Kyle Nolan, right, pictured with his triplet sister Marion and triplet brother, Kevin.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Is ayahuasca a natural remedy for anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder or just another drug fad? Lisa Ling goes inside an ayahuasca ceremony in the Amazon on this week's episode of "This Is Life With Lisa Ling: Jungle Fix" Sunday, October 26, at 10 p.m. ET/PT.

(CNN) -- Kyle Nolan did his research -- his mother made sure of that. She didn't want her 18-year-old son heading to the Amazon jungle at all -- let alone, without learning everything he could about the supposed "medicine" with the bizarre name that he insisted would help him turn his young life around.

"I really tried to discourage him ... I kept telling him over and over, there are no easy answers in life," Ingeborg Oswald said.

But she knew she couldn't stop him.

Overshadowed by his "overachieving" triplet brother and sister, Oswald said Kyle "was going through this teenage crisis, not knowing what he wanted to do with his life."

He had dropped out of junior college and was living with his mother, when he somehow discovered ayahuasca, (pronounced "eye-uh-WAHS-kuh") a psychedelic brew that some believe can help users achieve a higher state of consciousness.

"He went online and started reading all these positive things about ayahuasca, which is something I had never heard of before," Oswald said. "Apparently there's a huge, positive movement toward ayahuasca. And he thought that that would help him maybe discover who he was."

His research led him to the Shimbre Shamanic Center in a remote corner of the Peruvian Amazon region. Oswald said the center's website made its ayahuasca experience "sound very individualized."

Link:

A tragic quest for Amazon 'medicine'