A qualitative study of long-term members of ayahuasca spiritual communities in the United States: Motivations, practices, experiences and beliefs
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract This novel qualitative study examines the lived experiences of long-term participants in ayahuasca spiritual communities (ASCs) in the United States. Semi-structured interviews ( n = 11) were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis indicating that these communities (1) attract individuals seeking healing from trauma, addiction, and psychological distress, while offering a sense of belonging and cultural identity; (2) integrate Western biomedical understandings of psychedelics with entheogenic spiritual frameworks, forming a hybrid healing paradigm rooted in ritual, music, and shared intention; (3) foster a broad trajectory from self-oriented healing toward relational growth and altruistic action, often transforming participants into facilitators and community stewards; (4) encounter and navigate interpersonal and cultural tensions that arise within intimate communal life, which can serve as catalysts for emotional growth and reflection; (5) operate within a complex legal grey zone, requiring members to balance risks of practice, cultural identity, and legal protection; and (6) emphasize the importance of careful discernment when joining an ASC, encouraging alignment with one's values and awareness of group dynamics, accessibility, and safety. Overall, U.S. ASCs represent a distinctive sociocultural context for entheogen use, diverging from individualized, clinician-led psychedelic treatment models by emphasizing community, spirituality, and mutual transformation. These findings underscore the need for further research into the psychological, relational, and cultural dynamics of non-clinical psychedelic frameworks.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.015 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".