Introduction
Psychotria viridis, chacruna, is an evergreen understorey shrub of humid tropical America and the DMT-bearing leaf of the most widespread form of ayahuasca, cooked with the caapi vine. Swallowed alone, its DMT is broken down by monoamine oxidase; the β-carbolines of Banisteriopsis caapi inhibit MAO-A and let it act. Its DMT content varies widely between plants and samples. No archaeological remain has securely identified the species: Ruiz and Pavón described it in 1799 without recording any use, and the first secure chemical and ethnographic record dates from 1970–1972.
All sections
| Botanical name | Psychotria viridis |
|---|---|
| Taxa | Rubiaceae · Gentianales · Angiosperms |
| Traditional names | Chacruna · chacrona · rainha · chacrona folha · amiruca · oco-yagé |
| Regions | Humid tropical America: Mesoamerica and the Greater Antilles through northern and western South America, including Amazonian Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil. |
| Ethnographic entheogenic use | Chacruna is the DMT-bearing leaf of the most widespread form of ayahuasca, cooked with the caapi vine among the Huni Kuin, Shipibo-Konibo and many other peoples. Its first secure chemical and ethnographic documentation dates from 1970–1972, and the formula travelled through Indigenous, riverine, mission and urban networks (Rivier and Lindgren, 1972; Gow, 1994). |
01Ethnobotany of Psychotria viridis
Botanical Info
| Accepted name | Psychotria viridis Ruiz & Pav., 1799 — accepted by Plants of the World Online |
|---|---|
| Original publication | Flora Peruviana, et Chilensis, volume 2, p. 61, plate 210, fig. b (Ruiz and Pavón, 1799). An original expedition drawing by José Brunete survives in Madrid. |
| Family / order | Rubiaceae, subfamily Rubioideae, tribe Psychotrieae · Gentianales. |
| Life form | Evergreen, usually multi-stemmed understorey shrub or small tree, commonly 2–5 m tall. |
| Native range | Humid tropical America: Mesoamerica and the Greater Antilles through northern and western South America, including Amazonian Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil. It occurs in moist lowland and premontane forest, river terraces and secondary growth. |
| Cultivated range | Widely cultivated in western Amazonian household and specialist gardens, Brazilian religious communities, retreat centres and ethnobotanical collections; established in tropical and frost-free subtropical regions beyond its native range. |
| Local names | Chacruna / chakruna / chacrona in Peru and regional Spanish; chacrona, folha and rainha in Brazilian ayahuasca religions; amiruca / samiruca and oco-yagé occur in some regional literatures but may also name related species. Botanical identity needs more than a vernacular name. |
| Conservation | Least Concern Assessed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, while local wild populations and ritual cultivars remain exposed to habitat conversion and unrecorded trade (Machuca Machuca, 2022). |
Territories
- 1Huni Kuin / Cashinahua · Cashinahua material in the first secure chemical–ethnographic record (Der Marderosian et al., 1970), and ayahuasca among Cashinahua, Sharanahua, Culina and Piro (Rivier and Lindgren, 1972)
- 2Cueva del Chileno, Bolivia · a ritual bundle of c. 905–1170 CE containing DMT with harmine, bufotenine, cocaine and benzoylecgonine (Miller et al., 2019)
Deep Time
- c. 905–1170 CEDMT, with harmine, bufotenine, cocaine and benzoylecgonine, in a ritual bundle from Cueva del Chileno, Bolivia: an ancient multi-plant assemblage. The plant that supplied the DMT is unknown.
- 1799Ruiz and Pavón describe P. viridis from Peruvian expedition material, recording no entheogenic use.
- 1970Der Marderosian and colleagues publish chemical and ethnographic work on Cashinahua material: the first secure record of the leaf in ayahuasca.
- 1972Rivier and Lindgren analyse ayahuasca and its plants among Cashinahua, Sharanahua, Culina and Piro communities.
- 1981–1982In Iquitos, the vegetalista Don Emilio Andrade Gómez tells Luna that without chacruna no visions appear.
Morphology and propagation
Morphology
The plant bears opposite, simple leaves generally 5–15 cm long, elliptic to obovate, with entire margins, acute to acuminate tips and five to ten pairs of secondary veins. Interpetiolar stipules protect each new node; when they fall they leave a transverse scar with a reddish-brown line of hairs. Terminal or subterminal branching inflorescences carry many small, white, tubular five-lobed flowers. The fruits are small drupes that ripen red and contain two grooved pyrenes, each usually enclosing one seed.
Its most useful living diagnostic characters are the foveolae or domatia on the underside of many leaves: narrow pockets beside the midrib, often opening where a secondary vein meets it. These chambers shelter mites and vary in number and form among leaves. They help distinguish chacruna from several traded lookalikes, but no single leaf character is infallible. Flowers, fruits, stipules, micromorphology and authenticated voucher material provide stronger identification, especially for dried or fragmented products (Hamilton, 1989; Kowalczuk et al., 2015).
