Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia, may have become the first sitting government official in the world to admit to drinking ayahuasca, the psychedelic Amazon brew also known as yagé. He is also probably the first president to talk candidly about tripping, or any psychedelic usage in general. Pretty cool, huh? Let’s dive in…

Ayahuasca Leads the Way

The story emerged during an interview with Petro by Daniel Coronell, during his research for his now published book ‘The Children of the Amazon’. The book focused on the story of four Indigenous Colombian children who disappeared in the Amazon for 40 days last year. The children were only found after one of the members of the search party drank ayahuasca. 

Petro helped to build the search party, calling on the help of Giovani Yule, a respected Indigenous figure in Colombia, making the unusual move to combine Indigenous knowledge and military might. Coronell explained that Petro spoke with the great-uncle of the missing children, Fidencio Valencia, and he said to the president;

“‘I want to thank you for what you have done for the children. It’s very good that there are soldiers, so many helicopters, that there are aluminum birds flying over there. That’s good, but it’s not enough. You have to look for yagé because this has a spiritual solution. You have to look for Mayor Rubio, who is the wisest man in Araracuara.’”

So, they enlisted Rubio, a shaman who was known to give advice when Indigenous people were lost in the jungle. 

Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s president (via Creative Commons)

Venturing into the Spirit World

A member of the search team suggested that the children were being held captive by a pixie-like spirit called a duende, and Rubio agreed. So, he asked some soldiers who were leaving the jungle by helicopter to procure him some ayahuasca. He believed that he must enter the spirit realm to order the duende to release the missing children. 

The soldiers managed to acquire the potent potion for Rubio. After drinking it he had intense visions. In the official account of the events The Atavist Magazine reported;  “In his visions, Rubio later explained, he met the children and the duende who was with them… Rubio told the duende that he was there to take the children, and it agreed to return them on the condition that a spell be cast on the searchers.”

The Vision Came True

And the spell seemed to come true, as several of the Indigenous members of the search party came down with flu-like symptoms, while Rubio himself suffered from convulsions. So, the shaman told the search party that they would find the children that day. And they did! After a day of searching they came upon the children — and just in time too — malnutrition was beginning to seriously affect them. 

Petro was overjoyed at the “total survival” of the children, praising rare occurrences of the Indigenous communities and the military working together. He wrote on the platform-formally-know-as-Twitter; “Here, a different path is shown for Colombia.”

The President Discusses Psychedelics for the First Time

Telling Coronell this story led to Petro discussing his own ayahuasca experiences for the first time. They had not previously been mentioned In the president’s 2021 autobiography ‘One Life, Many Lives’. 

He told Coronell that in his first ayahuasca experience, he had visions of himself hugging a mountain and planting the roots of plants, leaving him with the realization that his purpose was to care for nature. 

His second ayahuasca experience however, was not so pleasant for the president. He saw a vision of his own death, likely influenced by his time as an urban guerilla before he became part of an official political party. Living in secret, and under constant threat had left its mark. Due to the intensity of the trip he experienced, Petro explained to Coronell, he does not wish to try the mystic brew again.

However, Petro still deeply respects the psychedelic root, clearly reflected in the prior story of the missing children, and the fact that in 2022, Petro himself sent a team of academics to Mexico to release a Colombian shaman from prison, who had been incarcerated for possessing ayahuasca. 

Opening the Minds of the Heads of State

To have a head-of-state publicly praising, and admitting to taking psychedelics seems like something from an alternate universe. However, as research deepens, and the good reports keep comin’, who knows? Opening the doors of perception can only be good for the leaders of the world…

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