No idea how much is truth and what is propaganda, but there seems to be a trend towards attacking Ayahuasca in the press lately.
Suicides, sects, murder and insanity: The disturbing truth about the trendy ‘spiritual’ hallucinogenic brew being taken by gap year backpackers in the Amazon (and even in British sitting rooms)
Ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic tea, draws tourists to South American retreats
It has even become popular at parties and cleansing weekends in the UK
But two travellers have died after taking part in the ceremony since 2014
Brazilian families have come forward to share their own tales of horror
The tea is used by a religious sect, but many describe watching their loved ones descend into madness before killing themselves or simply vanishing
It is the mind-bending brew which has brought backpackers and gap year students flocking to the jungles of South America in ever greater numbers.
Ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic drink made from vines, has been used in shamanic cleansing rituals for centuries – but has recently become a major tourist draw in the rainforests where it grows, where lodges and retreats offer it as an ‘authentic’ Amazon experience.
But there is no need to cross an ocean: it can be found here in the UK – offered at retreats and is being taken at parties in idyllic rural towns by people seeking enlightenment.
People don’t even need to leave the comfort of their own homes, with websites offering to deliver the ‘herb’ – legal in the UK and US, but not France or Canada – for less than £9 per 100g.
Frighteningly, the sellers say it would be ‘unethical’ to tell you how much is safe to take and how to prepare it.
Those looking for a weekend ‘detox’, including a tea ceremony can easily find them on offer across Europe. Surprisingly, one of the best known was once held in the sleepy East Sussex village of Ticehurst, run by the local ‘shaman’, Rain Queen.
It has even gained a celebrity following in recent years, with Sting and Lindsay Lohan gushing about its transformative qualities.
Yet it is not quite the harmless experience it may at first seem, beyond the violent vomiting it can induce at the start of every trip.
Earlier this month, New Zealander Matthew Dawson-Clarke, 24, who died during an ayahuasca ritual.
For those living with the plant brew on their doorsteps, there is an even darker and more terrifying side to the plant concoction – a side which is never mentioned in the tourist guides.
In Brazil, where consumption of the plant has led to numerous religious cults (one of which even boasts about giving it to newborns), the mind-altering tea has been linked with a string of suicides, murders and cases of mental illness and insanity – often at the very first time of ingesting it.
One mother, whose son allegedly became schizophrenic and committed suicide after taking the substance, said: ‘This drug… has taken the lives of many other sons and daughters. It is responsible for the deaths of more people than anyone is willing to admit.’
Warning: Many families have stories of tragedy to share, including that of Deise Faria Ferreira (right), who started drinking the tea with her congregation at a Santo Daime church earlier this year
Meanwhile, families of those caught up in the cults have told of their nightmares in trying to rescue loved ones from the grip of the brew.
The desperate daughter of a woman who recently disappeared during an ayahuasca ‘purging ritual’ told MailOnline that foreigners who think the drug will give them a cheap thrill should think again ‘if they have any love for their own lives’.
She pleaded: ‘It is a trip that you might not return from. Your curiosity could kill you, and cause suffering for your family. Please stay well away, you don’t know the danger you are putting yourself in.’
Only the Amazonian Indians knew about ayahuasca until early in the last century. They used the vine, found throughout the jungles of Brazil, Peru and Colombia, for healing and contacting the spirit world.
Either my mother became ill and died, and [the cult] got scared and hid her body, or they used her as a sacrifice and murdered her. I don’t know what they do in these rituals, I just know that she is no longer alive.
Apoena Faria Ferreira
Shamans claimed they would use the drink to enable their ‘spirit flight’ – to visit their ancestors or descend to the underworld to locate the source of illnesses.
One of the first ‘white men’ to experience the drug was Brazilian rubber tapper Raimundo Irineu Serra, who founded the religious sect Santo Daime in the 1920s after claiming he saw the Virgin Mary – who appeared as the ‘Queen of the Forest’ in a vision.
The cult – which uses elements from Christianity and African religions – quickly spread from the northern state of Acre to the rest of Brazil and today is the biggest of the ayahuasca cults, which are believed to have as many as 30,000 members.
Countless other churches have sprung up since 2010, when Brazil’s lawmakers allowed the use of ayahuasca for ‘religious purposes’.
Fabio Pedalino, the leader of the Ceu do Gamarra church in south-east Brazil, which is part of the Santo Daime doctrine, told MailOnline it was ‘impossible’ that ayahuasca could take anyone’s life.
He said he had never heard of anyone dying after taking the drink. adding: ‘Newborns drink it, older people over 90 drink it. I’ve never seen or heard of any problems.’
