Ayahuasca for Depression: Benefits & Healing Effects

Why do people go in the heart of the Amazonian jungle to relieve their sorrow? What’s in there that keeps them coming back to seek joy and peace?

People with depression are having a hard time fitting in themselves to society and dealing with their demons. Their condition is insufficiently understood by conventional medicine because it is too complex.

Depression is a common mental health problem that causes people to experience low mood, loss of interest or pleasure and feelings of guilt or self-worthlessness, difficulty in sleeping, poor concentration and low energy to mention a few. In the U.S.A., 16.2 million people(1)healthline.com/health/depression/facts-statistics-infographic#1 or 6.7 percent have had at least one major depressive episode in a given year.

This is dependant on individual experiences, personality and on one’s whole psycho-emotional structure making it very challenging to fit to the standard therapies and medication. At present, this is currently treated with antidepressants.

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Unfortunately, the current medications are causing furthermore problems through their side effects. Also, the change of the prescription drug becomes a routine as the body develops resistance quickly.

To address this, the ancient old medicine traditions seek for alternative cures and found Ayahuasca – a plant potion that magically relieved their sorrow and gave them an incredible life boost.

Plan On Drinking Ayahuasca?

They notice that this resets the coordinates of their brain and helps them become more enthusiastic and healthy. This is something that the traditional medications fail to offer as those usually come with a long list of side effects. Medical centers have also begun looking for solutions outside their laboratories and into the jungle and they also noticed ayahuasca’s potential.

For those suffering from depression and are looking for alternative medications, ayahuasca is the key to restructure your way of living and perceiving reality.

The therapeutic potentials of ayahuasca for depression are very impressive. In the next sections, we will discuss how psychedelic ayahuasca works in aiding you with this mental illness. We will also cover ayahuasca effects on depression.

Ayahuasca’s Mode Of Action Responds Perfectly To The Mechanism Of Depression

treatment-resistant depression randomized placebo-controlled ayahuasca healing depression

Depression is a complex condition, that emerges in people under traumatic stress or on the course of a series of traumatic events. This is not a momentary issue that occurs as a response to an isolated incident, but it emerges and evolves over a long period, restructuring the whole being under the paradigm of unhappiness.

When depressed an individual loses trust in his abilities to survive or to function in society, developing social anxiety and panic attacks that lead to isolation and for some, suicide.

Any traumatic event when repeated in your thoughts or prolonged exposure to negative stimuli not only enslaves the mind but in the end, convinces and reformats it to believe that – that ugly thing is its natural state. Ayahuasca’s capacity to rewrite patterns in your brain makes it a great solution to depression.

This Amazonian brew works by targeting your issues and helping you interact, accept and resolve it. Whatever you are feeling, ayahuasca will refresh you and set you in a healthy route.

To Heal The Mind Is Necessary To Heal The Soul

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The intricate mechanism through which depression creeps inside one’s mind and takes control of the whole strategy of life is very mysterious.

Although conventional medicine practitioners have shown a vivid interest in the therapeutic properties of this plant extract, it’s still going to take more work to cement its reputation as treatment for depressions.

When looking at its interaction with the human body, the standard medical authority tends to overlook what South America’s aborigine people consider essential – the spiritual aspect.

The interdependence of the psychic, emotional and physical dimensions is a simple principle that guides tribal cultures all over the world. In these terms, the condition of the mind will always be reflected in a certain emotional state. So, when you treat one, you will also heal the other.

For example, you can heal your body with your mind or heal your soul to enjoy peace of mind.

The Trance On Ayahuasca Is A Self Conducted Psychotherapy Session

Ayahuasca works for two reasons – (1) chemical reaction and (2) psychotherapy. I’ll explain these two in the following sections.

For the first one, the chemistry of the plant supplies the necessary compounds to aid the brain in the process of reprogramming it. This happens inevitably either consciously or unconsciously.

Like other psychoactive substances involved in studies and treatments, ketamine, MDMA, LSD or psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca generates introspection and self-analysis, pointing out to the core issues that generate the individual problem.

It puts the light on long-forgotten wounds and on ill-thinking and helps you realize what is good and what is bad for you. But most of all, it gives you the power to break the chain of unhealthy habits of entertaining negative thoughts. Ayahuasca will empower you to take care of yourself.

For the second one, the whole process can be likened to a session with a psychotherapist. However, the experience can be unique or difficult to comprehend for those who are not open to the ayahuasca’s potential.

Many who participated in the ayahuasca ceremony confessed that they have spoken with the spirit of the plant or animal. Some said that they had a divine encounter, others said that they were taken back to their darkest time. No matter what their experiences were, those gave them answers and guided them for a deeper self-exploration that led them to bliss.

Once your emotional state becomes evident to you, the sickening patterns of loneliness and depression will wither and break apart. You will be introduced to a new state of mind where feeling good is the natural state. Your mind will be reprogrammed and this will affect your mood, attitude, and disposition in life.

However, the internal process isn’t over when the trip ends, instead, it is only the beginning. Ayahuasca will only show you the way, you need to persevere to enjoy its long-term benefit.

