Through face-to-face interviews with therapists, healers and plant preparers at the Takiwasi Center, and a secondary analysis of data from the lived experiences of patients with Substance Use Disorder (SUD), the proposed study aims to investigate the perceptions and narratives of therapists, healers, and patients about "the purge" within the Ayahuasca ceremony in the context of drug addiction. To the best of the author's knowledge, no such study has yet been conducted to date. Given that the proposed study aims to explore perceptions and narratives around purging during Ayahuasca rituals in healers, therapists, and patients with SUD, it seems reasonable to refrain from formulating specific hypotheses, as is often the case in conventional research of mostly quantitative hypothesis testing. However, preliminary analysis of the material published by the Takiwasi Center and the researcher's previous experience at Takiwasi suggests that therapists, healers, and plant preparers may perceive "the purge" in terms of its effects on (A) the "physical body ", detoxifying the body of addictive substances (B) the "psycho-emotional body", through emotional relaxation after intense vomiting, which is reported to release psychological charges, negative emotions or attitudes (C) the" spirit " or the "energetic body", "cleansing" the body of evil spirits that are sometimes reported to possess the patient.

This study on the effect of perfumes and smells on brain activity is a development of a larger research on “perfumeros healers”, initiated in 2019. The research aim is to better understand the impact of perfumes and smells on patients during the healing process of Takiwasi center. For this phase of the experimental research, the researcher will undergo a series of perfume related rituals within the pedagogical context of Takiwasi, wearing a special equipment called “EEG” helmet, which is a tool that captures brain activity and codes it into raw data. This data will later be analysed and interpreted into visualisations. It is important to keep in mind that this research is situated in between the academic world and the artistic world. The goal of the PhD program SACRe is to allow artist researchers to work on the creation of knowledge via creative processes, within a frame recognized by academic institutions. Since the beginning of the research on perfumeros, one problematic aspect is to define how the perfumes and smells generate the healing effect, until now the focus has been placed on the sensitive, intellectual and emotional perception of the perfume, the present research sets the aim to access neural data generated by the brain itself, as proof of efficiency of the healing process.

The general framework of this study refers to the integration of traditional medicine with conventional/"Western" one. This topic will be approached through the study of the professional evolution of the Takiwasi Center's psychotherapists when integrating the practices of traditional Amazonian medicine. The main objectives of the research are: to collect the testimony of therapists who use psychotherapy combined with traditional Amazonian medicine in their clinical practice; understand what led these therapists to become particularly interested in Amazonian shamanism as practiced at the Takiwasi Center; understand what path of training and/or initiation was necessary to build their clinical practice; observe if they keep, in their definition of healing, theoretical contributions of their "initial" training and know the theoretical contributions that add to or replace the initial theoretical paradigm of the therapist; highlight the factors that encourage therapists to practice a treatment that includes traditional Amazonian medicine; propose illustrations of this practice with patient cases, to describe the way in which traditional Amazonian medicine is associated and how they perceive the benefits and limits of this therapeutic association, according to the therapist's point of view. We propose to carry out an exploratory qualitative research, through the following data collection procedure: interviews with Takiwasi’s therapists (mostly psychotherapists), in the form of a semi-structured interview; observation of clinical practice as a practitioner in the therapeutic area. Given the exploratory nature of this study, the expected results are open to the discoveries made during the study. We will expect to observe a conception of care and illness different from the one used by "Western" psychotherapists, thus redefining the objective of care and its means. We wish to be able to offer practical examples of clinical practice integration between “traditional” and “Western” medicine.

The general theme of the research project is the effect of personal experiences of crisis and dissolution of the Ego, spiritual combat and mystical experience in the therapeutic process of drug addict patients at the Takiwasi Center. We want to investigate, through the analysis of the clinical database of the Takiwasi Center, which contains the texts of the interviews carried out by the therapists with the patients, the testimonies of the effects of experiences of crisis/dissolution of the Ego in the therapeutic process of drug addicts and significant categories of differentiations between these experiences, with a specific focus on those that have had a spiritual/mystical/religious/sacred nature. The methodology is based on the detailed analysis, elaboration and interpretation of the contents of the clinical database of the Takiwasi Center that collects the texts of the interviews carried out by the therapists with drug addict patients during the therapeutic journey. The method of elaboration of the contents will depend on the specific characteristics of the significant elements identified in the analysis phase. Expected results: Identification of significant processes of crisis/dissolution of the Ego for the success of the therapy; identification of testimonies of most significant experiences in relation to the subject; identification of the most significant categories of differentiation among the testimonies collected; identification of categories of significant differentiation between the testimonies that are related to the different ritual contexts to which the interviews refer; identification of evidence of relationships between the testimonies and the success of the therapeutic process.