Pedalino is ‘completely against’ the export of the plant brew – which they call Daime – to Europe for people to use for recreational purposes, without converting to their religion.
He said: ‘This drink doesn’t work without the doctrine. It’s not worth having a Ferrari if you don’t have a road to drive it down. Our doctrine is our road.’
Side effects: But for Deise – pictured here with fellow church members, dressed in a pink dress, centre front – the tea had different effects, becoming restless, unable to concentrate. She ended up on anti-depressants
Despite Pedalino’s assurances, an increasing number of horror stories are beginning to emerge about the damaging and often deadly effects of the tea on followers – particularly those who already carried a hidden or underlying health problem or mental illness.
Many claim that the lack of proper controls, allowing anyone to open a ‘church’ and administer the drug, has led to an untold number of easily-avoidable tragedies.
The tea, which contains the psychedelic drug DMT, almost always induces profuse vomiting, discomfort and other physical effects before the start of the hallucinogenic experience – which is said to bring personal enlightenment by confronting the user with their darkest fears.
VOMITING THEN A TEN HOUR TRIP
Ayahuasca, or yage, contains Dimethyltryptamine, known as DMT.
Used in South America, especially in the Amazon basin, Ayahuasca is a drink produced from the stem bark of the vines Banisteriopsis caapi and B. inebrians.
It is said to have healing properties and bring inner peace by purging toxins and can produce reactions including vomiting.
Psychedelic experiences last six to 10 hours and are guided by experienced shamans in the South American countries where ayahuasca is legal to consume.
In July, nursing assistant Deise Faria Ferreira, 41, who had been frequenting a nearby Daime temple for three months, left her home in Goiania, central Brazil, to take part in an ayahuasca cleansing ceremony. She has not been seen again.
Her devastated family believe she is the latest victim of the unregulated spread of the rituals in the country, and the protected use of the hallucinogenic tea under the guise of ‘religion’.
Her daughter Apoena told MailOnline that Deise, who had never had any health problems, started showing signs of mental illness and high blood pressure two months after first starting to drink the tea in church ceremonies.
She said: ‘She became very different, more restless, less able to concentrate. Her blood pressure kept going up, and none of the tablets she was prescribed was able to get it down.
‘She ended up taking medicine for convulsions, depression and anxiety, as well as the blood pressure pills. She’d never had any problems with her health before. This was the effect of the ayahuasca, I’m sure of it.’
Under doctors orders, Deise spent a month off work and went to stay with a relative in the country’s capital, Brasilia. But a day after returning home on July 9, she spent the day with the sect, whose leaders allegedly told her to stop taking the tablets.
Apoena said: ‘They told her she was intoxicating herself with poison and that her body needed to be cleansed.
‘She agreed to go to a nearby country retreat with six cult members to take part in a weekend-long ayahuasca purging ceremony.
Widespread: Since then her daughter has heard similar stories from people whose loved ones have either disappeared or been sent crazy by the tea, made from this root
‘They told her not to tell anyone, not even her family, but she managed to call my grandmother and told her where she was going, and that she was going to be detoxified. That was the last time she spoke to her.
‘When my grandmother called the cult leader the next day to find out where she was, he at first pretended he hadn’t been with her.’
The details of what happened next are unclear. Those who were with Deise claim that after consuming ayahuasca on the Saturday night, she became agitated and asked to go home, but as one of them drove her out of the retreat she opened the car door and went off on foot.
The group claim they searched for her and could not find her – but did not explain why they failed to inform her family until Deise’s mother’s called – 23 hours after she went missing.
Police later found clothes belonging to Deise on the property covered in red stains, which tests later revealed was an unidentified substance other than blood.
She [her mother Deise] ended up taking medicine for convulsions, depression and anxiety, as well as the blood pressure pills. She’d never had any problems with her health before. This was the effect of the ayahuasca, I’m sure of it
Apoena Ferreira
Luminol tests revealed blood splatters on walls in the interior of the building, although DNA tests to find out if it is Deise’s have not yet returned.
Cameras on the only roads Deise would have walked along to leave the retreat failed to find images of her.
Two months on, Apoena said the family no longer holds out hope that her mother is alive.
She said: ‘Either she became ill and died, and they got scared and hid her body, or they used her as a sacrifice and murdered her. I don’t know what they do in these rituals, I just know that she is no longer alive.
‘It’s left the family in pieces. The authorities should better control the use of this drug before it destroys more lives.’
The case appears similar to that of American student Kyle Nolan, who disappeared in 2011 while at an ayahuasca lodge in Peru designed to help recruits ‘open their minds to deeper realities’.
