The Dangerous World Of Ayahuasca | Foreign Correspondent

foreign [Music] [Music] it was once famous for exporting rubber to Europe [Music] these days it's a mecca for anyone trying to get their hands on a new it drug a natural hike known as ayahuasca here they call it the medicine and each year tens of thousands are coming to try it many of those are Australians some claim it can cure everything from cancer to heroin addiction but not all Ayahuasca experiences end well foreign I want to investigate the death of one young man [Music] this is where Matt Dawson Clark's journey into the Amazon began and it's where it ended and that's why we've come here to try and get some answers about how he died and why [Music] it's a Sunday afternoon the phone was ringing and usually I'll ignore it but for some reason I thought I've got to get that cool hello slendy here and then I got this really heavy accent that came through saying is that um is that Matthew's mum and I can remember thinking what who's this I'm sorry who are you and she said to me I was I'm so sorry for your loss at that point my heart just stopped and I think I started screaming at you and I just said what are you talking about and she said I was on a retreat with your son Matthew died he died three days ago [Music] who will stop their day so now I had a son apparently did I didn't know where he was and this is my world you know it doesn't happen to people like me and it doesn't happen to my son like so many young people from this part of the world Matt was living and working in London from there he got work on a super yacht taking clients through the waters of the Mediterranean all the way to the Caribbean [Applause] [Music] men had a lot of promise and the saddest part of it all apart from losing our boys that the opportunity of seeing what he was going to become we're not going to have [Music] on the 6th of September 2015 Matthew Dawson Clark's family at home in Auckland desperately starts searching for information they reached the tour operator in Peru Andy Metcalf and record the call I want somebody to tell me where Matt is uh he's currently in the morning they have to say goodbye to one of your kids all you know is you want as much of them back as you can get [Music] can I rely on you to help us track things down so we can do the right thing for ourselves this is our son please I beg of you do you have anyone that can help us there find our son it turns out Andy Metcalf had told other members of The Retreat he'd broken the news to Matt's family he told him that he had told the parents what happened so he lied he never told us at all he's acknowledged that since [Music] [Music] he does holds a lot of the answers not just about Matt's death but also about why so many people are being drawn to ayahuasca this ancient custom once confined to the Amazon has spread like wildfire on the Internet it's now even available in countries like Australia and America now we're going just down into the entire River so we're just taking a short ride down here to mamaikuna to the land and then because of its flooded we'll go in through the the kamukama orchard Freddie Finley is a British expat who lives here stunning area from a successful child actor in London to a drug addict living on the streets of Peru's Capital Lima he's now an apprentice Shaman a traditional healer tonight Freddy's agreed to host us for an ayahuasca ceremony [Music] thank you this is um [Music] best way to start the day Ayahuasca only grows in the Amazon jungle and when brewed with other plants it's one of the most powerful hallucinogens on Earth it's illegal in most Western countries but not here in Peru each retreat has its own recipe if you just drunk this by itself you would just Purge you know you just vomit and go to the bathroom um but the combination of the Ayahuasca and the chakruna and the other two things is what makes the armored [Music] you know I guess you know I've always I have a history of you know drug abuse um and from an early age you know from when I was 13 14 onwards um crack heroin um uh also did a lot of you know of ecstasy and acid and things like that but I you know the harder drugs I I had problems with them um you know from having quite a a good career and earning some good money um you know having a lot of a lot of things I lost everything What proportion of the people do you think coming here up are trying to deal with with an addiction of some kind a lot of them some people have you know an addiction to marijuana are the people that are doing heroin and other people that are doing code you know whatever it is you know there's a lot of them coming so how effective do you think it is as a mechanisms for dealing with addiction is very effective and I would say that I'm living proof of it no because I was a mess a big mess how safe is it to come here and and try this um it's very safe again as long as you're with the right person you know the right people you know how this works you know nothing happens like that people come here to drink Ayahuasca for all sorts of reasons there are the sick and vulnerable people with addictions and with post-traumatic stress I feel now like totally symmetric and before I felt absolutely asymmetric but there's also the younger crowd a lot of them just come for the adventure what's up well the afternoon live is disappearing pretty quickly and inside they're preparing for their ayahuasca ceremony we are allowed to watch but the whole thing is going to happen in darkness [Music] thank