Ayahuasca

Ayahuasca (UK: /ˌaɪ(j)əˈwæskə/, US: /-ˈwɑːskə/) or ayaguasca (in Hispanicized spellings) from Quechua Ayawaska (aya: soul, waska: vine), or yagé (/jɑːˈheɪ, jæ-/), is an entheogenic brew made out of Banisteriopsis caapi vine and other ingredients. The brew is used as a traditional spiritual medicine in ceremonies among the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin and is known by a number of different names (see below).The cultivation of plants from which psychotropic substances are obtained is not controlled by the Vienna Convention. . . Neither the crown (fruit, mescal button) of the Peyote cactus nor the roots of the plant Mimosa hostilis nor Psilocybe mushrooms themselves are included in Schedule 1, but only their respective principals, mescaline, DMT, and psilocin. Ayahuasca (UK: /ˌaɪ(j)əˈwæskə/, US: /-ˈwɑːskə/) or ayaguasca (in Hispanicized spellings) from Quechua Ayawaska (aya: soul, waska: vine), or yagé (/jɑːˈheɪ, jæ-/), is an entheogenic brew made out of Banisteriopsis caapi vine and other ingredients. The brew is used as a traditional spiritual medicine in ceremonies among the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin and is known by a number of different names (see below). B. caapi contains several alkaloids that act as monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs). Another common ingredient in ayahuasca is the shrub Psychotria viridis which contains the primary psychoactive, dimethyltryptamine (DMT). MAOIs are required for DMT to be orally active. Ayahuasca is known by many names throughout Northern South America and Brazil. Ayahuasca is the hispanicized spelling of a word in the Quechua languages, which are spoken in the Andean states of Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. Speakers of Quechua languages or of the Aymara language may prefer the spelling ayawaska. This word refers both to the liana Banisteriopsis caapi, and to the brew prepared from it. In the Quechua languages, aya means 'spirit, soul', 'corpse, dead body', and waska means 'rope' and 'woody vine', 'liana'. The word ayahuasca has been variously translated as 'liana of the soul', 'liana of the dead', and 'spirit liana'. In Brazil, the brew and the liana are informally called either caapi or cipó; the latter is the Portuguese word for liana (or woody climbing vine). In the União do Vegetal of Brazil, an organised spiritual tradition in which people drink ayahuasca, the brew is prepared exclusively from B. caapi and Psychotria viridis. Adherents of União do Vegetal call this brew hoasca or vegetal Brazilian Yawanawa call the brew 'Uní'. The Achuar people and Shuar people of Ecuador and Peru call it natem, while the Sharanahua peoples of Peru call it shori. Evidence of Ayahuasca usage dates to at least 1000 A.D., based on discovering in 2010 a bundle containing the residue of ayahuasca ingredients along with other various well-preserved shamanic substances in a cave in southwestern Bolivia. In the 16th century, Christian missionaries from Spain first encountered indigenous western Amazonian basin South Americans (modern Peru/Ecuador) using ayahuasca; their earliest reports described it as 'the work of the devil'. In the 20th century, the active chemical constituent of B. caapi was named telepathine, but it was found to be identical to a chemical already isolated from Peganum harmala and was given the name harmine. Beat writer William S. Burroughs read a paper by Richard Evans Schultes on the subject and while traveling through South America in the early 1950s sought out ayahuasca in the hopes that it could relieve or cure opiate addiction (see The Yage Letters). Ayahuasca became more widely known when the McKenna brothers published their experience in the Amazon in True Hallucinations. Dennis McKenna later studied pharmacology, botany, and chemistry of ayahuasca and oo-koo-he, which became the subject of his master's thesis. Richard Evans Schultes allowed for Claudio Naranjo to make a special journey by canoe up the Amazon River to study ayahuasca with the South American Indians. He brought back samples of the beverage and published the first scientific description of the effects of its active alkaloids.