I like to bring awareness to the fact that this drug is not such a harmless medicine at all, or shall i better say it might be safe if administered by someone who is caring and responsible and acts safe. i know for fact that someone died after taking ayahuasca at one of peters ceremonies. Now i'm not saying that this was Peters fault, but the fact is that he walked out on a person who was semiconscious many hours after his ceremony was over. This person wasn't able to speak nor walk and Peter just walked out saying that a little sleep shall do it. well this person never woke up. this person needed immediate hospital care and would have survived. but the advise given was a little sleep and just to wait it out ... well that was a mistake. I'm sure Peter never intended to cause such a thing to happen, but up to this date he never even did apologize or maybe just showed his condolences for the immense loss and the hurt this death has caused. Or just even express his sorry for his misjudgement about the situation and that this has happened. Some one who takes money (and a substantial fee indeed) to run such a workshop should have the professionalism of making sure that the participants of his workshop are safe and receive appropriate care in cases of emergency. Ayahuasca is not a kindergarden drug, and for someone who claims to have such vast amount of experience i think it was totally... well i dont even have words for it. Do not get me wrong, i'm not accusing Peter of malice here, but of neglect of care of the beings who come and trust him in his workshops. I urge anybody who wants to explore with ayahuasca to be in safe hands, you never know how your body reacts to it. you might be ok or you might not. Well one person died. RIP

Who's Peter?

Sorry for your loss..many questions

peter who?

who died?

did they ever find out the cause of death or what?

Were they on any other prescriptions drugs or otherwise?

Was it there first time drinking the brew?

and i'm pretty sure this is the only claimed case i've ever heard of people dying on ayahuasca. If someone was to die on it i would bet that they didn't check in on the dangerous interactions between these MAOI and other drugs/prescriptions they were taking as well. Not saying this was necessarily the case here, but are you 100% sure it was not?

Hey amy,

If one dies due to negligence then that is a sad thing. If one person dies by the misinterpretation of another person than that is a tragedy. I'm not sure what exactly happened so I will not take any assumptions. I only hope that the person who passed away was not someone close to you, if so then my deep condolences.

As for Ayahuasca and safety: like with any substance or activity, people should be aware of any dangers, Ayahuasca is no exception. With Ayahuasca you can have contraindications, also during the journey you should be safe, things like having a journey next to a cliff should be avoided at all costs. Also choking due to purging might be a risk that people should be aware off.

It can never be stated enough that people should read the Health and Safety link!


Kind regards,

The Traveler

peter who?

Firstly, "ayahuasca" can be a sort of ambiguous term. Ayahuasca refers to a tea that can contain 1 or 50+ different plants..ayahuasca when containing just vine and DMT containing admixture is really quite harmless physically, unless someone is taking other drugs that interact with harmalas or they have other health problems already, like a heart problem etc. Saying ayahuasca is not really so harmless really does not mean much unless you specify the context, because there is definatly enough medical information gathered to suggest that ayahuasca containing just caapi and psychotria or is physically very very safe..psychological issues are the biggest concern with a brew like that I think.

Many other admixtures that are often only used by native amazonian healers are very deadly, such as brugmansia, mapacho, the sanangos etc..

I would be willing to be that it was one of those 2 cases that was the problem..either they had a pre-existing health problem or there was other admixtures besides just DMT plants in the brew that are physically toxic. There was another case in canada a few years back where a native american woman was attending a ceremony here and died durring the ceremony. Cause of death was a nicotine overdose(they think) due to very high levels of tobacco used as an admixture. Even with cannabis, you can still have a heart attack if you have a heart problem already..same with sex. Lots of people have died while having sex.

I am sure noone here knows who peter is..that again is sort of ambiguous..can you elaborate on the situation? What plants exactly were used in the brew?

Are you talking about Peter Aziz? He works in the UK I think, or did until he was busted..and he did work with other tropane plants like mandrake if I am not mistaken..

There are just too many variables here for anyone to really concider any of this until we have more specifics. Again, this is because "ayahuasca" is used to describe many many many different mixtures of plants..some extremely deadly and some very safe. The ayahuasca community has seen this sort of thing before and often it is the case that plants like brugmansia are involved.

Sorry for your loss if you were close to this person.

here is what I found on some site called the petition site raising funds for Peter Aziz..

