"Hello! I have a few personality traits which I describe below and which, as a consequence, cause many impediments in life. Some traits: Introverted; Neurotic (exaggerated preoccupation about what does not exist or suffering in anticipation); difficulty in talking and making friends; Self-critical; Perfectionist; Despairing; Lack of energy; Lack of enthusiasm; Nervous; Depressive (in treatment for 10 years without much progress); Intolerant; Impatient; Lack of initiative; Ill-humored; With heaviness in the head (perhaps originating from tension).

The question: By participating in the rituals and by ingesting ayahuasca, would I be able to change some of these traits that are part of my personality, or, at least, learn to live with some of them peacefully and without suffering, since antidepressants don't work for me? Hug, F.M."

-- Email message sent to Beatriz Caiuby Labate in 2008. *** Maria is a hard-working self-employed professional in a competitive Brazilian city. At 43 years old, her dream was to have a child. Recently she had gotten together with a certain man and they attempted in vitro fertilization. Each session (hormones plus fertilization) cost almost 12,000 dollars. The first two attempts failed, she was down to her last chance. The couple wasn't doing well and the man broke off the relationship. She was devastated. They had already paid for the third session and it was her last chance. What to do? Aside from the indecision, she didn't feel well mentally... Her therapist recommended a foreign ayahuasca healer who lived in a Brazilian metropolis. She called. The healer answered, with a distinctive portuñol accent (a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish), that he was busy that week detoxifying a young man who was addicted to cocaine and alcohol. He asked her to call the following week. She wasn't sure, but eventually called back. The healer proposed the following "treatment": three individual ayahuasca sessions including purification with tobacco smoke. She followed him to a house in a remote neighborhood in the city's periphery, hoping that something good would come from that intensive session with psychoactive plants and rituals of the Amazon.

*** "Health should be understood from a psychobiological and sociocultural perspective... health beliefs and practices form a logical-conceptual system... illnesses are not a set of universal physical symptoms or static states, but rather processes mediated by culture... the body is not a reality that exists outside the social, nor precedes it... society fabricates the body... the cure is a collective process that requires constructing the sense/negotiation of meanings... it is necessary to understand how the sick person manages suffering and organizes the experience of the illness... contemplate how the illnesses are lived, dreamed, imagined... the social role of the subject -- like social class, age, gender -- count how he experiences pain... each society has its own illness classification systems and etiological theories... the doctor's office is also a ritual space... it is necessary to account for the doctors' ideas about illness and how they experience the treatment..."

Author B. Labate was reading such phrases repeated in various forms in the anthropological literature on health and illness when her readings were interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. On the other end of the line, a stranger spoke: "Hi! How are you? Listen, I want to take my cousin tonight to a neoshamanistic ritual group that takes ayahuasca. She has never done it and wants to go. But she told me she took sleeping pills last night. Do you think that's a problem? I don't know what the name is, but, you know, it's one of those prescription drugs. Do you think there could be some kind of interaction? Could anything happen?"

*** Pronounced incurable by her doctors, with a brain tumor and a prognosis of certain death, a Spanish woman traveled to Céu do Mapiá, the main center of the Cefluris Santo Daime community in the Amazon interior, where she planned to take the Daime (ayahuasca), pray, and be close to nature. More than just cure herself, which at any rate at that point was impossible, she hoped to await her death in peace. In her final days, she wrote a beautiful diary that later came into the hands of a scholar, and was cited in his study about the Santo Daime doctrine. It is a simple and moving account about the full understanding and acceptance of death.

*** "I want to thank you deeply for the indescribable experience and illumination you provided me... I want you to know that the ceremony and the journey changed my life. I truly felt light, peace and love in such a pure form, that I have no words to explain it. I am able to forgive people for terrible things they have done, etc., up until now I haven't smoked a single cigarette and up to the day of the ceremony I smoked about 15 a day. I wanted to stop for a long time but couldn't. Well, it really was a great and unexpected impact. I feel truly clean and renewed! I think it was the most important and incredible experience of my life, I was able to arrive at the essence of things. A big hug, S."

