Frontiers in Pharmacology
May 28, 2021
David M. O’shaughnessy, Ilana Berlowitz
21 citations
Plant diets (dietas) in Peruvian Amazonian medicine are flexible techniques used for healing, prevention, strength-building, rites of passage, and learning medicine. Many dieted plants are psychoactive, including Banisteriopsis caapi, the vine in ayahuasca. While ayahuasca has drawn clinical attention within psychedelic science, plant diets remain understudied. Interviews with eight extensively trained healers in San Martín, Peru (2015–2017) were analyzed thematically. The authors argue that the “set and setting” framework central to psychedelic research is insufficient for understanding diets, which should not be explained by pharmacology or psychology alone. Intercultural and interdisciplinary research is needed to better understand plant diets and traditional Amazonian medicine.
Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs
July 1, 2020
Ilana Berlowitz, Heinrich Walt, Christian Ghasarian et al.
19 citations
The Amazonian medicine-based therapy attracts a diverse group of patients, including those from outside the region, and may be especially appealing to individuals with substance use disorders (SUD) who have a history of unsuccessful treatment. The cultural diversity of the sample indicates international interest in such therapies among SUD treatment-seeking patients. These findings are relevant to the need for improved SUD therapies and add to the growing research on ayahuasca-based treatments.
January 1, 2017
David M. O’shaughnessy
7 citations
An addiction treatment center in Peru, Takiwasi, combines Amazonian plant medicine (including ayahuasca) with Western psychotherapy and medicine. A reappraised biopsychosocial model, grounded in critical pragmatism, was used to study the center. Results from ethnographic fieldwork, psychological testing, and salivary cortisol measurement of patients undergoing treatment show no harm and clinically positive change for the majority. Profound but poorly understood biological and psychological mechanisms likely contribute, though some healing mechanisms exceed Western medical rationality. Contextualizing these results within a critical biopsychosocial model challenges the biomedical brain disease paradigm and demonstrates the deficiency of asocial, ahistorical addiction theories. Addiction is also considered via classical critical theory, with Takiwasi representing a potentially resistive process against a dangerous tendency in modernity.