In this legal gray area, new ayahuasca retreat centers have emerged across the country. At the same time, ayahuasca’s active ingredient, dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, remains a controlled substance under federal law, and thus illegal to consume. Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that the government could not stop a New Mexico church from using the substance as a sacrament. Americans with the money and interest to do so have traveled to places like Peru and Costa Rica for the experience. Since opening in 2019, Januszewski said he has welcomed close to 2,000 people to the three-bedroom house he rents for a weekend of psychedelic exploration.Īyahuasca has been used by Indigenous tribes in the Amazon for hundreds of years to purportedly heal physical and mental distress. Januszewski, 46, with tattooed arms and a trimmed beard, is the pastor of Pachamama Sanctuary, a religious organization he founded off of a wooded road in Canterbury, New Hampshire, that serves ayahuasca to its guests several times each month. His new world continues to revolve around ayahuasca, a tea brewed from a combination of plants native to South America that its adherents said has healing properties. “And for the first time in 10 years, I had 45 days of absolutely zero cravings, absolutely no pull to use,” he said. Then, in May 2017, he took ayahuasca for the first time. His former self struggled with obsessive compulsive disorder, childhood trauma and drug addiction. The life Derek Januszewski led before ayahuasca, and the life he leads after, bear little resemblance. (Courtesy Derek Januszewski/Pachamama Sanctuary) Participants in a retreat at Pachamama Sanctuary in Canterbury, N.H.
0 kommentar(er)