-- Email message sent to an ayahuasca healer by a male client after his first ayahuasca experience in São Paulo, December, 2008

*** This book was conceived and inspired by situations like those mentioned above: real everyday experiences in modern urban centers. This work explores aspects of health related to the consumption of ayahuasca -- a diabolical potion, according to some monotheistic religions, an entheogen according to Western psychonauts, a holy sacrament according to certain eclectic Brazilian ayahuasca religions, both medicine and poison according to indigenous Amazonian shamans, hallucinogenic pharmacological compound according to psychiatrists, and dangerous DMT-containing drug according to prohibitionist legislation.

"Health," according to the 1978 definition of the World Health Organization (WHO), is a state of "biological, psychological and social well-being" -- what is known as the "bio-psycho-social model." This definition, although widely accepted by diverse scientific disciplines (medicine, medical anthropology, health psychology, etc.), has been criticized by some authors for being naïve, by others for being Utopian, and by still others for being downright unspecific. However one chooses to define it, health in this book is taken in its broadest possible sense, not to encompass only "disease," but all experiences of suffering, ill-ease, ailment and discomfort, which is to say, not reducing to its physical dimension but as a physical-moral totality (Duarte 1998). In this sense, our objective is not to establish universalizing criteria for answering the question, "Does ayahuasca cure such and such an disease or not?" but instead, to understand ayahuasca use as part of what Foucault (2004) calls "technologies of the self" involved in shuffling the boundaries between pain and pleasure, or between waking and dreaming.

Beyond the analytic challenge of understanding situations such as those described above, certain practical motivations have also contributed to producing this collection: first, to systematically review the "state of the art" in biomedical understandings of ayahuasca consumption, which could be brought to bear in various judiciary cases that have afflicted ayahuasca users in different countries (many wind up in prison, while others win their freedom only after spending tremendous amounts of time, money and energy on lawyers as well as on improvised, amateur research collecting papers published about the topic). This objective obviously cannot be dissociated from analyzing the broader role of biomedical discourses about psychoactive substances in the social regulation of their use1 -- which in turn are often associated with criminal-legal and moral-religious discourses in establishing international control on drug use (Rodrigues 2004; Fiore 2007).

Another motivation behind this collection is our discomfort regarding the fact that the enormous expansion of ayahuasca consumption around the world has not been matched by a proportional growth in the quality and accessibility of literature on the subject.2 This lacuna creates a generalized lack of information which in turn falls back on researchers such as ourselves, who are often sought out by the general public searching for such information, and who get drawn into eclectic list-serves and "blogs" on the Internet. On the one hand, specialized texts -- sometimes technical, jargonized and not widely accessible -- have appeared in some biomedical and anthropological journals. On the other hand, Internet sites -- often pseudoscientific or superficially esoteric or spiritual -- devoted to these topics have proliferated. Finally, a few books on ayahuasca of varying quality have also appeared, though the subject of health is rarely contemplated. Thus, we sense an imperative to gather together a broad range of exemplary interdisciplinary works concerning diverse therapeutic issues related to ayahuasca use, and hope that these may prove useful to researchers, ayahuasca users and the general public.

The decisive factor in carrying out this project was the publication, in 2006, of the Final Report on the Multidisciplinary Group (GMT) on Ayahuasca (CONAD 2006; see also MacRae 2008), produced in collaboration between Brazilian government representatives, scientists of diverse specializations, and religious leaders from the main national ayahuasca religions. The text, which defined itself as a collection of "deontological ethics of ayahuasca use," seeks to establish parameters for regulating consumption in Brazil and was published years later in 2010 as an official decision after this book was completed (CONAD 2010). The document explicitly separates the "religious" from "therapeutic" use of ayahuasca. While the former is permitted, the latter is not. The actual text reads:

(...) For the purposes of this report "therapy" is understood to be an activity or process aimed at healing, maintaining or developing health, which takes into account scientific ethical principles.