Related and confused plants
Psychotria is one of the largest angiosperm genera and has proved phylogenetically complex. Organellar-genome analysis places P. viridis within Psychotrieae while confirming that older broad concepts of Psychotria span more than one lineage (Varani et al., 2022). Psychotria carthagenensis, frequently called samiruca or amiruca, is a close ritual substitute, but chemical studies report DMT-rich, DMT-poor and DMT-absent material under that name. Diplopterys cabrerana—chaliponga, chagropanga or chagro—is an unrelated Malpighiaceae vine and the major DMT leaf of many Colombian and Ecuadorian yagé preparations.
Commercial fragmentation intensifies ambiguity. A study of material sold as P. viridis found botanical and chemical heterogeneity, including samples without detectable DMT. Chemical detection alone is weak evidence of species because DMT occurs in many plants, while morphology alone may fail when leaves are powdered. Forensic and ethnobotanical identification therefore answer different questions: taxon, alkaloid content, provenance and ritual name require separate evidence (Kowalczuk et al., 2015).
Propagation and cultivation
Chacruna is propagated from fresh seed, stem cuttings and, characteristically, leaf cuttings. Adventitious plantlets can arise from wounded leaf veins when a leaf or section is held against moist substrate. Seeds contain an underdeveloped embryo and may germinate slowly; viability declines with poor storage. The shrub favours warmth, humidity, filtered light and freely drained but moisture-retentive soil. It tolerates repeated leaf harvest when plants are established, and pruning encourages branching.
Cultivated lineages vary in leaf shape, domatia, vigour, cold tolerance and chemistry. Full-sun and shade-grown clones show different metabolomic and lipidomic responses, especially among flavonoids, although a 2025 year-round clonal study found no statistically significant DMT difference across its tested seasons and light conditions (Matos et al., 2025). This contrasts with earlier field studies that detected environmental or harvest-related variation, illustrating how genotype and experimental design influence the result (Cavalcante et al., 2018).
02Chemistry
Entheogenic & associated compounds
N,N-Dimethyltryptamine
N-Methyltryptamine
Harmine
Serotonin
DMT pharmacology
DMT is a tryptamine structurally related to serotonin. Its psychedelic effects are mediated principally by agonism at cortical 5-HT2A receptors, with activity at other serotonin receptors contributing to the total profile. Binding to sigma-1 receptors and trace-amine-associated receptors has been demonstrated in experimental systems, but their importance to human visionary phenomenology remains unresolved (Carbonaro and Gatch, 2016). DMT is rapidly metabolised by monoamine oxidase A to indole-3-acetic acid and other metabolites.
Orally administered DMT is ordinarily inactivated before reaching effective systemic concentrations. Harmine and harmaline from B. caapi reversibly inhibit MAO-A; tetrahydroharmine contributes weaker MAO inhibition and additional serotonergic effects. The paired pharmacology gives chacruna DMT a slower onset and longer active window than inhaled or intravenous DMT, while the β-carbolines contribute their own bodily, oneiric and cognitive effects (McKenna, Towers and Abbott, 1984; Callaway et al., 1999; Riba et al., 2003).
Biosynthesis and leaf chemistry
Plant DMT biosynthesis is generally modelled from tryptophan through decarboxylation to tryptamine, followed by two sequential methylations: tryptamine to N-methyltryptamine and then DMT. The responsible aromatic amino-acid decarboxylase and indolethylamine N-methyltransferase pathways remain active areas of genomic and biochemical study in chacruna. Older analyses also report traces of methyl-tetrahydro-β-carboline and other minor bases, while untargeted work identifies triterpenes, phytosterols, flavonoids and long-chain lipids (Rivier and Lindgren, 1972; Soares et al., 2017; Matos et al., 2025).
Reported DMT concentration varies by individual, provenance, season, cultivation and analytical method. In 36 Brazilian leaf samples collected across 22 sites, some plants contained little or no detectable DMT, while others were appreciably richer (Callaway, Brito and Neves, 2005). Controlled 2025 metabolomics found seasonal change in many flavonoids and energy-related pathways but no statistically significant DMT shift in its clonal population. “Chacruna” therefore names a plant of variable chemistry.
Preparation as a plant relation
In common Peruvian and Brazilian preparations, fresh or dried leaves are layered or combined with cleaned and pounded caapi stem and repeatedly decocted. Selection may attend to plant lineage, leaf maturity, weather, prayer, ritual calendar and the authority of the person gathering. Santo Daime feitio and União do Vegetal preparations turn harvest, leaf cleaning, pounding, fire tending and reduction into collective liturgical labour. Preparation is simultaneously extraction, social organisation and transmission of doctrine.
- Supported
DMT source. Authenticated P. viridis commonly contains DMT as its dominant alkaloid, with major quantitative variability among plants and samples.
