AYAHUASCA GUMMIES

What a time to be alive

The gummy has arguably become the preferred drug delivery method for our current age of convenience. While the cavalier rebellion of snorting a white line will never go out of style, powders in plastic bags are cumbersome, trashy, and prone to messy accidents. Vapes can be equally embarrassing—the exhalation of giant vape clouds turning the private act of drug consumption into a self-consciously public exhibition. Popping a gummy, on the other hand, exudes casual discretion: a quick flick of the wrist, and you barely even notice it happened. Put them on a silver platter, and these trembling little squares of colorful gelatin even start to resemble hors d’oeuvres.

The cannabis gummy market valuation hit $8 billion in 2022—and that’s just for weed. These days, you can also find shroom gummies, acid gummies, and even molly gummies floating through the underground. But when ayahuasca gummies hit my group chat recently, something about it seemed sacrilegious, like maybe the psychonauts have gone a little too far.

The ayahuasca gummies went viral on X via the psychedelic power user @FatherMcKenna, who explained that there were two steps involved: first, you take the red gummy, which contains an MAOI-inhibitor. Then, you take the white gummy, which contains DMT, the active compound in ayahuasca. The MAOI-inhibitor gummy allows the DMT to remain in your body without getting metabolized immediately, mimicking the process of drinking the traditional ayahuasca brew. But who was the crazy chemist who came up with this?

I traced down the source post on Reddit’s /r/DMT, where the original poster claimed to have made these gummies themselves, and was busy fielding dozens of breathless questions from fellow DMT heads. I reached out for an interview, fully expecting that this underground chemist would shy away from speaking with a journalist. When they agreed to chat, I hopped on a Signal call, and got another surprise: the voice at the end of the line belonged to a woman. She told me her name was Krista, and that she is a former school teacher based in Canada who uses her science background to concoct all kinds of edibles. “I just took 400mg of THC,” she laughed.

Then, she gave me the step-by-step process through which she made these ayahuasca gummies—or “pharmahuasca,” as the drug nerds like to call pharmaceutical or lab-made versions of the ayahuasca brew. Our conversation meandered into the ethical considerations around removing ayahuasca from its ceremonial context, as well as the unexpected trickle-down effects of Canada’s liberal drug laws.

I am still on the fence about whether I would recommend trying these gummies yourself, but I thought our chat was a fascinating look into how drug decriminalization is opening up space in the underground for some pretty wild kitchen experiments by mommy-chemists. Paywalled for obvious reasons—dive in below.