Vegetal Redemption
Defying Brazilian law, the Caminho de Luz center—an offshoot of the UDV—makes ayahuasca the cornerstone of a treatment for drug addiction. Mestre Muniz, the charismatic founder, never says no: the homeless, thieves, or even murderers, rejected by society and family, find in the ecstatic experience the inspiration to climb out of the abyss.
Once the "vegetal" has been consumed, the participants in the ritual sit down, close their eyes, and wait for the trance. The lights do not go out. Pre-recorded music tracks play through the speakers.
Text and photos by Carlos Suárez Álvarez
Originally published in issue 237 of Cáñamo magazine, September 2017.
There will be four days of preparo (preparation), which is another way of saying four days of celebration. Music plays, children run around, women cook lunch, and men work efficiently and with focus. There are dozens: some wash the ayahuasca, others crush it, pass it through a grinder, mix it in huge pots with chacruna, and place it on the fire in the new ovens recently inaugurated in this new preparation house. Everyone has a task, which they perform with pride. Well dressed and clean, it’s hard to believe that a few years ago they were homeless, thieves, or hitmen. That addiction had driven them to the margins. That they had lost the support of their families. And that, unexpectedly, a light was kindled in their lives: the vegetal, as ayahuasca is called by the followers of the União do Vegetal church, with which Caminho de Luz is affiliated.
If I ask Jorge, a chubby, smiling man in his forties: “My mother helped me but I chose drugs, crack and marijuana.” He hesitates to explain how he paid for his habit: “Killing people for money.” He lifts his shirt and shows bullet scars: “Almost all my friends back then were killed. We were fifty, now we’re five.”
If I ask João, a former alcoholic and ex-cocaine user since 2005, he tells me: “I came to calm my wife. I arrived in the afternoon. There was a session at night. I drank vegetal; everything happening in my life played out like a movie. There were only horrible things, no good ones. I decided to start recovering. The vegetal gives you calm in the spirit, peace.”
I don’t dare ask the giant with the tattooed face. Something fierce in his gaze suggests a troubled past. He uses his enormous muscles to pound the vines with a mallet. Three tons will be processed to supply the five hundred residents of the nine recovery centers that belong to the Associação Beneficente Caminho de Luz. The preparation of the vegetal always has a festive connotation, but on this occasion, there are more reasons to celebrate: it is the twentieth anniversary of the association, which has seen thousands of people move from the dark side of drug use to lucidity and abstinence. And they celebrate the birthday of Mestre Muniz, the founder, a man with a mission.
The ayahuasca used in the preparations at Caminho de Luz comes from the jungle. But after decades of harvesting by the numerous ayahuasca churches, it is increasingly difficult to find in its natural state, so plantations have begun to appear.
forbidden therapy
The União do Vegetal (UDV) is, chronologically, the latest of the three ayahuasca churches that originated in the western Brazilian Amazon. Like Santo Daime and Barquinha, the UDV emerged from the encounter between rubber workers who came from northeastern Brazil and native ayahuasca practitioners from the tri-border area of Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia. Fascinated by ayahuasca, José Gabriel da Costa, known as Mestre Gabriel, founded the UDV on July 22, 1961. Like Santo Daime and Barquinha, the União do Vegetal incorporates elements of Catholicism, spiritism, and Afro-Brazilian cults.
The three also share a history of schisms (always in the name of legitimacy or orthodoxy) that divided them after the death of their founders. The one we focus on was led in the city of Rio Branco, Acre state, by José Muniz de Oliveira, who in the 1990s left the UDV center he frequented and founded his own, the Centro Espírita Beneficente Templo da Ordem Universal de Salomão, under whose care Caminho de Luz was born.
Mestre Muniz recounts that none of the medicines he sold in his pharmacy could combat drug addiction, a plague in Rio Branco, a major entry port for cocaine and base paste. At that time, Muniz witnessed, in a short time, the transformation of a gold seeker newly arrived from the jungle. “That man was a failure, toothless, hairy, pale, looked like a living dead man. Then he drank vegetal, improved, and became a different person—in his speech, behavior; he got better clothes, cut his hair, got teeth. And that was done by the tea. When I saw that, I gave it to other sick people, and I saw that the drug addicts improved.”
