Quote
dabcult
for exemple I tought religious belief made a difference but you say No
So is it only a question of safety ?

The content of their religious beliefs cannot be considered in these cases. What the courts and the DEA can consider is whether it is a fake religion made up to get around the law. But that is not what we should get involved in. The DEA can figure that part out for themselves.

It is the safety issue that will matter to them. But we don't want to imply that ayahuasca is merely dangerous and should be banned, it can be a very valuable therapeutic tool. And people who use it alone as a form of self-therapy may have frightening or difficult experiences, but lasting harm is rare (and lasting benefit is possible). But group ceremonies are a different story, people can be harmed in incompetently run large group ceremonies. We don't want to say anything that would contribute to closing the door on legitimate uses of ayahuasca, or encourage them to go after individuals using it independently, but specify we are talking about the potential problems of large group ceremonies without competent leadership.

This is the latest video of TNT Guzman
[www.youtube.com]

Mostly in spanish where he seem to have promise this poor old guy(shaman he tells us ) and daughter to bring them to the USA to do ceremonies .
He surely as not told them that he himself cannot get into the USA right now ...and that there are many people that will try their best to keep him out of the USA ....I also learn that he is leasing a place in Peru to have this "shaman"
do ceremonies near Machu Pichu .....will the USA followers of TNT be invited to come to PERU and for large DONATION of of money be invited to those ceremonies ..?

This video is so sad in a way here TNT is dangling promises to an uneducated man of travel to the USA and probaly lots of $$$...when he himself cannot even get in the USA ..
So much for universal love, peace, brotherhood and sisterhood ...and the great benefits of mother Ayawaska in the hands of charlatan .

I just got word from a reliable source that AH has not yet submitted their DEA petition.

gayle Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I just got word from a reliable source that AH has
> not yet submitted their DEA petition.

This is very good to know, thank you.

Back on March 8 Trinity wrote "We are working closely with an amazing attorney who is helping us receive our DEA Exemption."
[ayahuascahealings.com] This and other statements could incorrectly lead people to believe that AH was just a week or so away from a DEA exemption. This is false. [www.bialabate.net]

In a recent marketing email [archive.aweber.com] Trinity claims AH will also be able to open in Mexico, once "we have a written statement from any local prosecuters, or the police".

I Know for sure that Trinity is sending mass email telling people that
they will be able to be taking ayahuasca in America if they join his church right now ...for only his church members will be able to attend ceremonies ..
If Gayle is right ....then it is a monumental scam ..by a guy who cannot even enter the USA ...

Okay, I heard from someone with a connection that they just submitted their application yesterday.

Quote
dabcult
I Know for sure that Trinity is sending mass email telling people that
they will be able to be taking ayahuasca in America if they join his church right now ...for only his church members will be able to attend ceremonies ..
If Gayle is right ....then it is a monumental scam ..by a guy who cannot even enter the USA ...

Yes, it is a monumental scam. As I described in the article, even if they did have permission to serve ayahuasca to the public, membership in a church has nothing to do with it.

But don't get into this if you write to the DEA, they can figure it out for themselves. (And getting into too many different things could make it sound like you have a personal grudge.) Just stick to the point that unqualified or incompetent people running large group ayahuasca ceremonies is not safe. Especially since they actually advertise on their web site that they can help people with PTSD, suicidal thoughts, etc. -- ayahuasca does have the potential to help with things like that, but only in skilled hands, and it can't be done in huge groups of twenty or forty or a hundred people. And these people have no competence for that kind of therapy.

The DEA doesn't know much about ayahuasca, it is relatively new on their radar, so they will be receptive to guidelines about how to think about it. We don't want to close the door to legitimate research and therapy -- ayahuasca can be an extremely valuable therapeutic tool in the right hands -- so you want to distinguish legitimate therapeutic and religious use from exploitation.

Since this is a forum about cults, I would guess that a priority here would be the fact that ayahuasca has a huge potential for exploitation by unscrupulous cult leaders (especially since many people would come who are looking for help with psychological problems, vulnerable and desperate people who would trustingly and perhaps tragically put themselves in the wrong hands). If the legal door were opened for any cult leader to start serving ayahuasca to people, especially in large groups, the kind of psychological damage you see happening to cult victims could become so much greater. So this, I imagine, would be the priority concern for people here, and it could be presented as a safety concern for the DEA, since safety is their main priority as well.

