Ayahuasca

:This entry focuses on the Ayahuasca brew; for information on the vine of the same name, see Banisteriopsis caapi.

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The widely used Quechua name ayahuasca has two highly interrelated yet distinct meanings and referents: 1) an Amazonian giant vine native to the rainforest, generally Banisteriopsis caapi, and, by extension, 2) pharmacologically complex infusions prepared from it for shamanic, folk-medicinal, and neo-religious purposes. Sections of vine are boiled alone or with leaves from any of a large number of other plants, including Psychotria viridis (chakruna in Quechua) or Diplopterys cabrerana, yielding a brew containing the powerful entheogenic alkaloid N,N-dimethyltryptamine, combined with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (or MAOI) such as harmaline, harmine, d-tetrahydroharmine from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine (which is mildly hallucinogenic on its own).

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Often brews are made with no DMT containing plants; sometimes they are made with plants such as Justicia pectoralis, Brugmansia, coca or various cacti - and often they are made with no plants other than the ayahuasca vine itself. The potency of this brew varies radically from one batch to the next, both in strength and psychoactive effect, based mainly on the skill of the shaman producing it, as well as other admixtures sometimes added.

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Quechua: Quechua is a Native American language family spoken primarily in the Andes of South America, derived from an original common ancestor language, Proto-Quechua. It is the most widely spoken language family of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, with a total of probably some 6 to 8 million speaker...

Banisteriopsis caapi: :This entry focuses on the caapi vine itself; for information on entheogenic use, see Ayahuasca....

Psychotria viridis: :In parts of Ecuador, "Chacruna" is used to refer to Chaliponga, Diplopterys cabrerana, rather than P. viridis....