New Perspectives on the Therapeutics of Traditional Psychoactive Plant Medicines from Southern African and Upper Amazonia

The use of psychoactive plants in southern African traditional medicine has been a neglected area of ethnobotanical research. However, recent reviews have demonstrated the significance of psychoactive plant medicines in the healing practices of the southern African traditional healers, and ethnopharmacological studies indicate numerous species of southern African plants with psychotropic activity for treating mental illness. Yet, much of the cultural understandings of this psychoactive plant use remain undocumented. A cross cultural healing technology of utilising psychoactive initiation plant medicines has been identified from southern African and Upper Amazonia, that may hold keys to furthering our understanding of how psychoactive plants could be used to treat mental illness and addictions with potential application in future medicine.