The Role of Teacher Plants in Healing Addictions
THE ROLE OF TEACHER PLANTS IN HEALING ADDICTIONS
How Amazonian shamans are using ayahuasca, San Pedro and other jungle medicines to achieve up to 75% success rates in freeing people from addictions while the best Western models achieve only 30% success
By Tracie Thornberry with Ross Heaven
Synopsis: From her early teens for approximately 30 years Tracie Thornberry was addicted to alcohol and heroin. She undertook The Salvation Army’s Bridge Program to attempt a cure, a process she began with nine other women. Seven dropped out and of the three who completed the program, two returned to alcohol and one of these subsequently died as a result of her addiction. Only Tracie remained clean and sober, an achievement she puts down to a reconnection with spirit rather than the treatment she received per se.
Following her recovery she trained as a drug and addictions counsellor, hoping to find a program that could offer more than the 30% average success rate claimed by Western therapies – or the 10% success rate she had in fact experienced. Her journey then took her to Peru and to meetings with shamans there who were using teacher plants like ayahuasca and San Pedro to yield recovery rates of up to 75%, far better than Western methods. She now runs the Tranquilo Addictions Release Program at The Hummingbird Healing Centre in Iquitos, Peru, using teacher plants and other shamanic methods as well as Western therapeutic approaches to help those who would like to be free of addictions.
In this article she reflects on the approach of the shamans to addiction and concludes that Amazonian methods work (and Western