Is ayahuasca tourism harming the Amazon? We investigate
By Nastassja Salem
It’s the plant medicine that has been used for centuries in the Amazon, and more recently, it has begun to change the lives of thousands of Westerners. There are retreats offering the stuff in Brazil, Colombia and Peru, where it is legal, and in North America and Europe, where it is not. But as popular as it has become, and as ancient and useful as it can be, is there a darker side to ayahuasca? And is ayahuasca tourism harming the Amazon?
Ayahuasca usage dates back to at least 1000 A.D. and is a deeply embedded practice in Amazonian culture. It’s made from two plants: the banisteriopsis caapi vine combined with the leaves of the chacruna plant. This unique blend allows drinkers of the brew to see visions and to even experience what some have called ‘entry into another dimension’, or ‘communion with Mother Ayahuasca,’ the spirit associated with the medicine.
Traditionally, indigenous Amazonian healers, known as curanderos, have used ayahuasca to help them diagnose their patients. Apparently, the plant allows them to ‘see” what is wrong with another person, and helps guide them to select the right cure. In retreats aimed at foreigners, however, it’s the ‘patient’ who does the drinking, with the aim of looking inward and ‘healing’ whatever psychological, physical or even psychic damage that is present.
Effects – good and bad
Physically, the experience lasts approximately 4-6 hours and is usually done at night in a ceremony led by a shaman. You are handed a bucket at the beginning of the ceremony for purging into. It is believed that the vomiting and diarrhea that accompany ayahuasca drinking are the expelling of negative energies; a release of sorts.
There are a whole host of other possible effects. These include crying or laughing uncontrollably, feelings of bliss and euphoria, trembling and dissociating from your physical body. The experience is said to be heart opening; a sudden knowingness can take hold and bring you clarity about your life.
This medicine is quite unlike psilocybin (the psychoactive ingredient in ‘magic’ mushrooms for example), which inspires a mythic awe in the world and sense of transportation or change in perception on life. Sure, ayahuasca can also provide a sense of oneness and connection with the earth, nature, energy and life; a deep remembering of sorts. It also has the potential to cure myriad maladies, from post traumatic stress disorder and addiction to self-harming and depression.
Westerners have been seeking out ayahuasca as a tool for self-healing and expansion of consciousness only very recently. However, today’s reconfiguration of the shamanic healing tool to cater to the self-help epidemic is cause for concern on many levels in terms of ethics.
Is Ayahuasca Tourism Harming The Amazon?
One of those concerns is overuse of the plants needed to make the brew. It raises the question: is ayahuasca tourism harming the Amazon?
According to research by Carlos Suárez Álvarez, Amazonian studies expert and author of Ayahuasca, Iquitos and Monster Vorāx, in Iquitos, the largest city in Peru’s Amazon, 10 of the 40 biggest retreats here earn nearly £5m annually by hosting foreigners at well over $1,000 per stay.
This has led to the banisteriopsis caapi vine, which is the raw ingredient in ayahuasca, to decline in availability. It has also more than trebled in price over the past six years. In fact, the declining supply of ayahuasca ingredients was identified as a major botanical issue in an industry-wide survey conducted by the Ethnobotanical Stewardship Council (ESC) in 2014.
American based Anthropologist fears that ayahuasca tourism is over-harvesting the plant to the point of extinction and says that today, in many areas of the Amazon, ayahuasca no longer grows wild. Instead, the sacred plant is farmed, and of course, cultivation of commercial plants in the Amazon is one of the biggest causes of its deforestation and loss of diverse habitats.
The upside of ayahuasca
But not all cultivation is negative; in fact, in can be positive. For example, the Brazilian church União do Vegetal, which uses ayahuasca in its spiritual ceremonies, has a policy of forming its own sustainable plantations to grow their source plants, in order to prevent future shortages in the wild. Nevertheless, their plants can’t seem to grow fast enough to keep up with the expansion of the church’s membership, and they have recently been forced to harvest wild plants in areas that are under imminent threat of deforestation, according to Callicott.
She continues: ‘Further legalisation of ayahuasca in northern countries, or the relaxation of current enforcement, threatens to drive demand even further beyond the limits of what can be responsibly supplied. Given the plethora of nefarious actors in the Amazon (such as multinational drug and illegal logging cartels), and European nations’ history of pillaging the entire basin for high-value plant products (rubber, among others), this is not a scenario that we will want to cope with.’
Is Ayahuasca Out Of Control?
Indeed, there is a lack of any kind of assessment on the sustainability of ayahuasca, or of the impact of its harvesting and shortage on indigenous communities. Given the price of the vine is now so high, non-experts, foreign players and Amazonian people alike are now chasing the plant for profit. These opportunists often greedily cut the entire slow-growing plant, rather than just trimming the vine, meaning the tree cannot regrow (those who are experts in its cultivation know only to take the part that they need to allow the damaged area to renew itself.)
Without a structured preservation effort, Brazilian medicinal plants specialist Thiago Martins e Silva fears the vine will sooner or later become endangered. He also worries about the deforestation of the Amazon contributing to the depletion of wild ayahuasca stocks.
