Spirit Research

Resilience before ayahuasca retreats linked to tougher trips, study finds

People who scored higher on resilience before attending ayahuasca retreats tended to report more intense challenging experiences during the ceremonies, according to a longitudinal study published in Psychedelic Medicine and reported by PsyPost. The study, led by Yitong Xin and colleagues, also found that resilience strengthened the link between those difficult experiences and an increased search for meaning in life a month later.

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How the researchers framed resilience and the brew#

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew brewed from plants used by Indigenous communities in the Amazon for religious, spiritual and therapeutic purposes, and consuming it may produce profound visions and expanded awareness along with nausea, vomiting, fear, paranoia or distressing hallucinations, PsyPost reports; these adverse reactions are described in the study as challenges or challenging experiences.

Resilience is generally defined as the capacity to adapt positively and recover from stressful situations, and researchers have tied it to factors such as self-esteem, self-regulation, optimism and social support, according to the Wikipedia entry on psychological resilience. Xin and colleagues set out to test whether this capacity shapes how people respond to ayahuasca's harder moments, PsyPost reports.

The study measured resilience at the start of an ayahuasca retreat, then tracked difficult moments participants described upon completing the retreat and psychospiritual outcomes reported one month later, PsyPost reports.

What earlier ayahuasca research has found#

A separate exploratory clinical trial published in Scientific Reports found that combining ayahuasca with specialized grief therapy produced greater reductions in grief severity than therapy alone or no treatment among people bereaved by the loss of a close family member, PsyPost reports, and those improvements held up when participants were checked three months after the interventions ended.

A study of more than 800 Brazilian adults demonstrated that individuals with extensive prior experience consuming ayahuasca showed reduced depression, anxiety and stress compared to those preparing for a first-time ceremony, along with stronger spiritual well-being and lower alcohol use, Legal Reader reports. Researchers grouped participants by prior use, from none to more than 20 times, and cautioned that the results do not prove the drink caused the differences observed, according to Legal Reader and News-Medical.

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said on the Not Just Football podcast that ayahuasca helped his own healing and that he would not rule out using it again, despite not currently intending to do so, Steelers Now reports.

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