Purging and the body in the therapeutic use of ayahuasca

Abstract

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 from shamanic tourism contexts of the Peruvian Amazon and neo-shamanic networks in Australia (collected between 2003 and 2015 - with a total of 227 people interviewed or surveyed, including healers and participants), we demonstrate that purging has been integral to the therapeutic use of ayahuasca across and beyond Amazonia. Therapeutic approaches to ayahuasca point to combined modulations of the gut and the mind, and the bodily and the social, that are expressed through discourse about healing and the body. Relating ethnographic evidence to recent scientific studies that connect the gut to emotional health, we do not approach the gut as merely biological ground on which cultural meanings are imposed, but rather as simultaneously physical and cultural. Based upon our analysis, we argue that ayahuasca purging should not be dismissed as a drug side effect or irrational belief but reconsidered for its potential therapeutic effects.

In the evidence

This study is part of the evidence base for a synthesis in the library. Here is how each one recorded it.

• State of the evidence: Shamanism ↑Supports

  Argues that purging is integral to the therapeutic use of ayahuasca across and beyond Amazonia and should be reconsidered for potential therapeutic effects rather than dismissed as a side effect or irrational belief.

  Synthesized September 20, 2026

Comparable studies

Other qualitative studies on ayahuasca, most cited first.