International Journal of Drug Policy
April 19, 2017
Piera Talin, Emilia Sanabria
101 citations
The ritual use of ayahuasca challenges dominant views of addiction by bridging the gap between community-based and pharmacological interventions. The article concludes that flexible, adaptable forms of caregiving are crucial for successful addiction recovery, and that a sense of community belonging holds significant therapeutic potential.
Studia Religiologica
December 19, 2025
Piera Talin
Ayahuasca rituals are being reinvented through hybrid, artistic forms that the author calls 'otherwise ayahuasca expressions.' These ritual forms navigate a tension between fixed structures and flexible ones, with change involving shifting flows between established and more adaptable ritual frameworks. Based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in Brazil and Italy, the article explores transformations in ayahuasca ritual structures, bridging ritual studies and the anthropology of the otherwise. These otherwise ayahuasca expressions emerge from other religious and ritual forms, mediating ritual experiences through art and experimentation that are mostly not allowed in other comparable settings.
Quotidiana
December 17, 2025
Piera Talin
Following Italy's 2022 legal ban on ayahuasca, ayahuasca religions in the country have adapted their ritual practices by replacing the brew with water and developing new forms of religious travel. The article draws on anthropology, lived religion, and ritual studies to examine how prohibition reshapes ritual practice and everyday life for these transnational religious groups that center on the Amazonian psychoactive brew traditionally used in Indigenous rituals and healing.
Vibrant Virtual Brazilian Anthropology
January 1, 2025
Pietro Benedito, Isabel Santana de Rose, Emilia Sanabria et al.
As psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) trials advance, clinics offering such treatments are becoming a near-term reality, raising questions about therapeutic modalities, infrastructure, funding, and access. This paper describes the process of designing and holding a speculative space to imagine possible future ayahuasca care spaces. Ayahuasca healing remains largely tied to ritual settings, creating a complex and ambivalent relationship with the broader category of psychedelics and PATs. Through speculation, the authors collaboratively addressed issues of appropriation, commodification, standardization, and pharmaceuticalization of plant medicines, while exploring the more-than-human dimensions of care. The goal was to shift interactions with field interlocutors toward co-laboration and co-re-definition, discussing the creation, parameters, and framework of such a conversation.
Proposing Empirical Research
August 21, 2019
Piera Talin, Emilia Sanabria
Ayahuasca, an Amazonian brew, helps treat substance addiction through intertwined physiological and psychological mechanisms. This analysis focuses on how interactive ritual contexts support healing. Based on long-term fieldwork, participant observation in ayahuasca communities, and in-depth interviews with participants who have histories of substance misuse, the work provides an ethnographically grounded, qualitative account of addiction-recovery experiences within ayahuasca rituals.