Ayahuasca is a sacred plant for the Indian people of the Amazon. Properties have been found to cure alcoholic and heroin addicts.

Ayahuasca is any of various psychoactive infusions or decoctions prepared from the Banisteriopsis spp vine, usually mixed with the leaves of the Psychotria bush. It was first described in the early 1950’s by the late Harvard ethno botanist Richard Evans Schultes who found it employed for divinatory and healing purposes by Amerindians of Amazonian Colombia.

Ayahuasca is used largely as a religious sacrament. Those whose usage of ayahuasca is performed in non-traditional contexts often align themselves with the philosophies and cosmologies associated with ayahuasca shamanism, as practiced among indigenous peoples like the Uranina of Peruvian Amazon. The religion Santo Daime uses it.
While non-native users know of the spiritual applications of ayahuasca, a less well-known traditional usage focuses on the medicinal properties of ayahuasca. Its purgative properties are highly important (many refer to it as la purga, "the purge"). The intense vomiting and occasional diarrhea it induces can clear the body of worms and other tropical parasites, and harmala alkaloids themselves have been shown to be anthelmintic. Thus, this action is twofold; a direct action on the parasites by these harmala alkaloids (particularly harmine in ayahuasca) works to kill the parasites, and parasites are expelled through the increased intestinal motility that is caused by these alkaloids.
Dietary taboos are almost always associated with the use of Ayahuasca; in the rainforest, these tend towards the purification of one’s self - abstaining from spicy and heavily seasoned foods, fat, salt, caffeine, acidic foods (such as citrus) and sex before, after, or both before and after a ceremony. A diet low in foods containing tyramine has been recommended, as the speculative interaction of tyramine and MAOIs (Monoamine oxidase inhibitors) could lead to a hypertensive crisis. However, evidence indicates that harmala alkaloids act only on MAO-A, in a reversible way similar to moclobemide (an antidepressive that does not require dietary restrictions). Psychonautic experiments and absence of diet restrictions in the highly urban Brazilian ayahuasca church Uñiao de Vegetal also suggest that the risk is much lower than conceived, and probably non-existent.

In Brazil, a number of modern religious movements based on the use of ayahuasca have emerged, the most famous of them being Santo Daime and the Uñiao de Vegetal (or UDV), usually in an animistic context that may be shamanistic or, more often (as with Santo Daime and the UDV), integrated with Christianity. Both Santo Daime and União do Vegetal now have members and churches throughout the world. Similarly, the US and Europe have started to see new religious groups develop in relation to increased ayahuasca use. Some Westerners have teamed up with shamans in the Amazon rainforest regions, forming Ayahuasca healing retreats that claim to be able to cure mental and physical illness and allow communication with the spirit world.

Loren Miller obtained a patent in the United States for Ayahuasca to use it as an anti-depressive drug. He was declared an "enemy of indigenous people" whose "entrance in any indigenous territory should be prohibited." "It’s like getting a patent on the Christian cross or the Eucharist” Indigenous peoples interpret it as an assault on the core of their culture.

The drink that gives visions

Sections of vine are macerated and boiled alone or with leaves from any of a large number of other plants, including Psychotria Viridis (chakruna in Quechua) or Diplopterys cabreran (also known as chaliponga). The resulting brew contains MAO inhibiting harmala alkaloids and the powerful hallucinogenic alkaloid NN-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a psychedelic, which is active orally only when combined with an MAOI.
The many visions of snakes and boas reported by patients are used by healers to affect cures. It is widely believed that a snake (called in Spanish, culebra) is the mother spirit of the drug. Many herbs and medicines found in nature are believed to have protective spirits, which watch over their plant’s use and are jealous guardians.