Jungle juice

A hallucinogenic brew with awful side effects is being investigated for its potential to relieve mental illness.

- Nicky Pellegrino

There is growing interest in psychedelic therapies as a way to treat addiction disorders and depression. At the University of Melbourne, Daniel Perkins has been leading an international team’s first studies looking at ayahuasca and mental health. So far, they have had some interesting results.

Ayahuasca is a drink brewed from plants, traditionally used by Amazonian tribes for spiritual and religious purposes. Increasingly, the strongly flavoured hallucinogenic brew is being used by people on a journey of self-discovery, personal growth or healing. Ayahuasca tourists travel to such places as Costa Rica for luxury retreats where they can be both pampered and guided through a ritual using the tea, which contains a hallucinogen known as DMT.

Perkins started researching with psychedelics back in 2015. “There were a lot of anecdotal reports and I wanted to understand whether ayahuasca really was this miracle cure, as it was being described, or whether it was a lot of hype, with a placebo effect from having these intense experiences with a group of people in the middle of the Amazon jungle.”

Perkins and colleagues from five countries ran the Global Ayahuasca Survey, which asked nearly 11,000 people from more than 50 nations about their experiences of drinking the tea and how it affected them.

Most did not have a particularly pleasant time. Vomiting and nausea were experienced by 62% of participants, headaches by 17.8% and abdominal pain by 12.8%. Many also reported adverse mental-health effects – most commonly hearing and seeing things, but also feeling disconnected or alone, having nightmares and disturbing thoughts.