- Supported
Paired activation. Caapi β-carbolines permit orally ingested leaf DMT to remain bioavailable long enough to produce sustained psychedelic effects.
- Attribution
Plant versus beverage. Clinical and phenomenological studies usually administer complete ayahuasca or synthetic DMT, so chacruna’s own share of the observed effects is uncertain.
03Tradition, ritual & cultural use
Oldest evidenced or proposed human use
No archaeological remain has securely identified P. viridis. A c. 905–1170 CE ritual bundle from Cueva del Chileno, Bolivia, contained DMT together with harmine, bufotenine, cocaine and benzoylecgonine, demonstrating an ancient multi-plant psychotropic assemblage (Miller et al., 2019). DMT occurs in numerous South American taxa, so the source—chacruna, Diplopterys, Anadenanthera, Virola or another—stays unknown. The find gives no evidence of the modern caapi–chacruna recipe.
Ruiz and Pavón formally described the species in 1799 from Peruvian expedition material without recording an entheogenic use. Nineteenth-century descriptions of ayahuasca focused principally on the vine and often failed to identify admixture leaves. The first secure chemical–ethnographic documentation appeared in work with Cashinahua material published by Der Marderosian and colleagues in 1970, followed by Rivier and Lindgren’s 1972 analysis of ayahuasca and its plants among Cashinahua, Sharanahua, Culina and Piro communities. These studies helped establish DMT-bearing Psychotria as one component of western Amazonian preparations (Der Marderosian et al., 1970; Rivier and Lindgren, 1972).
The documentary chronology dates the record, and local knowledge is older. It does show that the geographically widespread caapi–chacruna formula was historically assembled and circulated through Indigenous, riverine, rubber-boom, mission, urban and religious networks. Critical ethnohistory treats present distribution as evidence of successful transmission; unchanged pre-Columbian antiquity for any given formulation would need separate proof (Gow, 1994; Brabec de Mori, 2011).
Peoples, territories and traditions
- Purús–Juruá
Huni Kuin/Cashinahua, Sharanahua, Culina and related traditions. Mid-twentieth-century ethnography and chemistry documented DMT-bearing Psychotria in beverages used for collective seeing, learning, social knowledge and consultation about distant persons or illness. Huni Kuin nixi pae now circulates through village, urban Indigenous and international ceremonial networks (Der Marderosian et al., 1970; Rivier and Lindgren, 1972).
- Ucayali
Shipibo-Konibo oni practice. Chacruna is a common contemporary companion leaf in preparations led by onanya. Vision, bewá song, tobacco smoke, perfume, extraction and protective design form one therapeutic field. Ethnohistorical work indicates that recipes and specialist forms have changed through long exchange with neighbouring peoples, towns, missions and mestizo healers (Gebhart-Sayer, 1985; Brabec de Mori and Mori Silvano de Brabec, 2009).
- Iquitos–Pucallpa–Tarapoto
Mestizo vegetalismo. Chacruna appears as a companion and teacher within ayahuasquero practice. Dietas, tobacco, ícaros, plant baths, perfumes and Catholic prayer create diagnostic and healing settings. Practitioners distinguish named leaf forms and may attribute clarity, colour or visionary light to chacruna (Luna, 1984; Luna, 1986; Beyer, 2009).
- Napo and eastern Andean piedmont
Kichwa and neighbouring traditions. P. viridis occurs in some Ecuadorian and Peruvian preparations, but Diplopterys cabrerana and other leaves are also important. “Chacruna” is one leaf among several across yagé and ayahuasca traditions.
- Brazil · Santo Daime
Rainha and the work of the feitio. The leaf is commonly called rainha, “queen”, and combined with jagube vine to produce daime. Hymn singing, dance formations, uniforms, the central table, celestial and Marian imagery, and collective discipline shape the sacrament’s effects. The preparation work itself transmits hierarchy, gendered offices and religious knowledge (MacRae, 1992; Hartogsohn, 2021).
- Brazil · União do Vegetal
Chacrona and mariri. UDV prepares hoasca or vegetal from chacrona leaf and mariri vine. Sessions centre spoken doctrine, question and answer, music, mental concentration and the authority of Mestre Gabriel’s teachings. The drink’s burracheira is cultivated as a state of heightened perception and learning (Grob et al., 1996; Labate and MacRae, 2010).
- Brazil · Barquinha
Daime, mediumship and maritime cosmology. Barquinha traditions combine the beverage with Christian devotion, Afro-Brazilian mediumship, healing works and a symbolic boat or barque. Chacrona participates within an institution whose songs, spirit incorporations and charitable works differ from Santo Daime and UDV (Araújo, 2002).
