History of ayahuasca
202306152045
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Tags: ayahuasca Psychedelics
Ayahuasca, meaning Vine of the Souls or Vine of the Dead in Incan Quechua, and also known as daime, yage, and hoasca, is a traditionally consumed brew consisting of primary psychoactive substances DMT and β-carboline harmala alkaloids, including harmine, tetrahydroharmine (THH), harmaline, harmol, and harmalol [@Brito-da-Costa2020; @Strassman2008; @Dominguez-Clave2016; @McKenna1984]. The ayahuasca brew is normatively brewed from the vine Banisteriopsis caapi, containing the harmala alkaloids, and Psychotria viridis, Mimosa hostilis, Acacia confusa, or Diploterys cabrerana which contains the tryptamine alkaloids, of which DMT is the primary psychoactive agent [@Bouso2015; @Brito-da-Costa2020].
Ayahuasca has been traditionally consumed for thousands of years [@Frecska2016; @McKenna1998]. Santo Daime, a neo-syncretic Brazilian religion, emerged in the Amazonian state of Acre in the 1930s, founded by Raimnudo Irineu Serra, and is practiced worldwide, though primarily in the Brazilian Amazon. Santo Daime utilizes an elaborate ritual, rich in symbology, to direct the experience of ayahuasca sessions [@Hartogsohn2021]. As such, the phenomenology of the hallucinogenic experience is markedly different from that of Western populations, and can be understood best through the differences in cultural context and the well-known expectancy effect. In other words, the user’s priors, or beliefs, around the use of psychedelics, in this case ayahuasca, shape its phenomenology and the subjective, hallucinogenic experience [@Haijen2018; @Muthukumaraswamy2021; @Carhart-Harris2018]. This poses major challenges for the interpretation and evaluation of literature on the use of drugs. In particular, the strong effect of expectancy and cultural biases on the subjective effects of psychedelic experiences pose additional challenges.