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corboy
Gayle, is clinical depression a condition that can be made worse with ayahuasca?
Hi corboy, clinical depression is one of the conditions that can respond most positively to ayahuasca. For both physiological and psychological reasons. In some cases (based on considerable anecdotal evidence that we have gathered on the Ayahuasca Forums) people have cured their clinical depression permanently with ayahuasca.
But it isn't so simple, because as you know, ayahuasca (and MAOIs in general) can have dangerous interaction with other antidepressant medications (as well as many other medications). And, as you note, some of these medications require weeks to get out of the system -- some of them require six weeks or more to get off (and the weaning process should be supervised by a doctor).
During that period, without meds, the person may get worse, and the problem is that ayahuasca does not ALWAYS work for depressed people. And then you can have a situation where someone has been off their meds for weeks, compounded by the discouragement that what they had placed such hope in didn't even work. This is the exception, but it does happen.
And while part of its antidepressant action is purely physiological (MAOIs are perhaps the most effective class of antidepressants, but doctors use them only as a last resort because of the interaction problem, with certain foods as well as with other meds) ayahuasca also can bring to the surface hidden traumas and issues that can lie behind the depression. And if this is not handled skillfully, hopefully with the support of a qualified therapist (or alone, if the person is determined enough), the person may not be able to work through these issues all the way through, leaving them stuck halfway through the process, and they may be too fearful to go back in and finish the process.
Anecdotally, this is a situation not uncommonly reported on the ayahuasca forums, and then we have to encourage the person to go back in and finish the process, because otherwise they can remain "stuck" in a worse state than before. Again, this is the exception, but it does happen.
So it is possible in some cases for those reasons for ayahuasca to worsen clinical depression. But that is the exception. Generally speaking, ayahuasca can be one of the most effective treatments for depression.
It should be noted that, while the DMT component (the Schedule 1 drug that is usually in ayahuasca brews, contained in the additive plants) gets the most publicity and interest, it is actually the other component, the ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) that contains the chemicals that have the physiological effect on depression. Some people have successfully used daily small doses of ayahuasca vine, without the DMT, to treat their depression. In other words, you can get the physiological anti-depressant effects without the hallucinatory effects. As I noted before, ayahuasca (vine) has the long-term effects of increasing serotonin receptors in the brain, making the brain more able to use serotonin even when it is low, which can lead to permanent improvement in depression.
Ayahuasca is potentially one of the best treatments for clinical depression, but unfortunately. research and double-blind studies are hampered by the legality problem.
(By the way, earlier I mentioned that bipolar disorder can be made worse -- this is because, for someone with bipolar disorder, the "afterglow" state I described before can lead to a manic state that can last for days, weeks, or months.)
So again, the legal avenues need to be opened for research on ayahuasca to develop effective therapies.