Ayahuasca has a dark side, and in my experience, one of the most toxic communities out of all psychedelic users. There are a lot of self-righteous attitudes, and white people who fetishize indigenous people and insist you need to take it in a “traditional” setting. However, a lot of those settings are anything but traditional and include various new agey things cherrypicked from different cultures that have nothing to do with the Amazon basin, like yoga, vegan diets, and chakra cleansing.

There are also a ton of charletans and predators facilitating ceremonies who are not fit to serve psychedelics to anyone, including themselves. The only way I felt comfortable drinking ayahuasca was to prepare it myself and take it alone at home. It benefited me greatly and even saved my life, but you can’t imagine the hateful, nasty comments I’ve received from people who accused me of abusing it by not going to some “traditional” $4000 retreat run by similar self-righteous white people.