There’s still another issue we need to address, this time, regarding animal welfare. According to recent research published in the journal Conservation Science and Practice, the trade in jaguar body parts is growing across Latin America, particularly in Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Peru, and Suriname.
Over the past few years, the most serious new threat to jaguars that has emerged is the illegal trade in jaguar fangs for the Chinese market. But according to a team of researchers led by Alexander Braczkowski of Australia’s University of Queensland, “commercialized ayahuasca tourism may be an undervalued contributor to the trade” in jaguar body parts.
Braczkowski and co-authors write in their paper that: “Most organized trafficking appears to be by contractors working for foreign companies hired to hunt cats to export body parts. But with Latin America’s current ayahuasca and shamanic tourist boom there are additional demands for jaguar products.”
Between August 2016 and August 2019, Braczowski and his team searched for jaguar parts trade in markets in three Peruvian cities that are considered top ayahuasca tourism destinations. These are Lima, Iquitos, and Pucallpa. And the results were depressing: “Every single place we went to look for jaguar skins, jaguar teeth, we found them,” Sharon Guynup, a co-author of the paper, told Mongabay Magazine.
The researchers found that jaguar canine pendants, jaguar skin bracelets, and other jaguar products are being sold to tourists under the false pretense that they somehow enhance the ayahuasca experience. It should be noted that local indigenous shamans and healers from the Pucallpa area (Shipibo, Conibo, and Ashaninka ethnicities) strongly deny this. They firmly state jaguar parts do NOT enhance the ayahuasca experience in any way. Furthermore, they insist that this practice is being marketed by ‘charlatan shamans’ seeking financial gain from the ayahuasca boom.
Other Concerns
While ayahuasca tourism has been blamed for botanical and ecological concerns, there are anthropologic ones, as well – specifically the themes of cultural appropriation and the twisting of Amazonian traditions for profit.
As mentioned above, ayahuasca ceremonies are being tainted with rare animal parts by charlatans. But just as bad is the fact that many untrained foreigners are now administering the brew. Indigenous people of the Amazon are not concerned about where their patients come from, but are indeed saddened by the degradation and devaluation of their traditional ceremonies.
“For many years, I have been coming here (to the Sacred Valley) to perform ceremonies to the foreigners. But now, some of the foreigners I gave medicine to are doing the ceremonies. This is very bad. These people are not curanderos. When I was a child, eight years old, I was drinking ayahuasca. I was taught by my father, a curandero. And he was taught by his father, also a curandero. I learned the icaros (songs sung during ayahuasca ceremonies) when I was a child. Mother Ayahuasca is a part of me,” says Shipibo elder Roberto Matias.
The necessity of an expert
He has reason to be concerned. In unregulated ceremonies, there have been cases of stabbings, molestation and violence when the facilitator isn’t an expert. There have been cases of several people dying – and even being murdered – in ayahuasca ceremonies.
These issues could also arise if the brew was not prepared properly, if the ceremony is not held by an experienced curandero, or if the drinkers are not screened. For example? Individuals with psychotic tendencies are not meant to drink ayahuasca at all. Nor are people on certain medications. After the ‘trip’, it’s essential that the experience be integrated into the psyche of the ‘patient’. This can take weeks, or even months.
As Dennis McKenna, famed American ethnopharmacologist and brother of the famed psychedelics proponent Terence McKenna states: “It’s a psychotherapeutic process: if (drinkers) don’t integrate the stuff that comes up, it can be very traumatic”.
Indeed, curanderos are considered medical professionals in the Amazon, and ayahuasca is thought to be such a powerfully curative plant, that only high trained specialists can administer it. The proliferation of ‘pseudo shamans’ – whether they’re in the business for the money, or because their egos have been inflated by the medicine to lead them to believe they have a ‘gift’ for ayahuasca – means that the integrity of ayahuasca practices is under threat, and much money generated by ayahuasca tourism doesn’t even go back into the hands of the indigenous communities.
So, Is Ayahuasca Tourism Harming The Amazon?
I should stress that the rise in ayahuasca drinking isn’t all bad. The interest in retreats has brought much needed money to this very poor region. And of course, many lives have been absolutely transformed from the stuff.
In fact, ayahuasca can be so effective, it is believed it could well change the face of Western medicine, such as in the treatment of cancer and Parkinson’s disease. But we must all acknowledge that these gains come with certain costs. Namely, the further degradation of the Amazon and the indigenous cultures that lie within.
What do you think? Is ayahuasca tourism harming the Amazon? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
- 6 Spiritual Practices That Harm The Earth - February 16, 2023
- London Fashion Week’s Ethical Highlights 2020 - March 4, 2020
- Is Ayahuasca Tourism Harming The Amazon? - November 16, 2019
But Jerónimo Mazarrasa, Secretary of the Board of Directors at the International Center for Ethnobotanical Education Research and Service, isn’t so anxious about the future of the Amazon or ayahuasca. Although he acknowledges that the plant has been ‘harvested to death’ all around Iquitos, he told the Guardian newspaper: “Economical plants don’t go extinct, ever. Humans don’t allow it.”
That may be true – but would commercial planting detract from the traditional experience and the sacred nature of the ceremonies? Many indigenous leaders strongly believe that what is sacred should never be cultivated, nor for sale.
Endangering Animals