To carry out his mission, Mestre Muniz had to face rejection from the ayahuasca churches, which did not want this “sacred drink” associated with drug users. They were (and are) struggling to legitimize themselves before society. In 1991, the ayahuasca religious groups publicly renounced the therapeutic use of ayahuasca (to avoid accusations of quackery) to guarantee the legality of spiritual use under religious freedom. Mestre Muniz explains that the churches “did not accept drug addicts in their sessions so that vegetal and drugs would not be associated. If they found out that the participant was a user, they were excluded.” Although Brazilian law only allows the religious use of ayahuasca, the therapeutic program developed at Caminho de Luz is known and supported by various official institutions in the state of Acre. They have realized that this therapeutic program can heal what prison only rots.
Mestre Muniz presides over a ritual. Like all centers linked to the UDV, hierarchy is a very present element. It is the prerogative of the Mestres to wear a blue shirt. Only those who have reached the rank of conselheiros may sit at the table.
ecstasy and discipline
The preparation doesn’t stop. Day and night they wash, mash, pots on the fire. I approach the tattooed giant: Christian crosses on his cheeks, barbed wire on his forehead, determination in his furrowed brow: mash, mash. He takes a breath, approaches the table in the center of the preparation house, and asks a conselheiro to serve him vegetal. From a large jar, he pours a small glass which he drinks in one gulp; it’s a smaller dose than what is consumed in religious ceremonies, where the astral is sought. He returns to work. I dare to ask him why he drinks it. “Feeling of peace and harmony, it’s good for working. In tune with the preparation,” he says seriously, kindly.
The large preparation house transforms as night falls; the session is about to begin. People arrive wearing their uniforms of white pants or yellow skirts and green shirts, except the mestres, who are identified by their blue shirts (hierarchy things). Two hundred people gather — current members, former members, family, supporters, and curious onlookers. At one end, the table presided over by Muniz, with the large jar of vegetal. Along the sides, chairs where men will sit on one side, and women on the other. The six large pots continue to bubble at the other end.
A long human line winds around the table to the little glass of vegetal, which each person collects before taking their seat. After a “Our Father,” comes the bitter drink, which some soften with a little water and others with a sweet. Under an intense white light, which will not be turned off, the participants close their eyes and wait. One of the conselheiros, next to the presidential table, sends the music that will guide the experience from his computer. Songs in the key of pop, folk, forró, or ballad, performed by the UDV, sound through speakers. Mestre Muniz occasionally takes the microphone and performs chamadas, sung invocations:
The strength of the marirí [the vine],
the light of chacruna,
the two united, to have vision.
It is superior strength,
it is the science of Solomon.
King Solomon, who in a mythical past gave the knowledge of the vegetal to mestre Caiano, a previous incarnation of mestre Gabriel, founder of the UDV.
The UDV ritual is regulated down to the smallest details. To take it, participants must form a line around the table, moving counterclockwise.
At midnight, when the session closes after a series of speeches, thanks, and recommendations, the social event begins. People chat animatedly, exchange smiles, hugs, congratulations, and food. “Inner peace. Our spirit rises.” “The guidance you get by traveling to an astral plane is the most beautiful possible.” “People manage to see a world beyond this one.” “I received guidance, things I do every day that aren’t right.” “I saw the light of God illuminating my life, clearing my mind.” These are some of the explanations participants offer about their experience.
Psychologist Mailton Bernardelli, who is concluding a month of fieldwork, has also taken the vegetal. An expert in drug dependency treatment centers, he is certain that the use of the vegetal represents a leap in effectiveness. “Through the expansion of consciousness, they manage to live through aspects of life, traumatic events, violence they committed against others. There is a review of attitudes, and the possibility opens to change habits, including drug use. Very aggressive people who did serious things to themselves or others find redemption and come to understand that they hurt someone, and that this is not right.” Bernardelli emphasizes that the inner journey is an essential difference compared to other therapeutic communities. “The fact that they rethink their lives is due to an internal process produced by the expansion of consciousness that the tea causes, not the moralizing a therapist or pastor does about what is right and wrong.”