Ritual practice and material culture
Ritual practice: seeing, diagnosis and healing
In western Amazonian curing, vision is a practical mode of diagnosis. A specialist may perceive pathogenic darts or substances, sorcery, soul loss, broken relations, plant owners or the actions of distant persons. Chacruna’s contribution is often described through illumination: it allows forms to become visible or sharp enough for the healer to inspect and act. Caapi supplies force, depth or command in complementary local formulations. These are emic distinctions that organise practice; chemical analysis describes the same pairing as DMT plus β-carbolines without exhausting its ritual meanings.
Healing proceeds through song, breath, tobacco, perfume, suction, massage, prayer and additional plants. Ícaros or bewá can summon assistance, direct the apparent motion of visions, extract or transform illness, establish arkana protection and close the body after work. Diet and abstention cultivate sensitivity and relations with plant teachers. The authority to interpret what is seen develops through apprenticeship and outcome (Luna, 1984; Beyer, 2009; Brabec de Mori, 2009).
Art and material culture
Shipibo-Konibo kené is applied to textiles, ceramics, bodies and architecture and is associated with beauty, ordering and identity. Ayahuasca-related healing accounts connect geometric vision, song and design, yet later Indigenous and ethnomusicological scholarship rejects a simple one-to-one transcription system in which every pattern can be literally sung. Visual and sonic practices correspond through embodied concepts of movement, proportion and efficacy while retaining distinct techniques and histories (Gebhart-Sayer, 1985; Brabec de Mori and Mori Silvano de Brabec, 2009; Belaunde, 2009).
Pablo Amaringo’s paintings offer a mestizo Amazonian archive of the visionary worlds made accessible through ayahuasca. Serpents, plant spirits, mermaids, healers, pathogenic projectiles, celestial cities, doctors, saints and technological craft coexist in densely structured scenes. Luna and Amaringo relate specific images to plant knowledge and ícaros; the paintings document one influential Peruvian visionary repertoire (Luna and Amaringo, 1991).
Brazilian material forms include the cross and star, uniforms, hymnbooks, maracas, the Santo Daime table, UDV salon seating and the collective architecture of the feitio. Each disciplines posture, attention, gender, sequence and memory. Their efficacy is distributed across beverage, body, sound, spatial order and institution.
Healing traditions
Vegetalismo and pajelança
Don Emilio Andrade Gómez, the Iquitos vegetalista Luna worked with in 1981–1982, insisted that chacruna be added to the brew, since without it no visions appear: the chacruna, he said, is like the “mirror” of ayahuasca (Luna, 1984b, p. 126). His practice is described in the Vegetalismo and Pajelança Healing Complex.
Indigenous Amazonian shamanisms
In the Huni Kuin origin myth, both plants of the brew grow from the body of the ancestor Yube after his death: “From his body will grow the vine and the chacruna leave, used together to prepare the brew” (Lagrou, 2018, p. 35). The myth is retold in the Indigenous Amazonian Shamanisms.
04Cosmology & key terms
The leaf that gives light
A widespread contemporary formulation contrasts the vine’s force with the leaf’s light: caapi establishes the passage or power, while chacruna makes its inhabitants and forms visible. The contrast appears in Peruvian vegetalismo, retreat discourse and Brazilian religion with different theological elaborations. It is best read as a recurrent relational model. In many Indigenous preparations the principal visionary leaf is another species, and caapi itself may be held to see and teach.
Madres, owners and plant teachers
Vegetalistas describe medicinal plants as having madres, owners or spirits with whom disciplined relations can be established. Chacruna may appear as a woman, voice, luminous presence, patterned domain or teacher of song. Luna’s informants treat the plant’s mother as its living agency and understand songs acquired during diets or visions as evidence of relation (Luna, 1984; Luna, 1986). The botanical shrub, prepared leaf, visionary person and knowledge received from it are distinguishable but mutually implicated.
Brazilian doctrines
Rainha, Queen of the Forest and Marian registers
In Santo Daime the chacrona leaf is commonly rainha, queen. The name resonates within a wider cosmology of the Rainha da Floresta, the Virgin of the Conception, the Moon, forest sovereignty and the divine feminine encountered in Mestre Irineu’s foundational narratives. The vine–leaf conjunction is frequently coded as masculine and feminine, joined in the sacrament. Hymns, however, distribute “queen”, “mother”, “forest” and Marian titles across several divine referents, so the botanical leaf has no single fixed goddess identity (MacRae, 1992; Groisman, 2000; Barnard, 2014).
Hoasca origins and doctrinal memory
UDV teaching situates mariri and chacrona within sacred histories transmitted orally through Mestre Gabriel’s doctrine. The plants are ingredients and participants in the restoration of primordial knowledge; their union produces vegetal and the state called burracheira. Narrative authority resides in the session, its sequence of calls, questions, teachings and remembered stories. Published summaries necessarily disclose less than the internally transmitted doctrinal system (Labate and MacRae, 2010).
