IamRickGrimesAMA

SOFTWARE:

1 1/2 oz. bourbon

1 oz. Campari

1 oz. sweet vermouth

Ice cubes

HARDWARE:

Tools: mixing glass, barspoon, strainer

Glass: cocktail

Garnish: orange slice, lemon twist or cherry

Stir long and well with ice in a mixing glass and strain into a cocktail glass.

The Boulevardier

Hi everyone. I'm some guy who knows a little about this stuff.

Over the past ten years everyone and their uncle has been throwing up ayahuasca retreat centers in and around Iquitos. Airport road has now turned into ayahuasca road with some twenty "centers" catering to the tourist crowd. The laws of supply and demand come into play here, and in a place that can be hard scrabble I can't say I'm surprised.

Traditionally, ayahuasca was consumed by the Curandero (the shaman). So, if you go to a ceremony, and you drink you are getting the gringo version. I'm not hating on that. I'm just saying. In so far as this is medicine, well...people have made a million claims but no one has (to my knowledge) done a controlled experiment to evaluate that.

Pre anti-retroviral therapy for HIV/AIDS there was an influx of late stage patients who went down for ceremonies. These people died. That's not to say they didn't experience some benefit (or not). But if ayahuasca was a silver bullet everyone would be using it by now.

People liked to get bent. Ayahuasca will pretzel you. Your world view is shaped by your experiences and adding this one isn't such a bad (or good) thing. It depends on you.

Ayahuasca is the new(-er...) Thing for the crystals and vortex crowd. It has been a part of traditional tribal medicine in the Amazon for thousands of years. But if you go and sit in a "healing center" on airport road...well, you're getting what you're paying for. Which isn't really good or bad in and of itself...it's the reality of tourism.

I lived in Iquitos for a year.

OP stated that talking was discouraged during ceremonies and that many didn't have a Curandero who sand or chanted (these songs are called icaros if memory serves). This is tantamount to going to a baseball game and not having the national anthem played. Maybe more so. It is an integral part of the ceremony, the Curandero asks the plants to give their power during to process of making the drink. He sings to his spirit guides for advice and protection. An ayahuasca ceremony without icaros isn't an ayahuasca ceremony at all. It's a cup of dmt (the active ingredient in ayahuasca).

I'm dyed in the cloth realist science type who wanta evidence for claims people make. When it comes to the aya, I haven't heard anything compelling that makes me think it is anything other than a hallucinogenic (which can have benefits). The drink compounds are quite similar and there are people who brew well and those who don't. I'm just saying that while you may get some decent aya, you will certainly be getting the tourist version of what a ceremony is. And that's ok too. Just realize they are different things.

Since you seem to have a Jill-of-all trades approach to writing fiction from your description, what is your take on on the 21st century's take on the vampire? Vampires certainly fulfilled a need for smut during the chaste Victorian era with all the elongating of teeth and the exchanging of bodily fluids. With True Blood and Twilight there seems to be an over emphasis (for my taste anyway) on the emotional connection between predator and, essentially, prey.

To put it another way, what does it say about us culturally when we turn our villains into anti-heroes who hold a spectre of true love?

The zombie thing has blown up since Sept. 11. Zombies have the unique trait among monsters in that while they feed on humans it is actually civilization that they are destroying, and the humanity of both their victims and the survivors.

Zombies post 9/11 are hugely fascinating to me although as an archetypal villain, vampires have so much swagger, when done correctly. The clothes, the bloodlines, the infighting, factions, cools houses. There is no accounting for taste. Oh, did you see my username?