It’s Saturday afternoon in the outer suburbs. Spring is about to pop, and in the backyard rows of native acacias are flooded in golden light.

“They are all DMT [a psychedelic compound] containing plants,” Craig (not his real name) tells me.

Later, he’ll mix acacia leaves with ayahuasca vines he’s bought off a grower on the East coast of Australia. He’ll brew it into a hallucinogenic tea, just like Indigenous people in Peru have been doing for centuries as part of their spiritual practice.

The ayahuasca brew often gives drinkers the runs or makes them vomit, before delivering a trip of epic proportions. Craig and his friends are evangelistic in their praise: they’ve overcome depression, quit smoking pot and learnt big life lessons through drinking the tea, they say.

You might have heard of ayahuasca when Ben Lee released his 2013 album Ayahuasca: Welcome to the Work or in 2014, when Bondi Hipsters' Dom and Adrian lost their shit on it.

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Then there are the wide-eyed travellers who return from a trip to South America and tell stories of rebirth and redemption. The word spreads, the industry booms and operators clamber to fill the demand. Rak Razam, a journalist with a focus on ayahuasca, describes the fledgling industry as offering “Contiki tours of higher consciousness”.

Taken out of context, or mixed with the wrong thing, the experience can be deadly. Last year a man was stabbed to death at an ayahuasca retreat by a man who had been drinking the plant brew. People familiar with the industry in Peru say there’s an inherent risk when outsiders go looking for spiritual salvation and struggle to separate shamans from opportunists.

But taken correctly, ayahuasca can have a profound impact on a user’s life, according to Dr Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA.

“For those who are well prepared for the experience and who do not have severe underlying vulnerabilities, [ayahuasca] can facilitate a very strong experience where powerful insights are derived, where individuals can step outside their normative sense of self and view their lives from another perspective.

If they've brought in questions to be answered, or concerns to be raised they may have considerable insight.”

What happens when you take ayahuasca

Dr Grob says typically, taking ayahuasca will produce a “three to four hour visionary experience.”

But there isn’t really a “typical” ayahuasca experience.

“The impact is, as with all drugs is variable, depending on set and setting,” Dr Grob explains, “Set being the disposition of the individual, their underlying vulnerabilities, their intention, their seriousness of purpose.

“Setting is where they take it, who they take it with, the safety of the setting, the skill of the facilitators.

“In an optimum setting, where individuals are kept safe and carefully monitored, there's a potential of experiencing a very intense visionary state, somewhat similar to a waking dream at times.

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Whatsapp A pot containing the ingredients to make Ayahuasca.

“With the best outcome cases, there can be persistent improvements in mood following the experience, lowering anxiety and a higher level of overall function.

“With some individuals who we met during our research investigations, it seems to have the potential capacity to lead to quite impressive and sustained transformations in personality structure and quality of life and in individuals capacity to function in an optimal manner.”

Dr Grob says for people with underlying mental health issues, ayahuasca often isn’t for them.

“It can be a very challenging experience for some and for those who are quite vulnerable and in inhospitable settings... it can be somewhat risky.”

Why the DIY guys do it

Craig takes ayahuasca about once a month. Some of his friends are first-time users; some use it on-and-off.

But the experience often comes with “purging” (AKA spewing or getting the runs).

“One time when I drank it, I vomited back into the cup that I was drinking from,” Craig’s friend Gerard says. “I kind of felt the pressure to drink it… it’s not an easy thing to drink, it’s probably the worst thing I have ever tasted.”

But for Craig and his friends, the disgusting taste and gross aftermath is totally worth it. For all of them, they’re drawn to ayahuasca for self-improvement.

“I do it because I think it’s just good for my health, really…it sometimes helps me get a bit of perspective on how I'm living my life... and just reflect on how I can be a better person."

I was seeking to reconnect to myself, I felt quite disconnected and I was led to ayahuasca,” Jason, another friend of Craig’s, told Hack.

And for Craig, it was about breaking an unhealthy cycle.

“I was just barrelling through [life],” Craig says, “I’d go to uni and go, ‘oh I can’t wait for Friday’ and then I’d look forward to Friday and I’d just want to go home and smoke some pot and get takeaway and pass out, and be really comfortable doing that week after week after week after week.”

Is ayahuasca illegal in Australia?

The ayahuasca vine, which is native to South America but is also grown here in Australia, isn’t illegal.

But DMT, which Craig extracts from acacia plants and mixes with the ayahuasca vine, is illegal.

Earlier this year, a submission was made to the Therapeutic Goods Administration - the body that’s responsible for regulation medications in Australia - to change the classification of DMT.

The hope was to make ayahuasca legal in religious contexts - like the ceremonies hosted by shamans in Peru, or at some churches in Brazil and the US, where the ceremonies are legal.

Dr Grob said a study he conducted at one of the churches in Brazil showed the positive results of ayahuasca.

“We interviewed a number of our subjects who had, prior to their entry into the ayahuasca church in Brazil, past histories of severe alcoholism and problems with other forms of drug abuse. These individuals who we got to know and got to talk to at great length reported that their alcoholism and drug abuse problems remitted after their experiences with the ayahuasca church.”

But an ayahuasca church won’t be opening in Australia any time soon; the TGA rejected the application to change the classification of DMT.

They cited a number of reasons why - including a lack of evidence on DMT’s toxicity at low doses; the “further investigation needed” into how DMT reacts with common medicines like antidepressants; how users would regulate the amount of DMT in the ayahuasca tea, and the unknown risk of dependency or abuse of the drug.

Listen back to our full segment on Hack below.