Short-Term Treatment Effects of a Substance Use Disorder Therapy Involving Traditional Amazonian Medicine

ABSTRACT

Chronic illness management today commonly involves alternative medicines. Substance use disorder (SUD), as a chronic psychosomatic illness, might benefit from a similar approach. The accredited Takiwasi Center offers such an SUD treatment program involving Amazonian medicine combined with psychotherapy. The current study assessed this integrative program‘s short-term therapeutic effects. We measured baseline data from 53 dependence-diagnosed males admitted to treatment (T1) and repeated clinical outcome variables at treatment completion (T2). Paired samples t-tests were used to assess changes between T1 and T2 (n = 36). Nearly all participants (age M= 30.86, SD= 8.17) were dependent on multiple substances, most prominently cannabis, alcohol, and cocaine-related drugs. A significant decrease (T1 to T2) was found for addiction severity outcomes drug use (p < .001), alcohol use (p < .001), psychiatric status (p < .001), and social/familial relationships (p < .001). Emotional distress also diminished significantly (p < .001), as did substance craving (p < .001). Quality of life increased significantly from T1 to T2 (p < .001). Our results provide first indications for significantly improved SUD symptoms after the Amazonian medicine-based treatment. These findings are preliminary given the design, but strongly encourage further investigation of this therapy, which in the long term may open new therapeutic avenues for SUDs.

KEYWORDS:

• Substance use disorder
• Amazonian medicine
• addiction treatment
• ayahuasca
• drug abuse
• alternative medicine

Acknowledgments

We thank the Swiss National Science Foundation for supporting this work with a research grant. We are grateful to the Takiwasi Center and its patients for enabling data collection for this research.

Disclosure statement

Dr. Mendive works as scientific coordinator at the Takiwasi Addiction Treatment Center, where the study was conducted.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Due to the small item number in this domain‘s scale, the indicator for internal consistency may not be reliable (WHOQOL Group 1998).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation [SNSF-148981].