Ayahuasca for Alcoholism
Though Ayahuasca is often administered in a ceremonial setting, it can also be administered as microdosing.What is Ayahuasca?
Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew that’s typically made using two plants: Banisteriopsis caapi and Psychotria viridis though it can be made with other herbs as well. These plants contain harmala alkaloids and dimethyltryptamine (DMT). The combination of these medicinal substances produces a dream-like state involving visual, auditory, and emotional effects.In shamanism, Ayahuasca is consumed to help the shaman find cures for diseases for the community he or she serves. Today, in western cultures, people take Ayahuasca as a sacred plant teacher or counselor. They can take the brew on their own behalf to receive a diagnosis, to adjust certain emotional problems, or to obtain information about how to cure a particular disease or mental health issue.
Ayahuasca challenges the conventional view of medicine in that you can take this herb both to speak to the Ayahuasca vine as a wise consciousness that has knowledge of other healing herbs and you can also take the herb to itself cure specific diseases such as insulin resistance or diabetes. If you’ve never worked with a plant medicine like Ayahuasca for addiction or for any other health issue, then it will be hard for you to understand how it works until you try it.
How is Ayahuasca used to cure alcoholism?
Alcoholism is an addiction that can be caused, at least in some cases, by insulin resistance. While many people are familiar with the idea that insulin helps sugars from the blood enter cells, most are not familiar with the fact that many nutrients cannot enter cells without insulin to open cellular membranes. If the body lacks sufficient insulin or if the cells are insulin resistant, cells lack nutrients as well as fuel. This makes people feel cravings and an urgent kind of neediness. As it turns out, alcohol in low to moderate doses can, in some cases, help the cells overcome insulin resistance and obtain vital nutrients.Click here to learn more about alcoholism and blood sugar issues.
Click here to read more about Ayahuasca for sugar addiction and fast food addiction and how this type of addiction is related to and contributes to alcoholism.
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Ayahuasca is an herbal cure for diabetes and insulin resistance. In fact, it is one of the most powerful diabetes cures that’s currently known in terms of its ability to regrow beta-cells in the pancreas. This may explain, at least to some extent, why Ayahuasca plays such an important role in alcoholism recovery at home. If you can obtain Ayahuasca to microdose or if you can go and do 1-3 Ayahuasca ceremonies after you’ve successfully stopped drinking for several weeks or months, this herb can help you get over the hump in terms of recovery.
Click here to read more about how Ayahuasca can regrow beta-cells in the pancreas to cure insulin resistance and diabetes naturally.
While Ayahuasca can give your pancreas a much-needed boost to enhance insulin production in your body, it does other things too that can be incredibly helpful as part of an alcohol recovery program at home. Though most people can’t obtain Ayahuasca easily for home use and even if they could, many wouldn’t feel comfortable using it alone at home without prior experience with it, Ayahuasca ceremonies in Mexico or other parts of Latin America take place over the course of just a few days. Many people report that after Ayahuasca, alcohol recovery is a completely different experience. One Ayahuasca ceremony is like doing 10 years of talk therapy in one night.
In summary, as a cure for alcoholism, Ayahuasca works in part by regrowing beta-cells in the pancreas and in part through psychoactive effects that help people approach trauma and topics that were previously impossible to access consciously.
My Experience with Ayahuasca
It’s hard for me to write about the sacred medicines. I’m passionate about these medicines and what they can do for people, but writing about Ayahuasca, for example, is very different from writing about amino acids for alcoholism or the scientific research demonstrating that insulin resistance and alcoholism are heavily correlated. For me, the difference between what I know about Ayahuasca and what I know about, let’s say, insulin resistance, is like the difference between knowing something that’s 3-dimensional versus something that 2-dimensional: while I can read about insulin resistance and understand it with my mind, when I take Ayahuasca and many of the other sacred indigenous medicines allow me to know things with my body and with my soul.