Traditionally, some spiritual traditions contain healing practices which make use of Ayahuasca, included within the context of religious faith. Such therapeutic use traditionally attributed to Ayahuasca within religious rites is not therapy in the sense defined above, rather it constitutes an act of faith and, being thus, it is not up to the State to intervene in the conduct of people, groups or entities making this use of the beverage within a strictly religious context. Those who use the beverage outside a religious context find themselves in a different situation. This has nothing to do with religious use, and such practices are not recognized as legitimate by CONAD, which limited itself to authorizing use of the substance in religious rituals.

The therapeutic use of Ayahuasca in the private activities of legally regulated professions depends upon professional licensing and support by scientific research, since otherwise such use would constitute illegal exercise of the profession or fraudulent professional practice.

Any practice that involves using Ayahuasca for strictly therapeutic ends, either of the substance alone or in association with other substances or therapeutic practices, should be prohibited until its efficacy is proven by means of scientific research carried out by research centers associated with academic institutions, obeying the scientific method. Thus, recognition of legitimate therapeutic use of Ayahuasca will occur only after the completion of research that proves its efficacy.

Based on the accounts of the representatives of the entities who use it, it was possible to verify that the cures and solutions to personal problems should be understood in the same religious context as other religions: as acts of faith, without any necessary relationship of cause and effect between the use of Ayahuasca and the cure or solution to problems.

This excerpt demonstrates explicitly the difficulty of defining "religious" as opposed to "medicinal" use of ayahuasca,3 a distinction that appears to be based on fragile semantic distinctions. For example, if I state, "Jesus cured me in an União do Vegetal ritual," I would be expressing "my freedom of religious practice," whereas if I say, "Come take ayahuasca with me to cure yourself of depression," would I then be exercising the "illegal practice of medicine"? It is clear that other nuances are involved, and that this kind of problem does not involve only the question of ayahuasca consumption, but rather pertains to a larger conflict involving the State's attempts at control and hegemony over the human body. On such issues, the State is often in dialogue with Medicine, compounding an intricate biopolitics that should not be reduced, however, to the existence of a supposed mechanical, univocal conspiratorial alliance between the State and Medicine. These issues, though clearly relevant, cannot be discussed at length here.4

For the time being, it is worth noting that defining the boundaries between religion and medicine -- beyond theoretical or speculative questions in social sciences -- takes a central place in public debate precisely to the degree that international anti-drug legislation treats some drug uses as legitimate and others as not. Thus, whereas in Brazil the "religious" (but not therapeutic) use of ayahuasca is permitted, and regulated per the parameters established in the above-mentioned report, in Peru, the public debate situates ayahuasca within the realm of "traditional medicine of indigenous peoples." The following is an excerpt of a resolution by the Peruvian National Institute of Culture, which recognizes ayahuasca as a national cultural patrimony (RDN INC 2008, our translation):

WHEREAS (...) said plant is known throughout the indigenous Amazonian world as a wise master plant that teaches the initiated about the very fundaments of the world and its components. The effects of its consumption consist of entering into the spirit world and into its mysteries, and in this manner at some point in their lives the traditional medicine of indigenous Amazonian peoples has been structured around the Ayahuasca ritual, being indispensable for those who assume the role of privileged transmitters of these cultures, which is to say those who are responsible for communication with the spirit world and those who express it dynamically (...)

AND WHEREAS the supporting information suggests that the practice of ritual ayahuasca sessions constitutes one of the fundamental pillars of the identity of Amazonian peoples, and that its ancestral use in traditional rituals, which guarantees cultural continuity, is directly bound up with the therapeutic virtues of the plant (...)

BE IT RESOLVED THAT (Sole Article): The knowledge and traditional uses of Ayahuasca practiced by native Amazonian communities are hereby declared National Cultural Patrimony as a guarantee of cultural continuity.

This book proposes to think through some of these issues.