However, for Bernardelli, the ecstatic experience alone is not enough. This is known by the participant Carlos Machado, from a well-off family in Brasília. Carlos tried to quit crack by taking vegetal sporadically at a “legitimate” UDV center. “Before coming here, I took the vegetal for ten years but couldn’t quit the drug, because I didn’t fully engage with the doctrine, I didn’t join the UDV. There came a point when I used crack in the afternoon and vegetal at night. I had a bad force inside me and a good force trying to enter, and the positive one won. It gave me diarrhea and vomiting, which is the vegetal’s way to cleanse.” The cleansing, without the context and continuity of treatment, lasted little.
Although based on the use of the vegetal, the therapeutic program of Caminho de Luz also incorporates a religious component. The UDV combines elements of Catholicism, Afro-Brazilian cults, Spiritism, and indigenous philosophy in its beliefs.
sweating pará nuts
Developed by former patients who overcame their addiction, the treatment at Caminho de Luz has three phases. In the first phase, the patients stay for thirty days at King Solomon, an isolated complex in the jungle. Then they are referred to one of the other centers dependent on the association to complete the second phase. Good nutrition, rest, physical activity, group meetings, and a schedule of activities that the patients must follow disciplinedly for nine months.
The oldest center, Caminho de Luz, which gave the association its name, is located on the outskirts of Rio Branco, on the mestre’s farm. Although the surroundings are being swallowed by urbanization, Caminho de Luz preserves large green spaces, among which stands a beautiful chacruna plantation. The patients live in humble wooden houses. One house serves as kitchen, dining room, and TV room. A smaller one houses the therapeutic team’s offices, and a large side porch where the patients, six hours a day, sweat hard peeling Pará nuts, which will be turned into sweets and sold on the streets to support the program. Besides contributing to the center’s funding, they contribute to their healing. “Detoxification is done through work, what is called work therapy,” explains Everson dos Santos, therapeutic coordinator, with another rough story not guessed from the diligence and seriousness with which he supervises the facility. “The person goes to peel nuts, to work in the kitchen, clean their room… so the person sweats to let the toxin out of the body.”
At Caminho de Luz the vegetal plays a crucial role in detoxification and overcoming withdrawal syndrome. In a shed at the entrance of the facility, three times a day a line of patients forms waiting for a small dose. “The patients, when they arrive, take vegetal two or three times a day, because it is detoxifying, and because it helps a lot with withdrawal. It makes the person calm, peaceful, and reflective,” explains Everson. The dose is usually not strong enough to prevent the patient from carrying out their work therapy activities, but it is not uncommon to see someone in a corner, silent and alone, going inward.
Not only is the dose smaller than the one consumed ritually, but the composition is different. It is the vegetal das nove, a formula devised by the founder of the UDV, mestre Gabriel, to heal the body, which, besides ayahuasca and chacruna, contains nine other medicinal plants. And so, Caminho de Luz challenges the public stance of ayahuasca churches, committed to using exclusively ayahuasca and chacruna in their ritual formula and renouncing any therapeutic indication.
Everson dos Santos recounts that, in his case, healing went beyond dependence. “I arrived with a cancerous tumor in my lung that was growing. Mestre Muniz suggested I drink vegetal three times a day, as if it were a medicine. And that’s what I did for a time until I went to the hospital, had a CT scan, and the doctor told me the tumor was shrinking.” But maybe Everson shouldn’t have said that nor should I have written it: we could be accused of charlatans. Let’s return to the treatment of dependence: Everson explains that, to stay strong and healthy, he takes vegetal das nove every two days, plus on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when rituals are held with the full dose of the regular vegetal.
The patients, especially in the early stages of their recovery, take a small dose of vegetal three times a day to fight withdrawal syndrome.
drug or medicine?
