“Ayahuasca ceremony” sounds like one thing, but researchers describe several. In Shipibo-Konibo healing in Peru, a healer sings songs called icaros, and fieldwork shows that historically the healer, not the patient, often drank. The anthropologist Bernd Brabec de Mori writes that the word “ceremony” itself appeared in the 1990s, for sessions involving visitors (Brabec de Mori, 2021).
In the Brazilian churches, services are built around hymns. A 2009 US federal court found that at one Oregon Santo Daime church, hymns constitute doctrine, and services last several hours and sometimes almost all night (Church of the Holy Light of the Queen v. Mukasey, 2009).
Retreats for visitors are the newest form. One 2025 study described a four-day retreat with 36 participants whose ceremonies began at 9 pm and lasted six hours, with music and guided meditations (Sznitman et al., 2025). Safety practice varies: among 49 organizations advertising retreats, 34 (69.4%) worked with a licensed health professional or someone with emergency training (McGuire et al., 2026).
Canada’s travel advice for Peru says ceremonies have led to serious illness, injury, assault and the death of several tourists, and advises Canadians to avoid them (Government of Canada). In Canada itself, DMT is a Schedule III controlled substance.
Sources
- Brabec de Mori, 2021, Frontiers in Psychology: social attribution and ayahuasca healing
- Church of the Holy Light of the Queen v. Mukasey, 615 F. Supp. 2d 1210 (D. Or. 2009)
- McGuire et al., 2026, JAMA Network Open: safety practices of psychedelic retreats
- Government of Canada: travel advice for Peru
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