Given the centrality of biomedical discourses (and let us remember that even these are not homogenous and univocal) in the cartography of power within the field of debates over the "drug question" -- and also considering that the field is highly polarized and moralizing -- taking on a subject such as "health" in relation to ayahuasca consumption implies a task of considerable responsibility. Perhaps the main challenge in a work like this, or at least its first challenge, is to define and choose the articles to be included, which, one must affirm clearly, reflects certain ideological options. On the one hand, there was a desire (and as we understand it, a legitimate one) to take on the "positive" aspects of ayahuasca use, for example, to review and unite several research efforts that have been carried out on the medical potential of psychedelic agents in general (cf. Winkelman & Roberts 2007), and to reflect on the therapeutic possibilities of ayahuasca in particular, including the important discussion concerning its apparent efficacy in treating addictions to alcohol, cocaine and other substances, or at least as prophylaxis for these addictions. We took as our starting point the objective to use this book to stimulate the development of clinical research protocols into the psychotherapeutic potential of ayahuasca consumption to improve mental health (which obviously cannot be separated from health more generally) of patients undergoing psychological treatment.

On the other hand, we wanted to produce a critical and plural work that could reach a broader audience; therefore, it was necessary to reveal and analyze dangerous, uncertain or darker aspects of the experience, which can be generically denominated as the occasional "risks" and "adverse effects" of taking ayahuasca. Thus we also began with the objective of problematizing a certain common understanding present in many areas of drug research -- which probably results from the encounter between humanitarian activism and certain sociological generalizations elaborated by social scientists, or else drawing on a superficial appropriation of sociological discourses by doctors, legislators and public policy makers -- namely, that the "ritual context guarantees the safe consumption of a psychoactive substance." Although we agree with this principle in general, and we recognize the centrality of setting to the experience, this generalization is not sufficient to fully account for the phenomenon. In other words, it is necessary to go beyond the ritual setting without at the same time falling into biomedical reductionism. Therefore, it seemed important to distance ourselves from the issue by asking, for example, "What could be considered 'non-ritual' contexts for psychoactive substances?" or, "Is it possible for a ritual context to present more problems than benefits in the consumption of a psychoactive substance?" or, "Can the setting of a scientific research laboratory be problematic for users participating in controlled studies?" and so on.

In sum, we do not intend to produce a book that vindicates the "benefits of ayahuasca" for an ayahuasca-using public (which would be mere preaching to the converted), nor one that attempts to convince certain opposing or detracting camps (the religious establishment, legislators, police and so on) to change their mind. Nor do we want to unnecessarily expose certain "negative" aspects (which are at any rate quite complex) that might be misinterpreted by those who care little for scientific debate, for they already know from the outset that drug use is wrong and should always be banned.

We will now share with the reader some of the issues we encountered during the process of creating this book, the type of issues that typically wind up strategically disguised or omitted in the final text: should we include an account of someone who allegedly had a psychotic episode with ayahuasca, or of someone who claims to have cured themselves of a serious illness like cancer or AIDS with this beverage? Would we be criticized for producing a book without scientific objectivity that creates false hopes for sick or afflicted people in general? How to address the darker sides of the experience without trivializing its profound mystical and hidden meanings for people belonging to different ayahuasca-using groups? Could we find a shaman willing to talk to us about sorcery, a fundamental element of ayahuasca use among Indians and mestizos? And, in this case, would it be dangerous to include these words here? Is it possible to use our own personal experience drawn from years of consumption of this psychoactive plant without unduly exposing ourselves, or falling into the uncritical assertion of ethnographic authority that, "I was present, I know what it is like"? How to reconcile the academic project with the enchantment, the awe, the strangeness of the experience? How to merge a desire to protect ayahuasca users from the unnecessary intrusions of the State in their private subjective sphere with the disappointing realization that there are so many empirical problems in the field of ayahuasca studies, not to mention the persistent disputes over power and legitimacy among the diverse shamans and religious groups?

We chose to focus on the theme of health from within an interdisciplinary perspective that contemplates the paradigms of social sciences, biomedical sciences and the subjective accounts of individual users, trying to bring these different ways of knowing into dialogue. We have walked on a tightrope between one extreme that treats the biomedical perspective as the only one capable of revealing the "true causes" of diseases and cures, and the other, that of total relativism that rejects completely the validity of scientific research and implicating, moreover, an equally problematic approach that insists on native knowledge as the only legitimate way of knowing.

