Microdosing has become one of the defining wellness trends of the past decade. From Silicon Valley executives microdosing psilocybin for productivity to therapists recommending sub-perceptual LSD for emotional regulation, the idea of taking tiny amounts of psychedelics to improve daily functioning — without the full visionary experience — has captured mainstream attention. So it is natural that people ask: can you microdose ayahuasca? The answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no. It…

Timothy Leary first articulated the concept of set and setting in the 1960s as a framework for understanding psychedelic experiences. Set refers to the mindset a person brings — their intentions, fears, expectations, and psychological state. Setting refers to the physical and social environment in which the experience takes place. Leary’s insight was simple but profound: the same substance, at the same dose, can produce radically different experiences depending on the internal and external conditions…

If you have attended an ayahuasca ceremony — or spent time researching what one looks like — you will likely have encountered the thick, pungent smoke of mapacho. Rolled into large rustic cigars, cigarettes or smoked through a pipe, its presence in ceremony is unmistakable. If you are newer to what a ceremony looks like in practice, our Ayahuasca Ceremony page gives a detailed overview of what to expect. To the uninitiated, it might look…

There is a moment in nearly every ayahuasca ceremony where the medicine presents you with a choice. The experience is intensifying. Something uncomfortable — physical, emotional, or psychological — is rising to the surface. The ordinary mind responds the way it always does: it tries to manage. It tries to control. It braces, reasons, negotiates, or runs. This is the moment that determines everything about the experience that follows. The single most important thing you…

Carl Jung spent decades mapping the territory of the unconscious. He wrote extensively about archetypes — universal patterns of psyche that appear in dreams, myths, religion, and art across all cultures and throughout all of human history. He named the shadow, the anima, the animus, the Self. He described a collective unconscious that underlies individual experience. He never drank ayahuasca. But many who have, suggest that the visionary experiences of ayahuasca ceremonies are, in some…

Nobody warned you that coming home from the retreat would feel so strange. Your partner is the same person. Your friends are the same people. But something has shifted in how you see them — and in how you see yourself in relation to them. Some connections feel deeper and more precious than ever. Others feel hollow, or confining, or built on a version of you that no longer quite fits. Relationship changes after ayahuasca…

You came back from ceremony with something. Maybe it was a vision you cannot stop thinking about. A feeling of openness that you desperately want to hold onto. A clarity about a relationship, a pattern, a choice — clarity that felt absolute in the jungle and now feels fragile in the ordinary light of your daily life. Or perhaps you came back shaken. Something was stirred that you did not expect. Grief that you had…

You prepared for weeks. You followed the diet. You flew to Peru, arrived at the retreat center, drank the medicine with intention and trust — and then waited. And waited. And while others around you seemed to be deep in vision, in tears, in some profound interior world, you felt… not much. Maybe a slight buzzing. Some nausea that passed. A heaviness in your limbs. By morning, you were confused, perhaps disappointed, and wondering what…

If you are considering attending an ayahuasca retreat — or if you have already been to one and are wondering about returning — a natural question arises: can you build up a tolerance to ayahuasca? Will drinking the medicine repeatedly make it less effective? Will your third ceremony be weaker than your first? These are practical, reasonable questions. And the answers are more nuanced — and more reassuring — than you might expect. The Pharmacology…