I was apprehensive to write this. People are fiercely attached to their belief in the ayahuasca “medicine.” And let’s be clear, ayahuasca is medicine. Which is why this is a delicate thread to pull, not because the medicine isn’t real, but because what surrounds it has become increasingly distorted.

Has the medicine been hijacked? Or has the collective consciousness been hijacked, filtering the messages through wounded, hyper-stimulated minds? Let’s have a look.

For those of us who didn’t live through the hippie movement, much of its unraveling is lost on us. But Laurel Canyon, from what I’ve studied, was the symbolic heart of that cultural rebellion. Barefoot prophets and cosmic idealists gathered beneath the haze of hash smoke and LSD. It was a supposed spiritual epicenter of liberation. Yet behind the curtain, a quieter current ran: intelligence agencies, military lineage and social engineering. Gurus spoke of ascension while government-funded cameras rolled in the hills above them.

Today, Pisac, Peru carries a striking resemblance. Spiritual seekers flood in to join ceremonies and chase awakening. Ayahuasca flows freely, along with every other supposedly “pure” substance, and the medicine circle has morphed into something hashtag-ready. Ceremony participants now dress the part. Instagram-model aesthetics wrapped in New Age garb signal status as much as “soul”. The original vision, to reconnect with the sacred, with community, and with realms beyond, has been repackaged into an algorithm of performance.

Why has plant medicine become a brand?

Why has vulnerability become a business model?

Why does the merging of spirituality, therapy, and marketing feel like an implosion disguised as healing?

Back in Laurel Canyon, the so-called spontaneous cultural explosion was populated by artists with deep military roots. Today, seekers say they’ve “heard the call,” but what is the call? A Facebook ad? A TikTok testimonial? A retreat link embedded in a story? If the military once used LSD to fragment identity, what’s to say a digital algorithm can’t do the same?

One of my favorite healers, Hannah Kroeger, once wrote about LSD. It was said to increase creativity, but she spent years helping people recover from the shells they became after using it and I believe her, I don’t get the vibe she was a Puritan. I see the same pattern with ayahuasca when it’s overused or improperly held. The light goes out. I’ve watched it for over a decade. Too much “medicine” without integration turns people into echoes of themselves. Highly suggestible, energetically porous, easily steered by charismatic leaders or ideological scripts. I have a hunch that intelligence agencies know this terrain well.

Let’s also be honest. The non-stop cycling through ayahuasca, San Pedro, Bufo, and whatever else, even just one of them, is not an indigenous practice. It is the product of economic need in impoverished communities and the insatiable consumerism of spiritual tourism. This is not a return to tradition. It’s the extraction of tradition into a marketplace, which feels like a rinse and repeat out of the control the population playbook. 

And now, the next layer. Psychedelic therapy is being funded by Silicon Valley. People don’t always resonate with this, but Silicon Valley is the new face of the military-industrial complex. It’s Laurel Canyon with better UX. The aesthetics may be shamanic, but the infrastructure is corporate. Your healing is their data.

From what I can see, what neutralized the revolutionary energy in Laurel Canyon was not the lack of spirit, but the overload of spectacle, the presence of drugs without discipline, and the manipulation woven into the movement itself. The same type of spell is being cast again. A genuine impulse toward transformation is being flooded with noise. The sacred is being swallowed by the market.

This isn’t to say the whole thing is corrupt. Many people in this movement have pure hearts. The many people who come there for real healing, show us how many people are tired of being sick. They’ve touched true insight in their processes, but I believe their light has been hijacked, absorbed into a social algorithm designed to stall the deeper revolution, by confusing them into thinking it’s never enough.

So how do we stop it?

By refusing to be bought.

By making what we do unsellable.

By keeping the most sacred parts of our path off the stage.

By protecting the mystery, not packaging it.

Maybe if you feel called to add to this, your insight could help us all find our way back to center.