Posts tagged depression

I happen to know for a fact that ayahuasca can help with depression, because it helped me. I had suffered from depression since I was fifteen, being suicidal for seven of those years. Thirty years later, after a quite a variety of therapies, medications, self­-help books, workshops, spiritual practices, and eventually dedicating to a healthy diet and regular exercise (don’t underestimate the impact of those two factors), my life had become… okay. Depressive episodes had pretty much disappeared, but my experience of life was flat, joyless. Not much excited me and very little held any real interest, but I was highly functional professionally, developed friends, and no longer thought of dying on a regular basis. I now suspect I would have scored as depressed on any of the standard psychological tests, but it was such an improvement for me that I told people I was no longer depressed. Yet I still envied the joy and zest for life I saw in many other people.

One day doing some research on the internet I stumbled upon an article about ayahuasca. It was intriguing for many reasons, and a bit of exploration soon revealed the conventional wisdom that it could help with depression. Given the lingering flatness of my experience of life, I decided to give it a try. In short, it worked.  After my time in Peru drinking ayahuasca, I felt happy, got excited about doing things, laughed easily and found joy in many simple things in life. As long as I took good care or myself (eating well, exercise, nurturing my spiritual life, etc.), the flatness would not return. New acquaintances were surprised when they learned I had spent 30 years of my life depressed.

Much can be found on the internet about ayahuasca helping people who suffer from depression, in the form of both anecdotal personal accounts and research papers. Of the research papers I have read, all have had the interpretation of their results severely restricted by limitations of their sample base or study methodology. The sample size for the study may have been small, or the demographics of its participants narrow in scope. It may have been limited to participants who had drunk ayahuasca in the past, or ayahuasca’s efficacy with depression may simply have been an indication revealed in the scope of a broader study. All these accounts and studies have left me disappointed in my search for some definite, incontrovertible evidence that ayahuasca is in fact effective for helping people suffering from depression.

(more…)

Incoming search terms:

• ayahuasca depression
• ayahuasca for anxiety
• ayahuasca and depression
• ayahuasca social anxiety
• curing with ayahuasca
• ayahuasca anxiety
• ayahuasca borderline
• ayahuasca erectile dysfunction
• can ayahuasca cure thought disorders
• does ayahuasca treat social