What I know about Ayahuasca for alcoholism comes from two places: scientific research and my own personal experience working with this plant medicine. Ayahuasca herself can tell me about who she is and what she can do. I don’t have to read about her. She can speak for herself. While I don’t have trouble writing about the science behind Mucuna pruriens, for example, as a powerful plant medicine for addiction, Ayahuasca is very different. It’s true, in fact, that people who develop depression during alcohol withdrawal can do a dieta with Mucuna pruriens wherein they work closely with Mucuna and focus on this plant as an Herbal Depression Healer, Mucuna is not psychoactive. It is not an entheogen. As such, it doesn’t “speak” to the person taking it. Rather, Mucuna heals the brain and body so that these parts of us work more normally again. Instead of feeling like something or someone is speaking to us inside our own minds, Mucuna simply makes us feel like we’re able to speak to ourselves, as ourselves.
Ayahuasca, in contrast, speaks. And it also goes beyond words to communicate with us unequivocally about many things through methods of communication that we never thought possible. Ayahuasca is the plant that taught me that all plants have a consciousness. Before taking Ayahuasca for the first time, I didn’t understand this fact though I’d read about it in many places.
Ayahuasca as a Dream Herb
Back when I was in high school in the 1990’s, I became enamored with Sigmund Freud’s methods for interpreting dreams. I became known for my ability and interest in interpreting dreams and a lot of my high school classmates would tell me their dreams for this reason. Throughout my life, I’ve kept a journal of my dreams and other people’s dreams and for the most part, until about the last 5 years, I believed that dreams were nothing but our own minds trying to communicate with us.For as long as I believed that dreams were nothing more than just my unconscious mind trying to process the previous 3 days of my life, I couldn’t see what my dreams really were or how my dreams were there to help me in a much more profound way. For example, shortly before we moved to Mexico, I was looking back through my travel journals where I had recorded many dreams when we were living in other places in the world. In one journal, I had recorded a dream where I was working in a hospital with an Asian woman. She and I were nurses. I was stacking blood pressure cuffs on the table. The hospital had no roof and I was concerned about this. The Asian woman held out her hand to me. She was holding a flat, jade stone with a hole in the center of it that floated just above her palm, rotating slowly. She said, “If you keep moving you won’t be hit once from in front and once from behind.”
I had had this dream in India while I was en route to Japan. I had just finished looking through a journal from one year LATER though, where I’d written about how we had traveled from India to Japan literally within hours of a hurricane that left Japan as we landed. Our trip lasted four days. I had had a fever and I was rather ill the entire time we were there. As we were leaving, another hurricane was blowing into the island and we were really unsure about whether or not we’d make it home or not (we did).
When I read this dream which had been written a year prior to this event which happened in real life on the exact same travel route (from India to Japan), I actually felt really confused. I was like, “Did I have this dream because I’d seen a weather report on TV or absorbed some information about the weather unconsciously?” It took me a few minutes to realize that the dream had predicted something that took place a year later about the weather in the same approximate place in the world.
Of course, I was really excited about this discovery, but I didn’t necessarily believe that dreams could be a resource to me or that I might ever have to depend on my dreams to get me out of a tight spot. About 3 years after this discovery though, COVID would close down travel and I found myself and my family in a very serious predicament. Information about how to move from point A to point B was almost impossible to find online and we had some serious movement that we needed to do to help our son-in-law make his way across the planet on a very weak passport that only permitted travel to 48 countries in the world. Though there was no way to get information in many of the countries we had to work with, we found our way through the world using dreams.
When I say “we” I mean my husband, me, my daughter, and my son-in-law. We were given information in dreams that we pooled together to find countries and airports that were open that my son-in-law could pass through on his weak passport. Pooling our dream information made it possible for us to get him out of his home country just two months before a civil war took shape.
