Ayahuasca Treatment for Addiction
Addiction is rarely about the substance alone. Our long-term residential program uses ayahuasca, the forest, and daily care to work with what lives beneath it, over weeks and months rather than a single weekend.
How the program works
- A long-term residential stay: you come and live here
- Repeated ceremony held over weeks and months
- Plant diet, simple food, and a structured daily rhythm
- One-on-one guidance and integration throughout
- A gradual, supported return to life outside
Who this is for
- 01
You are ready to leave your environment
This is a residential program. You come and live here, away from the people, places and routines that keep the pattern running. For most people that distance is where the work starts.
- 02
You have tried other paths
Most people who come to us have already been through detox, rehab, meetings, medication, or all of them. That work counts, and it is often what makes this possible. But if the pattern keeps coming back, something underneath it has not been reached yet.
Every application starts with a confidential conversation about whether this is right for you.
Why ayahuasca works with addiction
Addiction runs on avoidance. The substance is a way of not feeling something. Ayahuasca takes that option away for several hours and asks you to sit with what is underneath, with a curandera holding the space and a circle around you. That is why we do not hand anyone a dose and send them home. It happens inside ceremony, inside a program, and it takes time. The research agrees on this much: the medicine only does its work as part of something larger.
There is no randomised controlled trial of ayahuasca for addiction. The samples below are small, the studies are observational, and every research team behind them says a proper trial is still needed. You should know that before you read the numbers.
1,947
ceremony drinkers, 10 Brazilian states
Brazil, and the more ceremonies they sat, the lower the rates
Members of the União do Vegetal, who drink ayahuasca in ceremony twice a month, were measured against a Brazilian national sample of 7,939. Their lifetime alcohol and tobacco use ran higher than the national average, so these were not light drinkers. Their current rates of alcohol and tobacco use disorder came out significantly lower. The more ceremonies someone had attended in the previous year, and the longer they had been a member, the further those rates fell. The study is cross-sectional, which means it can show you the pattern but cannot prove the ceremonies caused it.
Barbosa et al., Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 201896,901
survey respondents worldwide
Less problematic drinking than other psychedelic users
In a global survey of drug use, the 527 respondents who had drunk ayahuasca in the past year reported greater wellbeing and less problematic drinking than people who used other psychedelics. It was a self-selecting online survey rather than a trial, and its authors call for randomised research.
Lawn et al., Scientific Reports, 20171 year
after a residential program in Peru
Still holding twelve months later
A one-year follow-up of 52 people at the Takiwasi Center in Peru, an accredited therapeutic community running a residential ayahuasca-assisted addiction program. Alcohol and drug use severity, depression, anxiety and several measures of quality of life had all improved significantly. The authors say plainly that the design was uncontrolled and observational.
Rush et al., Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 20242
ceremonies, measured six months on
Cocaine use fell, cannabis and opiate use did not
Twelve members of a rural First Nations community in British Columbia attended a retreat combining four days of group counselling with two ceremonies. Six months later, hopefulness, empowerment, mindfulness and quality of life had all risen significantly, and problematic cocaine use had fallen. Cannabis and opiate use had not.
Thomas et al., Current Drug Abuse Reviews, 2013Every
clinical study, pointing one way
A review of the alcohol research
A review of the clinical and preclinical research on ayahuasca and alcohol use disorder found that every clinical study showed a significant decrease in alcohol use. The same review notes that most of those studies were retrospective.
Marinho et al., International Review of Neurobiology, 2024
None of this is medical advice, and we are not a medical facility. Read our medical disclaimer.
