Thank you for your comments, Michael — both here and with my other article (DIY Mescaline). It’s interesting to hear about your negative experience with ayahuasca (and surprising to hear that the shaman admitted that it was a problem with the medicine itself). I am extremely curious to know what, exactly, happened with that batch? My guess is that the the mixture of DMT-bearing plants used in the mixture is what caused the negative reactions. Ideally, it’s the job of the shaman/guide to try the medicine before he/she administers it to anyone else, so that these things can be caught ahead of time. He evidently didn’t do that, which is unfortunate. It brings to mind another difference between Ayahuasca and San Pedro that I didn’t think to mention in the article; its harder to screw up a San Pedro brew than it is to screw up an Ayahuasca brew. San Pedro (typically) only includes one active ingredient: San Pedro. Whereas Ayahuasca includes the MAO-inhibiting vine (and there are several species that can be used) combined with one or multiple DMT-containing plants, each of which have different effects. This means that San Pedro is a lot easier to predict than Ayahuasca, in terms of the quality and effect of the medicine itself. This is something I’m going to add to the article. Thanks for sharing that account, it’s a good lesson to have in mind.