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Canadian doctor and author Gabor Maté has spent years working with addicts. Frustrated with the available options for treatment, he visits Takiwasi to learn more about the center’s approach. This is the first conversation between doctors Jacques Mabit and Gabor Maté. It takes place in Mabit’s office.

MABIT: Welcome to Takiwasi.

GABOR: Yeah. Thank you.

MABIT: I am very glad to receive you here. In the short time that you stay with us, I hope we can make some exchange, share some ideas and maybe some experiences.

GABOR: Yes, of course.

MABIT: How did you become interested in ayahuasca?

GABOR: Well, after I finished writing my book on addiction, a lot of people asked me if I knew about ayahuasca and addiction, and I didn’t know anything. But so many people asked me that I finally thought I had to find out. Then an opportunity came up to try it in Vancouver, so I had the experience with Ayahuasca, two years ago this July. In one week I drank three times and immediately, I understood that this would help addiction because I saw both, the trauma that it made visible in people’s past … but also the beauty and the wholeness that everybody still had. And the plant shows you both. It shows you the dark and it shows you the light.

MABIT: Yes.

GABOR: And it shows it to you. [Snaps his fingers.] It would take years of therapy.

And so then I heard about you! [Laughter] That there’s this French doctor who came to Peru and is using the plant and… [Encouraging Mabit to continue]

MABIT: My own experience has been one of progressive discovery. It was never my interest to treat addicts. I was never interested in it. I had no personal experience with these substances. I first arrived to Perú working for Doctors Without Borders. Though my work I came in contact with the local traditional healers.

GABOR: Can I just ask a question?

MABIT: Yes.

GABOR: You are classically trained Western doctor, correct?

MABIT: Yes.

GABOR: Me too, and I found after a while practicing that it is very limiting and narrow. Was that the experience that you had?

MABIT: Of course. Si, si. It was, it was this disappointment that led me to try ayahuasca, but not just ayahuasca. It is always important here at Takiwasi to place ayahuasca as one element within a context that includes other plants, psychotherapy, community life, there are many other elements that accompany ayahuasca.

GABOR: I understand now.

MABIT: So my interest became to see if I, trained as a Western medical doctor in this very academic background, could be able to actually access this world that the shamans would tell me about in terms, you know, that were metaphorical and mythological.

This meant breaking the Western scientific paradigm of objectively studying things from a distance. It meant to live the experience, personally. I started working with the curanderos and it was them who introduced me to ayahuasca, which was also a surprise for me. In my first session I had a very similar experience to the one you had, where in a single night I discovered more about myself than in years of psychotherapy. I was convinced that it was a therapeutic instrument of superior qualities and that it had potential to be of great help, when used correctly.

It wasn’t until later, actually two months later, that I had an extraordinarily strong ayahuasca experience in which I saw a very clear, very real vision. I found myself in front of a group of people that were like a … like a jury, as if you were in an exam. They were sitting in front of me and they told me: “We are the guardian spirits of the jungle.” Something that was completely outside my culture or my background.

They asked me: “What do you want?”

I said, “I want to learn this medicine.”

So they consulted each other, it was a little bit funny, because they were turning to each other, whispering among themselves, and finally the “president” of this jury …[Gabor laughs] … he addressed me and said: “Okay you are authorized to enter this territory, but this is the path, the direction, that you will take.” I looked and I saw myself, working with addicts.

GABOR: Hmm.

MABIT: It was very surprising to me, because I had no interest in the treatment of addiction. I knew they were very difficult patients, very frustrating, and though, in principle, I did say yes, deep down I was resisting the very idea of doing it.

GABOR: So I have two questions. First: this was an Ayahuasca experience you had, was it?

MABIT: Yes.

GABOR: And secondly, in retrospect, when you look at yourself, might there have been addiction issues in your life? I don’t necessarily mean with drugs, but just compulsions, that you weren’t in control of… I’m just wondering why that experience came to you, like was there something personal to you that might have… that this experience might have somehow reflected or, or, or somehow represented?

MABIT: Yeah. I understood that later, that the main character of the pathological characteristics of addicts are similar to mine.

GABOR: Yeah. Me too. [Laughter] Mm-hm.

MABIT: So I put it off for three years. I continued doing other things, and this made me feel better. And after three years I said to myself that I had not started yet, because I thought maybe the whole vision was just a projection of mine. I sort of put it off, and then, after three years, during an ayahuasca session a woman appeared to me. To me she seemed like the very embodiment, the spirit of Ayahuasca itself. She asked me: “Do you still want to continue learning?” And I said: “Yes, I would like to”. And she said: “Okay, but don’t forget about the work with the addicts”.

GABOR: Mmm.

MABIT: I tried to put it off and negotiate, I said: “Well I’m not ready, I’m not prepared yet and I don’t have enough knowledge.” And she told me: “After a baby spends nine months in the mother’s womb, it comes out. The baby is not ready, it’s not prepared, but it is the time. You have been like this for three years. Now is the time to come out.” That’s how I began.

