Ayahuasca has become popular among non-Indigenous people outside the Amazon, often promoted as an ancient natural remedy for shamanic healing. However, this neo-shamanic and recreational use differs fundamentally from traditional Indigenous practices and modern medical research. Indigenous use treats ayahuasca as a means to amplify communication with non-human beings in animal, plant, or spirit realms, where efficacy depends on correct interaction with these powers, not the drug itself. Modern medicine focuses on neurochemical processes like MAO inhibition and DMT activity to trigger psychological and somatic responses for treating mental conditions. The author argues an ontological incommensurability exists between Indigenous and medicinal concepts, so one cannot legitimate the other, and the coloniality of appropriating Indigenous practices must be questioned.
The experience of Indigenous people as interest from northern countries in drinking ayahuasca grows has received little attention. Among Shipibo-Konibo, ayahuasca's meaning and value had already shifted by the 1960s. Observing visitors' focus on ayahuasca ingestion, many Shipibo changed their representation of indigeneity to meet those expectations. Six biographies of Indigenous individuals involved in commercializing ayahuasca illustrate diverse related economies. Potential conflicts arise from Amazonian native ontology merging with visitors' expectations. The contemporary ayahuasca ceremony may substitute for former cosmogonical rituals no longer performed. Indigenous specialists face both problems and profits, and they ridicule a legion of apprentice shamans.
Ayahuasca's growing prominence in contemporary literature and search engines is explained by the parallel decline in the use of tobacco, which has historically been underrepresented. Among the Yine people of the Ucayali valley, individuals known as kagonchi or monchi are associated with tobacco use and magical chanting, an association that may be ancient but has taken new forms. The most remote use of tobacco occurs among voluntarily isolated indigenous groups along the Peruvian-Brazilian border, who avoid contact with globalization. The chapter concludes by considering how cosmopolitan attitudes toward tobacco and ayahuasca influence substance use generally, particularly in drug tourism contexts.