No. DMT is ayahuasca’s primary psychoactive compound, but the brew is not interchangeable with DMT alone. Taken orally without the vine, DMT is destroyed in the digestive system before it reaches the brain. Ayahuasca works because Banisteriopsis caapi, contributing beta-carboline MAOIs, harmine, harmaline, and tetrahydroharmine, that disable the enzyme responsible for that breakdown, allowing DMT to become orally active (Hermanns et al., 2024). The MAOIs are what make the brew work. Ayahuasca vs DMT is less a comparison of two competing options and more a description of the same compound in two different delivery systems.