We chose not to shy from the responsibility of calling attention to possible problems related to the ayahuasca experience, since no substance is a panacea, nor without problems, nor, obviously, of universal applicability. On the other hand, we do not intend to promote the medicalization of ayahuasca practices by conferring them legitimacy solely based on biomedical discourse (even though this might prove to be a welcome collateral effect in some instances), much less create parameters that seek to place ayahuasca use uniquely under the supervision of Western doctors and therapists, even though this modality could be considered legitimate alongside other, equally legitimate ones.

When we speak of interdisciplinarity and cultural dialogue, we do not intend to verify, for example, whether the rigorous indigenous dietary and behavioral prohibitions surrounding ayahuasca (e.g., "diets" to avoid certain foods, or the prohibition of menstruating women in the ceremonies) have a biological basis, or whether the efficacy of sorcery could be "proven" through double-blind placebo-controlled trials. In practice, we have sought not to privilege one type of knowledge over another but rather have tried to render different ontologies intelligible to one another. Finally, just as ayahuasca itself is used in the indigenous world, we have tried to use the discussion to open mediation and dialogue between different kinds of subjectivities in the universe.

The issue of psychotic episodes, mentioned above, deserves brief digression. Although public debate and the scientific literature includes a vast discussion of possible problems and disturbances related to the use of psychedelic substances, the idea that they can eventually unleash a psychotic episode -- which could even lead to suicide -- is probably the most emblematic of the "dangers of psychedelics" (cf. Strassman 1984; Frescka 2007). This idea is central to biomedical discourses, even though the topic runs into a dead-end once it is admitted that one can never know what precisely causes such extreme and rare circumstances, which are usually described as resulting from diffuse and multi-factorial background conditions (e.g., pre-existing psychological conditions, family histories of mental health problems, weak ego structure, severe addiction). For us it is clear that the original effect of the psychoactive substance could be enough to unbalance the brain's biochemistry and could produce a psychotic episode, comprised of biochemical characteristics and functional mechanisms still in need of investigation.

Of course, with the specific psychoactive substance in question, biochemical mechanisms and functioning still require much study. But, at least according to certain spiritual-therapeutic viewpoints (e.g., Grof & Grof 1989), there is an important distinction between "psychotic episode" and "spiritual emergency." The latter, while dramatic and painful, can be beneficial and necessary in the process of psychological and spiritual development for some people. Nevertheless, is important to neither romanticize mental illness nor to superficially mix up indigenous initiation rites with psychological problems experienced by the Western users of ayahuasca (Lewis 2008).

The concept of "psychotic episode" is closely associated with that of "risk," a topic that has been widely discussed in the studies about the biomedical discourse on drugs.5 While the alleged biomedical risks associated with drug use can serve as camouflage for the moral agendas behind the juridical persecution of drug use, denying these risks will not unmask this camouflage, but rather it will only help to legitimate it. Therefore, an analysis of the risks leads necessarily to a maximization of the benefits.

It is important to note that these ideas are also present in some form or another within the imagination of ayahuasca users themselves. First, such ideas appear to function as a signal of identity for the users in relationship with the broader society: "We are the ones who have had the courage to go down these unknown and inscrutable pathways... we are the 'initiates.'" At the same time, these themes are present in the accusations leveled among different ayahuasca-using groups: "With them you cannot be sure what might happen... but here you are safe." Thus in this book, we do not include accounts of either psychotic episodes or miraculous cures induced by ayahuasca, despite having encountered examples, to various degrees, of both in our research trajectories and empirical experiences in this realm. We continue to circle around this particularly delicate subject, waiting for a better opportunity for reflection.

The purists, but the ones of the other side, will accuse us of starting on the wrong foot from the beginning, since ayahuasca is not a drug. In this sense, we preferred to begin by initiating dissension with radicals on all sides...

