Eleven maestros from five indigenous groups across the Colombian and Peruvian Amazon describe their plant relationships as literal communication: "It was the plants that told us." Based on over a decade of fieldwork including multiple dietas with teacher plants and approximately 200 ayahuasca ceremonies, the author proposes extended multispecies liminality—a permanent state of plant-human co-habitation produced through dieta, altered states ceremony, and sonic integration. The first in-depth ethnographic account of chiric sanango (Brunfelsia chiricaspi) dieta shows that apprenticeship dietas produce lasting somatic, perceptual, and dietary transformations persisting years beyond formal conclusion. This challenges representationalist approaches by insisting these practices are actual technologies with concrete inter-species effects, not symbolic performances of cosmological belief.
Ego-dissolution—a sense of losing one's usual self-boundaries—is considered important in psychedelic therapy, but existing scales may miss its complexity. A new 34-item measure, the Multidimensional Ego-Dissolution Assessment (MEDA), was tested on 207 people who had profound experiences with ayahuasca, DMT, LSD, or psilocybin. Factor analysis identified six distinct dimensions: dissolving of identity, experiences of eternity, dissolving of physical body, dissolving into environment, clarity about life and purpose, and pleasure. Ayahuasca and DMT produced higher dissolution scores than LSD and psilocybin on four factors, while all substances yielded similarly high scores on insight and pleasure. Dosage did not affect results. The findings suggest that different psychedelics may produce distinct ego-dissolution profiles, which could guide therapeutic choices.