For people suffering from depression, ayahuasca is a breath of fresh air. It cleanses your mental and emotional state taking you out from the darkness and giving you a brand new start.

Averting The Noise In The Brain And The Loneliness In The Heart

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For people suffering from depression, social anxiety is a predicament that they inevitably have to endure. In most cases it causes the individual to become more and more isolated, cutting all ties around him which further leads to loneliness

One of the essential effects of Ayahuasca is an overwhelming feeling of connection with everything there is, paired with a peaceful state of mind, where trusting and forgiving yourself and others become the natural state.

This way ayahuasca alleviates social anxiety, by ensuring the individual of its own force, of its place and role in the world, by giving him back the lost self-esteem and the power to love himself. By freeing the mind of disturbing patterns, one is free to readdress the world from a different setting and intention.

Ayahuasca ceremony includes purging where one releases the toxins of the body, heart, and mind. After this process, you will get to eliminate the unnecessary noise and sickening thoughts and emotions within you.

The Chemistry Behind Ayahuasca’s Beneficial Effects On Depression

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Ayahuasca depression benefits are very popular. The experts are even convinced that these medicinal plants are viable options to treat a variety of mental conditions including addictions, depression and anxiety. Ayahuasca tea is a popular psychedleic tea

The science behind ayahuasca’s action is simply incredible and it is mind-blowing how tribal people came up with this combo. This jungle brew, cooked on the fire under the bright blue sky, fuses two different chemical compounds that are a perfect match.

The leaves of Psychotria viridis or Diplopterys cabrerana contain DMT while Banisteriopsis caapi contains the MAO inhibitors. DMT, the spirit molecule, is considered by scientists as the prime generator of the psychotropic experience, the introspective trance one enters under the effect of Ayahuasca (although shamans attribute much of it to the other component plant as well).

DMT is a naturally occurring substance in our body or it can also be consumed as a psychedelic drug for ritual purposes. It manifests during meditation, near-death experiences and the likes. When you are in any of the aforementioned state of mind you tend to experience peace and clarity, which depressive person longs for and never reaches.

Under normal conditions, DMT is immediately broken down by our body’s enzymes, MAO (monoamine oxidase). Solely the effect of DMT would last only a few minutes if it weren’t for the MAO inhibitors that prolong and enhance the journey.

The duration of the entire process is significant for the healing effect to take root inside one’s mind, as for depression this is mirroring the great length of time that took for depression to settle. For this reason, the combination of chemical composition that makes up ayahuasca is a more efficient solution than solely the chemically extracted DMT.

What was rather evident in studies concerning the uses and effects of ayahuasca on people affected by depression is an increase in the number of serotonin receptors, continuing after the session is over. This gives the body the possibility to manage its serotonin resources more efficiently without creating an imbalance.

As opposed, antidepressant medications concentrate on over-flooding the brain with an excess of serotonin, which once exhausted leaves it depleted. As a consequence, the body develops resistance. So, one has to take a larger dose or look for a new medication.

Ayahuasca Effects on Depression Studies

You’ve got to check an ayahuasca depression study to ensure the traditional Amazonian plant medicine effects on mental health problems. Extensive research has been done to elucidate the mechanics and the amazing results of Ayahuasca treatment. However, there is such a huge gap between the conventional and the tribal medical education (curanderos have outstanding knowledge of the workings of nature and the human body) that it’s hard to translate the jungle experience into a standard clinical one.

For once, the whole ceremony where the shaman sings and blows tobacco smoke along with other ritual instruments cannot be incorporated in a hospital room. It cannot even be considered relevant from a scientific point of view.

The doctors who conduct this type of trials are themselves, explorers and believers. Such notions are simply incompatible with any reasonable scientific coordinate.

So, to test ayahuasca, they have to secure the climate of the experience under the same conditions as any other clinical trial, which of course is not easy, yet there is hope as more and more programs are being devised to study this medicinal brew on actual patients.

Until now the scientific research that has been done in this domain couldn’t be considered conclusive due to lack of classical empirical instruments, like a control group (placebo group) to confirm the test’s results. Still, observational studies of members of the Ayahuasca religion show that it has been clearly curing their depression, anxiety, and addiction.

Jaime Hallak from the University of Sao Paulo found that one single session of Ayahuasca has long-lasting powerful antidepressant and anti-anxiety effects. Professor Draulio Barros de Araujo at the Brain Institute in Brazil has given the plant medicine to a great number of people with depression and with resistance to conventional medication. According to the report, it helped improved their condition up to one week after a single drink.

More studies are needed to support the effectiveness of ayahuasca for depression. However, those who used this were very impressed at how this helped them deal with depression successfully.

Other Sources

  • scientificamerican.com/article/ayahuasca-psychedelic-tested-for-depression/
  • reset.me/personal-story/personal-story-treating-depression-and-anxiety-with-ayahuasca-and-huachuma/
  • ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4773875/
  • scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1516-44462015000100013


1 healthline.com/health/depression/facts-statistics-infographic#1