This book, composed of 21 previously unpublished articles, is divided into two parts. The first, "Shamanism and Religion," addresses the use of ayahuasca in indigenous and mestizo settings and among the Brazilian ayahuasca religions (Santo Daime, Barquinha and União do Vegetal), taking as our point of departure the approach of both anthropologists and ayahuasca users themselves. As we demonstrate, within these viewpoints ayahuasca takes on diverse possibilities, as medicine, sacrament, and as means to knowledge or socialization, among others. The second part, "Science and Therapeutics," focuses on the perspectives of biomedicine and psychology regarding the mechanisms of ayahuasca's activity, as well as its therapeutic possibilities and limitations, especially in the treatment of addiction and in its effects on mental health. In this part, the articles concentrate on the use of ayahuasca in diverse native contexts as well as in clinical and laboratory settings. A preliminary glance might lead to the assumption that the book is thus divided into two antagonistic or opposing halves: magic/religion vs. science, social vs. biomedical sciences, culture vs. nature, spirit vs. body, etc. But upon closer examination, this turns out not to be the case: there are many fluid connections, many comings and goings between the diverse contexts of ayahuasca consumption, and, to some extent, between different ways of addressing them.

In the two parts of the work, we observe processes of hybridization between Western and indigenous health concepts and therapeutic practices, revealing similarities and differences between "traditional" approaches and biomedical discourses on health. The book seeks to unravel historical connections, and thus reconstruct processes that could allow, for example, asking novices aspiring to participate in Santo Daime rituals to first fill out medical evaluation forms; or indigenous Amazonian shamans to prohibit the users of certain psychopharmacological agents (substance-entities duly incorporated into their cosmologies) from participating in ayahuasca sessions, or to relax classic dietary and behavioral prohibitions of the indigenous ayahuasca world based on a relativistic anthropological discourse; or the creation of research laboratory settings inspired by the contexts and concepts of native ayahuasca consumption. The processes of indigenization of biomedicine (Fóller 2004), and, by the same token, scientifying or medicalizing of religion and shamanism, are well reflected in diverse web sites that offer the ayahuasca experience in resorts in the Peruvian Amazon, and in the popular literature circulating on the Internet concerning iconic psychologist-shamans, anthropologist-shamans, shaman-scientists, spiritual master-psychiatrists, guru-psychologists, and other hybrid characters that populate the pages of this book (including some of the chapter authors).

Together, the articles allow us to rethink a series of concepts found in the conventional wisdom and sometimes even in scientific discourses (both social and biomedical), as well as, in some cases, the self-representations of ayahuasca users themselves. Here, we briefly discuss a few of these concepts as treated in several of the articles:

• The idea that ayahuasca is always associated with health. This idea is related in turn to the tendency to assume great antiquity for the therapeutic use of ayahuasca, a point of view that has been challenged by authors such as Gow (2004), Bianchi (2005), and Calavia Sáez (2000) who suggest that such therapeutic uses are more recent than one would imagine; ancient contexts of use of ayahuasca were oriented towards practices of divination, cosmological intervention and to improve luck in hunting and warfare. Some articles in this collection demonstrate various uses of ayahuasca not associated with the strictly "therapeutic" dimension, at least according to Western terms. In some cases, multiple uses overlap within the same context (e.g. sacred and recreational); there are also multiple indigenous concepts of health, illness and cure that come into play.


• An obsessive emphasis on the psychoactive agent, as if "ayahuasca" always comprised an identical uniform substance (when in fact it is the result of diverse mixtures depending on the context), or was always used by itself (when in fact it is often ingested with other plants), or that the indigenous, mestizo and urban populations who use it conferred upon it an absolute centrality (which is not the case); or as if, moreover, the active principle is necessarily the main aspect of the experience, or is that which produces the "cure." The articles gathered here demonstrate that much debate is still required on this subject, and some suggest that "extra-psychedelic" aspects may be responsible for the therapeutic possibilities of ayahuasca.


• An exaggerated attention to the role of ritual performance. Although there is dissonance among specific articles regarding this theme, as a whole they relativize the idea that performance -- with its articulation of multiple elements (narrative, drama, aesthetic) and its emphasis on experiential and bodily dimensions -- should be taken as the exclusive analytical framework for understanding the efficacy of cure, independent of consuming the substance among other variables (keeping in mind that, in many cases, it is the shaman and not the patient who takes ayahuasca).


