It's about nine in the evening and I'm on a thin mattress in a kind of large round hut in the jungle on the edge of the Peruvian Amazon.

There's about eight other mattresses with people on them, each with a little bucket by their beds for when they feel nauseous.

It's pitch black apart from a single candle that's burning at the end of the hut where Maestra Angela Sanchez-Rios, a shaman from the Shepibo-Conibo tribe, is holding an ayahuasca ceremony.

She starts by breathing a local tobacco known as Mapacho and the thick smell of tobacco slowly fills the heart.

After a while she begins to sing what are called Ikaros, ritual songs that accompany the ayahuasca ceremony.

This is the documentary on the BBC World Service. I'm Januk Rogers and for heart and soul I'm in Peru, looking into the growing use of a powerful psychedelic drug, ayahuasca, as a tool

for healing and to connect with the spiritual world. More often than not, ayahuasca, as a tool for healing and to connect with the spiritual world.

More often than not, ayahuasca here in Peru is simply called la medicina, the medicine.

And ceremonies like these have exploded in popularity, with many foreigners drawn to psychedelics,

in the hope that traditional plant medicines like ayahuasca will help tackle depression,

anxiety, PTSD, and often a whole range of other existential and spiritual questions.

Ayahuasca, though, is illegal in most of the world. It contains DMT, which is classed as a

class A drug in several places and also has strong side effects.

While in some circles there is a growing scientific interest in psychedelic-assisted therapy

in the Western world, there's no consensus on how it should be used, or even if it should be used,

and no scientific proof that it works consistently. But still, the whole ayahuasca boom continues, and over the last decade has been fueled

by a chorus of Hollywood celebrities, singing ayahuasca's praises on late-night talk shows and

podcasts.

You drugs, like you drank ayahuasca tea that's used in spiritual awakenings among the indigenous peoples of Peru.

Yes.

How did that work out?

Well, do you want me to tell you about the ayahuasca experience?

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