The hallucinogen, ayahuasca is used most effectively in healing those illnesses believed to be magical in origin. The particular visual hallucinations are put to use by the healer to determine the magical cause of illness as well as to neutralize evil magic. The importance of the forest setting, and the widespread knowledge, awareness, and familiarity of most people with the drug, the expectations of what will happen and the great respect for and remembered cures of drug healers, point up the importance of cultural variables stressed at the beginning of this article, which are of primary importance in understanding how hallucinogens have been used to augment healing. The powerful vine, ayahuasca is used quite differently from Western drug-adjuncted psychotherapy (see Caldwell, 1968). In the latter, attempts are made to open up areas of repressed and painful memories. Or else, long-term "psycholytic therapy" with drugs occurs, involving many months of treatment. Most ayahuasca healers see patients in a drug session for a relatively short period of time, which ranges from once or twice, to a month or so. Anxiety and stress which are constant companions of many rain forest slum-dwellers, can reach intolerable levels so that the drug healer receives a call to ameliorate acute symptoms. It is in these ritual, magical healing sessions that ayahuasca is used most effectively—entering into the realm of tenuous, uneasy inter-personal relations, and acting as a means to restore equilibrium in difficult situations.