Addictions and spiritual search

There are few things today as evident as the problem of addictions. A big part of our civilization is based precisely on them. Setting for a while the addiction to drugs aside, every person can be said to have addictions: to food, tobacco, sex, relations, sports, television, etc. Making a list would be a never-ending task.

 

The addict is only a person searching for the infinity, frustrated due to the lack of solutions offered by the society, which makes only shallow offerings. The results are deeper dependencies and a derived conversion to objects.

 

There aren’t addictions in the communities of the ancestors. This is due to the fact that the substances taken are consumed as part of a ritual, being therefore a deep-reaching activity and a present consciousness. In the way that are used the Ayahuasca, the tobacco and the coca by the Indians in South America, there aren’t any addicts. It is a mechanic and compulsive consumption, without any revealing intentions, which causes the never-ending dependencies.

 

Behind this problem are the lack of communication and contact to us and to other people. By trying to find ourselves without any result, we get trapped by our anxiety, thus falling in vice.

 

Our successful experiences in Colombia and Germany led us to suggest an interesting model of a treatment.

 

Duga is a millenary procedure of the Uitotos of the Amazon. It consists of meetings at night of different number of persons at the house of the community, or Maloca, to get a clear sight of the aspects related to life and work in the community, as well as the derived consequences on the environment, the myths and the religion, from a spiritual point of view. It is therefore a sort of meditation, arising with the help of two sacred plants: tobacco, in the form of a dissolving mash called Ambil, and Jipiji, a mixture of roasted leafs of coca ( erythroxilum coca) and the ashes of the leafs of a tree called Yarumo ( cecropia discolor).

 

This use of the coca is completely legal in the Andean countries, as it isn’t considered to be a drug, but as an aliment. There haven’t been found harmful side effects and it is a known source of protein, vitamin and minerals. The procedures to eliminate illegal plantations protect the use of the ancestors, which is a right recognized by the United Nations.

 

Based on the Duga, a type of healing activity known as ethnotherapy has appeared. It is very well adapted to treatments on groups. Hundreds of people have been treated in Colombia.

 

In countries with less tolerance to different cultures, we use, instead of Jipiji, Mate (ilex paraguariensis ) , accepted all around the world .

 

In Germany we have used Ambil in workshops on communication, in order to show that the knowledge of ourselves is the knowledge of the others and to make clear, that there are new, non conventional ways of relating to other people (see: “The use of ambil as an oracle and a short myth about the origin of tobacco”).

 

The herb Mate has a long history, too. First it was used as a shamanic herb by the Indians in Paraguay and then as a ritual beverage in the farms in Brazil. There it served to share the problems between workers and patrons and to solve them in peaceful terms. Its use by groups exists still today in the countries in the southern part of South America .