Future Ayahuasca Care Spaces: An Experimental Speculative Exercise

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.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract With the rapid advancement of psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) trials, psychedelic clinics are set to become a tangible reality in the near future. Questions abound concerning the therapeutic modalities that will be adopted, the human and material infrastructures that will enable the delivery of this novel form of healthcare, and their funding model - which will have direct implications for who can access PATs. In this paper, we reflect on the process of designing, organizing and holding a speculative space to imagine possible future ayahuasca care spaces. Ayahuasca healing practices are (still) mostly indissociable from their ritual settings, placing them in complex and ambivalent relation to “psychedelics” and PATs. Speculation enabled us to collaboratively address questions of appropriation, commodification, standardization and pharmaceuticalization of plant medicines, and explore the more-than-human contours of care. Our goal was to shift the parameters of our interactions with key interlocutors in “the field” in ways that enable co-laboration and co-re-definition. We discuss the process of creating this speculative space of encounter, defining its parameters, and designing the framework within which such a conversation is even possible.