February 15, 2018
Clancy Cavnar
1 citation
Ayahuasca has been found in some research to have positive long-term effects on mental states and a particularly strong positive effect on perceptions of identity. The research in this chapter examines these findings in relationship to the experience of gay people, who are often taught by their culture and religion that their lifestyles, values, and sexual orientation are unacceptable. A...
February 15, 2018
Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Glauber Loures de Assis
1 citation
Born during the twentieth century, Barquinha, Santo Daime, and the União do Vegetal, known as the Brazilian ayahuasca religions, were circumscribed to the northern region of Brazil at least until the beginning of the 70's. Since then, Santo Daime and the União do Vegetal have expanded significantly, each one in its own way, reaching all the regions of the country, crossing the Brazilian borders...
February 15, 2018
Ana Gretel Echazú Böschemeier, Carl Kevin Carew
1 citation
This chapter presents the construction of the idea of a "Male-Shaman-Who-Heals-With-Ayahuasca" as an emergent myth in societies from the political North – a myth which asserts powerful meaning in a global world. This myth is related to power relationships between people and plants that are commodified and embedded in the context of capitalism and patriarchy. Guided by a reflexive empirical...
February 15, 2018
Silvia Mesturini Cappo
2 citations
The recognition of Ayahuasca as a being, capable of agency and intention, taking action both as a healing and teaching spirit and as an ethical entity making a stand in the contemporary struggle for ecological survival and for indigenous culture valorisation is the central interrogation of this paper. What makes Ayahuasca an entity? Who is she an entity for? The importance of these questions is...
February 15, 2018
Matthew S. Conrad
4 citations
This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of ayahuasca's presence on the Internet. It assesses a variety of online spaces through which information and cultural products are promoted and disseminated, in order to assess the Internet's role in the current global expansion of ayahuasca. It is argued that the Internet has been instrumental to ayahuasca's globalization due its capacity to...
February 15, 2018
Juan Scuro
10 citations
Since the 1990s, three major (neo)shamanic linages associated with sacred plants use have arrived in Uruguay. Each one comes from a particular Latin American national context: Brazil and its ayahuasca religions, Peru and vegetalismo, Mexico and the Red Path. In what way do these practices and discourses develop in a Latin American country imagined as "white," "without indigenous people," and...
February 15, 2018
Silvia Mesturini
26 citations
During its expansion from the Amazon jungle to Western societies, ayahuasca use has encountered different legal and cultural responses. Following on from the earlier edited collection, The Expanding World Ayahuasca Diaspora continues to explore how certain alternative global religious groups, shamanic tourism industries and recreational drug milieus grounded in the consumption of the...
Archives of Clinical Psychiatry (São Paulo)
February 1, 2018
Rafael G. Dos Santos, Rafael Faria Sanches, Flávia de Lima Osório et al.
37 citations
Abstract Background Ayahuasca is a botanical hallucinogenic preparation traditionally used by indigenous populations of Northwestern Amazonian countries for ritual and therapeutic purposes. It is rich in β-carboline alkaloids and N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Preclinical, observational, and experimental studies suggest that ayahuasca and its alkaloids have anxiolytic and antidepressive effects....
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
January 31, 2018
Ana Cecília de Menezes Galvão, Raíssa Nóbrega de Almeida, Erick Allan Dos Santos Silva et al.
5 citations
preprint
ABSTRACT Major depression is a highly prevalent mood disorder, affecting about 350 million people, and around 30% of the patients are resistant to currently available antidepressant medications. Recent evidence from a randomized placebo-controlled trial supports the rapid antidepressant effects of the psychedelic ayahuasca in treatment-resistant depression. The aim of this study was to explore...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
January 25, 2018
Flávia Santos Da Silva, Erick Allan Dos Santos Silva, Geovan Menezes de Sousa et al.
4 citations
preprint
ABSTRACT The incidence of major depression in adolescents, aged between 15 to 18 years, reaches approximately 14%. Usually, this disorder presents a recurrent way, without remission of symptoms even after several pharmacological treatments, persisting through adult life. Due to the relatively low efficacy of commercially available antidepressant, new pharmacological therapies are under...
Cultura y Droga
January 2, 2018
Jacques Mabit
Mientras el Perú construyó la magnífica civilización Inca mediante la sabiduría proporcionada por la hoja de coca, se volvió luego el primer productor de derivados tóxicos de esta planta profanada. Hoy en día, de nuevo, la hoja de coca permite tratar la adicción a la cocaína y así lo demuestra la experiencia del Centro Takiwasi. Asimismo, se descubre hace unos decenios el uso sanador de la...
Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences
2018
Michael Kometer, Franz X. Vollenweider
Serotonergic hallucinogens, such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin, and N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), are famous for their capacity to temporally and profoundly alter an individual's visual experiences. These visual alterations show consistent attributes despite large inter- and intra-individual variances. Many reports document a common perception of colors as more saturated, with...
Progress in Brain Research
2018
Felix Müller, Matthias E. Liechti, Undine E. Lang et al.
32 citations
The effects of hallucinogenic drugs on the human brain have been studied since the earliest days of neuroimaging in the 1990s. However, approaches are often hard to compare and results are heterogeneous. In this chapter, we summarize studies investigating the effects of hallucinogens on the resting brain, with a special emphasis on replicability and limitations. In previous studies,...
Journal de la Société des Américanistes
2018
David Dupuis
15 citations
Takiwasi est à la fois une clinique de traitement des addictions et l’un des principaux « centres chamaniques » d’Amazonie péruvienne. Chaque année, une clientèle internationale participe à des stages impliquant l’usage ritualisé de préparations émétiques, du breuvage psychotrope ayahuasca ainsi que des retraites dans la jungle, des conférences et des groupes de parole. Les activités proposées...
Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences
2018
Dennis J. Mckenna, Jordi Riba
67 citations
New World indigenous peoples are noted for their sophisticated use of psychedelic plants in shamanic and ethnomedical practices. The use of psychedelic plant preparations among New World tribes is far more prevalent than in the Old World. Yet, although these preparations are botanically diverse, almost all are chemically similar in that their active principles are tryptamine derivatives, either...