Ayahuasca in the treatment of the consequences of chronic childhood sexual abuse in a religious community
March 27, 2025 preprint DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/mzkyv_v1 via OpenAlex
Summary
A woman in her mid-50s, who experienced severe childhood sexual abuse and later developed bipolar disorder, found significant relief from her trauma after attending four underground ayahuasca ceremonies. Despite a long history of depression and unsuccessful treatments, she reported that the core of her embodied trauma had dissolved following these experiences. The study questions traditional psychiatric diagnoses and suggests that psychedelic therapy could address trauma without needing to classify psychiatric conditions.
Study at a glance
| Design | case study |
|---|---|
| Population | a woman in her mid-50s with a history of childhood sexual abuse and bipolar disorder |
| Key finding | The woman's participation in ayahuasca ceremonies led to excellent outcomes and a dissolution of her core embodied trauma. |
Abstract
This retrospective case study features a woman in her mid-50s who spent her childhood in a religious community plagued by sexual abuse of children. She was abused by her father for more than a decade. The church and her mother ignored her reports about it. In her early twenties, she enrolled herself in the Erhard Seminars Training program that destabilized her, inducing a first-onset psychosis, decades later used as the main rationale for diagnosing her with bipolar disorder. For the following decades, she suffered from severe depression and emotional isolation but was functional professionally and became a medical doctor. 35 years of talk therapy helped somewhat but did not resolve trauma ingrained in her body nor her at-times catatonic depression.In her early 50s, she experimented with psilocybin, which resulted in somatic improvement but did not resolve her depression. She wanted to attend underground ayahuasca ceremonies but was rejected because of her bipolar diagnosis. Eventually, she decided not to disclose her diagnosis and attended four ceremonies in two different ceremony groups, with excellent outcomes. She considered that the core of her embodied trauma had dissolved.The rationale for assigning diagnoses is questioned; a focus on etiology combined with the broad-spectrum nature of psychedelic therapy may mostly eliminate the need to discern between 'psychiatric conditions'. Trauma is considered socially contagious, similar to infectious diseases. The prohibition of psychedelic therapies is interpreted as a society-wide refusal to recognize trauma: a refusal to see what actually happened and happens.