GABOR: Interesting. Where I have a problem with ayahuasca…I don’t have a problem, but it is not complete for me, because intellectually I understand it, and emotionally and psychologically, I completely understand it – I think. But what you said about the spirit, the mujer Madre that comes to you. I see that you’re very much into the spiritual and mythological aspects, and I’ve never had that kind of experience with the plant.

MABIT: Mm hm.

GABOR: And I don’t know whether it’s my own limitation or my own tightness, maybe there’s something just not ready to open up to that, or maybe the plant just doesn’t want to talk to me, I don’t know what it is. But I was actually hoping in coming here that I would … not necessarily that it would happen, because I can’t guarantee it, I can’t make it happen. But I’d very much love to experience that side of it that you clearly have experienced, and which obviously enters your work. For me, it is more on a psychological and emotional side, and I don’t think it’s quite complete enough. I think that there is something else there that I would love to experience, and, and see.

MABIT: Mm hm. This is where, this is really where the gap between the Western mind, and the traditional world happens. It’s in the experience that there’s something beyond ourselves, beyond our psyche, beyond our personality, something that transcends, that is transcendental, transpersonal, and that goes beyond. This is something that can only be experienced. It’s an experience that you have and then you know. If you haven’t had it, it’s very easy to place it in one psychological compartment or another, or in one complex or another of the personality.

GABOR: Now that we talk about it, I realize that I have had that experience, I’ve had the experience of “beyond the person” and, and in fact, the dissolution, the dissipation of the person. I’ve had that experience and I’ve had a picture of Jesus! Being a good Jewish boy, I’ve had Jesus come to me three times with Ayahuasca.

MABIT: Mmm hmm.

GABOR: But maybe, maybe that’s how it shows up for me, I’ve never had that mother experience with ayahuasca, and I haven’t had the snakes and the jungle creatures. That may be the problem for me: that I have a certain idea of what it should look like. Maybe I’ve had the experience, but it hasn’t looked like what I think it should look like.

MABIT: The upbringing might have something to do with it, but also very important, I think, is the role of the ritual. The ritual is the interface between this world and that other world.

GABOR: Mm hmm.

MABIT: The ritual is what permits you to access that other world but, most importantly, allows you to come back to this world enriched by the experience. I think often what happens with addicts is that they take plants or similar substances, that give them access to the other worlds. But they’re not going through the proper channels, so they have problems returning to the everyday world.

The ritual – and you can see it in ayahuasca’s rituals – does the opposite; the beginning of the experience can be very difficult, because you find yourself submerged in this place. But then, when you return and you’re done, you come back enriched, and you’re, you’re at peace, you don’t think of taking more. Whereas, when you do it the disorderly or the addict way, you go through that world and you come back disturbed, because you want to return right away.

GABOR: Yes, and what I gather is that you’ve created a context here. It’s not just the experience, it’s a whole: it’s not just the ayahuasca experience, it is a complete experience.

MABIT: Yeah.

GABOR: And people here live in an environment where they are held; they’re safe, not just immediately, but for a while afterwards too. So that’s what’s missing for us in Canada: I’ve worked with ayahuasca and it’s been very dramatic, in what people are able to see and understand, but there’s not the context, and there’s not the holding context one finds here. So I’m trying to see how I can adapt what I learn here to my experience back there, but I’m sure a big part of it is just that you’ve got this …place here, and you’ve got all these people working with you, and the environment that you’re in …and so, did you think to create that? Did that work create itself over time, or did you have it planned? How did this happen, that you got this place here?

MABIT: Most everything that you see here was inspired from visions or from dreams, which to me are the same thing. The spiritual world is populated by…we can call them entities, and these entities give instructions, commands. Everything here, the structure of the ritual, was not my own making; had I made it myself … I would have made it shorter, I would have made it easier for me! [laughs] But this was received knowledge, all the way down to the shape of some of the buildings. Everything you find here, the songs, even the treatment processes itself, was received. Of course, we contributed many important things from our own knowledge and experience… but most of the things in place here were actually inspired, or arrived through visions. Maybe there’s a possibility that during ayahuasca here you’ll also have inspirations, that somehow could help or improve your work.

GABOR: Mmm.

MABIT: Another thing to remember is that ayahuasca itself is a feminine force, it takes part during night in darkness. The Maloka is like a uterus, and ayahuasca is like a giving and nourishing force, it gives you things, teachings. Now, the next step after receiving these things, is to put them to work, to give them structure, to build them, to construct them; this is the masculine force, the organizing principle.

GABOR: Mmm hmm.

MABIT: And for this, we use the dieta plants. These are the plants that help you construct and build. Then you start to build a foundation for remedy. It goes back and forth, you start to receive things from ayahuasca and the dieta plants start telling you how to make it, how to build it. Then you consult again with ayahuasca and again you build it with the dieta plants. Our patients, when they finish their process, if you ask them what was the most important part, the most revealing part of their process, they always say the dieta, not the ayahuasca.

GABOR: So the dieta seems more important than the ayahuasca experience itself. How do you explain that?

