Ayahuasca tourism moves a practice that belongs to specific Amazonian communities into a market for foreign visitors, and that shift raises questions about who benefits, who sets the rules and what happens to the plants. The questions below are concrete enough to think through before deciding to take part.
As early as 2010, the International Narcotics Control Board noted that such plants are “often used outside of their original socio-economic context” and that they could be flown “quickly by air to any country in the world” (INCB Annual Report 2010, §286). The Board's concern was drug control. The same shift looks different from the point of view of the communities involved.
Whose practice it is
Ayahuasca use grew within particular peoples of the western Amazon, each with its own songs, rules and specialists. Peru recognised that in 2008, when it declared the knowledge and traditional uses of ayahuasca by native Amazonian communities part of the nation's cultural heritage (Andina, 2008). In the same year it gave the same status to the kené line patterns of the Shipibo-Konibo, which are tied to their ceremonial songs.
Retreats for visitors often borrow the outward signs of that tradition: textiles, songs, the title maestro. Some are run by members of Indigenous communities, many are not. A visitor usually cannot tell how much of the money reaches the community whose practice is being sold, or whether the person leading the ceremony has any standing in that community.
The money and the people
Ceremony tourism brings money into towns such as Iquitos and Pucallpa in Peru. It also changes the role of ayahuasca there, from a practice embedded in local life to a service with prices, packages and online reviews. Whether that balance is good for the communities involved is for them to judge, and we do not try to settle it here.
What is clearer is the risk to individual visitors and staff when a retreat is run as a business without oversight. The cases of abuse, injury and death that led the US Embassy in Peru to warn its citizens in 2025 happened in that commercial setting. The retreats chapter covers how to recognise it.
The vine itself
Banisteriopsis caapi is a forest liana that takes three to five years to mature, and up to ten in poor conditions. Demand from retreats and from churches abroad has grown, and harvesters around Iquitos and Pucallpa report local shortages and smaller vines, a sign that they do not have time to regrow. Many have started cultivating the vine in response (Ermakova, Chacruna Institute, 2022). Experts disagree about whether supply is threatened across the whole region or only locally.
Cultivation brings its own problem. In Acre, Brazil, journalists documented forest being cleared for plantations of ayahuasca plants to supply the international market (Mongabay, 2021).
Questions to ask yourself before going
- Do I know whose tradition this is, and does this retreat have any real relationship with that community?
- Where does the money go? Is the ceremony leader paid fairly, and by whom?
- Is the brew made from cultivated or wild-harvested vine, and does anyone know?
- Would I be breaking the law at home by bringing anything back? (See the law.)
- Am I looking for something a retreat is promising, and is that promise honest?
Outside South America
Ceremonies in Europe and North America add another layer. They are usually illegal, which pushes them into private houses without medical backup and without a way to complain when something goes wrong. In the Netherlands, even the Santo Daime church, which had won court cases in 2001 and 2012, lost that ground in 2019.
The full background is in the earlier chapters: the brew, the experience and safety.