Visionary beings and perspectival worlds
Serpents, jaguars, birds, aquatic people, ancestors and plant owners recur within western Amazonian accounts. Their meaning reaches beyond resemblance to entoptic forms. Amazonian perspectival ontologies recognise animals and spirits as subjects possessing social worlds and points of view; visionary practice can temporarily alter the participant’s location within this field. The leaf’s “light” therefore reveals agencies and relations (Viveiros de Castro, 1998; Gearin and Deveney, 2021).
05Visionary phenomenology
Time course
Chacruna drunk with caapi. Bands are the ranges this entry gives for caapi–chacruna preparations. The two marks are peak DMT in controlled dosing (about 1.5 hours; Riba et al., 2003) and mean time to peak plasma DMT in a 15-person ceremonial study (about 108 minutes; Callaway et al., 1999). Not charted: the leaf swallowed alone, whose DMT does not act without an MAO-A inhibitor; and isolated inhaled or intravenous DMT, for which the entry gives onset in seconds and a main visionary interval often under 20–30 minutes.
Phenomenological profile
The profile lists effects the sources report, for each preparation separately, grouped by domain. Each row gives the grade, how often the sources say the effect occurs (only where they say so; most do not) and the kinds of source behind it. A chip naming a compound, such as “Trial · psilocybin”, means the evidence comes from studies of that compound rather than of the preparation itself; “partial” means the route, purity or dose differs from the traditional preparation, so the row cannot be graded above supported. The line under each preparation says which domains have evidence entered here. A domain with nothing entered has not yet been assessed in this profile; that is not a finding that the literature is silent, and the article may discuss it. Open a row for the note and the sources.
With caapiayahuasca, daime, hoasca
Evidence entered for 7 of 8 domains. Not yet entered: states of consciousness.
The leaf supplies DMT, which caapi’s β-carbolines make active by mouth. Trials and surveys of the complete drink attest these rows in full; most do not record which DMT-bearing leaf their brew contained. Studies of DMT injected or inhaled count at partial weight: the same molecule by another route, with effects that begin within seconds and are largely over within half an hour (Strassman et al., 1994).
Visual
Geometric patterningLattices, spirals, tunnels and other repeating forms seen with eyes closed or overlaid on the visual field.SupportedCommonExperience
Early visual phases commonly contain grids, zigzags, spirals, tessellations, tunnels and rapidly recombining colour, overlaying the room with open eyes or expanding behind closed eyelids (Shanon, 2002).
Immersive realmsCoherent places or events that surround the experiencer, who seems to be located in them rather than looking at images.SupportedExperienceSurvey · dmt, partial
Geometry may deepen into fully articulated scenes: forests, rivers, palaces, temples, cities, processions and distant or apparently historical worlds (Shanon, 2002). In a field study of inhaled DMT, all 36 reports described emerging into other worlds, from natural to artificial scenes (Michael, Luke and Robinson, 2021). Inhaled DMT acts within minutes and briefly, so this counts at partial weight. Read about the phenomenology of immersive realms →
Other senses
Sound–vision couplingMusic or voice changing the form, movement, colour or emotional tone of imagery.SupportedEthnographyExperience
Ícaros are said to direct the apparent motion of visions (Luna, 1984; Beyer, 2009); music can appear to draw lines through visual space, change colours or call a new scene into view, and Santo Daime hymns and UDV music shape a session’s course (Hartogsohn, 2021).
Body
Nausea and purgingNausea, vomiting or diarrhoea during the acute state.SupportedExperienceTrialSurveyPharmacology
A toxicological review lists vomiting among the effects of DMT-containing ayahuasca (Brito-da-Costa, Dias-da-Silva and Gomes, 2020). Nausea or vomiting dominated acute physical effects in the Global Ayahuasca Survey, where 69.9% of 8,216 respondents reported at least one (Bouso et al., 2022); controlled dosing also records nausea (Riba et al., 2003), although in one laboratory trial no volunteer vomited (Riba et al., 2001). In written ceremony accounts, vomiting comes at the peak of fear and precedes a sudden shift “from hell to heaven” (Kjellgren, Eriksson and Norlander, 2009).
Tremor and motor slowingTrembling, impaired coordination or slowed movement.SupportedTrial
Controlled administration records impaired coordination (Riba et al., 2003).
Raised blood pressureA measured rise in arterial blood pressure during the acute state.SupportedTrial
The higher standardised dose raised mean diastolic pressure by about 9 mmHg at 75 minutes; other changes were smaller and not statistically significant (Riba et al., 2003). A measured sign rather than an experience.
Altered bodily sensationTingling, vibration, heat, cold, heaviness, pressure or internal movement felt in the body.SupportedTrial
The somaesthesia scale of the Hallucinogen Rating Scale rose even at the lowest dose tested; volunteers described an “electric / tingling feeling” and feeling hot or cold (Riba et al., 2001).
