> Could psychedelic drug ayahuasca have health benefits?
Certainly, anecdotally I kicked a very strong 20 year coffee and sugar habit after doing a 3-day retreat in Latin America this past winter. Just happened naturally, oh, I don't need this daily coffee and sugar fix anymore.
On the flip side, as the article mentions, the psychedlic tourism industry as a whole doesn't have formal safe guards in place for when the shit hits the fan with one (or more) of the attendees. My friend, who sat all eleven days, said that two women just completely lost it on day 3, screaming hysterically, out of their minds battling unknown demons.
The retreat "helpers", do the best they can to settle you down, but when you're deep in the experience it's very hard to distinguish between real/unreal. For example, in some kind of existential moment I shouted out in my mind's eye, "you are the most high!". In reality I shocked the 30 other attendants out of their seats, and a helper rushed up to see if I was Ok.
It's an extremely powerful substance. At the end of the retreat, when everyone headed off to sleep, I was still tripping so hard that sleep was impossible. When I finally lay down the sheer flow of non-stop Dali/Escher-like hallucinations running through my mind were sufficient to make me question whether I was ever going to return to reality -- Pandora's box indeed.
tl;dr; proceed with caution, can have beneficial side-effects.