Medicinal Plants of the Amazon

Across the Amazon, many peoples speak of certain plants as teachers: beings with their own character, who are approached with diet, song and respect, and who are best known through the people who have kept them for generations. This page introduces the plants closest to our ceremonies and a few of the forest's best-known remedies. We describe each one by its names, the peoples who use it, how it is prepared and its place in ceremony, and we say plainly what science has and has not found.

Our ceremonies are spiritual practice. They are not medical or psychological treatment, and nothing on this page is a claim that any plant diagnoses, treats, cures or prevents any illness. Please keep working with your own doctors, and never stop a prescribed medicine without your prescriber.

The plants at a glance

Plant	Botanical name	Kept by	Place in practice
Yagé, ayahuasca	Banisteriopsis caapi	Inga, Kamsá, Siona, Cofán and many other Amazonian peoples	The vine of the sacred brew, and its teacher
Chagropanga	Diplopterys cabrerana	Siona and peoples of the upper Putumayo	The leaf of the Colombian yagé tradition
Chacruna	Psychotria viridis	Peruvian healers and the Brazilian churches	The leaf most used in Peru and Brazil
Mapacho	Nicotiana rustica	Peoples across lowland South America	Sacred tobacco, often called the master plant
Hapé (rapé)	N. rustica with tree ash	Huni Kuin, Yawanawá, Katukina and other peoples of Acre, Brazil	Snuff, blown with a tepi or kuripe
Sangre de grado	Croton lechleri	Peoples and families across the western Amazon	Red tree sap, a household remedy
Uña de gato, cat's claw	Uncaria tomentosa, U. guianensis	Asháninka and other peoples	Bark tea
Guayusa	Ilex guayusa	Kichwa (Runa) families of Ecuador	Morning tea and dream telling

Yagé: the vine

Almost every language of the Amazon uses one word for both the vine and the brew made from it. It is caapi among Tupi speakers, yajé among Tukanoan speakers, natem among the Shuar and Achuar, and nixi pae among the Huni Kuin. Ayahuasca, "vine of the soul", is a Quechua word, from the language family of the Inga of Colombia. In the Colombian tradition the vine is called yagé, and its spirit is often spoken of as male.

The vine, Banisteriopsis caapi, is a large woody climber of the western Amazon, in the family Malpighiaceae. It takes three to ten years to mature. Indigenous peoples classify vines by the visions they give rather than by botany: the Siona alone have named about twenty kinds of yagé, and the Tukano and the healers of the Peruvian Amazon have their own lists. In these traditions it is the vine, not the leaf, that teaches. Some peoples brew the vine alone, and of the more than a hundred plants recorded as additions to the brew, most were added so the drinker could come to know those plants too.

The vine contains harmine, harmaline and tetrahydroharmine. The strength of these varies widely from vine to vine, which is one reason the tradition relies on an experienced preparer rather than a recipe.

The vine is under pressure in places. Around the tourist centers of the Peruvian Amazon, wild vines are being harvested faster than they grow, and harvesters travel further for thinner vines. In Colombia, researchers report that communities have long managed the harvest well, though the yagé healers themselves named the loss of forest and of yagé as a threat in 1999. Cultivation in forest gardens, as the Brazilian churches have shown, is the most hopeful answer.

Chagropanga: the leaf of the yagé tradition

Chagropanga, also called chaliponga or oco-yagé, is a forest climber related to the vine. In the Colombian yagé tradition its leaves, not its bark, are cooked with the vine. Richard Evans Schultes recorded that they were added "to lengthen and brighten the visions". "Panga" means leaf. Researchers have suggested that the vine first met this leaf in the upper Putumayo, among the Siona, giving rise to a yagé culture that differs in several ways from the ayahuasca traditions of Peru.

The leaves contain DMT. They hold only a trace of 5-MeO-DMT, so the popular label "a 5-MeO plant" overstates it.

Chacruna: the leaf of Peru and Brazil

Chacruna, Psychotria viridis, is a small forest shrub of the coffee family (Rubiaceae). It is the leaf most often brewed with the vine in Peru and in Brazil's churches, where the Santo Daime call it Rainha, the Queen. Its name comes from the Quechua for "mixture", and in parts of Ecuador "chakruna" means chagropanga instead, so the names are easy to confuse. Like chagropanga, chacruna contains DMT.

The yagé ceremony in Colombia

Among the Inga, Kamsá, Siona, Cofán and Coreguaje of the Colombian Amazon and the Andean foothills, yagé is carried by the taita. The word means father, a title of respect for an elder healer. Taitas wear crowns of feathers and necklaces of seeds, beads and bone, received in recognition from other taitas, and they sing and play rattles through the night. The visions are called the pinta. In the traditional understanding the healer is the main visionary: the taita drinks in order to see the cause of a person's suffering. In much Indigenous practice only the healer drank, and the shared ceremony in which everyone drinks is a newer form. Colombia never developed the mestizo healing traditions of Peru, and leading yagé ceremonies there remains the work of Indigenous healers trained over many years of apprenticeship.