Self and unity
Ego dissolutionLoosening or loss of the sense of being a bounded self.SupportedExperienceSurvey
Fifty-seven ceremony attendants in Colombia and the Netherlands scored a mean of 60 (SD 27.3) on the Ego Dissolution Inventory, and the degree of dissolution correlated with later changes in affect, life satisfaction and mindfulness (Uthaug et al., 2018); the relation was replicated with 73 attendants (van Oorsouw et al., 2021). Some experiences involve dissolution of personal boundaries or identification with animals, plants, other people or a wider field of consciousness (Shanon, 2002; Gearin and Calavia Sáez, 2021).
Unitive experienceThe sense that self and world, or all things, are one or interconnected.SupportedExperience
A translucent web perceived across open-eyed reality becomes, in Shanon’s analysis, both an image and an apparent demonstration that all things are connected (Shanon, 2002). Northern European participants describe the sense that “all is one” within limitless expansive states (Kjellgren, Eriksson and Norlander, 2009).
Death and rebirthExperiencing one’s own death, and a return or renewal.SupportedExperienceTrial · dmt, partial
Qualitative studies of vegetalismo tourism report death and rebirth among the experiences participants call most relevant (Wolff et al., 2019); written ceremony accounts include death and reincarnation (Kjellgren, Eriksson and Norlander, 2009). Both rest on small, self-selected samples. Near-death features rose significantly after intravenous DMT against placebo, and overlapped with those of people who had had a near-death experience (Timmermann et al., 2018). DMT was injected, briefer and faster than the drink, so this counts at partial weight.
Affect
Fear and dreadFear, panic, chaos or a sense of threat during the experience.SupportedEthnographyExperienceTrial · dmt, partialPharmacology · dmt, partial
DMT-containing ayahuasca can produce intense anxiety and disorientation (Brito-da-Costa, Dias-da-Silva and Gomes, 2020). A “contractile frightening state” beginning about half an hour after drinking: loss of control, chaos, sometimes the belief that one is going mad, and the reliving of traumatic memories (Kjellgren, Eriksson and Norlander, 2009). A vegetalista describes the brew as opening “unthinkable horizons of beauty and terror” (Luna, 1984b, p. 130). After intravenous DMT, euphoria alternated or coexisted with anxiety (Strassman et al., 1994). DMT was injected, briefer and faster than the drink, so this counts at partial weight.
Bliss and euphoriaIntense joy, beauty, love or wellbeing.SupportedExperienceTrial · dmt, partial
Bliss, beauty and love follow the turn from fear (Kjellgren, Eriksson and Norlander, 2009). Under controlled dosing, the euphoria scale of the Addiction Research Center Inventory rose at the two higher doses, with dysphoria also rising at the highest (Riba et al., 2001). After intravenous DMT, euphoria alternated or coexisted with anxiety (Strassman et al., 1994). DMT was injected, briefer and faster than the drink, so this counts at partial weight.
Cognition
NoesisThe felt disclosure of knowledge: understanding that seems to arrive with what is perceived.SupportedExperience
The feeling that one has been shown knowledge is a central phenomenological fact, even when the external truth of the content remains a separate question (Shanon, 2002).
IneffabilityThe experience resists description in words.SupportedExperience
Many participants found the experience hard to put into words (Kjellgren, Eriksson and Norlander, 2009).
Loss of ordinary awarenessOrdinary sense, orientation or self-control is lost or overwhelmed.SupportedTrial · dmt, partial
Intravenous DMT brought a “loss of control” with an overwhelming “rush”, leading to a dissociated state that replaced ongoing experience (Strassman et al., 1994). DMT was injected, briefer and faster than the drink, so this counts at partial weight.
Relation to other beings
Autonomous entitiesBeings experienced as acting, communicating or observing independently of the experiencer’s will.SupportedRecurrentEthnographyExperienceSurvey · dmt, partial
Serpents, felines, birds, human teachers, ancestors, religious figures and technological beings may appear as agents (Shanon, 2002). Vegetalistas meet the leaf’s mother as a woman, voice, luminous presence or teacher of song (Luna, 1984; Luna, 1986). In the same field study, 34 of 36 inhaled-DMT experiences (94%) included an encounter with sentient entities experienced as beyond the self, most with individual characteristics (Michael, Luke and Robinson, 2021); partial weight, for the route. Read about the phenomenology of autonomous entities →
Teaching by the plantThe plant or its spirit is experienced as a teacher, giving knowledge, songs, diet or diagnosis.SupportedEthnography
Luna’s informants treat the plant’s mother as its living agency, and understand songs acquired during diets or visions as evidence of that relation (Luna, 1984; Luna, 1986).
Leaf aloneswallowed, no MAO-A inhibitor
Evidence entered for 1 of 8 domains. Not yet entered: other senses, body, self and unity, affect, cognition, relation to other beings, states of consciousness.
Without the β-carbolines of caapi the leaf’s DMT is broken down by monoamine oxidase.
