Ayahuasca: Sacred Tea from the Amazon

A tea used for centuries by the Amazon Indians has a message for the world -- will we listen?

By Jeremiah Creedon, Utne Reader
September/October 2001

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Drugs and Addiction 
Ayahuasca: Sacred Tea from the Amazon
-Jeremiah Creedon,

Honoring Our Hunger for the Ecstatic
-Fred R.

Seeking Peace in the War on Drugs
-Ethan A. Nadelmann
Discuss ayahuasca in the Currents forum at Café Utne's: cafe.utne.com

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Dennis McKenna has an idea for treating alcoholics. He wants to give them drugs. To be more precise, he thinks he can help them beat their habit with a complex drug mixture. What he has in mind is no less ingenious than the multiple-drug regimens that are used today against HIV and may someday curb certain cancers, but that’s where the similarity ends. McKenna’s blend is a bitter tea called ayahuasca, used by some of the peoples of the Amazon for perhaps thousands of years. Though its importance in the region’s sacred and medicinal traditions has been well documented by Western scientists, the drink is not an accepted therapy in the United States. Along with its curative properties, ayahuasca can profoundly affect the human mind.McKenna, a trained ethnopharmacologist, has some hurdles to clear before he can test his ideas in an actual scientific study. A senior lecturer at the University of Minnesota Center for Spirituality and Healing, he’s a world authority on how plant hallucinogens have been traditionally used by other cultures, especially in South America. But those credentials are no guarantee that he’ll be able to buck a 30-year taboo against such research in this country. To pull it off, he will have to overcome a lot of resistance from federal regulators who haven’t been that interested in finding therapeutic uses for these drugs.McKenna’s first step will be to convince the government that his study has rock-solid scientific merit. Next, he’ll have to line up patients and locate a facility suitable for treating them, both with psychotherapy and with regular doses of ayahuasca. And then there’s the matter of how to clinically administer a drink its shaman inventors were known to gulp from calabash gourds while singing magical songs—then expel out either end as its serpent spirit uncoiled in their intestines. Also known as caapi, yagé, and la purga, ayahuasca can cause vomiting and diarrhea. It will never be a party drug like Ecstasy, but these messy side effects may offer a clue to how it apparently influences both body and mind.
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