• The mistake of attributing necessarily to the ritual the role of organizing and conferring meaning to the experience. Although this does occur in many cases, the diverse settings described -- from minimalist laboratory settings to complex sacred technologies -- invite us to think about how certain rituals function even when the participant doesn't share the same logic, semantic system and cultural symbols of a given context; for example, foreigners taking ayahuasca with Indians in Peru. Perhaps the efficacy of such rituals resides precisely in their non-intelligibility to some members of the audience, allied as well with ayahuasca's particular psychoactive effects.


• The idea that it is possible to establish clear and defined limits between cure/health and illness/harm. In some contexts, the cure may involve the dangerous procedure of returning a magical aggression to its instigator, causing that person harm or even death. Although the subject of the aggressive capabilities of sorcery is not discussed in depth in any article, it is present in several, providing a glimpse of a complex plot of attacks and counter-attacks.


• An association between ayahuasca use and self knowledge. Several articles reflect upon the important role of ayahuasca in what could be termed the process of "obsessive interiorization of the modern individual"; however others included here make clear that the psychologization of the ayahuasca use does not extend to all contexts.


• The idea that the visionary element represents the central dimension of the ayahuasca experience, or that it is responsible for its therapeutic action. Visions may or may not occur; if they occur, they are merely one part of the experience. The articles suggest how this dimension is very valued in some contexts, including by many ayahuasca scholars (perhaps related to the primacy of vision in the West), but also affirm that this certainly is not universal. In addition, there are different manners of understanding what the "visions" are.


• An exaggerated emphasis on the bodily dimension. This approach can take on a positive attitude that reads ayahuasca as a powerful purgative that cleans bodily and spiritual impurities through vomiting and diarrhea, or a negative one in which the physical purge results in "intoxication" by the plant. The articles demonstrate that various dimensions -- bodily, visionary, intellectual, and emotional -- constitute the phenomenon and all should be taken into account.


• The idea that ayahuasca consumption is a unique experience, qualitatively different from the consumption of other psychoactives, or states produced by practices such as fasting, illness, sleep, meditation or sexual relations. The experience of taking ayahuasca, like diverse other practices that require their own particular disciplines, constructs the body and subjectivity. Similar to these other practices, abandoning control over body and mind may often constitute an active stance. The use of ayahuasca should be understood, therefore, within a broad symbolic economy of mind/body states and moods.

We hope the book can combat a reductionist vision about ayahuasca and about research in both the human and biomedical sciences concerning it. The various texts united here -- including those of religious leaders, shamans and ayahuasca healers (some of whom have clinical or academic affiliations) -- describe a multiplicity of approaches, styles and perspectives. The attentive reader will perceive that the human sciences have come far from the stereotypical "constructivism" commonly attributed to them, while ayahuasca users do not necessarily take an apologist or naïve view of their practices. She will also realize that biomedical research includes a challenging agenda that confronts questions such as: the development of sophisticated freeze-dried ayahuasca capsules that yield a standard dose similar to that found in the traditional beverage; the invention of placebo substances for use in controlled trials that are capable of deceiving experienced users; the creation of research protocols that allow the "effect of the plant" and the "effect of culture" to be isolated; the effects of DMT and beta-carbolines; differential effects on experienced vs. novice users, on men vs. women, young and old, healthy users as compared to those with pre-existing health problems, and so on. We refer the reader to Renato Sztutman's preface and Stelio Marras's epilogue for a deeper reflection on some of these themes.

*** An anecdote: this book survived the scientific and shamanic attacks (via "sorcery dart" emails) between the co-editors, who, belonging to different genders, countries and disciplines (anthropology and neuropsychology), frequently disagreed, making more evident the difficulty of achieving the promise of interdisciplinary dialogue. We made an effort to integrate the rich anthropology of ayahuasca in Brazil with the fertile field of biomedical studies of ayahuasca in Spain, but perhaps we have brought more questions than answers. We hope that you, Dear Reader, are not disappointed: we did our best. Now it is up to you. Salud con todos, "To your health."