Classifying Ayahuasca: Experiences in Psychiatric Research with Psychedelics - Brian Anderson

Classifying Ayahuasca: The Role of Subjective Experience in Psychiatric Research with Psychedelics

Brian Anderson, MSc, MD (C)

Recently, neuropsychiatric studies with the psychedelic brew ayahuasca have been initiated by a small group of researchers in Brazil. Their research alternatively portrays the modified state of consciousness induced by ayahuasca as psychopathological, psychotherapeutic, or spiritual by (respectively) using ayahuasca to model psychosis, to treat depression, and to induce religious visions. Through interviews with the scientists doing this research—complemented by a previous ethnographic study of the ayahuasca religions—a case study has been developed showing how these researchers' subjective experiences with ayahuasca, as well as the experiences of religious ayahuasca users, shape the researchers' classifications and representations of the ayahuasca experience. The inclusion of such subjective experiences in considerations about the nature of the ayahuasca experience lends itself to establishing a complex understanding of the brew's effects that is often at odds with conventional psychiatric understandings of psychedelic drugs, particularly the categorical delimitations between what is considered psychopathological, psychotherapeutic, and spiritual.

[kroux]

This is a great talk, and I appreciate the message that you end with. Until now, I have never thought it problematic to label my ayahuasca visions as "hallucinations" when speaking with others. However, this is a distinction I will be careful to make in the future. One way it has been explained to me recently is that when I blow into a dog whistle, I do not hear anything but I know a sound is being made. I cannot hear it simply because my body does not have the physical apparatus to detect the pitch of the whistle. However, if I was able to put on some technology that expanded my sense of hearing into this new range, the reality of the dog whistle would become apparent to my consciousness. Likewise, the reality that ayahuasca unlocks is below that of the perception of ordinary waking consciousness. Ayahuasca is now the "apparatus" one puts on in order to expand the conscious state enough to become aware of this different reality.

[yourdearmirror]

I was waiting all the time for him to be done with the scientific approach and come to some points. But I am left with only intellectual extravaganza.