And dreams, of course, can also help us do things like communicate with ancestors and loved ones who have passed on. They can help us become aware of cures for diseases that we’ve never heard of before. Dreams can give us the solutions to problems that we otherwise would not be able to solve with waking consciousness by ourselves. So for me, dreams are an extremely important part of waking life.
That being said, most people who are recovering from an addiction are not sleeping very well. And most of these recovering addicts are also not dreaming either. It’s true that dreams can be viewed as a way for our minds and bodies to process difficult information. According to this view, if a person is not dreaming, he or she is likely also not processing data from their lives. Indeed, a lack of dreaming and Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep can lead to autonomic nervous system dysfunction. The eye muscles, after all, play a central role in balancing the autonomic nervous system. When our eyes move back and forth during sleep or when our brains enter into certain brainwave states, we balance the right brain with the left brain. But really, more than balancing the right with the left, we balance the mind with the body. REM sleep helps us balance our thoughts with how our bodies feel in regard to a given situation.
While our minds are very rule-oriented and sensitive to concepts of right and wrong, the human body is still a wild animal. This wild part of us is essential to our survival, but it doesn’t follow any rules. Throughout any given day, we might encounter a number of situations in which we feel like running away and hiding or fighting with our claws out, but usually, we don’t run, we don’t hide, and we also don’t fight. Nonetheless, if our bodies feel like running, hiding, or fighting and we don’t act on these feelings, the feelings become like stuck energy in the autonomic nervous system. Our minds tell us to stand still, smile, pretend like everything is okay while our bodies want to run and hide. The mind knows all of the social rules that are made by the government, the church, our families, our friends, but our bodies sense things that our minds want to deny and forget. During REM sleep and dreaming, we reconcile these things so that our minds can know what our bodies sense. But if our minds don’t believe in the information coming to us from what our bodies sense, we have a problem.
The autonomic nervous system is balanced by REM sleep, but in people who are in addiction recovery, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing / EMDR can be used to treat insomnia and get the brain and the body’s “felt sense” to sync back up again. EMDR simply involves the movement of the eyes back and forth while thinking about situations that are troubling to you. It is easy to do it as part of an at home alcoholism recovery program.
Click here to do a free trial of EMDR online.
That being said, Ayahuasca is a dream herb that can help bring back a person’s ability to dream. In other words, it’s an herb that can be used to enhance dreaming when it’s taken in sub-psychoactive doses. At higher doses, Ayahuasca helps people enter fully into a dreamworld – another state of consciousness. There are a number of dream herbs or dream roots that are used to enhance dreaming, but Ayahuasca is an herb that doesn’t usually impact sleep in a negative way when taken at about 1/20th of a full dose about an hour before bed. In fact, it can help enhance sleep in some people who take it regularly.
In fact, anyone who is intrigued by Ayahuasca, but perhaps afraid to do a full dose using this herb can work with Ayahuasca in microdoses as an alternative treatment for trauma. Though it isn’t always easy to get Ayahuasca in many countries in the world, it is possible to get Ayahuasca in Mexico to do microdosing.
If you have access to Ayahuasca, you can use this herb to enhance the clarity of your dreams. Be aware that this herb is “conscious” so when it works with you, it gives you what you need, not always what you want. You may, for example, take Ayahuasca as a microdose one night and ask for dreams as your intention but wake up without any dreams that you can remember. Three nights later, even if you don’t take Ayahuasca again, you may have a powerful dream that’s unlike any dream you’ve ever had before in your life. This is how Ayahuasca works. It’s mysterious and not always “by the book”. Indeed, once you make the intention to work with this herb, it begins to work with you even if you’ve never taken it.
As a dream herb, Ayahuasca can be used as a microdose before bed. If you plan to microdose Ayahuasca for the purposes of having clear dreams, be sure to keep a dream journal by the bed and write your dreams down when you have them. In the morning, read the dreams and interpret them as best you can.
Note that nightmares are often a discharge of fear and though some scary dreams are prophetic and should be heeded, most scary dreams are the release of trauma, which is a good thing during an at home alcoholism recovery program.
