One of my old friends got involved with a group drinking ayahuasca frequently.

In their case they were taking lower doses than are traditionally associated with the one-off stories you hear about people traveling for ceremonies. There is also a tolerance build up that lessens the overt effects.

However, it still resulted in some major mental health issues over time. He was outwardly happy and cheerful, but the longer you talked to him the more you realized he had developed impossible ideas about reality, distorted (and easily debunked with photos and other records) memories of past events, and a lot of mystical ideas about the world.

He had mostly learned to hide them from people who weren’t in his group. When you got a couple of them ayahuasca people together and they started talking about mysticism, telepathy, and dismissing “western science” it started to reveal how far he was down the rabbit hole.

He has since gone MIA, though we get signs that he’s still alive and active from time to time via social media. The way it changed him was scary, though.

This is common with some groups unfortunately. I've seen a lot of "casual" drinkers with big ideas show up at our center and are a little taken aback by how grounded the traditional ways are. A lot of people use it to escape and build stories instead of dispelling them. I don't blame anyone in these situations- everyone is on their own journey- but it can be a heck of a pitfall to get stuck in if you're new and actually trying to heal. The hippy-dippy spiritual tourists are stuck there and taken advantage of.

The place I was at drinks 4 times a week (9-10 months out of the year), I usually did twice/week. The shamans drink every time, thousands of ceremonies under their belts over many years.