In 1999, about forty healers from seven peoples met at Yurayaco, in Caquetá, and formed UMIYAC, the Union of Yagé Healers of the Colombian Amazon. Its Code of Ethics, adopted in 2000, asks healers not to sell yagé for distribution among non-Indigenous people. It holds that only healers trained and recognized in their own tradition should serve it, and that apprentices remain under their teachers. It bans alcohol in ceremony, and it asks that no outside group claim the healers' name, practices, symbols or dress. We honor these teachings, and we describe the taitas' regalia here so it can be understood, not as our own emblem. Nothing on this page speaks for UMIYAC or for any Indigenous community.

What research has found about the brew

Scientific study of ayahuasca is young. One small controlled trial and a number of observational studies suggest possible benefits, and reviews of the research describe the evidence as early and in need of replication. A one-year study of long-term members of Brazilian ayahuasca churches found no signs of harm to mental health or thinking. Research of this kind does not support medical claims, and we make none.

Several popular claims have no support. Purging is central to Amazonian practice and is understood there as cleansing, but no study shows that it "releases toxins". There is no evidence that the pineal gland makes visionary DMT. And the tradition is old but not unchanged: today's practice was shaped by missions, the rubber boom and, now, tourism. The oldest direct evidence of related plant use is a ritual bundle about a thousand years old, found in the Bolivian Andes.

Mapacho: sacred tobacco

Scholars of lowland South America treat tobacco, more than ayahuasca, as the region's central healing plant. A survey of nearly 300 societies found it chewed, drunk, licked, snuffed, smoked and taken as an enema, and found it bound up with healing almost everywhere. Several languages build their word for healer on the word for tobacco, and the Amazonian Kichwa call it "the father of all plants".

The tobacco of ceremony is mapacho, Nicotiana rustica, of the nightshade family. It is far stronger than commercial tobacco: its leaves can carry up to about nine percent nicotine, against one to three percent. In Peruvian vegetalismo the healer blows tobacco smoke over a person (soplada) and sings icaros, healing songs, to direct the medicine. The smoke is drawn into the mouth and blown, not inhaled.

Drinking tobacco, as tobacco water or a tobacco purge, is its most dangerous form. A review of 58 deaths reported in connection with ayahuasca found tobacco the apparent direct cause in four. A Peruvian master of tobacco listed heart disease, high or low blood pressure, weak lungs or liver, severe mental illness, pregnancy and breastfeeding, frailty and young age as reasons never to give it, and warned that tobacco served by someone who is not a trained healer can kill. Tobacco is never to be drunk outside the care of a healer trained in it. The Temple does not serve tobacco water or tobacco purges.

Hapé: the snuff of the Huni Kuin and their neighbors

Hapé, also spelled rapé, is a fine snuff of mapacho mixed with the alkaline ash of particular trees. It is made by the Huni Kuin (also called Kaxinawá, one people under two names), the Yawanawá, the Katukina, the Nukini, the Kuntanawa and other peoples of Acre, in Brazil, whose making and use of it has revived strongly since the 1990s. It is blown into the nose by another person through a V-shaped pipe called a tepi, or self-applied with an elbow-shaped pipe called a kuripe. Many families keep their ash recipes to themselves. Ashes commonly named include tsunu, cumaru and cacao.

The ash matters chemically. It makes the snuff strongly alkaline, which frees the nicotine to be absorbed quickly through the nose. Hapé is a nicotine product: it can cause dependence, and the World Health Organization's cancer agency classes smokeless tobacco, including nasal snuff, as a known cause of cancer. Laboratory testing of hapé by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found known and probable carcinogens. If you have heart disease or high blood pressure, are pregnant, or have stopped using nicotine, please talk with us before receiving it.

Much of the hapé sold today comes through online shops owned outside the communities, and demand has grown enough that whole trees, not just bark, are burned for ash. Huni Kuin leaders have spoken of forest medicine "being appropriated without recognition of its origin". Describing blends by the chakras they open comes from modern energy practice, not from the peoples who make hapé; where we use that language on our hapé page, it is our own. Claims that hapé decalcifies the pineal gland or clears "cellular memory" come from marketing and appear in no Indigenous account or study we have found.

Other healing plants of the forest

Sangre de grado (Croton lechleri, spurge family) is a fast-growing tree whose red sap is among the most widely used household remedies of the Peruvian Amazon, put on wounds and taken for the stomach. A Jesuit recorded its use in the 1600s. It is the one plant on this page behind an approved drug: crofelemer, purified from the sap, was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2012 for one narrow use. That approval applies to the purified drug, not to raw sap. "Dragon's blood" is also a trade name for several unrelated resins.

