Ayahuasca was already taken in pre-Columbian times, when indigenous peoples discovered its psychoactive effects on body and mind. Made of two plants growing in the Amazon rainforest, the liana Banisteriopsis caapi and leaves of Psychotria viridis, the beverage is still used nowadays by Amazonian shamans for healing rituals and shamanic experience as well as by ecclesial movements in Brazil as a sacrament. Due to stated healing effects in recent years Ayahuasca stimulates more and more medical and ethnobotanical discussions and research.