Ayahuasca effect, the potion from the Amazon that has bewitched the West

The "vine of souls" is a decoction of indigenous medicine from the Amazon that can alter the psychic state of those who take it, and for this reason it fascinates millions of people around the world.

If Western tourism, eager for exoticism, has even reached some corners of the world Amazon forest it is to be seduced by the aura of mystery around ayahuasca, the “vine of souls” in Quechua language.This term refers to both the plant and the infusion, similar to a plant-based medicinal tea, which can have a psychoactive effect if it is drunk.People who take it often report travel in time, commune with spirits or a higher power, reaching a final state capable of relieving anxiety and depression.A practice that, over the years, has involved millions of people all over the world.

The natural philosopher Terence McKenna, one of the most significant figures of the American counterculture of the 1960s and an exponent of the psychedelic culture that was establishing itself in those years, defined the ayahuasca experience in this way.

A sound level that becomes denser and materializes in small gnome-like creatures made of an obsidian-like material, emitted from the body, mouth and sexual organs, for the duration of the sound.It is effervescent, phosphorescent and indescribable.Linguistic metaphors become useless, because this matter is beyond language, not a language made of words, a language that becomes the things it describes.

Terence McKenna

The chemistry of ayahuasca

At the basis of the powerful psychotropic effect of ayahuasca is a profound knowledge of the world of hallucinogenic plants and balancing the various effects that they are capable of producing.The traditional decoction is in fact composed of two different ingredients:there Psychotria viridis And Banisteriopsis caapi, shrubs native to the Amazon and the tropical belt of South America.The leaves of Psychotria viridis contain N,n-dimethyltryptamine, also known by the acronym Dmt, a hallucinogenic substance common in nature and present in many varieties of plants such as mimosas, acacias and also in some mushrooms.Despite having a fairly powerful effect, our body is able to metabolize it quickly.For this reason the Psychotria viridis is combined with another plant, la Banisteriopsis caapi, whose bark contains substances capable of inhibiting the enzymes responsible for "digestion", amplifying the psychoactive effect of the infusion.

It's about the monoamine oxidase inhibitors, which we find in drugs used in the treatment of depression and psychiatric disorders.In nature they occur in the form of alkaloids such as harmaline and harmine, and are able to slow down the work of neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine.Theirs inhibition intensifies the psychoactive effects of DMT and prolongs the duration of the psychedelic experience.It is thanks to this combination that ayahuasca releases its most powerful effects, capable of altering the consciousness, perception and mood of those who take it.Ayahuasca intervenes on specific areas of our brain such asamygdala and other parts of the limbic system, which is a set of brain components that regulate emotions and memory.In particular, the amygdala regulates fear conditioning, anxiety, aggression, emotional memory and social conditioning.

The Amazonian origins and the role of shamans 

Ayahuasca has been used in Amazonian cultures since over three thousand years.The first ones indigenous peoples who lived around the Amazon River basin - territories now included in Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and also Venezuela - regularly consumed it to come into contact with the spiritual world, bearer of messages that would have had an impact on the lives of ancient community. Divination experiences, initiation rites and healing rituals they were officiated solely by the figure of shaman, according to what most scholars maintain.Shamans, central figures in the preparation and administration of the decoction, still exist today and in addition to representing a reliable and wise figure for the entire community, they have a vast knowledge of the medicinal plants that grow in tropical areas.In particular, the ayahuaschero – or curandero – is the person who, after a long preparation process that can last up to ten hours, prepares a tea similar to mud to offer to those who undergo the healing-liberation rite.

The doctor Piero Cipriano, author of the book Ayahuasca and healing the world (published by Politi Seganfreddo edizioni), has repeatedly underlined how the value of ayahuasca often escapes attempts at understanding by the Western world, which tends to make it coincide with the two main molecules.According to him, ayahuasca is, to all intents and purposes, "a multi-purpose drug container” within which you can try many other plants.The combination of ingredients, which may include coca leaves, tobacco or datura (with narcotic properties) is at the discretion of the ayahuaschero, who decides from time to time what to add to the decoction based on the purposes he wants to achieve.

Undergoing an ayahuasca ceremony is not child's play.Many experts insist on the need for a good predisposition, both physical and mental, when encountering a difficult cultural practice, to respect all the steps needed to make the experience a true bridge of contact with the most intimate and submerged self.Before and after the ceremony, for example, one must respect a diet in which pork and alcohol are excluded, and one must abstain from sex.The actual ceremony begins inside the Maloca, a typical structure of the Amazonian indigenous people.Here those present drink ayahuasca and then wait for it to release its effects sitting in the dark.The first visions, although the effects vary from person to person, generally arrive after 20-30 minutes.Often, these are followed by the need to vomit, a fundamental but not obligatory step within the ceremonies.

