Friends of the Forest

Ethno Pharmacological Agents & Rituals

Ecological & Environmental Projects

Drug Dependency Treatment Research

Friends of the Forest is a non-profitable foundation with the following goals:
To research ethnopharmacological agents in a broad sense with the use of several disciplines such as medical and social sciences, pharmacology, botany, ecology, anthropology, philosophy and religion.
To research traditional medicine, psychoactive plants and rituals, sciences and technologies used by indigenous people as well as from other ethnogroups throughout the forests of the world.
To investigate, develop and promote treatments through those ethnopharmacological agents and rituals and their therapeutical applications with a focus on drug addiction, depression and other psychosomatic diseases in cooperation with other existing instances as well as to develop
consciousness.
To make those traditional healing practices accessible for the western science. Conservation of indigenous traditions, botany and traditional use thereof. To support and help reforestation and other ecological projects in areas where such traditions still exist.
To recrute professionals to carry out the programs, the research and the ecological projects inside the forests of the world and in Europe.
To gather funds from donations, subsidies and income from workshops, experimental rituals as well as to import and market ethnopharmacological agents to organizations with the same target, to finance projects in Europe and in the Forests of Latin America, Africa and other continents.

Recent international attention to the destruction of the rain forests in Latin America and the extinction of human communities and their cultures all over the world has sensitized our community. This is an essential part of the loss to the global ecology of the forest and those traditions in the knowledge of traditional and indigenous medicinal plants and the healing
protocols of using them. Both ethnopharmacology, ethnopsychiatry as well as the allied disciplines of medical anthropology and medical sociology have amply documented the use of these plants in their traditional and indigenous context. In areas where there are few resources, traditional ethno-medicine approach have filled the vacuum. A number of indigenous traditional plants and health care methods have been employed, some with promising results. However, much work is needed to transfer this knowledge into the setting of the modern clinic and the practice of scientific medicine. Friends of the Forest is proposed to address this knowledge transfer into the many different areas.

Very little is know about the capacities of our brain. To be able to bring relevant information about the brain network into scientific consideration, a serious study is been done. Friends of the Forest realizes rituals with ayahuasca and analogues open to the public, where we research with different settings, we run Peak Experience Questionnaires (PEP) and other questionnaires as well as sharing the day after the rituals, keeping all the records for further investigations. We map the Internet of the psyche with the use of those ethno-pharmacological agents (psychoactive plants) & rituals exploring shamanic/indigenous belief systems that involves other dimensions and consequent realities to reach a level of knowledge and understanding in that direction, as well as to explore those inner landscape and healing mechanism. Its our objective to go beyond the hidden frontiers of the psyche and to make this fascinating study available as to help in the understanding of the many possibilities of brain and behavior. The participation of FoF's members in this work will allow this study to come to a completion as well as to sustain the individual transformational processes and its follow up. The Foundation has already developed a standardized
treatment research protocol for the study of the clinical relevance and effectiveness of some of those plants and rituals in the area of drug dependency treatment. Along with this standardized methodology, in association with the university of Maastricht/IPSER (International Institute for Psycho Social and Social Ecological Research), a database has been started.

In addition, Friends of the Forest aims to create strategies for social, cultural, ecological and environmental preservation as well as to ensure the survival and well being of such traditions and their natural environment worldwide.

In this way, we can help humanity to grow deeper into the knowledge of the many possibilities of integration and preservation of our planet for the benefit of our global community.

This adventure into the depths of our roots does provide the shift that might change the world. It may change the life of many human communities, traditions and cultures as well as the lives of many of us who are entangled in the web of addiction and physical, mental and spiritual disorders.

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