The Ayahuasca Experience: A Phenomenological Study of Tourists in Iquitos, Peru

Sammanfattning: Yearly thousands travel from around the globe to Peru to participate in the ceremonial consumption of ayahuasca under the guidance of a shaman. The brew stimulates a psychedelic state in users that triggers hallucinations, powerful emotional responses,and severe physical reactions, all of which are codified into ritual practice. Drawing from ethnographic material gathered from one month of field work in Iquitos, Peru, this study utilizes a phenomenological framework to qualitatively analyze ayahuasca as experienced by the foreign tourist, critically engaging with the concept of experience itself as primarily a social phenomenon. Applying the concept of phenomenological modification, I argue that broad cultural narratives of New Age and Indigenous spiritual paradigms coupled with the social contexts of the embodied ceremonial space orient ritual participants towards particular experiences. These include deep personal healing, spiritual transformation, and encounters with spirits and the spirit world. Narratives and social contexts not only serve to shape these experiences, but imbue them with meaning, and offer tools for the individual to organize their chaotic and profound experiences as they express them creatively in dialogue with others. Narratives in the ayahuasca context serve both as boundaries to profound and overwhelming experiences and as stages for creative social expressions of human agency