Dr. X is a dad. Appropriately – boringly – at 4:37 p.m. on a national holiday, he is lighting a charcoal grill, about to grab a pair of tongs with one hand and a beer with the other.
I visited Peru to find out more about an intriguing ayahuasca study – and to have my own experience with the psychedelic brew...
I started taking the Amazonian psychedelic ayahuasca two years ago because I had an 11-year addiction to heroin I couldn’t shake. Photo: Darryl Dyck, Associated Press
Right now, I am undergoing what ayahuasca users call "integration." Following a ceremony, there's an indefinite period, maybe days or weeks, when the plant's lessons continue to seep in.
For centuries, some indigenous groups in South America have relied on a brew made from the parts of a local vine and a shrub. Credit: Lisa Johnson Getty Images
JI-PARANÁ, Brazil — As the night sky enveloped this outpost in Brazil’s Amazon basin, the ceremony at the open-air temple began simply enough.
"Leon" is a young Brazilian man who has long struggled with depression. He keeps an anonymous blog, in Portuguese, where he describes the challenge of living with a mental illness that affects some 300 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