What to Expect from Ayahuasca Alcohol Treatment
Ayahuasca has been studied scientifically in terms of its effects on addiction in general and alcoholism in particular. According to studies, people who do take a full dose of Ayahuasca can expect to feel better in terms of the following:- Hopefulness
- Empowerment
- Mindfulness
- General Quality of Life
- Sense of Meaning
- Positive Outlook
One study showed that after 2 Ayahuasca ceremonies, people reduced their use of alcohol, tobacco, and cocaine though cannabis use and opiate use did not decline.
As a ceremony with a full-strength brew and high dose, Ayahuasca as a treatment for alcohol addiction is administered by someone with expertise working with this plant medicine. There are a number of ingredients that can be added to an Ayahuasca brew to accomplish specific treatment goals, but typically, Banisteriopsis caapi and Psychotria viridis are used as the two staple ingredients.
Ayahuasca ceremonies vary considerably from place to place and in terms of how the ceremonial space is set up and how the progression of events unfolds. Most people can take short breaks from their Ayahuasca trip (though it’s usually best to stay focused) and leave the ceremonial space to reconnect with ordinary reality briefly. This depends on the person to some extent who is taking the brew though.
Ayahuasca Microdosing for Alcoholism
Ayahuasca microdosing for alcoholism is relatively straightforward if you can get either a pre-prepared Ayahuasca microdosing tincture or if you can get Ayahuasca as a pre-prepared brew. If you get an Ayahuasca tincture, follow the dosing instructions. If you get Ayahuasca as a full-strength brew, order some empty gelatin capsules (size 0) and using a dropper fill 1-2 capsules with the brew and take them immediately.If you can’t obtain Ayahuasca as a pre-prepared brew, consider ordering Banisteriopsis caapi tincture and add it to a cup of traditionally prepared cacao as an alternative.
Ayahuasca Microdosing for an Alcoholism Recovery Program at Home
If you’re not ready to commit to an Ayahuasca ceremony with a full dose of this dream herb, consider instead doing microdosing as part of an alcoholism recovery program at home. There are a number of places online that offer Banisteriopsis caapi as a powder. To produce an alcohol-free tincture of Banisteriopsis caapi powder, combine the powder with water that covers the herb by about 1 1/2 inches and the juice of 1 lemon. Allow it to simmer for 8-12 hours. When the water simmers down to the same level as the herb, strain pour the water into a separate bowl. Then add more water to the Banisteriopsis pot and simmer again. Strain and pour the water out into a separate container up to 3 times.Finally, take the water that you’ve strained into a separate container and simmer it until it is the consistency of hot chocolate. Remove it from the fire and store it in the refrigerator for microdosing for up to 6 months.
Take 1-4 00 sized capsules of the brew about 1 hour before bed each night.
Other Elements of Our Alcoholism Recovery Program at Home
In addition to microdosing Ayahuasca for alcoholism, you should also work with the following treatments to overcome alcohol addiction at home:- Supplements and herbal remedies for alcoholism
- Ketogenic Diet for Alcohol Addiction Recovery
- Strategies for Safe Detox from Alcohol at Home
- Psilocybin for Trauma
- Alcoholism Recovery Coaching (online sessions once or twice weekly) - contact us at [email protected] for rates and information.
- Sacred Medicines Retreat in Mexico (optional) - contact us at [email protected] for rates and information.
Click here to buy psilocybin online.
Resources:
• Thomas, G. et al. (2013). Ayahuasca-Assisted Therapy for Addiction: Results from a Preliminary Observational Study in Canada. Retrieved February 15, 2024 from https://maps.org/research-archive/ayahuasca/Thomas_et_al_CDAR.pdf
• Hamill, J. et al. (2019). Ayahuasca: Psychological and Physiologic Effects, Pharmacology and Potential Uses in Addiction and Mental Illness. Retrieved February 15, 2024 from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6343205/
