大象传媒

Growing numbers of tourists are travelling to the Peruvian Amazon to drink ayahuasca, a traditional plant medicine said to bring about a higher state of consciousness. Foreigners come looking for spiritual enlightenment or help with mental health problems like trauma, depression, and addiction.

But not everyone is happy about Peru’s booming ayahuasca tourism industry, and some Westerners who are seeking solace are discovering there is a darker side to the commercialised world of spiritual healing.

Walter Lopez, a traditional indigenous healer from Peru’s Shipibo tribe, remembers his first experience with the plant medicine, aged just 14: “The first time I drunk, I felt weak. And the first thing I saw was a UFO coming down. They abducted me and they took me to their world of aliens. That world was very hot. I felt like I was burning, but at the same time I felt like I was renewing myself.”

The man who gave Walter his first drink of ayahuasca was his great uncle who, like Walter’s grandfather, was a healer. “That ceremony was the starting point of my career. My great-uncle said to me, now it’s up to you. You have the knowledge, that is your destiny. To help our people,” says Walter.

Traditionally, the healers would drink ayahuasca and use their visions to understand the complaints of their patients. But those indigenous traditions are changing. More and more Western tourists are coming to the Amazon to experience the power of the plants for themselves, and new practitioners are starting up businesses to meet the demand.

Edward – a gentle, bearded Brit in his thirties – explains why he sought out the retreat: “I’ve basically struggled with anxiety for most of my life, and I tried a variety of different ways of coping with it or treating it, some of which were conventional medicine, some of which were psychotherapy, and nothing was quite fixing the problem for me.” Ayahuasca, however, seems to be having a positive impact.

Ceremonies at The Temple always take place at night, in a quiet, lantern-lit maloca (an indigenous ancestral house). There are mattresses on the ground, each with a toilet roll and a plastic container next to it. The participants take one of the mattresses positioned around the healer, who dresses in a robe embroidered with intricate geometric patterns.

He blows into the bottle containing the sticky brown ayahuasca, drinks a small amount, and then each of the participants goes up in turn to drink.

For about 40 minutes there’s just silence in the dark room as participants sit cross-legged on their mattresses. Then the healer sings his medicine songs known as icaros to the group before perching on the end of each mattress and chanting to each person individually.

The purging that happens isn’t just emotional. As the ayahuasca takes effect people retch and many vomit into their buckets. When first timers drink large amounts there’s often screaming and wailing too.

Scientific interests in the effects of ayahuasca is growing and research suggests it could be effective in helping to alleviate depression, addiction and trauma. But many of the participants are vulnerable and some centres seem ill-equipped to deal with complications.

An emergency doctor at the local hospital says they sometimes get tourists from ayahuasca retreats dumped at their door with no explanation. There have even been reports of deaths - not linked directly to the drink, but to poor care for visitors when things go wrong.

There are also claims of sexual assault. Anna (not her real name), a Canadian in her forties, was a heroin addict who was seeking out alternative therapies to help her. She took part in a large ceremony run by an internationally renowned healer. She was having a difficult time so when the healer came to sit with her, she initially felt relief. But he went on to physically molest her. At a subsequent ceremony, she was raped by another healer. It has taken her six years to speak out about what happened to her. “The medicine was helping me so I didn’t want to speak up because I was afraid I would be ostracised from the community,” she says.

Anna is not alone. Experiences of sexual abuse seem to be shockingly widespread within the world of ayahuasca. Survivors of sexual abuse who are searching for healing in the Amazon are being further abused by those they are looking to for help.