Ayahuasca Can Help You Communicate with Plant Spirits, and Heal Your Body and Mind

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If you needed any further persuasion that psychedelic drugs are back in vogue, this hearty endorsement by Newsweek of the foul but powerful brew known as Ayahuasca should do the trick:

Drink ayahuasca and you may see yourself being eaten by a crocodile. You may find a miraculous resolution to a crippling sadness. Or, more likely, you’ll land somewhere in between. Regardless, you will definitely throw up. Author and ethnobotanist Chris Kilham says all of these things have happened to him after drinking this psychoactive Amazonian brew.

If you haven’t heard of ayahuasca, you may soon. While once consumed mainly by natives of the Amazon basin, today, thousands visit Latin American countries every year to imbibe it, with the hopes of seeing profound visions, having religious experiences and—many claim—undergoing immense healing. Ayahuasca now has devoted followers throughout the world.

Kilham, who calls himself the “medicine hunter” and has traveled to and intermittently lived in the Amazon for more than two decades, says that he is a firm believer in the healing properties of the drink, which is made from the bark of a jungle vine called Banisteriopsis Caapi, and usually mixed with other plants like the leaves of the Justicia pectoralis or Psychotria viridis. It has been drunk by shamans throughout the region for thousands of years as a part of traditional healing processes: the visions brought on by the brew guided the shaman to the his patient’s problem.

Inspired by his experiences with the brew, Kilham has written a book called The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook: The Essential Guide to Ayahuasca Journeying, which he views as primer for people interested in the topic, or a reference for people who have already experienced it.

The drink’s psychoactive properties are thought to derive from the presence of a psychedelic compound called DMT. Normally, when a person ingests DMT, the brain processes it quickly and it has no psychoactive effects. But ayahuasca also contains monoamine oxidase inhibitors (from the B. Caapi vine), which prevent the brain from doing its processing job effectively. But many, like Kilham, also believe that the ayahuasca experience results from communicating with the plants’ spirits. Far out.

I sat down with Kilham—a lively, funny man who sports a moustache and a goatee—to hear about his book and experiences with the brew…

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