"I like to bring awareness to the fact that this drug is not such a harmless medicine at all, or shall i better say it might be safe if administered by someone who is caring and responsible and safe. i know for fact that someone died after taking ayahuasca at one of peters ceremonies. Now i'm not saying that this was Peters fault, but the fact is that he walked out on a person who was semiconscious many hours after his ceremony was over. This person wasn't able to speak nor walk and Peter just walked out saying that a little sleep shall do it. well this person never woke up. this person needed immediate hospital care and would have survived. but the advise given was a little sleep and just to wait it out ... well that was a mistake. I'm sure Peter never intended to cause such a thing to happen, but up to this date he never even did apologize or maybe just showed his condolences for the immense loss and the hurt this death has caused. Or just even show his sorry for his misjudgement about the situation and that this has happened. Some one who takes money (and a substantial fee indeed) to run such a workshop should have the professionalism of making sure that the participants of his workshop are safe and receive appropriate care in cases of emergency. Ayahuasca is not a kindergarden drug, and for someone who claims to have such vast amount of experience i think it was totally... well i dont even have words for it. Do not get me wrong, i'm not accusing Peter of malice here, but of neglect of care of the beings who come and trust him in his workshop. I urge anybody who wants to explore with ayahuasca to be in safe hands, you never know how your body reacts to it. you might be ok or you might not. Well one person died. RIP"

http://www.thepetitionsi...m/1/release-peter-aziz/

I am sure many people here will remember all about Peter Aziz...

The guy is NOT what I would concider a currandero I would work with, but that is just based on some stuff I read when all this went down and I could be completely wrong..and yes, he does work with tropanes..where they in his ayahuasca is the question.

i'm not accusing nor wishing ill will. this is just a really sad story that happened. It wasn't the fault of ayahuasca nor peter's fault that this person died, ayahuasca is not a bad drug ...this is not what i'm saying... all i want to bring across is please be safe when you do it. (it was a misjudgement and poor professionalism dealing with what turned out the be an emergency and ended up fatal, (i'm not saying it was ayhuasca) the important point is that there was a vulnerable person after participating this workshop whom didn't get appropriate care and as a result of that died. so be safe when you explore... be safe

..ayahuasca is potentially dangerous (as all shamans say)
people should not partake in sessions where money (or ego) are factors in the session taking place..
the dietary restrictions of the old always (incl. sexual abstinence) should be taken seriously..
the holder of the circle must take complete responsibility for this...

i'm not accusing nor wishing ill will. this is just a really sad story that happened. It wasn't the fault of ayahuasca nor peter's fault that this person died, ayahuasca is not a bad drug ...this is not what i'm saying... all i want to bring across is please be safe when you do it. (it was a misjudgement and poor professionalism dealing with what turned out the be an emergency and ended up fatal, (i'm not saying it was ayhuasca) the important point is that there was a vulnerable person after participating this workshop whom didn't get appropriate care and as a result of that died. so be safe when you explore... be safe

..having worked with the vine for over 20 years, i firmly hold the circle holder responsible and would similarly take and accept responsibility if any such thing happened under my supervision..i agree it is not the vine's fault..

..it's not peters 'fault', but it's his responsibility..

The problem I see here amy, is the lack of information. universecannon asked some great questions and without answers I don't it's fair to make attempts to evaluate either the situation or Peter or ayahuasca.

nen888, do you have any new information about the dietary interactions ? If I remember correctly we established that for the majority of people those restrictions aren't needed and that there isn't a consensus (in between different shamans/tribes) what an "aya diet" consists of.

..there is no consensus diet, but shamanic traditions mostly agree on having one..
the 'no need for diet' approach is, to me, based on the kinds of doses which create the basic activation of dmt with harmalas..'santo-diame' brews are similar..but, the much stronger brews (sometimes with other admixtures) sometimes given by old-school ayahuasqeros are very demanding of diet unless one wants toxic effects..also, how diet effects the subtler psychological state is often ignored..not to mention how it affects heart rate, which is relevant to some but not others..experienced shamans warn of fatalities if certain restrictions are not followed..

i'm an advocate of much of the old wisdom..they worked this stuff out..better safe than sorry, i believe..

There are many type´s of ayahuasca brews. The types of brew (50 grams of caapi or 3 grams of rue, with DMT admixture) that have become popular in the west, are totally safe for people who´re not on medication or who don´t suffer from a serious health problem already, IMHO.