year of undergraduate study, asked his mother to answer the question, “Did anyone close to you notice any changes in you (since drinking ayahuasca)?” She responded, “Now he has control over his behavior and has become very spiritual.” It’s interesting to note that this young man’s mother identified two very important themes that others mentioned about post-ayahuasca changes: better behavior and spiritual awakening. Again, the latter is more than psychotherapy intends to accomplish or claims to do.
A number of people reported reconciliations in ruptured relationships. One woman wrote, “I made peace with my ex-husband, and it made a huge difference for us and our two children.” I also experienced a changed attitude toward my ex-husband after taking ayahuasca. I’m able to see once again the spiritual being I fell in love with underneath his personality. However, whether, and how, you act on an inner shift in perspective is a therapeutic decision. Inner experiences, whether resulting from ayahuasca ceremonies or something else, do not necessarily translate into specific behaviors or a face-to-face reconciliation. This is another reason I recommend talking with a therapist after an ayahuasca healing, since this can help differentiate what insights to act on and what insights to hold privately.
The question about relationships is complex. Some people answered, “No change,” but we don’t know if that lack of change is positive or negative. Were their relationships already accepting and loving, or were their relationships unsatisfactory and remained so? Alas, the limits of a questionnaire.
A number of people reported ending “unhealthy relationships” with both romantic partners and friends. This news was presented as an accomplishment, something they should’ve done long ago. It seems there’s a reevaluation of relationships after the ayahuasca experience. For example, one woman explained that she “was better at setting limits without guilt” in her relationships. Another said, “I’ve stopped anything that was toxic.” One man reported, “Some people do not fit anymore.”
Other factors also complicate the relationship question. There can be an in-group/out-group dynamic: Those drinking ayahuasca share a very intense experience that is by its very nature ineffable and difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced the medicine. This is a particularly delicate issue for couples when one partner drinks and the other doesn’t. I experienced this dynamic with a married friend of mine. After a weekend ceremony, we returned to her house, chattering away about our experiences, and her husband, rightfully so, felt left out of our conversation. My friend and I agreed to debrief elsewhere in deference to his feelings.
A variant on this theme was expressed by a woman who joined her husband in a ceremony but repeatedly received the same message from Grandmother Ayahuasca: You don’t really need to be here. You’re already doing your job as a partner and helpmate to your husband. This ceremony is for him. Eventually, she decided to continue joining him in ceremony but to drink only a very small amount of the medicine. This was an interesting compromise elegantly designed to stay connected to her husband’s experience even though ayahuasca was not her personal path.
As if all these relationship issues aren’t complex enough to navigate and understand, the illicit nature of the situation cannot be forgotten. We don’t live in an indigenous village where ayahuasca ceremonies are part of the fabric of the culture, where friends and family respect the medicine. A Westerner can hardly walk into work Monday morning and say, “Guess what I did this weekend?”
Depression and Anxiety
“Depression is GONE. I now have a feeling of self-worth. I’m slower to anger and quicker to smile,” wrote Ben, a thirty-one-year-old man. He said he’d been on antidepressants since his teens and had undergone five years of psychotherapy. Before the study, he’d been drinking ayahuasca every two months or so for about a year.
This is the miracle cure we all want, but the reason it’s called a miracle is precisely because it doesn’t always happen. There are no guarantees. When this kind of relief from depression or anxiety does happen, we need to know: How often is the person drinking ayahuasca? How long does the relief last? What percentage of people enjoy such a miraculous cure? We need long-term studies to follow up on people like Ben and to explore the most therapeutic use of ayahuasca in terms of frequency and dose.
In my study, two-thirds of the people reported improvement in mood after drinking ayahuasca. Only a few described a miraculous cure like Ben’s. The fact that an instantaneous lifting of major depression doesn’t happen for everyone doesn’t minimize the self-reports describing a range of relief from both depression and anxiety. Most people noted a general improvement in mood: more feelings of love and compassion, increased optimism, greater serenity, increased confidence, and more joy. As a result of drinking ayahuasca, respondents said they felt more easygoing, safer, and lighter; they had more fun and felt more stable. They also reported feeling less anxious, angry, agitated, or upset. One person wrote, “Less darkness, more light.”
We do have a few clues about the frequency of drinking ayahuasca. One research study with only three subjects showed how depressive symptoms returned exactly fourteen days after drinking the medicine.7 Santo Daime churches, with decades of experience, hold a ceremony or “work” every two weeks, and this frequency seems to maintain the antidepressant effects of ayahuasca.
People seeking help for depression or anxiety may need to drink ayahuasca on a regular basis. This is a realistic consideration not usually included in the splashy media articles about the new medicine from the Amazon. When people return from an ayahuasca retreat in South America, having enjoyed some relief from lifelong depression and anxiety, they’re faced with a dilemma — how to continue drinking ayahuasca. Not many people can afford the time and money for regular trips to the jungle, while accessing the medicine in the United States means entering an illegal underground. This is hardly a comfortable decision for people seeking healing and spiritual direction.
An important aspect of the healing process continues long after the ceremony is over. In terms of depression and anxiety, people seem to develop a distance between themselves and their moods that allows them to consider the most constructive way to handle their emotionality. A forty-seven-year-old teacher wrote, “I’m less emotional and can better deal with my moods.” Another woman, age fifty-nine and a college professor, described a distancing from her moods: “I don’t take my moods so seriously anymore.” This is not denial or repression, but rather emotional objectivity with a touch of disidentification. This is what’s taught in Roberto Assagioli’s transpersonal approach to psychotherapy, psychosynthesis — “I have a body, but I am not my body. I have an emotional life, but I am not my emotions or my feelings.”8
Disidentification is not the detachment seen in schizoid personality disorder, where the person is out of touch with the flow of their inner, emotional life. People with this diagnosis are often indifferent to others and appear to be cold and detached with little emotional range.
The people reporting greater objectivity about their moods after ayahuasca are very much in touch with their emotions. “I still have ups and downs but I’m less surprised,” wrote a thirty-year-old male musician. A thirty-nine-year-old woman who practiced acupuncture had a similar response: “My oversensitivity has decreased, or I’m better able to handle it.”
In psychosynthesis, the full process is identification, disidentification, and finally Self-identification. With a capital S, Self refers to the transpersonal Self, beyond the ego. Psychosynthesis uses the term Self in the same way Jungians do, meaning a numinous center. The identification step means that the person is aware of and in touch with his or her moods yet is able to develop greater insight. Or, as a fifty-year-old man wrote, “I’m clearer about the source of my moods and the effect they have on others.”
Disidentifying with every passing mood creates a new level of inner freedom and choice. Amy wrote, “I used to be very hot-tempered. While I still get