Visual
Not establishedVisionary effects from the leaf swallowed alone. Orally administered DMT is ordinarily inactivated before reaching effective systemic concentrations (McKenna, Towers and Abbott, 1984).
Terms used within traditions. Each links to the complex where it is explained; they overlap with the effects above without translating them.
Phenomenology Discussion
Geometry, radiance and scene formation
Early visual phases commonly contain grids, zigzags, spirals, tessellations, tunnels and rapidly recombining colour. These can overlay the room with open eyes or expand behind closed eyelids. Geometry may acquire depth and become foliage, scales, feathers, architecture or an entry into fully articulated scenes. Participants report exceptional luminosity and detail: surfaces appear internally lit, boundaries pulse, and forms transform without obeying ordinary object permanence (Shanon, 2002).
Complex scenes include forests, rivers, palaces, temples, cities, processions, healing theatres and distant or apparently historical worlds. Serpents, felines, birds, human teachers, ancestors, religious figures, aliens or technological beings may appear as agents. Benny Shanon’s cognitive-phenomenological corpus distinguishes recurrent content from deeper structural changes in agency, identity, time, intentionality and perceived reality. The feeling that one has been shown knowledge—noesis—is a central phenomenological fact even when the external truth of the content remains a separate question (Shanon, 2002).
- Recurrent
Radiant complexity. Fine geometry, saturated colour and internally luminous scenes are among the most stable descriptive themes in DMT-rich ayahuasca reports.
Plant attribution within a compound experience
Practitioners often attribute visual brightness, colour, specificity and disclosure to chacruna, while caapi supplies bodily force, rhythm, depth or teaching. Laboratory pharmacology supports DMT’s major contribution to complex visual imagery, yet the orally active state depends on β-carbolines and unfolds more slowly than isolated DMT. Songs, darkness, posture, group expectation and the chemical ratio all affect whether experience remains geometric, becomes narrative or is organised as diagnosis.
Chacruna alone, swallowed without MAO-A inhibition, seldom reproduces ayahuasca’s visionary syndrome because its DMT is rapidly metabolised. Caapi-only preparations, by contrast, can be psychoactive and visionary. The phenomenological distinction is therefore relational: both plants are active.
- Source attribution
Chacruna-specific content. No controlled design can assign serpents, cities or entities to the leaf independently of caapi, participant and cultural setting.
Sound, body and healing action
Music can appear to draw lines through visual space, change colours, rotate patterned fields or call a new scene into view. In Shipibo-Konibo and vegetalista work, this coupling is understood as skilled action: the healer observes a patient and adjusts song, breath, tobacco and perfume. In Santo Daime, repeated hymns, maracá pulse and coordinated dance sustain attention and social order; UDV privileges seated concentration, speech and carefully timed recorded music. Different institutions produce different trajectories from overlapping chemistry (Hartogsohn, 2021).
The bodily field includes pressure, vibration, warmth and cold, altered balance, salivation, sweating, tremor and gastrointestinal urgency. Vomiting can be experienced as expulsion of illness, moral burden or intrusive force. Fear may change abruptly into relief, beauty or affection; autobiographical memory can carry unusual immediacy and moral weight. Other episodes involve apparent death, rebirth, dismemberment, identification with animals or plants, and loss of the ordinary boundary between self and world.
The Antipodes of the mind reveal a geography that is much more amazing.
- Relational
Music–vision coupling. Visual motion and affect commonly change with song; ceremonial specialists use this coupling diagnostically and therapeutically.
06Contemporary status
Contemporary expressions and economies
Chacruna remains a living ritual crop in Indigenous territories, mestizo healing centres, Santo Daime, União do Vegetal and Barquinha communities. Its cultivation now extends through urban gardens, church plantations and retreat-centre supply networks. Leaves circulate fresh, dried, refrigerated or as prepared beverage; value is created through horticulture, harvest, cooking, ceremony, music, accommodation and claims of lineage. Because leaf mass is repeatedly renewable and the shrub grows readily from cuttings, supply dynamics differ from harvesting decades-old wild caapi stems.
Transnational ayahuasca has brought chacruna into botanical collections and commercial nurseries far beyond Amazonia. It has also created new hybrids, selected clones and cultivation research. Public commerce often collapses chacruna, P. carthagenensis, “Nexus” hybrids and other Psychotria into chemical commodities. Authenticated community cultivation preserves a different set of values: named lineage, known effects, ritual provenance and continuity of collective preparation.
Conservation and biocultural continuity
The IUCN assessment of Least Concern reflects the species’ broad range and current global extinction risk; individual populations vary. Deforestation, forest fragmentation and conversion of river terraces can remove wild stands. Cultivation reduces direct pressure, but cloned gardens can narrow genetic diversity and detach plants from the ecologies, languages and practices through which local kinds are recognised (Machuca Machuca, 2022; Ermakova et al., 2025).