you [Music] foreign this ceremony will continue for the next five or six hours as will the singing and the purging [Music] know the man [Music] is [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] all right okay [Music] I think about Matt every day even though I don't I don't I let myself think about it very long after Matthew Dawson Clark's death his parents began contacting the other guests from The Retreat to find out what happened they reached Richard from Texas this is not one day that has gone by that I haven't thought about him or his family the pain that they must have been going through and are going through right now [Music] [Applause] [Music] about his Ayahuasca Journey good job so we've agreed to keep his identity and his real name Secret like many others leave his PTSD brought on by working as a paramedic with the fire department instead it only made things worse I'm still I feel more lost now than I was when I started in in this the shameful thing is that that I was on my way you know I was I was almost there [Music] here's what we understand happened to Matt on the 3rd of September 2015. it begins the morning after a wild night of dancing around the fire in preparation for another ayahuasca ceremony Matthew drinks a powerful Brew of tobacco tea part of the cleansing ritual within 15 minutes he feels unwell he says he thinks he's been poisoned by the shaman who prepared the tea Don [Music] [Applause] [Music] at one point during the day they cycle Matt's legs as if to maintain circulation my intuition as a medic as someone who's been doing this job for a while was that something wasn't right with Matt Richard the paramedic offers help but is turned away at the door by Carolina it's not until the very end of the day at 5 PM when Matt goes into cardiac arrest that Richard is finally enlisted to help does he have a pulse or something do you feel full I realized that I was the only person there that was medically trained no one had any first aid training or CPR training at all romantic effort because a vehicle to get Matt to hospital deep in the Amazon it's a dangerous and difficult Journey the vehicle gets bald it even tips over [Music] eventually making it down the river just before midnight Matthew Dawson Clark's body is released to the morgue Richard is still deeply troubled by the events of that week and this is a 24 year old kid for God's sake so shouldn't be he shouldn't be dead he went there to go better himself to become a better person a better human being and I'm sorry that you know I couldn't I tried you know sorry yeah I mean I I I tried so hard I did everything in my power to save their son and uh you know I'm sorry the Striking thing about Matt's death is that no one has ever been held accountable in the year and a half since another five people have died in this region in connection with Ayahuasca retreats the investigation into Matt's death was closed last year and the shaman Don Lucho is still operating capitari The Retreat where Matt died and still offering that same tobacco tea that's where I'm heading now fair to say this place is remote it's taken us two boat Journeys to get here a good buenos the earth a good 30 to 40 minutes walking deeper into the jungle there is no phone reception or patchy reception and no electricity if something goes wrong out here you're a long way from help [Music] finding Don Lucho may help answer some of the many questions about Matt's death [Music] oh there's cafetari hola I'm Hamish I'm from the ABC Australia we're hoping to speak with Don luccio if that's possible we have some questions it turns out the man we've come here to find has gone to town for the day Australia [Music] so we race back to the port to find Don Lucho is waiting we just have a few questions about the death of Matthew Dawson Clark we're looking into his case um I'd like to understand why you didn't take him to hospital that day again but he took the tobacco tea very early in the day and immediately he said that he thought he'd been poisoned and it wasn't until 5 PM when you asked others for help um okay it's okay and have you got anything you want to say to Matthew Dawson Clark's parents is Don mucho might say there's no issue with tobacco teas but in the very same year that Matt died a young Canadian woman died after drinking one too and while Donald says Matt's death is not his fault remember the tour operator Andy Metcalfe from the phone calls he's never been held accountable either [Music] after initially agreeing to see us one day we'd be better to talk to you and get pure version of things when it comes to meeting the next day Andy is giving us the slip he's about to disappear into the jungle where he now owns his own Retreat and he's texted saying he's too busy on a tip-off we learn that's not quite true Andy is in fact just down the road having lunch at the Karma Cafe sorry I heard you were down here so I thought I'd come and say hi it's our last chance to get some answers about his responsibility to his clients guys like Andy make a lot of the money in this largely unregulated industry often more than the local charmandu but you know clearly there were people that were very upset a lot of things were sad a lot of people are still trusting Andy Metcalfe with their lives in these remote jungle Retreats so we decide to secretly record his response I don't accept blame for what happened you know we had a well over a thousand people on the streets of kabutari before that came along no incidents whatsoever you