The Acid Diaries (Christopher Gray) / quote 49 of 125
How ayahuasca makes DMT work
Before Schultes, no one had understood that the decisive ingredient of ayahuasca wasn’t the giant Banisteriopsis caapi vine so much as the various dimethyltryptamine-rich admixture plants that also went into the brew. The visions came, or came largely, from the DMT. What the Banisteriopsis caapi was doing was something subtler. Normally DMT has to be either smoked or injected, because if it is taken orally it is instantly neutralized by a stomach enzyme, monoamine oxidase; but Banisteriopsis contains alkaloids that can temporarily neutralize the monoamine oxidase itself (hence referred to as MAO-inhibitors) and allow the DMT to be digested gradually in the stomach. This results in a much longer and steadier exposure to the world’s most potent hallucinogen than the few timeless, action-packed minutes you get if you smoke it.