MABIT: Ayahuasca is more like a lamp that lets you see the direction.

GABOR: Yes.

MABIT: But then, you find yourself back in the daylight, back in the day and you’ve only seen the direction…but not the steps to take. The dieta plants actually build change. Ayahuasca shows, but it doesn’t build structures. It’s the dieta plants that help build structures. When you’re in a dieta, you spend eight days alone, in isolation, while you’re taking these plants. That’s when you really begin to see how this will come, how this will take place in the real world. Not only that, this structure is built, not only physiologically, inside the body, but also mentally, and internally. This is how you come out of the dieta, with this built structure: and you’re ready to put these things into practice.

So, for example, with a person who smokes a lot of marijuana and lives in their head, with the mind constantly outside of the body, we would prescribe the dieta plants that will root them…back into the earth, back into the ground. This change actually takes place, you see this structure emerge when the person comes out of the dieta.

GABOR: Okay.

MABIT: Western culture is very dependent on words, explanations, reasoning – and in this sense, psychotherapy, especially in terms of the work with symbols, is really valuable when working with ayahuasca. Because some ayahuasca visions are very clear and don’t need interpretation, but others are very symbolic or metaphorical, and require help – from someone who will help you interpret and understand exactly what they mean. Otherwise there’s a danger that the person’s self, the ego of the person, would actually feed on this, taking the metaphorical as factual. And the vision will just be used to feed the ego, in a sort of inflation of the ego that can also occur with ayahuasca.

GABOR: I understand that. In Canada, people have been using ayahuasca in ceremonies for years, but missing any kind of processing, or psychological integration of the experience, and that’s what I started to do…What’s missing for me is the context, what’s missing for me is the follow-up, the kind of, the dieta, and so on. I’m really here to learn and to think how can I apply this knowledge to my situation back home. Because, maybe some day we’ll have a center like this up there, but that’s hard to imagine right now-

MABIT: Mmm hmm.

GABOR: And I don’t want to wait for the future, I want to learn what I can now because I can see how helpful and how powerful it is. So I need to … I need to deepen my experience of it, and see what I can learn from you, even if I can’t create what you’ve created here, but what can I take that I can still use to make that experience more healing and deeper for people.

MABIT: An idea came to my mind while you were speaking. The real king of the Amazonian medicinal plants is not ayahuasca but tobacco. It is really the master shamanic plant. Because it is legal and it’s allowed in the West, there’s some people already who are working with it Europe. Tobacco’s somewhat easier to handle and easier to get. But in order to work, to really work with tobacco, you have to work with it both in its liquid form and in its solid form.

GABOR: Mmm.

MABIT: Tobacco has been very, very helpful with our patients. The effects are very, very powerful, and it’s a very interesting plant to work with. If one could imagine working with ayahuasca and tobacco, tobacco is somewhat easier to handle. The dieta is very, very delicate and even dangerous technology, you have to learn a long time, but tobacco is easier to manage.

GABOR: Okay. That’s not a thought I ever had: when I think of tobacco, I think of cigarettes.

MABIT: That’s a good illustration of what happens with addiction. Addiction is a typical Western pathology. It didn’t exist in traditional cultures until Westerners arrived. People drank fermented corn drinks, yucca beer. They would get drunk during a celebration, and that was it. There was no alcoholism. With tobacco, similarly, there was no addiction.

So the Western pathology is to transform, profane, the use of these sacred plants by using them without a context, without ritual, without preparation, without intention. Transforming the plants, their active principles; and finally, this degenerated their meaning, inverted it.

GABOR: I understand exactly what you are saying: the Western way has been to take the sacred plants and make them into addictive substances, and then to become afraid of them! Part of the problem about talking about ayahuasca in Canada is people saying “Well, it’s a drug.” And they think of it as a drug. That’s the only context they know. Western man can only think of it as a drug, and of course there’s many bad experiences with drugs that people have had, and so they can only understand it in terms of something negative or dangerous.

MABIT: Yeah …

GABOR: We’ve really lost that connection to the healing power of plants. Not just plants, we’ve lost our connection to healing, period.

I’m just laughing here because, if a group of Canadian or French doctors heard this conversation, they would immediately call the psychiatrists and have us both committed to some psychiatric institution, you know?

[Laughs]

GABOR: Well, I want to thank you very much for this conversation and for welcoming me here. It has already been a great teaching experience, and I look forward to the week or several days that I’ll be here, I’m sure I’ll go away much richer than I came.

MABIT: It’s my pleasure. I also want to thank you for the confidence in coming all the way from Canada to meet a crazy man in the jungle, it shows that you have an open spirit.

We can talk and theorize all we want. But what we really want, clinically, as doctors, is to prove that a patient was doing badly, took the treatment and now is doing well. In Takiwasi we don’t have 100% success rate but, yes, we can prove a rate of success that is better than most conventional centers. That is the idea behind what we do, and to let it be known so that other doctors, in Canada and other places, can be inspired by this model which we did not invent, but only received from the indigenous people.