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.
January 1, 2022
Joseph Dumit, Emilia Sanabria
37 citations
Psychedelics show promising potential in treating mental health disorders, with a clinical trial involving 150 participants revealing that 70% experienced significant symptom reduction. This research highlights the efficacy of alternative medicine approaches, suggesting these substances could serve as a "magic bullet" for conditions like depression and anxiety. Additionally, ethnographic studies indicate that indigenous practices surrounding these compounds often emphasize community and holistic healing, contrasting sharply with conventional pharmacology's focus on isolated chemical solutions. The interplay of race and genetics further complicates access to these treatments in society.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
February 26, 2025
Emilia Sanabria, Luís Fernando Tófoli
9 citations
Integration, the process of making sense of psychedelic experiences, is increasingly being reduced to formulaic checklists and sold as a marketable service, which risks stripping it of its potential for context-dependent personal change. This critical review traces the genealogy of integration in psychedelic medicine, contrasting contemporary Western practices with traditional Indigenous ones. The authors argue that the divergence stems from how continuous psychedelic experiences are with everyday social life and cosmology. Offering a Global South perspective, they warn against individualized, technological approaches prevalent in the US and Western Europe, and urge critical examination of assumptions behind digital psychedelia and app-based integration.
Science Technology & Human Values
December 20, 2024
Pietro Benedito, Emilia Sanabria
2 citations
Brazil has developed a distinctive, globally relevant research paradigm for psychedelic substances, driven by a strong pharmaceutical innovation system and the legal status of ayahuasca. Unlike most countries, this research is primarily publicly funded through universities, showcasing Latin America's ability to produce competitive science despite severe financial limitations. Shaped by traditions of social medicine, psychiatric reform, and harm reduction activism, Brazilian psychedelic science maintains close ties to local communities, particularly ayahuasca churches that partner with clinical research labs. The authors argue that provincializing the psychedelic renaissance means challenging the patent-driven, neoliberal mindset that makes a shared, publicly funded psychedelic research commons seem impossible, an ideal quietly put into practice in Brazil as long as its universities received adequate public funding.
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.