This movie was a little bit anguishing to me at times, moving at others, and in the end, it was relieving.
In the beginning, I thought the story would be only about James, but throughout the movie we see that it is much more than that, it also covers the community in Peru and its local drama and issues around the use of Ayahuasca as "a business", like stated the movie.
The story passed about the year of 2011 if I am not wrong and I am pretty sure that the commercialized Ayahuasca has taken over peru and other places by now (2022), since there is huge number of centers that conduct such ceremonies not only in Peru, but also in other countries.
Anyway, aside from that, the story of James is anguishing at times, like I said, but you can see that he is looking for something real, he just does not know where to look to solve his issues. And like many people who suffer from depression can relate, conventional medicine and psychiatry frequently doesn't help at all.
So he goes for Ayahuasca as a last resort for answers. In Peru, he goes through some issues which I will not go into detail, and also a few different shamans in a what was possibly a very long and courageous stay in Peru, far from his home.
By the end, what he learned from the plants is that the answers to his problems are inside of himself, like stated in the beginning of the documentary. So what I learned is that we can see that there really isn't a magic solution to anything, but the solution is really inside ourselves, and this realization can help us reorient our lives and give us the needed courage, energy, motivation, honesty and sincerity with our own selves to keep going in our lives towards what we really want and will make us happy. So in the end he is not cured, but he has renewed hope and he knows that he can get better somehow.
In the beginning, I thought the story would be only about James, but throughout the movie we see that it is much more than that, it also covers the community in Peru and its local drama and issues around the use of Ayahuasca as "a business", like stated the movie.
The story passed about the year of 2011 if I am not wrong and I am pretty sure that the commercialized Ayahuasca has taken over peru and other places by now (2022), since there is huge number of centers that conduct such ceremonies not only in Peru, but also in other countries.
Anyway, aside from that, the story of James is anguishing at times, like I said, but you can see that he is looking for something real, he just does not know where to look to solve his issues. And like many people who suffer from depression can relate, conventional medicine and psychiatry frequently doesn't help at all.
So he goes for Ayahuasca as a last resort for answers. In Peru, he goes through some issues which I will not go into detail, and also a few different shamans in a what was possibly a very long and courageous stay in Peru, far from his home.
By the end, what he learned from the plants is that the answers to his problems are inside of himself, like stated in the beginning of the documentary. So what I learned is that we can see that there really isn't a magic solution to anything, but the solution is really inside ourselves, and this realization can help us reorient our lives and give us the needed courage, energy, motivation, honesty and sincerity with our own selves to keep going in our lives towards what we really want and will make us happy. So in the end he is not cured, but he has renewed hope and he knows that he can get better somehow.