The Psychedelic Journey of Marlene Dobkin de Rios
Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic mixture rich in alkaloids that has been used by shamans in South America for millennia as a spirit drug for divinatory and healing purposes. Although the late Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes was credited with being the first to document the use of ayahuasca in the early 1950s, other researchers, including the eminent anthropologist Marlene Dobkin de Rios, were responsible for expanding on his findings and uncovering the curative properties of this amazing compound.
Marlene Dobkin de Rios' Psychedelic Journey is a collection of de Rios' 45 years of pioneering field work in the realm of hallucinogens in Peru and the Amazon. Her study of ayahuasca, which she conducted in conjunction with more than a dozen traditional Mestizo folk curanderos, shamans, and ethnobotanists, focuses on the plant's usage in the treatment of resistant psychological and emotional illnesses. She also discusses some of her beliefs proving that the Maya used hallucinogenic plants in religious rites, illustrating the impact of plant psychedelics on human prehistory.
