www.takiwasi.org Center for Drug Addiction Treatment and Research on Traditional Medicines Prolongación Alerta Nº 466. Tel. +51‐(0)42‐52 2818 – fax +51‐(0)42‐ 52 5479 Tarapoto – Peru 1 Ayahuasca in the treatment of Addictions DR. JACQUES MABIT Physician, founder of Takiwasi Center Published in the book “Psychedelic Medicine (Vol. 2): New Evidence for Hallucinogic Substances as Treatments” 1 (2007). Jacques Mabit, M.D., is Founder and Executive President of the Takiwasi Center for Drug Addict Rehabilitation and Research on Traditional Medicines in Tarapoto, San Martin, Peru. He is Eminent Professor responsible for Traditional Medicine Studies at the Universidad Cientifica del Sur in Lima, Peru, and distinguished as Honorary Member of the Peruvian Psychology Association. He was selected as a Fellow of the Ashoka Foundation in 1996. Ayahuasca is a mixture of a least two psychoactive South American plants: the liana ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi) which gives its name to the beverage; and the leaves of chacruna (Psychotria viridis). The ayahuasca beverage constitutes a unique preparation because of its pharmacological action in which the beta-carboline alkaloids of Banisteriopsis caapi, playing the role of MAO inhibitors, enable the visionary effects of the tryptamine alkaloids found in Psychotria viridis. This specific symbiotic action, which modern science identified just a few decades ago, has been empirically known for at least 3000 years by the Indigenous groups of the western Amazon, according to archaeological evidence (Naranjo P., 1983). This simple fact deserves our attention because it reveals the extraordinary investigative potential of these ethnic groups, based on the compilation of information from the subjective perspective, which challenges our conventional western approach that tends towards exclusive objectivity with a rational focus. In other words, the psychotherapeutic discoveries of these Amazonian Indigenous peoples are not the result of mere chance or erratic investigation following the trial and error approach (Narby 1998). It is significant that both families of alkaloids of ayahuasca are also present in our bodies (Strassman 2001) and affect the serotonergic system, which suggests the existence of a natural, endogenous ayahuasca (Metzner et al 1999). Human use of use ayahuasca does not, therefore, constitute an external agent that could violate our physiology, but rather, it appeals to natural neuro-pharmacological processes, empowering them in ways that amplify their normal functions i . Interest in the topic of ayahuasca among populations of developed countries has increased over the last 20 years to the point of becoming a fashionable phenomena. Enthusiasm for this topic has widely exceeded the framework of the academic community and scientific laboratories. This interest is derived from the expansion of self-exploration initiated in the 1960s; an exploration that sought to confront the lack of satisfying answers from the churches, the philosophical schools, and the psychotherapeutic traditions. It was a reaction to the general secularization of society that has abolished the ritual forms, liturgies or symbolic experiential spaces that permit the individual to experience, in a sensitive manner, the semantic dimensions of life and to consequently give meaning to their everyday life. Confronted with the absence of coherent life projects and the lack of a mythical 1 MABIT Jacques, “Ayahuasca in the treatment of Addictions”, In: Psychedelic Medicine (Vol. 2): New Evidence for Hallucinogic Substances as Treatments, by Thomas B. Robert, Michael J. Winkelman, pp. 87-103, Praeger Ed., USA, 2007. ISBN: 0-275-99023-0