Amazonian Medicine and the Psychedelic Revival: Considering the “Dieta”

Abstract

Background: In Peruvian Amazonian medicine, plant diets (dietas) are a fundamental and highly flexible technique with a variety of uses: from treating and preventing illness, to increasing strength and resilience, to rites of passage, to learning even medicine itself. Many of the plants used in diets are psychoactive; for example, one now well-known plant that can be dieted is Banisteriopsis caapi—the vine also used in the psychoactive brew ayahuasca. The use of ayahuasca has attracted increasing clinical attention towards Amazonian medicine in recent decades, and much work has focused on the potent DMT-containing ayahuasca brew, thus placing the tradition within the purview of psychedelic science.Aims: In comparison to ayahuasca, the properties of diets have been studied less often. Our work draws on data from Amazonian healers to examine plant diets as medical practices, while also considering their fit within the “set and setting framework” that is central to psychedelic research. We argue that the framework is not sufficiently broad for understanding diets, and thus the investigation aimed to expand the conceptual field of Amazonian medicine, particularly in the context of a renewed psychedelic science and its theoretical concepts.Design: We used qualitative data from interviews with Amazonian healers, applying a thematic analysis and contrasting findings with the available literature.Setting: Interviews were conducted in various locations in the San Martín province of Peru between 2015 and 2017.Participants: We selected and interviewed eight healers who had been extensively trained in traditional Amazonian medicine.Measures: Semi-structured interviews were used to gain insight into the healers’ personal experiences with plant diets.Conclusions: Diets are complex but understudied medical practices that should not be explained by reference to pharmacology or psychology only. Intercultural and interdisciplinary research programmes are called for in order to not only better understand plant diets, but traditional Amazonian medicine on the whole.

Indigenous-Amazonian Traditional Medicine’s Usage of the Tobacco Plant: A Transdisciplinary Ethnopsychological Mixed-Methods Case Study

“…Another extra-pharmacological aspect of the treatment may involve the relationship between healer and patient; the importance of the therapeutic alliance between therapist and patient is well-established in psychotherapy research (see Common Factors Theory) [ 123 ] and may well extend to traditional healing. The concepts of set and setting [ 124 ] may also have merit in this context, but, as we have argued elsewhere [ 88 , 125 ], are insufficient to account for the complexity of Indigenous applications of psychoactives. As an example, emesis in conjunction with tobacco, ayahuasca, and other plants is considered a key therapeutic mechanism in Amazonian medicine, associated with multiple kinds of depuration, depending on the specific plant at hand [ 76 , 90 , 91 ].…”

Planting the future

“…While the plants are carefully studied, the practice itself is often loosely defined as an initiation practice involving isolation and restrictions on food and behavior. Some recent studies focus on the practice itself (Juaregui et al, 2011;O'Shaughnessy and Berlowitz, 2021), addressing Indigenous perspectives, interspecies (human-plant) communication, and the current commercialization of Dieta for a foreign audience (Dev 2018(Dev , 2020. 2 The terms Onanya (the one who knows), Meraya (the one who finds), and Yobe (the one who confronts darkness) appear in José Lopez Sanchez's text, below.…”

The Power of Social Attribution: Perspectives on the Healing Efficacy of Ayahuasca

“…In traditional Shipibo medicine, an apprentice would embark on lengthy "diets" (samá; cf. Illius, 1987;LeClerc, 2003;O'Shaughnessy and Berlowitz, 2021) that do not involve the intake of ayahuasca but of other plants, and seldom animal or inorganic substances. These are ingested before and during a span of time when the apprentice would retire from much of social contacts and follow a set of alimentary and social taboos.…”