After initially joining his mother’s pleas for help in finding her son, the shaman who ran the retreat admitted the 18-year-old had died after an ayahuasca session and that he buried his body at the edge of the property.
Apoena claims that since her mother disappeared, she has been contacted by other families who have suffered their own tragedies, which they too blame on the hallucinogenic brew.
She said: ‘We’ve heard lots of cases of people who committed suicide immediately after taking the tea for the first time.
‘Two families who live next to the Daime church my mother went to also spoke to us. One of them told us that their daughter killed herself after drinking the tea. Another woman, who lives right next to the temple, said her husband took his own life after taking the tea for the very first time.
‘There are lots of cases of suicide, but the families are often poor and because it was suicide they don’t have any way of proving that it was because of the drug, so the death goes unreported.
Vision: Sting, pictured with his wife Trudie Styler, says the tea gave him the one religious experience of his life
‘There are many other cases of people becoming schizophrenic after taking the tea, or going crazy for the rest of their lives. These churches are attracting more and more followers, most of them young people who go just for the hallucinations.
‘Anyone can take the tea, there are no health checks and not even first-aiders on stand-by in case anything goes wrong.
‘How many more people will have to die and how many more families will have to suffer before something is done about this?’
The claims are echoed by Claudetina de Almeida, 47, whose son Joao Raimundo, 20, killed himself by jumping off a viaduct after taking ayahuasca in a Santo Daime church where he had been a member for three years.
My son become delusional. He started saying he was the incarnation of Jesus Christ and that one of his sisters was the Virgin Mary. He once tried to attack me with a hoe. I thought he was possessed by an evil spirit.
Claudetina de Almeida
Claudetina, a domestic maid, said her son began to show signs of schizophrenia a year after starting to attend the church, where the tea, considered a sacrament, is distributed to followers during services.
She said: ‘He was a normal person who was happy and liked to joke. But the problems began after he started to frequent this religion.
‘He started talking to himself, laugh for no reason and he seemed like he was on another planet. He become delusional. He started saying he was the incarnation of Jesus Christ and that one of his sisters was the Virgin Mary.
‘He once tried to attack me with a hoe. I thought he was possessed by an evil spirit. It took me a while to realise the problem was his health. The psychologists said that he was schizophrenic.’
Joao reportedly drank poison before throwing himself off the viaduct in the centre of Sao Paulo, south-east Brazil. Following his death, Claudetina reported the case to police, but the investigation was closed two months later because of lack of proof linking ayahuasca to his death.
She said: ‘I have no doubt that the ayahuasca developed schizophrenia in my son. And this drug took my son’s life, as it has taken the lives of many other sons and daughters. It is responsible for the deaths of more people than anyone is willing to admit.’
Joao was a member of the Ceu de Maria church in Sao Paulo, the scene of another horror story linked to ayahuasca which shook Brazil in 2010.
The church’s founder, and one of Brazil’s best-known cartoonists, Glauco Villas Boas, 53, and his 25-year-old son Raoni, were gunned down by a masked assailant who had burst into their home.
The murderer, it turned out, was one of Glauco’s followers, whose family claimed he had developed schizophrenia after starting to frequent the church and use the mind-altering drink.
When police caught 24-year-old Carlos Eduardo Sundfeld Nunes he claimed he had wanted to kidnap the cartoonist to prove to his family that his younger brother was, in fact, Jesus Christ.
His father, Carlos Grecchi Nunes, later told Brazilian magazine Isto E: ‘He started talking about religion the whole time. He once spent five days without sleeping, reading the Bible. He said he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.
‘One day he arrived back from the church so out of his mind that his brother had to tie him to the gate. His mother asked the church to stop giving him the tea, but it was in vain.
‘On New Year’s Eve he went to church and, on his way back, was so high that he crashed his car in a ditch.’
Meanwhile, on numerous online discussion forums the families of other members of Brazilian ayahuasca sects share stories of their loved ones own descent into isolation, and their desperate attempts to take them out.
In one, Suele writes: ‘I’ve been trying to take my daughter out of Santo Daime for five years. She lives only for this sect, she’s forgotten her brothers and other family. She even lost custody of her 10-year-old daughter, and still she doesn’t leave.
‘God is liberty and not imprisonment. This sect is brainwashing and addiction.’
(cut short due to the post char limit)
I probably would have tried this one out in my youth, but I think I’ll pass in my older age. This stuff lasts too long and puts you way out there. It’s hard enough for me to find the free time to do some boomers these days.
:tripping: :tripping: :tripping: