Ayahuasca - VD show bbc2

Presenter interrupting too much !

I watched this..... and like most of the country I had never even heard of this drug. Good of the BBC to make us all aware of it, and maybe a few will now want to sample it. Well done BBC

You will not have heard of it, you probably don't use much social media, however, younger people are hearing about it and may be tempted to try it out, so it is best to provide and them with the facts.

I had heard of it about a year back... found this in the Guardian just now:
.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2017/apr/06/a-puke-bucket-and-an-ancient-drug-is-ayahuasca-the-future-of-ptsd-treatment-

First few paragraphs :

I’m sitting on a blue plastic, wipe-down mattress with my back to a wooden pillar. Within arm’s reach on the floor is a small torch to light my way to the toilet during the night, on the other side an orange plastic bucket to puke into. As the light fades my four companions, each with his or her own plastic mattress and bucket, disappear from view while on every side the barks, croaks, growls and cries of jungle life grow louder. Twenty minutes ago I gulped down a draught of the bitter psychedelic brew known as ayahuasca and I have convinced myself that I can feel its hot, unstoppable progress through my body, from my seething guts into my veins and onwards to my brain.

This is hardly a recreational drug experience, what with the nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, not to mention the possibility a truly terrifying trip, yet thousands now beat a path to Peru, Ecuador and Brazil every year to drink ayahuasca. Some are just looking for an exotic thrill, but others hope for enlightenment and healing from this ancient plant medicine. In the past few years, many of them have been war veterans desperate to escape the nightmares of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Combat-related PTSD is notoriously difficult to treat and in theory ayahuasca can work as a form of drug-assisted exposure therapy. When traumatised people repeatedly avoid fear-inducing situations this only serves to maintain and reinforce the deeply ingrained conditioning that underlies their illness. The idea is that by dredging up traumatic memories and exposing them to conscious awareness within a safe, controlled environment, ayahuasca allows the brain to reassess and extinguish conditioned fear responses.

Classic psychedelics such as DMT – an active component of ayahuasca – break the control that the prefrontal cortex normally holds over more primitive parts of the brain, triggering vivid hallucinatory memories and emotions. “That lets us go to places in our psyche or internal landscape that we wouldn’t normally allow ourselves to go,” says Gerald Thomas, who researches addiction at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. “In psychotherapy, it’s how we reconcile past events that have traumatised us.”

Thomas has conducted preliminary research suggesting that ayahuasca can reduce dependence on addictive drugs. Part of the explanation may be that it helps ease the pain of traumatic memories that people sometimes “self-medicate” with substances such as alcohol, tobacco and cocaine.

To date, any evidence that ayahuasca can do the same for people with PTSD has been anecdotal. But an ambitious study now under way at the Temple of the Way of Light in the Peruvian Amazon is monitoring its long-term effects on psychological wellbeing and may provide some answers. The research is a collaboration with the International Center for Ethnobotanical Research and Service in Spain and the Beckley Foundation in the UK. Around 580 retreat participants a year – among them combat veterans suffering from PTSD – are being recruited, making it the largest psychedelic study of its kind ever undertaken.

More on webpage

DMT is fascinating. It's an endogenous ligand as well (made in our own brains) and may have something to do with time perception and possibly even near death experiences

Ayahuasca is DMT mixed with a MAO inhibiter, namely it stops it being broken down so the experience last for a very long time. 

As for making people want to try it, and increasing interest in it, anyone who's tried hallucinogens is probably aware of its existence, and Terence Mckenna was talking about it (and the machine elves) decades ago.

Besides, hallucinogens are generally considered to be some of the least harmful substances a person can take.

These drugs may mess up something in your system that is not immediately obvious and you may pay for later.

I did my share in my 20s and didn't come away unscathed.

This stuff sounds too risky !