For this blog post I want to talk about the interview with Guillermo Arrévalo – I found this interview to be so interesting! There are a few things I want to point out. Firstly, my aunt is a psychologist who works in Toronto, and last Christmas I remember having a conversation with her about ayahuasca, and how many of her patients raise the topic with her asking for her advice on whether or not it’s a good idea for them. Some of them struggle with severe depression and anxiety, and others see her for a variety of other reasons. My aunt said she, and other psychologists, have had to look into ayahuasca more and more in the past few years as it has become quite a popular topic. It’s interesting to me that Arrévalo sees it essentially as a money grab: “… most of all this is a type of commercial shamanic done in order to extract money from people.” The reality is, like Arrévalo says, “the community lives from tourism”. My aunt seemed to share the same views as Arrévalo. Some of her patients express their interest in going down to Peru for months at a time, sometimes even longer. This is excellent for the tourism industry! Perhaps the most interesting part about this interview was when Arrévalo describes the reasons why tourists go to Peru. He says that the most popular reason is to resolve social problems, but people also go to look for spiritual responses. Arrévalo even suggests that in North America there exists a spiritual and psychological crisis, where many people are suffering from depression, are slaves to their work, have a bad relationship and/or are consumed by materialism. I think that Arrévalo is right, but I also think that for some people, ayahuasca is just a subject of curiosity. The problem is, what happens when this curiosity dies down? Just like Homan says, trends come and go. How will this effect the local people? I suspect that the local people will be greatly effected in many ways, mostly negative.