Marketed as a dietary supplement, it is separated from the colorful, cosmic experience associated with the South American plant brew and presented on its own terms as a finished botanical supplement that can help sharpen focus, ease mood and improve nervous system balance. The active ingredients are harmala alkaloids—harmine, harmaline and tetrahydroharmine—extracted as nature’s formulation from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine.
“Happy Caapi: Adapt to Life. Focus + Adapt = Perform,” the label on the pump bottle reads.
Banisteriopsis caapi, or caapi for short, has been used for centuries by Indigenous peoples in the Amazon and is commonly described as the ayahuasca vine. The Quechua-derived term ayahuasca translates as “vine of the soul” or “rope of the spirit”, a reference that describes the climbing vine itself as much as the better-known ceremonial psychedelic decoction.
In traditional preparations, the vine is crushed and brewed with plants like chacruna (Psychotria viridis) that contain the psychedelic chemical DMT. Here, caapi’s harmala alkaloids, also known as beta-carboline alkaloids, are important enablers—acting as monoamine oxidase inhibitors and in botanical synergy to prevent gut enzymes from breaking DMT down before it reaches the brain.
“Caapi is actually a non-psychedelic plant,” said Gonzalo Bisquerra, co-founder and CEO of Happy Caapi. “It’s a psychoactive plant, like coffee is a psychoactive plant, but it’s not psychedelic.”
That distinction is shaping how the company is approaching branding, regulatory review and consumer education as it begins selling online in the United States.
From ceremony to supplement
Bisquerra, who studied engineering and business in Venezuela and the US, spent two decades in supply chain and sourcing for major consumer brands in Panama and the UK before a friend, who was also on the corporate ladder, convinced him of ayahuasca’s benefits.
He traveled to El Valle, Panama, a rural community in the crater of an extinct volcano and a long-time highland sanctuary for Panama’s affluent families who escape to private estates for slow weekends and the “eternal spring” microclimate. Home to mineral springs, hyper-vibrant vegetation and the endangered but deadly golden frog, this setting provided the backdrop for Bisquerra’s first guided group ayahuasca experience, one which would inspire him to launch the Happy Caapi brand.
“I started to feel other people’s thoughts, and then I started to go back to my studies of quantum mechanics and electromagnetism, and then it all made sense—of course, we’re all electromagnetic beings,” he said.
Whether the profound sense of unity felt during an ayahuasca journey is rooted in subatomic quantum fields or a neurobiological muting of the brain’s internal filters, Bisquerra began thinking of ayahuasca as a technology and wondered how it might be harnessed to unlock the power of the human brain and nurture the alignment he had felt during his ayahuasca encounter.
After the ceremony, Happy Caapi co-founders Diego Bodart and Rodrigo Rodriguez approached him with an earlier iteration of the Happy Caapi product, which they had been developing and experimenting with in Panama, and asked whether his pharma and consumer goods background could help turn their experimentation into a market-ready product. The three began exploring the science and regulation of how to move from ayahuasca ceremony to dietary supplement market.
Today, Haapi Caapi maintains a pilot cultivation project on a sustainable farm just down the mountain from El Valle near the resort communities of the Pacific beaches but for now sources its caapi vines from suppliers in South America. The longer-term goal is to develop cultivation protocols that could support a more controlled supply model. Bisquerra compared the approach to other traditional botanicals that have moved from variable sourcing into more standardized and sustainable supplement ingredient systems.
The raw material is then processed using a specific botanical extraction method at a GMP-certified herbal contract manufacturer in the United States and batch-tested by ISO-accredited contract testing laboratory Alkemist Labs to validate its alkaloid profile and verify the absence of intoxicating compounds.
“With an innovative botanical like this, you can’t simply say what’s in the bottle—you should be able to prove it, batch after batch,” said Elan Sudberg, CEO of Alkemist Labs. “For me, this project sits at a really interesting intersection of traditional botanical knowledge, emerging science and modern quality assurance. We’re proud to help bring analytical rigor and transparency to it.”
The product’s toxicological profile has also been reviewed by global assurance, testing, inspection and certification firm Intertek, which confirmed that the recommended serving size of 0.6 mg/day is well below levels associated with any reported adverse effects.
Regarding regulatory status, Bisquerra said that historical evidence indicates that the caapi vine was sold commercially prior to October 15, 1994. Under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, such evidence would support its classification as an old dietary ingredient (ODI), which would allow it to be marketed as a dietary supplement without being subject to new dietary ingredient notification (NDIN) requirements.
Locking into the Happy Caapi experience
Bisquerra describes Happy Caapi as a “power gel for your brain”, a way for anyone to have a daily communion with ayahuasca without traveling to the jungle, worrying about consuming psychedelics or stepping away from reality for an extended period.
The current product is a liquid pump bottle designed for regular use at a 5 mL dose up to twice a day. The company is also preparing portable single-serve sachets with a 10 mL saturation dose to make it easier to adapt to life on the go.
“When you drink ayahuasca, you’re out for eight hours,” Bisquerra said. “When you take Happy Caapi, you’re in for three hours. You are totally locked into whatever you are doing.”
Caapi has a documented research record dating from early phytochemical work in the 1920s through peer-reviewed neuroscience published in 2026 that maps the activity of the vine’s alkaloid family across mood regulation, cognitive performance, adult neurogenesis and neuroinflammation.
Research in the 1950s established the mechanistic bridge between traditional use for mood and cognition and the caapi’s measurable biochemistry, identifying the beta-carboline class as reversible inhibitors of monoamine oxidase type A (MAO-A), the enzyme that degrades serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine. The most widely cited scientific reference on its mechanism of action as a potent, short-acting, reversible MAO inhibitor dates to a paper published by the U.S. National Institutes of Health in 1958.
Happy Caapi is also committed to building on this foundation by investing in a branded-ingredient clinical research program. The program is currently advancing a human bioavailability study, as well as trials in healthy adults to evaluate its effects on acute cognitive performance and longer-term mood and resilience.
The brand’s early audience includes biohackers, the Panamanian fencing team and consumers looking for focus-oriented products outside caffeine, mushrooms or mainstream adaptogens.
For the moment, it remains self-funded and is moving selectively on investment while growing visibility through industry and investor forums, including a recent Nutritional Capital Network pitch event where he it received the People’s Choice recognition. In June, Bisquerra accepted an invitation to give a talk at Dave Asprey’s Biohackers World Conference and was accompanied by Chris Kilham, the medicine hunter, a Happy Caapi advisor and the author of “The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook”.
“The large number of people at Bio Hackers World in NYC who reported quickly elevated mood after sampling Happy Caapi convinced me that the product has real merit,” Kilham said. “Critical feel-good neurochemicals like serotonin and dopamine remain in the brain soup longer and that enhances sustained positive mood. Because Happy Caapi offers a good effect quickly, I believe it has a good future.”
