Yagé (pronounced yah-HEY) is a psychoactive plant brew originating from indigenous communities in the Amazon regions of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. It is essentially the same preparation widely known as ayahuasca, though the name yagé is more common among Colombian and southern Colombian indigenous groups. The brew combines two plants: a woody vine and a leafy plant, which work together to produce intense visions, physical purging, and what practitioners describe as deep spiritual insight. Its effects typically last four to six hours.
What Goes Into the Brew
Yagé is made from two core ingredients. The first is the yagé vine itself, Banisteriopsis caapi, a thick woody vine native to the Amazon basin. The second is a leafy plant that supplies the psychoactive compound DMT. In Colombian traditions, the preferred leaf is Diplopterys cabrerana, sometimes called chagropanga or “oco yagé.” Other regional preparations use a different DMT-containing plant called chacruna (Psychotria viridis), but the Colombian yagé tradition typically relies on Diplopterys.
Traditional preparation involves mashing the vine stalks and boiling them together with the leaves in water for hours, sometimes an entire day, to produce a thick, dark, bitter liquid. There is no standardized recipe. The concentration of active compounds varies widely depending on the plants’ growing region, the quantity used, and the desired strength of the final brew. Each healer, known as a taita in the Colombian tradition, prepares it according to their own lineage and knowledge.
How the Two Plants Work Together
Neither plant would produce its full effect alone when swallowed. DMT, the compound in the leaves that produces visions, is normally destroyed by enzymes in your gut before it can reach your bloodstream. Your body breaks it down almost immediately through a process called first-pass metabolism.
The vine solves this problem. It contains a family of compounds called harmala alkaloids, particularly harmine and harmaline, that temporarily block the gut enzyme (MAO-A) responsible for destroying DMT. With that enzyme suppressed, DMT survives digestion, enters the bloodstream, and reaches the brain in concentrations high enough to produce powerful psychedelic effects lasting four to six hours. DMT on its own is potently psychoactive when inhaled or injected (routes that skip the gut entirely), but it takes the vine’s enzyme-blocking action to make it work orally. The vine’s alkaloids may also have their own mild psychoactive properties beyond simply protecting the DMT.
Cultural and Spiritual Roots
Yagé has been central to the medical, spiritual, and cultural systems of indigenous peoples in the Amazon piedmont for centuries. Among the Siona, Cofán, Coreguaje, Secoya, and Awa peoples of southern Colombia and eastern Ecuador, it is far more than a psychoactive substance. The Cofán describe it as “a spiritual element that gives cohesion to our cultural life,” one whose ceremonial use helps shape a model of life for future generations.
In these traditions, yagé is considered a medicine of knowledge. The visions it produces are understood as teachings, not hallucinations. A common phrase among practitioners: “The more one drinks, the more one learns and sees.” The brew is sometimes called “the mirror of consciousness” or “the mirror of truth.” Practitioners describe encounters with spiritual beings called “yagé people” who teach the drinker the art of healing and seeing. The Siona and Secoya traditions describe how their first ancestors received the medicine and learned to identify all varieties of the vine, each with its own specific use.
A taita typically guides the ceremony, having undergone years of apprenticeship drinking the medicine under senior healers. Taita Luis Antonio Portilla, a well-known Colombian practitioner of Awa heritage, trained under Siona and Coreguaje masters in the Putumayo region, learning the “pinta,” or visionary knowledge, from each before establishing his own practice. This lineage-based transmission of knowledge is a defining feature of the tradition.
What the Experience Feels Like
After drinking, effects typically begin within 20 to 60 minutes. The peak arrives between 1.5 and 4 hours after ingestion, and the most noticeable effects fade within 4 to 8 hours total.
The most immediate physical effect for many people is purging. Nausea and vomiting are reported by roughly 62% of users in surveys. This happens because the vine’s enzyme-blocking compounds disrupt normal stomach function, while DMT activates serotonin receptors in the gut. In traditional practice, this purging is not seen as a side effect. Practitioners call the brew “la purga” (the purge) and interpret the vomiting as an expelling of physical toxins and psychological trauma. Some refer to it simply as “getting well.”
Beyond the physical purging, the experience involves vivid visual imagery, intense emotions, and altered perception of time and self. Many people report emotional breakthroughs, revisiting difficult memories, or a sense of connection to something larger than themselves. The subjective experience varies enormously from person to person and session to session.
Research on Depression
A randomized, placebo-controlled trial tested ayahuasca in 29 patients with treatment-resistant depression. By day seven after a single dose, 64% of patients in the ayahuasca group showed a significant reduction in depression symptoms, compared to 27% in the placebo group. The effect size was large and grew stronger over the week rather than fading. About 36% of patients in the ayahuasca group were in remission by day seven, compared to 7% on placebo.
These results are preliminary. The trial was small, and much larger studies are needed before any clinical conclusions can be drawn. But the speed and magnitude of the response in people who had not improved on conventional antidepressants has generated significant interest in the research community.
Safety Risks and Drug Interactions
The most significant safety concern with yagé involves its interaction with other substances. Because the vine’s compounds block the enzyme MAO-A, anything else that raises serotonin levels in the body can become dangerous when combined with the brew. This includes common antidepressants like SSRIs and tricyclic antidepressants, which could trigger a potentially life-threatening condition called serotonin syndrome when taken alongside an MAO inhibitor.
Foods rich in tyramine, such as aged cheeses and red wine, also pose risks when MAO is suppressed. Recreational drugs including MDMA, alcohol, and cannabis have not been demonstrated to be safe in combination with ayahuasca and are advised against. The general guidance across both traditional and clinical settings is that concurrent use of yagé with other drugs or medications is not recommended.
Legal Status
DMT, the active psychedelic compound in the brew, is a Schedule I controlled substance in the United States and is similarly restricted in most countries under the 1971 United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances. This makes yagé illegal to possess or distribute in most Western nations. However, the plants themselves occupy a legal gray area in some jurisdictions, and certain religious organizations in the U.S. and Europe have won legal exemptions for ceremonial use. In countries like Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, traditional and religious use of ayahuasca or yagé is generally permitted, though commercial and non-traditional contexts may still face legal scrutiny.