Ayahuasca tourism in 'The Atlantic'

Of course they still get it wrong and title the article, "Acid Trip: In search of the Amazon's magical mystery cure". People are still searching for the magical mystery cure? Acid in the Amazon? Oh well, at least they're trying.

AFTER STEVE WITTE was laid off from his job at Pfizer last year, he decided to pursue a radically different approach to medicine. Swapping his New York apartment for a thatch hut near Iquitos, Peru, Witte, 44, set aside his squash hobby to become an apprentice under the master shaman Alfredo Cairuna.

Like many of the traditional healers in this part of the Amazon, Cairuna -- who is of the indigenous Shipibo people -- serves as an intermediary between the physical and spiritual worlds, with the help of a hallucinogen known as ayahuasca, a plant-based concoction that has been used for centuries to treat a range of physical and spiritual maladies. Tourists, equally convinced that ayahuasca can alleviate everything from chronic pain to depression, have more recently turned its distribution into a thriving local industry. People "go back to work more calm and accepting -- or they make huge decisions they weren't able to before," Witte says of those who come to visit Cairuna's ayahuasca lodge. "People say it changes their lives."

Served as a drink by Cairuna during an elaborate ceremony that lasts for hours, ayahuasca is made mainly of the local ayahuasca and chacruna plants. It is thick and muddy and the color of clay. Drinking it usually occasions some intense vomiting, but that's hardly the most extreme side effect. "It can be painful, and you can suffer, but it can also be intensely beautiful and enlightening beyond words. It can be a cleansing of your body in every way. I've seen people get really scared," says Witte. "I just try to keep a calm mind, even if strange things happen.