There is a preoccupation with the name of our religion, the name of the Santo Daime, and for us is a motive for apprehension and sadness to be facing the possibility of the name of our religious sacrament and of our doctrine be, or have been, confused with a drug.

For us it represents a misunderstanding. It is the same thing to say that antivenom is the snake poison. Then, before this confusion that seems to be happening, or can happen, we are attentive so that will not happen any injustice in the evaluation of this holy drink, and we are talking because we have experience. Most of us drink Daime for many years and we also participated in studies and commissions that happened here in Brazil regarding the exam of the Santo Daime.

We were present, in 1976, when one of our members, as a psychologist, rendered deposition before the federal police exempting the Daime from the drug designation because there is no dependency and neither traffic. What became evident in 1976 was that: it does not cause dependency and there is no Daime's traffic. It was the basic conclusion of the studies carried out in that year. The Daime, in the Amazon, was always accepted as a traditional religion, even older than the ones that arrived with the European in 1500, here, in South America.

Then, in 1982, there was by the government, the army, the federal police and the Attorney General of the Republic commissions where members from this church, here, showed to the authorities that it wasn't a case for the police, but it was a scientific, cultural and religious one, tied to the citizenship human rights itself, where the religious freedom is a pillar, like a master-column that holds the human rights framework. The religious freedom has in the belief rights its flag. The belief rights are the core, the religious freedom content.

This is what compels us because we see that one billion of Catholics have the right to believe that Saint Francis of Assisi, in the Italy of the 12th century, saw Jesus Christ. That Jesus Christ appeared to him as a Cherub with three pair of wings.

Who can be able to, against the Jewish, say that Moses was hallucinating in the Mount Sinai when he saw the burning bushes? When he saw the ardent bushes, and so did Muhammad?

Nobody is going to buy a religious war against the Muslim’s saying that they don't have the right to believe that Muhammad saw the Virgin Mary and the archangel Saint Gabriel in the Paradise. It is the belief’s right, of the belief in the visionary experience. What Saint Francis, Moses and Muhammad have in common is just that they had the so called visionary experience. They had visions; they saw Jesus Christ; the ardent bushes... it is the belief’s right in the visionary experience.

This is what we defend and, thanks to God, in Brazil, in Holland, in Spain and, recently, once again in the justice, the União do Vegetal (Vegetal Union) won by the third time in the United States, including in the Appeals Court, where in between thirteen judges eight voted in favor and five against.

We are then based on scientific facts, and to that we also add the UN's recognition. Daime is natural and it isn't chemical, but organic, and it does not go through any chemical processing. The Daime is in its natural form. The use of the Daime is not recreational, but religious. Recreational drugs can provoke the disorientation in the space and in time. The person does not know when and neither where he (she) is. In the Daime, at the other hand, the reference of space and time is held. It is a visionary experience and a hallucinatory state is completely different from a visionary experience.

With a drug there is conscience and memory loss. In the Daime there is the conscience expansion and revival of the memory. The drug can provoke a self-alienation process of the person, by running away from ourselves through the own conscience loss.

It is an escape, an escape that the person practices regarding him (her) self. In the Daime, as the conscience expands, the effect is the encounter with ourselves; it is the encounter with the search for ourselves; the reflection; the act of looking to yourself and to get in touch with yourself. The drug vitiates, and the Daime doesn't. The drug does not cure anything and neither there are any cure reports. The Daime has several healing factors, having reports about its use in many kinds of cure, including heavy drugs and alcohol.

So many people arrive and ask for a Daime, for a medicinal use, to have at home, for a sick relative, for a child... here the Daime is given all the time. Almost at every work some one comes saying – “ah… can I ask for some Daime?” They always receive it here, gratuitously.

The Daime is used for over four thousand years. The ayahuasca, at least, is used for over four thousand years, here in the Northwest of the South America, by seventy two ethnic indigenous groups, which means millions and millions of people.

The Daime does not provoke hallucinations and we do not have records of visual or hearing hallucinations. What we do have is the visionary experience with the closed eyes. The person closes the eyes and has visions of things, of scenes, lights, colors and have a whole vision spectrum that happen with the closed eyes and that can be simply interrupted by the opening of the eyes. This aspect differentiates very much the visionary experience from the hallucinatory state. The visionary experience can be interrupted - "I am seeing a lot of things but if I open my eyes I stop on seeing it and I see everything normal again."

The drug, by the fact of being chemical, synthetic, is very toxic. The drug can easily provoke the overdose. The heart doesn't stand it, provoking, then, the overdose. It is impossible to have an overdose with the Daime because it has the self-regulator factor, which is the adaptive characteristic of the plant. The plant itself provokes vomits. It is then impossible to take a liter, two liters of Daime because whether you take 100 or 200ml you are already going to vomit. This is the self-regulation. You can never have an overdose, because you purge it out.

A social evidence is the lack of criminal occurrences or criminal facts tied to the Daime's use, as all drugs have. There was never a criminal occurrence associated to the Daime's use in these 22 years, till today.