know so you know maybe we've accomplished about that but what about things like first aid and training and like plans for if things go wrong I guess it wasn't really something that we imagined whatever happened it's not very easy to get first aid training in Peru in kids yeah but then I guess when you when you accept the money you take some responsibility right I [Music] so you could argue that there's some responsibility that things were handled very badly in the aftermath as well and I certainly acceptable for that so the big story which everybody's ignoring is you know how many people die from pharmaceutical jobs that region even ones that were properly subscribed you know and anytime [ __ ] happens it's always going to happen you know [ __ ] happens well that's not how Matt's family sees this the reality is that Matt Dawson Clark paid 650 US dollars to go to a retreat capitari that we've learned was and still is operating illegally and when things went wrong for Matt it was another tourist Richard from Texas who had to try and save him what sort of stands out to me is that it it wasn't the staff that sort of initiated taking Matt to hospital I was the one that had to take charge of this whole situation there was no help Don Lucho didn't come he didn't come uh you know with us along the way to the to the boat or you know he wasn't there I did feel I did feel like we didn't take responsibility I've never I've never heard him take responsibility Andy saying that he'd told the parents was he telling the truth I would say not so will anyone ever be forced to take responsibility for this death since we've been working on this story there's been a huge development Matt Dawson Clark's family lodged a formal complaint with the Peruvian authorities that's now led them to reopen the investigation as a result Don Lucho is now inside this building making a pointed claim to the prosecutor that Matthew Dawson Clark may have been using other drugs just before coming to the retreat Now Matt did tell others on the retreat that like many young people he'd used some drugs in the past but the claim made by Don luccio is not supported by any actual evidence foreign foreign deaths are very rare so what we've got here is one of the autopsy reports that's coming out of Peru Matthew Dawson Clark's family has now spent a year and a half fighting for justice and fighting for answers uh they're referring to the comment about stealing drugs such as cocaine or Methamphetamine no information regarding this in the case neither these drugs were detected by the postmortem and talks analysis the post-mortem from Peru blames pneumonia leading to cardiac arrest for Matt's death but in New Zealand so far a coronal inquest remains inconclusive and an autopsy report points to possible nicotine poisoning possible nicotine toxicity which fits exactly with what we believe to be the occasion that led to him being given the tobacco tea on the accusation about Matt using drugs before he went to capitari his family and the available evidence are clear well Matthew wasn't a drinker he certainly wasn't a methamphetamine addict our belief is pretty simple as the rumors that were proliferating out of Peru really just were to give themselves they thought some breathing space I believe because at the end of the day they're too easily disproved there's a part of you that's going to be forever empty it can't be undone and you go through regular periods where you just actually um you just want to go and be with them and that's often at the expense of those that are still with us while you're alive because it's very easy just to go I don't want to be here anymore Mark even had to fight just to get Matt's belongings back home from Peru yes this is my place of remembrance what is it about the physical the physical things do you think it reminds me I mean every day when I go walking in the morning as I'm coming down the driveway I yell out to the universe I have a son his name is Matthew James Dawson Clark because people forget and their lives move on but for me my life stopped that day and I have to remember that I have a son these physical things remind me that he was my boy and he lived here and he still does live here she wants anyone thinking about Ayahuasca to know the risks I think for me personally it wasn't the Ayah that took my son it was the tobacco perch that took my son they need to be aware that it may not be right for everybody and if you are a really healthy individual what are you putting into your system and the possibility of you dying can happen I'm not here to tell people what to do with their lives I'm just here to say be aware [Music] it's now been 16 months of darkness and [Music] of torment and of me searching for my son trying to because my belief was that he was in such Agony when he died and I wasn't there to save him [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 728,176

Keywords: Australia, drugs, peru, amazon, documentary, death, drug, ayahuasca, jungle, industry, investigation, shaman, traditional, spiritual, hallucinogen, hallucinogenic, dangers, rainforest, Foreign Correspondent, ayahuasca experience, ayahuasca retreat, ayahuasca safe, is ayahuasca bad for you, is ayahuasca safe, ayahuasca trip, ayahuasca legal, ayahuasca medicine, ayahuasca healing experience, ayahuasca healing, ayahuasca peru, peru hallucinogen ayahuasca, foreign correspondent peru, ayahuasca death

Id: Pq47Btrlp4k

Length: 29min 9sec (1749 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 14 2017