Arts + Culture

Mind–Altering Vacations

by Barbara Cleveland


AYAHUASCA IN BRAZIL

The buzz: For more than 3,000 years, Amazonian tribes have been using this tea—brewed from the vine of the ayahuasca plant and the leaves of the chacruna, a member of the coffee family—to cure emotional ailments. Current practitioners describe it as a confrontation with one's innermost self. But this is no sissy sipping experience: Because the tea contains dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, you'll have emotional highs similar to what you experience on Ecstasy and hallucinations on par with peyote. The trip can last from 2 to 5 hours, depending on the amount of tea you drink.

Where to score: Heart of the Initiate, a U.S.-based organization, offers ayahuasca workshops at an eco-resort on the coast of Brazil, where the indigenous, religious, and ritual use of ayahuasca is protected by federal law. The workshops—either 8 or 17 days—begin with 2 days of decompression, followed by ayahuasca ceremonies every other day, led by an experienced shaman. The company insists that ayahuasca is not a recreational drug, warning that you should expect to "get comfortable with being uncomfortable."

Where to chill: The simple answer? You won't. The ceremony itself can get quite intense—there's chanting, songs in tribal languages, incense, and, of course, drinking the tea. And you should expect to throw up. Just as in ayurvedic traditions on the other side of the world, vomiting is an expected and therapeutic part of the process. Champions claim that ayahuasca purges the digestive, circulatory, and neurological systems, and many participants report a feeling of well-being and internal "cleanliness" that lasts after the ceremony.

How to come down: Feel free to wander within the bounds of the resort, but don't give in to the siren song of the beach—the riptides can be extremely dangerous. Coming down from the experience as a whole, though, is a longer process. Past trippers talk about sporadic bursts of emotional insights for weeks after the workshops—so you may as well do that on the beach in Rio.

Copyright 2009 Condé Nast Traveler

53:06 minutes (24.33 MB)
Download the podcast

We are excited to offer the first episode of our podcast!

In this podcast, we invite you to listen to a lecture given by Ralph Miller on the sacred plant medicine Ayahuasca. Making the assumption that listeners know nothing about this ancient plant teacher, Ralph talks about what Ayahuasca is and tells the story of how it is moving out of the jungle and into the Western consciousness, helping humans create a bridge back to our ancient past, a reconnection to the sacred primal force within us all. In the process, he explains the distinction between what we call "drugs" and the Ayahuasca plant medicine. Ralph also touches on some of the biological and chemical aspects of our brain's inherent connection with the active ingredient in the Ayahuascsa brew, dimethytriptamine (DMT), through our pineal gland.

Throughout the podcast, Peter and Chapman pause the lecture to clarify some questions that might come up for the listeners.

We are very happy to offer this new technology to everyone interested in our workshops.