Control, Support, and Context: Distinguishing Cultic Coercion, Religiosity, and Ritual Ayahuasca Use in Research on Substance Use
Mohnish Shende
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Critical narrative review |
|---|---|
| Topics | Ayahuasca |
| Key findings | Argues that coercive-control research on high-demand religious groups, epidemiological work on mainstream religiosity and substance use, and ritual ayahuasca research are analytically distinct literatures that cannot be compared on equal terms as currently constituted. Proposes an operationalized comparative framework with candidate indicators and testable propositions, and contends that religious intensity, collective structure, and psychoactive use by themselves do not establish coercion, benefit, or harm. |
Abstract
Research on coercive control in high-demand religious groups, on religiosity and substance use, and on ritual ayahuasca practice is often discussed as though it described a single phenomenon: intense religious group life and its relationship to psychoactive substances. This critical narrative review argues that the three bodies of work describe analytically distinct processes, rest on evidence of very different kinds, and were assembled by research traditions that were looking for different things. Rather than comparing three types of setting, the review compares three differently constituted literatures on a shared set of observable dimensions: where authority sits and to whom it answers, whether consent is informed and revocable, how far the setting reaches into relationships, money, health care, sexuality and time, what dissent and exit cost, and whether adverse events are defined and recorded. Studies of coercive groups document domination through control of personal life, emotional abuse, information management and unaccountable charismatic authority, but are drawn largely from adjudicated cases and former-member samples. Epidemiological and developmental studies of mainstream religious participation more often report protective associations, concentrated in organised participation rather than private belief, and were mostly designed to detect protection. Research on ritual ayahuasca use describes psychoactive effects deliberately shaped by set, setting, symbolism and collective care, in settings that granted researchers access, with adverse-event ascertainment largely absent. The review proposes an operationalised comparative framework, with candidate indicators and testable propositions for each dimension, and sets out the measurement and design work needed before 1 the three domains can be compared on equal terms. Its central claim is negative and, we argue, robust: religious intensity, collective structure, and psychoactive use do not by themselves establish coercion, benefit, or harm.
Comparable studies
Other narrative reviews on ayahuasca, most cited first.