Dream drug or demon brew?

摘要

In the brightly lit chapel, the ceremony is due to begin. Dennis McKenna lines up with 500 others to sip the sacrament. It takes 45 minutes before it hits him. Then, eyes closed, he finds himself hovering above the Amazon basin, aware of the massive forests and the meandering rivers beneath. A giant vine winds up towards him and he hurtles down it, shrinking as he goes until the leaves themselves seem the size of trees. Shrinking further, he finds himself surrounded by a new forest made up of molecules engaged in photosynthesis. McKenna, an ethnobotanist from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, is high on ayahuasea. Ayahuasca is not the latest party drug but a foul-tasting plant concoction Amazonian people have been downing for centuries. It is the stuff of legends, credited with sending people on the most incredible trips. Today this bitter tea, also known as hoasca, has become the sacramental ritual of two modern religions in Brazil; one of them, the Uniao do Vegetal (UDV) church, has invited McKenna, an expert on psychoactive plants, and other research teams, to scrutinise this sacred brew.