Ayahuasca and Cancer: One Man’s Experience

This story from the Bulletin of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies was published in the autumn of 1998.

After being diagnosed with cancer of the liver, the author was advised by oncologists that his chances of survival were slim. He went to ayahuascaa South American psychoactive brew used both socially and as ceremonial spiritual medicine among the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin for a second opinion.

An excerpt:

Sometime during this period of painful recovery from the operation, I remembered having read something, somewhere about the healing properties of ayahuasca. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, since it seemed unlikely that I would be going to the Amazon, and wasn’t particularly interested in a psychedelic experience. Still, it lingered in the recesses of my mind, which was still reeling from the physical and psychic wounds of major surgery, the outcome of which was dubious.

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