Does ayahuasca ring any bells?

If you’re unfamiliar with this spiritual drug of choice, it’s a combination of tree bark, some other plants, and of course the ayahuasca vine. And to those familiar with its street name, it’s also known as yaje.

This elixir is definitely not for the novice and is used to achieve a trancelike state that is reputed to cleanse the body and mind and even make connection with the spirit world possible.

What’s really surprising is that this type of drug tourism has brought in a huge number of tourists from the western world, with some paying up to thousands of dollars to stay in special lodges and have the natives there guide them through the ayahuasca rituals.

Ayahuasca has been used for every problem you can think of. If you have an emotional, physical, or psychological problem, try ayahuasca. If you have an addiction to prescription drugs, drink some ayahuasca. It’s even been purported to allow time travel so that you can go back and confront your childhood traumas.

For more on this hallucinogenic drink, check out this article from Time.com

Down the Amazon in Search of Ayahuasca

by John Otis

Although his parents urged him to study medicine, Jimmy Weiskopf dropped out of college and in the 1970s moved to Colombia, where he eventually began to focus on a different kind of elixir. The New York City native became an early advocate for the hallucinogenic plant mixture ayahuasca. For centuries, Amazonian Indians have been drinking ayahuasca, also known as yaje — a combination of the ayahuasca vine, tree bark and other plants — to achieve a trancelike state that they believe cleanses body and mind and enables communication with spirits. Weiskopf, who has published a 688-page tome about ayahuasca, was once among a tiny coterie of foreigners using the potion, but these days he has lots of company.

Word of ayahuasca’s healing properties has brought a growing number of New Age tourists from the U.S. and Europe, some of whom pay thousands of dollars to stay at jungle lodges where Indian medicine men guide them through all-night ayahuasca rituals. Sting and Tori Amos have admitted sampling it in Latin America, where it is legal, as has Paul Simon, who chronicled the experience in his song “Spirit Voices.” “It heals the body and the spirit,” says Eustacio Payaguaje, 51, a Cofán Indian shaman who regularly treks to Bogotá to lead weekend ayahuasca ceremonies in the city. “It is medicine for the soul.”

But as the subtitle of Weiskopf’s 2004 book, Yaje: The New Purgatory, suggests, ayahuasca is not for the faint of heart — or stomach. Drinking a few ounces of the sludgy brown liquid usually leads to a violent purge from both ends of the body. Beat Generation novelist William Burroughs, seeking to get high on Colombian ayahuasca in the early 1960s, described hurling himself against a tree and barfing six times. At a recent ceremony on the outskirts of Bogotá, most of the 40 participants packed sleeping bags, water bottles — and rolls of toilet paper. Sting, in a Rolling Stone interview, made clear that ayahuasca is no party drug. “There’s a certain amount of dread attached to taking it,” the singer said. “You have a hallucinogenic trip that deals with death and your mortality. So it’s quite an ordeal. It’s not something you’re going to score and have a great time on.”

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