I would like to give a little background. I have been a moderator of the Ayahuasca forums for twelve years (and a member a few years longer) and (besides living for several years with Amazonian Indians, being a member of the Santo Daime church, and being a member of a network of academic researchers who study ayahuasca from many different angles) have had a front row seat for many people's experiences with ayahuasca.

Most people who take ayahuasca ARE benefitted, some experience tremendous benefit and healing. From my experience, the number of people with bad outcomes may be only about 2-3%. Nevertheless, given that more and more people are trying ayahuasca, probably tens of thousands since the ayahuasca tourist boom started in earnest about a decade ago, that is not an insignificant number, and the depth of the harm to those few people can be severe.

(AH has reportedly been receiving 100 inquiries a day, or 3000 a month, and they plan to open enough centers to accommodate these numbers, so using that informal percentage means that perhaps 60 to 90 people a month would leave with severe or worsened psychological problems.)

In my observation, practically all bad outcomes happen in poorly run groups. People who take it alone very rarely have lasting problems, as do people who take it in properly run therapeutic, shamanic or religious settings. (And, with all respect to dabcult, speaking as a fellow fardada, not all Santo Daime churches are benign. Each church is different, and some individual churches ARE cultlike and harmful to their members. It is observing this, firsthand, that has made me so alarmed at the potential for disaster if cult leaders in this country were to get legal access to use ayahuasca in the name of "religious freedom.")

As far as ayahuasca tourism in Peru, people who go seeking "authentic shamanic experiences" don't realize that the ayahuasca retreats are not authentic at all, even if they employ local curanderos. It has never been traditional in the Amazon to administer ayahuasca to large groups of people overseen by a shaman. The indigenous shamans work with one or a few people at a time, and usually their patients don't even drink the ayahuasca, or only a little. Even the genuine Amazonian curanderos have no training or experience in handling large groups. (Notoriously, many of these curanderos, authentic or not, have discovered how easy it is to seduce their starry-eyed gringa clients who are in the afterglow of the medicine, a state in which you can be feeling completely in love with the entire world, and easily convinced that the ceremony leader is some kind of incredible spiritual being -- indeed, once again, I shudder at the thought of cult leaders getting hold of ayahuasca.) I would still say that probably 97% of people who take ayahuasca even in those settings probably experience benefit. But the maybe 3% who experience quite the opposite are not to be ignored.

Trinity displays the starry-eyed in-love-with-the-world feeling that is common among neophytes on the ayahuasca path. Just seeing that initially alarmed me, that the project was being led by infants. Infants who would oversee other infants. That was alarming enough. But the thing is, when people are in that state, or that stage, it is extremely easy to manipulate them and get them to focus that state on the leader and fall in love with the leader. I'm sure that most cults are already led by leaders who know how to make their followers fall in love with them.

It is also extremely common for neophytes on the ayahuasca path to experience a "messianic call" and believe that they have some special destiny to save the world. Usually this is transitory. It is so common that it is almost a normal phase to go through. But if you put ayahuasca in the hands of someone who already has messianic tendencies, it can totally blow them up.

So there are both of these ways that ayahuasca has the potential to dangerously exacerbate the problem of cultism, if it were to be made legal for anyone who started a "religion" to give it to people under the name of "religious freedom."

Ayahuasca is in the main a highly beneficial therapeutic tool, but, like most technologies, it has the potential to be misused. Giving cult leaders legal permission to use it in the name of religion would open the door to the most grotesque misuse of ayahuasca. We don't want the DEA to think that ayahuasca is mainly dangerous to people and slam the door on it. In fact, it would work in favor of ayahuasca being permitted its proper use if the DEA were to see that people both in and out of the ayahuasca community can differentiate between safe and unsafe use.

And it is a simple and straightforward enough message, that it is unsafe for ayahuasca to be administered by unqualified people, especially in large groups. The burden of proof should be on the person who seeks to administer ayahuasca that they are qualified to do it, but the doors should be open to that. (In the long run, as legal doors are opened, it may be possible to form professional associations such as doctors and lawyers have to certify them).