Uña de gato, or cat's claw (Uncaria tomentosa and U. guianensis, coffee family), is a woody climber whose inner bark is boiled as a tea by the Asháninka and many others. Small trials have been encouraging, but the US National Institutes of Health finds no conclusive evidence for any use in people. It may affect autoimmune conditions and blood clotting, it was used traditionally to prevent and end pregnancy, and it is considered unsafe during pregnancy.

Guayusa (Ilex guayusa, a holly) is drunk by Kichwa families of Ecuador before dawn. They gather by the fire around three in the morning to drink it and to share and interpret their dreams. It is a caffeinated tea, not a visionary plant, whatever "dream tea" labels suggest.

What is not part of this tradition

Several things sold as "Amazonian plant medicine" are not plants, are not Amazonian, or are dangerous additions. None of them belongs to the yagé tradition described here.

Kambo is not a plant. It is the skin secretion of a tree frog, Phyllomedusa bicolor, used by the Matsés and Katukina as hunting medicine. Its recorded harms include seizures, liver injury, kidney failure, psychosis and death, some linked to the large amounts of water drinkers are told to take. New Zealand's medicines regulator advises people to "leave it with the frogs".
Toé (Brugmansia) is an Amazonian plant sometimes added to brews. It contains scopolamine and is the addition most often tied to deaths. In the yagé tradition the brew is the vine and the chagropanga leaf.
San Pedro (Echinopsis pachanoi) is a cactus of the Andes, with more than 3,000 years of use by the healers of northern Peru.
Iboga is a shrub of Central Africa, sacred to the Bwiti of Gabon. Its record outside Africa includes deaths, mostly in people with heart disease or taking other drugs.
Psilocybin mushrooms belong to the traditions of the Mazatec and other peoples of Mexico, not the Amazon.

Staying safe

The brew's own toxicity has not been found to be the cause in the deaths reviewed by researchers. The dangers are what surrounds it: other medicines and drugs, drunk tobacco, added plants, kambo, heart and mental health conditions that were never screened, and people left without care. These are the things we guard against.

Medicines that must not be combined with ayahuasca. The vine blocks an enzyme the body uses to break down serotonin and other chemicals, so some medicines can cause a dangerous reaction called serotonin syndrome. Tell us about every medicine and supplement you take, including:

antidepressants, including SSRIs, SNRIs, MAO inhibitors and tricyclics
St John's Wort
lithium
stimulants, including ADHD medicines, amphetamines, cocaine, phentermine and other diet pills
some opioids, including tramadol, methadone, meperidine and tapentadol
cough and cold medicines with dextromethorphan, pseudoephedrine or chlorpheniramine
MDMA, 5-MeO-DMT and other psychedelics, and kambo

This list is not complete, so please ask about anything you take.

Never stop a medicine on your own. We never ask anyone to stop a prescribed medicine. If you and your prescriber decide together to change something, they can tell you how long it needs to clear. For many medicines that is at least two weeks, and for fluoxetine (Prozac) at least six. Some medicines must be tapered slowly. If stopping is not safe for you, the right choice is to keep your medicine and wait.

Health conditions to tell us about. Please tell us before you register if you have heart disease, high blood pressure, epilepsy or seizures, a recent surgery or fracture, or an infection, or if you are pregnant or breastfeeding. There is no safety data for ayahuasca in pregnancy. Please also tell us about any personal or family history of psychosis or bipolar disorder. Serious reactions are rare, and they are rarer still when people are screened, supervised and supported afterward.

Food. Because the vine's effect on the gut enzyme is short and reversible, food reactions are far less of a concern than with prescription MAO inhibitors. Even so, avoid large amounts of aged, fermented or spoiled food on ceremony days. The longer food traditions around ceremony are spiritual preparation, and the ceremony guidelines explain how we keep them.

What to expect. In the largest survey of ayahuasca drinkers, of about eight thousand people, most had passing physical effects, chiefly vomiting, and about two in a hundred needed medical care afterward. Many had hard weeks in the time after ceremony, and most saw those weeks as part of their growth. That is why we screen everyone, keep trained people with you through each night, and stay in touch after you go home.

Our medical guidelines, safety protocol and informed consent papers say more. If you are ever in crisis, call or text 988. For support after a psychedelic experience, Fireside Project answers at 623-473-7433.

Respect and reciprocity

These plants come to us through the knowledge of Indigenous peoples, and that knowledge has often been taken without consent. In 1986 a US entrepreneur patented a variety of the yagé vine. The Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) and the Center for International Environmental Law challenged it, and after years of dispute the patent expired in 2003. Peru has since declared the traditional knowledge and use of ayahuasca by its Amazonian peoples part of its national cultural heritage, setting it apart from commercial use. International agreements such as the Nagoya Protocol now hold that traditional knowledge should be shared only with the free and informed consent of the people who hold it, and with a fair return to them.

We try to honor this. We name the peoples a practice comes from. We quote their words with care and credit, and we keep our own Hermetic teaching distinct from theirs. Describing a tradition is not the same as speaking for it, and an Indigenous understanding of healing is not proof of a medical claim. We are still learning, and we welcome correction.