Research priorities include population genetics, verified living collections, cultivar documentation and the conservation of related admixture species. The 2022 plastid and mitochondrial genomes provide tools for phylogeny and identification, while tissue-culture systems offer ex-situ propagation. In-situ habitat and community-held horticultural knowledge remain irreplaceable (Varani et al., 2022; Andrade et al., 2025).
Law and patents
Legality
DMT is listed in Schedule I of the 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances. The living plant has no separate listing in that convention, and international control of a pure compound leaves the status of DMT-bearing plants and decoctions to national law. National laws differ sharply: some name P. viridis, some treat leaf material or ayahuasca as a DMT preparation, and others recognise specified Indigenous or religious use. France and Poland have explicitly controlled the plant; in the United Kingdom a DMT-containing preparation is exposed to Class A controls.
Brazil regulates religious ayahuasca practice through CONAD Resolution No. 1 of 2010. Peru’s 2008 cultural-heritage declaration protects the traditional knowledge and uses of ayahuasca among native Amazonian communities. In the United States, Gonzales v. O Centro (2006) and subsequent church agreements created fact-specific religious protections, short of a general national exemption for DMT-containing leaf or beverage (Labate and Feeney, 2012).
Patents and pharmaceutical translation
No prominent modern plant patent comparable to the “Da Vine” caapi case centres on P. viridis. Patent activity instead claims synthetic DMT compositions, salts, delivery systems, controlled infusions, deuterated analogues and oral or transmucosal combinations with MAO inhibitors. US11602521B2 concerns DMT compositions and methods; WO2021259962A1 claims combinations and kits involving DMT and β-carbolines, including plant-source examples. Such claims generally concern formulations or methods, with chacruna as a species outside them.
The distinction matters scientifically and legally. Pharmaceutical DMT can be chemically identical to a plant alkaloid while differing in route, duration, accompanying β-carbolines, intellectual history and therapeutic institution. Patent novelty is assessed through claims and prior art, which leave out much of the ethnobotanical system that made oral DMT combinations historically visible.
Research, safety and open questions
Latest research: plant systems, brains and clinics
- Organellar genomics
First genomic resources. The complete chloroplast and mitochondrial genomes clarified placement within Psychotrieae and supplied markers for future taxonomy and authentication (Varani et al., 2022).
- Metabolomics
Season and cultivation. A 2025 clonal study found strong seasonal or light-related variation in flavonoids, lipids and carbohydrate pathways, but no significant DMT difference under its tested conditions (Matos et al., 2025).
- Plant biotechnology
Callus and regeneration. Andrade et al. (2025) established callus culture, plantlet regeneration and in-vitro DMT production, with temporary-immersion plantlets surviving acclimatisation. This creates research and propagation capacity.
- Plasticity
Cell and animal models. DMT promotes structural and functional neural plasticity in experimental systems. Translation to lasting human therapeutic change remains under study, a long step from cultured neurons (Ly et al., 2018).
- Depression
Synthetic intravenous DMT. A 2026 phase IIa trial in 34 adults found a rapid reduction in depressive symptoms after one supported IV DMT session, with effects sustained during follow-up. It studied a standardised pharmaceutical route; chacruna and ayahuasca were outside it (Erritzoe et al., 2026).
- Neuroimaging
Large-scale connectivity. A 2026 international mega-analysis integrated 11 datasets across DMT, ayahuasca and other psychedelics and found increased coupling between transmodal and sensory networks alongside drug-specific variability (Girn et al., 2026).
Open questions on this entry
Safety and law
07Cross-correlations
| Kingdom / ecology | Plantae · humid-forest understorey shrub · Rubiaceae · leaf- and seed-propagated ritual crop |
|---|---|
| Principal compound | N,N-dimethyltryptamine ↳ orally activated in many preparations by caapi β-carbolines · also in the bark resin of Virola theiodora, taken there as snuff |
| Primary companion | Banisteriopsis caapi · related alternatives include Psychotria carthagenensis and Diplopterys cabrerana |
| Cultural complexes | Huni Kuin nixi pae · Shipibo-Konibo oni · Peruvian vegetalismo · Santo Daime · União do Vegetal · Barquinha · transnational ayahuasca |
| Ritual associations | Visionary light · diagnosis · plant teaching · song · kené · Rainha · collective feitio · burracheira · visionary painting |
| Linked species | Banisteriopsis caapi · Psychotria carthagenensis · Diplopterys cabrerana · Nicotiana rustica · Brugmansia spp. |
| Vegetalismo and Pajelança | Vegetalismo and Pajelança Healing Complex: the leaf an Iquitos vegetalista called the “mirror” of ayahuasca. HEALING COMPLEX |
| Indigenous Amazonian Shamanisms | Indigenous Amazonian Shamanisms: the chacruna that grows with the vine from the body of the Huni Kuin ancestor Yube. INDIGENOUS COMPLEX |
08Bibliography
How to read the labels on each source
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