Ayahuasca – The Vine of Spirits I

Ayahuasca is an hallucinogenic Amazonian plant concoction, that has been used by native Indian and mestizo shamans in South America for healing and divination for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Western trained physicians and psychologists have acknowledged that psychedelic or entheogenic substances like ayahuasca can afford access to non-ordinary, spiritual or transpersonal dimensions of consciousness. In the Brazilian churches using ayahuasca, which by now have thousands of followers, including in North America and Europe, we have seen the development of an authentic folk religious movement that incorporate the hallucinogenic plant extract as a sacrament - developing both syncretic and highly original forms of religious ceremony.
In the context of Amazonian traditional healing practice the drinking of ayahuasca, combined with a highly restrictive diet, is something like a master cure for all illnesses, both physical and psychological. Not that the medicine itself is a panacea, but that it functions as a guide or teacher or instrument for the healer, pointing him or her to other herbs that might be needed, allowing him to counteract sorcery or extract poisonous infections. Clearly such practices presume a completely different understanding of illness and medicine than what we are accustomed to in the West.
Even from the point of view of Western medicine and psychotherapy it is clear from the literature that remarkable physical healings and resolutions of psychological difficulties can occur with this medicine. There have been ancedotal accounts of the complete remission of some cancers after one or two sessions with ayahuasca. Since these occurred in the context of traditional healing ceremonies, it is impossible to separate out the pharmacological effect from the psychosocial and shamanic elements.
On the psychological level also, there is intriguing evidence of positive therapeutic changes being induced by the ritualistic ingestion of ayahuasca. The research with the Brazilian hoasca church known as UDV showed that long-term users of hoasca reported making positive changes in their behavior (less drinking and drug use, more responsibility) as a result of their participation in the ceremonies. Many of the stories recounted in my book on ayahuasca – Sacred Vine of Spirits - and elsewhere, support the notion that under the influence of ayahuasca people are able to see and understand themselves better, to think more clearly about their relationships, the nature of the cosmos and their own place in it.
The combination of physical and psychic purging that occurs quite regularly with ayahuasca has lead me and others to suggest that potentially the most useful application of this medicine in Western society may be in the treatment of addiction and alcoholism. The Brazilian hoasca project with long-term members of the UDV reported a marked decline in alcoholism and drug addiction among church members. Similarly, among members of the peyote-using Native American Church in the United States, it has regularly been reported there is a significant decline in the alcoholism that is otherwise so devastating to the Native American population. Looking back at the history of Western research with psychedelic drugs, the most widespread therapeutic applications of LSD was found in the treatment of alcoholism. At one point during the late 1960s, there were about five or six hospitals in North America with an LSD alcoholism treatment program; the efficacy rate was on average about comparable to other forms of treatment.
Since the psychedelic (entheogenic, hallucinogenic) drugs and plants as consciousness-expanding, heightening awareness and providing self-insight, they are the logical and natural antidotes to the consciousness-contracting, fixating, narcotizing effect of addictive drugs and alcohol. And because of the purging effect (found in peyote and ayahuasca) there is reason to believe that such plant combined emetic-hallucinogens may be even more effective in treating alcoholism and addiction than LSD. The addict needs to purge not only the toxic residues of alcohol and other drugs from their system, but also the mental, emotional and perceptual reaction-patterns and habits. I believe there is a strong possibility that an alcoholism and addiction treatment program using ayahuasca in the context of a holistic approach that also uses nutrition, exercise, and psychospiritual group therapy can be established some time in the next ten years; if not in the United States, then perhaps in Mexico or Canada, where anti-drug political hysteria is less intense.
In the Amazonian shamanistic cultures, there is a deep association between the ayahuasca medicine and the serpents. Visions of giant or multiple serpents, in and around the body, as well as in the environment, are often reported – and portrayed in the tribal art. The shamans say that the power and knowledge to heal comes through the vine, but comes from the serpent – the serpent is the mother of ayahuasca. Jeremy Narby, in his fascinating book The Cosmic Serpent has made a powerful case for the idea that when the shaman-healers take ayahuasca, their perceptions are attuned to the cellular and molecular level, like a virtual electron microscope, where they can see the double helix forms of DNA – the basic evolutionary code of all life on Earth, coiled into the nucleus of every one of the trillions of cells of our body. The following poem describes a vision I was shown when I participated in an ayahuasca ceremony in Manaus, Brazil, a few years ago.

Ayahuasca Serpent Vision

I pray to the serpent vine of visions:
Help me heal the ancient wounds.
Slowly, the glittering snakes glide and slide,
Insinuating intimately into my deepest roots.
I’m inside the Serpent Mother now,
Coiling, writhing, turning, squirming,
Our bodies merged – one skin, one spine.

The space within expands to spaciousness,
Our little band of travellers on the spirit boat,
Are in the house, on the river, in the snake,
Sailing serenely along the darkening stream.

The Great Serpent’s body expands once more,
Encompassing now the River of Time,
The barque of human civilizations:
Whole villages & towns, I see, temples & palaces,
Pyramids & towers, kingdoms & nations:
Egypt, Rome, India, America,
Carried by the currents of collective fate,
Through the millenia, one great stream, one great Snake.

Now – continents & oceans, cloud montains, I see,
Vast deserts, rain forests, river deltas,
Are only the shimmering body of Diamond Rainbow Serpent,
Mother of All Organic Life on Earth.

And now – the great Earth with all her sibling planets,
Companion worlds, Moon, Mercury and Mars,
Spinning and whirling in stately serpentine orbits,
Around Primordial Mother-Father Sun.

The barque of hundreds of millions of years sails on,
Great Cosmic Star Sun Serpent,
Wheeling majestically around the Milky Way
Galactic Center, Dark Source of All Radiance.