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HEALTH | MENTAL HEALTH | PSYCHEDELICS
How Ayahuasca Retreats Gamble with Your Life: 13 Ways to Protect Yourself
Stay safe and survive the Wild-West of the plant medicine world.
Type in ayahuasca retreat, plant medicine journey, shaman or ayahuasca ceremony into Google and you’ll get hundreds of thousands of search results — whether located in the Amazonian rainforest of Brazil, the ‘Sacred’ Valley in Peru, someplace high in the Himalayas, the urban jungle of New York city, Euro-chic retreats in Ibiza or Portugal, somewhere unpronounceable in Timbucktu, or an underground ‘ceremonia’ held in someone’s living room — the question remains: is it safe?
Ayahuasca itself — an entheogenic plant medicine from the Amazon, which miraculously holds the mind-blowing capacity to reveal to you truths about yourself to which you were oblivious or shadow parts from which you were hiding — is safe.
No one has actually ever died from simply drinking the mixed-berry smoothie coloured brew. Yet, plenty have been maimed or severly harmed due to an inability by those facilitating — the retreat hosts, ‘shaman’ or ‘curandero’ serving the ‘medicine’ — to provide sufficient duty of care.
Having spent 18 months living in, working at, or visiting various centers in Peru, both in the Amazon and Sacred Valley — as well as participating in 100’s of ceremonies with individual shamans of various indegenous lineages across four continents over a 5 year period — I can safely say that the ayahuasca and plant medicine world is very much the Wild West, frequented by copious cowboys and outlaws, exhibiting just as many unruly behaviors.
In addition to witnessing many miraculous healings with individuals experiencing recovery from PTSD, eating disorders, grief, abuse, trauma, depression and addiction, sadly, during this time I’ve consistently seen or heard first-hand accounts of things that range from the unecessarily idiotic to the downright dangerous:
The time I watched a ‘shaman’ — who claimed to be of Peruvian lineage and to have studied the plants with his grandfather’s guidance for 20 years — have absolutely no clue as to what to do with the woman who screamed and screamed during his…
