Rubiaceae
Psychotria viridis
Chacruna · Chakruna
- Part used
- leaf
- Native range
- The Amazon basin
- Morphology
- An understorey shrub to five metres with glossy opposite leaves and small white flowers followed by red berries.
What is in it
Evidence
No controlled evidence for the plant. DMT is studied as an isolated compound in psychedelic research.
Safety
Orally inactive alone. Active only in combination with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, and every hazard described for Banisteriopsis caapi applies to the combination. Contraindicated in psychosis risk.
Interactions: In combination, potentially fatal with serotonergic drugs
Regulatory: DMT is a controlled substance in Australia and most jurisdictions.
Historical use
The DMT-containing partner in the ayahuasca brew across much of the western Amazon, though other species are used in other regions. The pairing is specific and traditional.
Recorded as history and attributed where possible. Long use establishes that a plant was widely used, not that it worked, and not that it was safe.
Worth knowing
Chacruna is here principally to make the point that the second plant is not interchangeable. The brew is a specific pairing, and Amazonian traditions distinguish between the species used, the regions they come from and the preparations they belong to, in ways that Western accounts routinely flatten into a single word.
Neither plant does anything useful alone, which is worth restating: the vine without the leaf is an MAO inhibitor, and the leaf without the vine is inert.
Nomenclature verified against GBIF backbone taxonomy.