It is a simple enough message to give to the DEA, that the AH people are unqualified to lead ayahuasca ceremonies, and that their practice, therefore, is unsafe.

Dear Gayle

Most people who take ayahuasca ARE benefitted, some experience tremendous benefit and healing. From my experience, the number of people with bad outcomes may be only about 2-3%. I DO NOT KNOW WHERE YOU GET THESE NUMBERS ?
Long term effect on the brain ...we do not know ...what happen in the jungles of Peru Equador and Brasil ...we do not know ? It might be much higher ....
I have also see ...people that are long time leaders in the Santo Daime people who have drank gallons and gallons of the brew ...that have become overcome by
lust and started to use their "LEADER" PADRIHO ....position to abuse sexully many many gulible woman.

TNT GUZMAN is sending mass emails telling people that they have to join his new church if they want to attend Ayawaska ceremonies .
He does not give any Theological points ...about the church
Would you join a church ...if you do not know what are the beliefs of the church?This goes to prove that the so called church is only a front to serve AYAHUASKA...and make money ...he is inviting people to join a church that does not even register in the USA ...what a scammer

I'd like to add more about ayahuasca, especially as it relates to cultism.

Ayahuasca is different from recreational drugs and drugs of abuse, including alcohol, in that those normally make one feel good when one is under the effects, and then one feels bad afterward. Ayahuasca, on the other hand, is at best an unpleasant experience. It can be a physical and mental ordeal. You have to have courage and maybe a touch of masochism to do it.

But on the other side of the ordeal is the euphoric afterglow. This comes from both physiological reasons and psychological reasons (facing and purging inner demons, etc). For clinically depressed people, it can be the only time that they have experienced joy and happiness since they can remember. While this afterglow doesn't last more than a few days, just having the experience to help their brain remember what joy actually feels like can be a miracle for a clinically depressed person.

In this afterglow, which is most intense immediately after the ceremony, you feel in love with the whole world and with everyone you see. You love and trust everyone. In this open state, you could be extremely susceptible to cultist brainwashing (as long as it is all washed down with hugs and smiles and love-love-love). It's scary, to me, to think of ayahuasca being in the hands of cult leaders.

This, I feel, is the danger here, the real safety issue. But, as I am sure that everyone here knows, the law has nothing to say about cultism. The First Amendment prohibits any legal discrimination based on religious beliefs.

So the only safety issue that can be brought up to the DEA is the issue of unqualified leaders who are unequipped to handle crises that can come up and who can even make people's problems worse. Which is indeed a genuine problem. People do -- rarely -- get traumatized in badly run ceremonies.

But between me and the cult forum, I don't feel that is the most important danger. The real danger would be to let cult leaders get hold of this medicine. That is a very scary thought to me.

Christopher "Trinity" de Guzman, his "shaman" Marc Roland Shackman, and "medicine woman" Franziska Hoffman are unqualified to safely administer ayahuasca, especially in the large groups that Trinity plans.

I hope many of us do as Gayle suggests in communicating our safety concerns to the DEA.

I myself am not part of any ayahuasca communities so I am relatively agnostic on that, although in general I trend towards harm reduction / decriminalize / scientific studies / professional organization licensing and oversight.

I want to help prevent Trinity, the manipulative messianic infant, and his crew, from further potentially damaging people by how they administer ayahuasca, along with their other problematic behaviors.

So with the DEA we can keep our message clear and concise. Our other concerns can be tackled in other arenas, reporting to other agencies, and discussing concerns online.

I and others have contacted Lewis County WA prosecuter / sheriff / health department, WA state attorney general / department of health, federal DEA / immigration / border / internal revenue service. Canadian border / revenue. People who lost money have successfully had banks reverse charges and banks are investigating AH.

Over the months there have been good discussions online and excellent knowledgable articles posted.

Communicating our safety concerns about AH to the DEA could prevent AH from being granted an exemption. This would be a very good thing.

I view Trinity as a potentially destructive leader. I don't want him to be able to legally give people ayahuasca and by his actions cause harm.