Am I addicted to Ayahuasca?

I want to acknowledge that engaging with ayahuasca can raise important environmental and ethical concerns. Ayahuasca tourism can be extractive and harmful to both the plant and indigenous communities. I am deeply mindful of these issues and choose very carefully where and with whom I engage in this practice, prioritizing spaces that honor indigenous wisdom and operate with genuine reciprocity and respect.

At now close to 30 Ayahuasca ceremonies, this question has been asked to me, either directly or covertly. As I was speaking with my mother about some important insights I experienced in my last ceremony, she asked: "That's impressive. I'm happy for you sweetie. But when will you be healed?" and she added, after a short pause, "when will you stop drinking ayahuasca?"

I spent most of my life buying into the colonial framing of drugs, which cast them as dangerous, immoral, and destructive—without questioning how deeply racist that narrative was: designed to criminalise Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, while allowing white elites to consume, profit, and remain untouched. My mother lost two cousins to heroin addiction and she led a very effective anti-drug campaign with us that led me to avoid all psychoactive substances altogether, including alcohol, cannabis and even tobacco.

Most Western countries, including Germany, criminalize Ayahuasca, ignoring the Indigenous traditions and knowledge systems that have used it for centuries as a sacred medicine and guide. While Ayahuasca is forbidden in Germany, western psychoactive pharmaceuticals that large corporations profit from—like antidepressants—are widely accepted. Rarely do we ask with the same concern if people on antidepressants are addicted to them.

I turned to Ayahuasca because conventional western therapeutic methods had reached their limits for me. And at the risk of sounding embarrassingly cliché: it changed my life.

What began as healing has evolved into something far greater—a path of continuous learning, spiritual expansion, and deeper communion with the intelligence that flows through all living things.

Seeing the incredible impact it had in my life, I returned for more. So my mother's concern about a potential addiction is valid. Am I, indeed, addicted to ayahuasca?

The answer is no. Ayahuasca is basically anti-addictive. Not only doesn't it create physical dependence or withdrawal symptoms, but the physical, mental and psychological discomfort it induces is prohibitive.

Ayahuasca does not create the immediate relief or escape that addictions usually do. I always have to overcome a great deal of anxiety and disgust when drinking it. The mere thought of having to swallow the nauseating brew gives me the chills. All the vomiting, diarrhea, intense crying, the highly confronting memories I relived over and over again. All of this isn’t… nice.

So why I am returning for more?

I make this choice because if a natural substance supports my healing and spiritual growth, and helps me gain insight and wisdom, I see no reason to keep away from it. Skeptical friends have told me that I should rather stick to therapy. What they mean is: stick to human therapists only. Why should I limit myself? Ayahuasca is, among many other things, therapy—a plant therapist that I choose to work with.

I've retrieved memories lost to traumatic amnesia that would probably have remained buried in my psyche forever. I've healed and continue to heal traumas that would have taken a lifetime to mend, if at all. I've connected to love in a way I didn't believe was possible. No human-led therapy could have possibly done all of that for me. (And I’m only talking about the healing aspect of the plant, not even mentioning the metaphysical and philosophical learnings and experience).

And all of that didn't unfold only during the ceremonies themselves—it is an ongoing process, co-created by the plant, my own inner work, and ongoing integration. Drinking Ayahuasca is just one part of a conscious healing journey that includes preparation, reflection, and integration—a deliberate practice, not a compulsion.

But let's return to the initial question: addiction.

We live in a society built on addiction. Not the kind that lands you in rehab, but the kind that keeps you functional, productive, and perpetually disconnected from your own soul. These addictions aren't accidents—they're features of a system that profits from our disconnection.

Productivity addiction keeps us grinding, measuring our worth by our output. Consumerism addiction convinces us that happiness lives in the next purchase. Social media dopamine-seeking addiction fragments our attention and alienates us from our thoughts. News cycle addiction keeps us perpetually anxious and reactive. Caffeine addiction gets us to work on time and keeps us awake when our bodies need rest. Alcohol addiction helps us cope with a life that is damaging to our souls and bodies, or numbs the grief that has no other outlet.

Each addiction serves capitalism's need for compliant workers and eager consumers, while systematically severing us from what might actually nourish us: stillness, connection, presence, meaning. We are all addicted—not by choice, but by design.

And the biggest, most inescapable addiction of all? Money. Addiction to money isn't a personal failing, it's a systemic requirement. A rewarded addiction. The more addicted to money you are, the more “successful”. We are forced into this dependence, celebrated for chasing it, and punished for resisting it. Money-related anxiety saturates our thoughts: Will I have enough? How can I get more? And the worst about it is that we act as if life cannot continue without money—but seem strangely comfortable living without what actually sustains us: plants.

As Clarissa Pinkola Estés reminds us: "To be poor and be without trees, is to be the most starved human being in the world. To be poor and have trees, is to be completely rich in ways that money can never buy."

Plants have sustained human life from the beginning, offering not just nourishment but a living memory of another way of being—one that capitalism works tirelessly to erase. If we must live in a world of dependencies, let mine be conscious ones. Let me choose connection over consumption, healing over numbing, presence over productivity.

The question isn't whether I'm addicted to ayahuasca—it's whether we're brave enough to examine what we're all actually addicted to, and whether those addictions serve our souls or someone else's profit margins.

Getting sober from these normalised, everyday addictions is possible, and we don't have to do it alone—the plants have been waiting patiently to help us remember who we really are.

These ideas and reflections are developed more extensively in my latest book, “LIEBEN”.