capture, and the displacement of community authority. The review proposes a continuum model of commodification—infrastructural, experiential, and extractive—and argues that the key issue is whether market mediation remains subordinate to ritual integrity, psychological safeguarding, community custodianship, and equitable benefit-sharing.