Someone might argue that what these drug addicts are doing is just swapping one drug for another. “To those who say vegetal is a drug, I tell them that if it were a drug, it would be a very good one, because besides making people stop using other drugs, it gives you the will to live again.” The testimony of Elton Nunes Vera, the only certified therapist at Caminho de Luz, is revealing. Born in Minas Gerais, three thousand kilometers from Rio Branco, Elton was a drug user for twenty years. In the last two years, he sank into crack addiction. Searching for a way out, back in Minas he attended several sessions at a center of the original UDV line. It helped him. “The vegetal was the force I needed to quit crack.” However, the sessions only took place every fifteen days, and the emptiness hit him more often. He asked the mestre for a quantity to take home. The mestre said no: no drug addicts affiliated with the UDV, nor therapy with vegetal. Elton sought Christian treatment in the jungle of the state of Rondônia. Prayer, work, and a good daily dose of mood stabilizers and antidepressants finally got him off crack. He stayed at the center as a monitor and trained as a holistic therapist.
Four years after his arrival, he attended to a young addict who had been through Caminho de Luz: he spoke to him about mestre Muniz and the use of vegetal. His curiosity was sparked; Rio Branco was nearby, so he traveled there. He stayed at Caminho de Luz for a month. He went to the jungle and participated in making the vegetal. “We took tree barks, I prepared it with them and started taking that vegetal as if it were medicine. Every day. It was an incredible process because I was swollen from the medications I was taking. I drank vegetal, stopped the medications, and lost weight. I felt vigorous, with energy.” He stayed at Caminho de Luz.
Did he change his crack addiction for pharmaceutical chemicals and then for a powerful psychoactive? He is clear that he did not. “I don’t feel withdrawal from vegetal. I had to take mood stabilizers three times a day to balance myself, and I felt sluggish, swollen. I was dependent. Right now, I’m almost twenty days without drinking vegetal.” That is the big difference: for the first time in 22 years, he is free from substances, legal or illegal, synthetic or natural. “There is no withdrawal syndrome from vegetal,” Elton emphasizes. “It’s the opposite. People who drink vegetal, the next day don’t even want to hear about vegetal. When expanding consciousness, often there is a tough journey: it shows inappropriate behaviors, and then they want to fix those first before taking it again.”
After four days of preparation, more than a thousand liters of ayahuasca were produced. In two months, they will have to prepare it again.
treatment in society
But finally, the time comes to leave the guaranteed well-being of the center to face the worldly chaos, the competition, the distrust. It is not uncommon that this step results in relapse. There are no reliable data on the success of the treatment. Mestre Muniz believes that 40% of those who start it reach the end, a figure higher than that of any other center. It is more difficult to know how many of those who finish do not relapse. The independent psychologist Mailton Bernardelli, with a long research background, believes that the success here is greater than in other centers. Many of the patients who have passed through other places before Caminho de Luz also think so.
But all of them — mestre, therapists, and patients — emphasize that the vegetal alone is not enough. Labor therapy (typical), group meetings (morning and afternoon), discipline (necessary), and an innovation that provides a decisive advantage: the third phase. Mestre Muniz’s estate is divided into two. On one side, isolated by a precarious almost-fence, is the inpatient unit. On the other grows the Sociedade. Patients who do not feel confident to face the outside world, who have no housing, work, or family support, stay in some of the small houses built around the preparo house by the mestre and given to his pupils.
“The problem with therapeutic communities,” explains Muniz, “is that they are completely closed, and once the treatment is over, completely open. Here that reintegration is progressive. In legal terms, this third phase would be a semi-open regime. They are going, they are coming back, they are still being cared for, so that they return to society safely.” Support and shelter continue to be guaranteed by the mestre, although most residents in the Sociedade find more or less regular work. Some never leave the Sociedade, form their families, and remain close to the vegetal, always available when anxiety strikes, surrounded by people who understand and care for them. A small society, a big family, a charismatic leader, a wonderful remedy. Caminho de Luz is proof that healing cannot be reduced to techniques on paper nor to molecules in the bloodstream.