“Many natives – writes Cipriano in the newspaper the Manifesto – they use a non-visionary ayahuasca, that is, composed only of vine, which does not give visions but intuitions, information, and is responsible for the so-called purge, of the vomiting that worries Westerners so much, but which seems to be the central element for expelling the pathological parts.We Westerners, linked almost as cinephiles to visions, if there are no visions it is as if the message does not arrive, and shamans, knowing this, reinforce the visionary element".

The alteration of consciousness can last up to 2-3 hours, a period of time accompanied by icaros, songs sung by the curandero, who at this moment becomes a real guide to everyone's experience.There total duration of the ceremony is 6-7 hours, during which it is possible to take ayahuasca for a second time.What is seen and experienced during the ceremony must be internalized by the individual and processed, exploring all the meanings of the experience.

The effects of ayahuasca on us

“People who take ayahuasca can hallucinate, often revisiting past traumas that shaped or still influence their lives and relationships,” he says Jeff McNairy, medical director of the Rythmia life advancement center, a center specializing in the medical use of plants in Guanacaste, Costa Rica.Over the years, similar structures have multiplied around the world, particularly in the United States, demonstrating the growth in popularity of ayahuasca outside the circuits of followers of traditional Amazonian medicine and visitors to South America.A trend that is part of a broader context of studies on the microdosing of psychedelic substances in the treatment of problems such as anxiety, depression and in mental health care.

The renewed interest in this practice can also be found in the scientific field, as demonstrated by some studies published recently.There is one of the most complete Ayahuasca and dimethyltryptamine adverse events and toxicity analysis:a systematic thematic review, (White, Kennedy and Sarris) published in the National Library of Medicine of the United States, which focuses on the effects related to intake.According to the study, although numerous opinions indicate that ayahuasca is a generally safe plant, there are some cases under study that would link its consumption to psychosis.Similar cases which have sometimes become the subject of news have also been reported by syncretic churches born around ayahuasca, although most of the time it is still very complex to trace a clear cause-effect connection.On the other hand, numerous studies have underlined the valid contribution in the treatment of drug addictions in the reduction of symptoms linked to the progressive cessation of these substances.

The “churches” of ayahuasca in the world

Although it appears like a total immersion in the traditional practices of a people, ayahuasca-based ceremonies have not escaped the scrutiny of Western colonialism.More generally, Amazonian curanderismo did not remain pure, but was affected by the arrival of Europeans and, above all, by contact with Catholicism.Over time, in fact, indigenous rituals have mixed with external practices and influences, generating the syncretism that has today been brought into the world by various churches linked to the use of ayahuasca:The Holy Come on, the Barquinha and theUniao do Vegetal.These are real religions that blend the dogmas of Christianity with a spirituality cultivated through a direct and inseparable relationship on the earth, underlining the role of the Holy Trinity in giving human beings healing plants.In Italy, Santo Daime began to spread between the 1980s and 1990s, finding interest especially among psychotherapists and anthropologists.

According to the data offered by a laborious investigation conducted by the International center for ethnobotanical education, research and service (Iceers), a non-profit organization that deals with to redesign the relationship that societies have towards psychoactive plants, over 4 million people from the Americas, Europe, Australia and New Zealand have consumed ayahuasca at some point in their lives.Of these, only 4 percent it belongs to indigenous communities who have used it for centuries, demonstrating how widely globalized it already is.

The encounter with the Western world is not, in itself, a factor in the cultural impoverishment of ancient practices, but it makes the study by modern curanderi even more important.Bringing this knowledge to metropolitan contexts is an operation extremely delicate and which needs time to avoid distorting and reducing the value of these practices.First of all, it is important to break away from the idea that body and mind are divisible elements of the human being:on theindivisibility The traditional practices of the Amazonian peoples are based on these two components and on the relationship that every living being has with the land that surrounds them.

The regulation of ayahuasca in Italy

On March 14, 2022, at the time of the government led by Mario Draghi, a ministerial decree has included it in Table I of narcotic substances of the Consolidated Law on Drugs of 1990 Banisteriopsis caapi and the Psychotria viridis, the plants from which the active ingredients found in ayahuasca are extracted.In support of the provision, the text cited five reports of seizures that occurred between 2019 and 2021, as well as two cases of intoxication due to the intake of harmine reported by the Poison Control Center of Pavia.Consequently, the decoction has also been included among the substances to be prohibited.

The decision arrived before the judges of the TAR of Lazio after the challenge by the Italian Church of the eclectic cult of the flowing universal light, close to the doctrine of the Santo Daime.She later landed up to Council of State because, among other things, the ministerial decree did not attach any studies or analyzes that would show whether there actually existed a danger to public health and safety, as required by the Italian law on drugs.

The critical issues determined by a prohibition approach not sufficiently corroborated by scientific evidence then became evident a few months after Giorgia Meloni's government took office at the end of 2022, with the decree that he prohibited musical gatherings in the open air reflexively demonizing the world of psychoactive molecules.The final result, as Marco Perduca of the Luca Coscioni Association underlines, is that a similar posture towards ayahuasca and, more generally, psychoactive substances "has not canceled the phenomena it prohibits, it has only made them clandestine".