Can Ayahuasca Cure Addiction?

Scientific evidence is mounting which suggests that ayahuasca may help treat substance use disorders.

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“Llullon Llaki Supai” (2011). Image credit:

“Before I started working with yagé, I was crazy. I was drinking too much, smoking too much weed. Cocaine, man! I was addicted to the shit.”

These are the words of Diego Hernandez, 34, from Bogotá, Colombia. He wears a black hoodie, black sweatpants, and black Nike trainers with a white swoosh. His hair is closely cropped, his face cleanly shaven. He tells me about his history with substance use as we stand on the grounds of Casa Ceremonial Tsanda U’fa, a temple that hosts plant medicine ceremonies in the mountains south of Bogotá.

“Yagé saved my life,” Diego told me. “I haven’t touched drugs since I started working with yagé, and that was almost ten years ago.”

Yagé is a Cofán word. The Cofán are an Indigenous peoples from the northwestern Amazon Rainforest. They are one of more than 160 Amazonian cultures that brew and drink yagé for purposes of healing, divination, and communion with the divine. This sacred brew goes by many names, varying from culture to culture across the Amazon Basin: hoasca, caapi, yagé, cipó, natema, dapa, mihi, vegetal…