Ayahuasca has a long and venerable history as the quintessential shamanic medicine. Its reputation as a healing medicine is based partly on its well documented role in indigenous ethnomedical practices, partly on the testimony of Westerners who have experienced it, and partly on the results of scientific studies such as the "Hoasca Project," and more recently, the work of Jordi Riba and his colleagues in Spain. Given current regulatory challenges, the inbuilt biases of mainstream medicine against the use of plant medicines, and especially hallucinogenic plant medicines, it is unlikely that ayahuasca is going to find its way into a clinic near you anytime soon (McKenna 2004). One only has to look at the current controversies surrounding the issue of medical marijuana to gain an appreciation for the difficulties involved. Although there is an abundance of evidence from numerous reputable scientific reports and publications that Cannabis has therapeutic efficacy (or at least potential) for treating a variety of serious conditions, the recent pronouncement by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration 2006) that "there is no evidence that marijuana has any value as medicine," is indicative of the regulatory and policy climate in which such judgments are made. The statement, profound in its ignorance (Harris 2006), flies in the face of the accepted consensus of a large segment of the scientific community and simply demonstrates, if further proof were needed, that regulatory decisions about the therapeutic use of controlled substances are based on politics, and not science. If these daunting regulatory hurdles block efforts to investigate marijuana as medicine, then it is highly unlikely that ayahuasca, which has no popular constituency at all, will ever be employed within the context of mainstream Western medicine. This is not necessarily a bad thing. In shamanic traditions, ayahuasca is a mystery, and a medicine; for the syncretic religions of Brazil such as the UDV, hoasca is a sacrament. Perhaps, in viewing the respect and reverence with which it is regarded in these traditions, there is a message; perhaps the message is that ayahuasca should not be made into a pharmaceutical medicine, something to be patented and owned by Merck or Pfizer or some other soulless pharmaceutical conglomerate. That pattern resembles too much the pattern of the past, under which Western science and capitalism investigates and steals the medicines and knowledge of indigenous peoples, while rarely, if ever, giving anything back or even acknowledging the debt that is owed. That has been the pattern for far too long, and perhaps it is time to stop. The social phenomenon of "drug tourism," the recent approval of sacramental use of hoasca by the Supreme Court, the proliferation of conferences, and the explosion of knowledge on the Internet, all are hopeful indicators that ayahuasca is finding its way to those it needs to find. And those who want to find it, if they pursue their quest in a spirit of humility and respect, will find their way to it. Indeed, this is the way that humanity has always formed alliances with sacred plants, and there may be good reasons for this. This process has expressed itself again and again, throughout the long millennia of humanity's coevolutionary relationships with plants, and it has done so without the need for the intervention of regulatory agencies, capitalism, the pharmaceutical industry, science, or "mainstream" medicine. That sustained alliance will continue, if we can resist the impulse to intervene, and instead learn to "trust the medicine."