Brazil

Psychedelic substances have a long and layered history in Brazil that blends Indigenous, syncretic-religious and biomedical trajectories. Indigenous Amazonian groups have used ayahuasca (hoasca, caapi) and other plant medicines for centuries within ritual and healing contexts; these practices were later integrated into syncretic churches such as Santo Daime and União do Vegetal (UDV) in the 20th century. The entry of classical psychedelics into scientific and psychiatric discourse followed the global pattern: Albert Hofmann's discoveries in Switzerland (LSD in 1938 and the isolation/synthesis of psilocybin in 1958) helped trigger international research in the post-war decades, and Sandoz’s distribution of compounds like LSD made such agents available to researchers worldwide during the 1950s and 1960s.

From the 1970s onward, international scheduling (notably the 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances) and national controls reduced mainstream clinical research globally and in Brazil. Nevertheless, Brazil’s particular cultural and legal environment — including constitutional protections for freedom of religion (1988) — created a context in which religious use of ayahuasca persisted and attracted anthropological, pharmacological and clinical attention. Over the last two decades Brazilian universities and hospitals have established sustained research programmes examining ritual use, psychopharmacology, neuroimaging and the therapeutic potential of ayahuasca, producing a distinctive literature that links ethnography, basic science and clinical research.

A major turning point for Brazilian clinical research came with rigorously designed trials and neurobiological studies led by academic groups in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and other centres. Notably, a randomised placebo-controlled trial published in 2019 demonstrating rapid antidepressant effects of ayahuasca in treatment-resistant depression elevated international recognition of Brazil’s scientific leadership on this compound. Since then, Brazilian teams have expanded neuroimaging, biomarker and longitudinal studies while also engaging with global debates on safety, ethics and regulatory pathways for research with classic and entactogenic psychedelics.

Today the research landscape in Brazil is plural and pragmatic: robust expertise exists around ayahuasca in clinical and naturalistic settings, while nascent activity addresses psilocybin, MDMA and other agents. Research is tightly regulated through Brazil’s ethical review system and ANVISA (the national health surveillance agency); investigators routinely navigate complex intersections of religious practice, indigenous knowledge and biomedical research ethics.