Plant Teachers by Jeremy Narby

Author:Jeremy Narby
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781608687749
Publisher: New World Library
Published: 2021-07-14T00:00:00+00:00

CONTRAINDICATIONS, ADVERSE EFFECTS, AND THE DARK SIDE OF AYAHUASCA

Scientists have begun to recognize the therapeutic potential of ayahuasca, and this comes with a list of contraindications. Ayahuasca is not recommended for people who suffer from psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or cardiovascular disease or who use pharmaceutical drugs such as antidepressants, anti-anxiety agents, hypertension drugs, amphetamines, sedatives, or sleeping pills. Nor is it recommended for pregnant women.37

Beyond these contraindications, it sometimes happens that healthy individuals who have prepared themselves appropriately, and who drink well-administered ayahuasca, nonetheless end up feeling deeply discombobulated by the experience. Ayahuasca can have a distressing and destructuring effect on people. This rare phenomenon, which scientists call a “transitory psychotic crisis,” remains understudied and requires further investigation.38

The fact is that consuming ayahuasca is necessarily a risky proposition. Inasmuch as the brew acts as a “psychedelic” — meaning “psyche-revealing” — you take a risk with your own psyche when you drink it. You never know what this potent hallucinogen will reveal about yourself until you have swallowed it; but then it’s too late to turn back.

Anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna pinpoints part of the problem:

The greatest dangers of ayahuasca do not concern potential adverse physiological problems, which are few and can be avoided through proper information, nor even psychological problems, which in most cases can be controlled through proper set and setting (though, of course anyone with serious psychotic issues should abstain from ayahuasca). The real problem has to do with ego inflation, to which no one is impervious. This may take the form of messianic delusions and abuse of various kinds, such as taking advantage of the vulnerable situation in which inexperienced people find themselves, either due to their fear, their ingenuousness or their gratitude towards the person who facilitated their experiences with ayahuasca.39

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