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Ayahuasca Experience: Jaw-Dropping Stories You Don't Hear

Woman overlooking lake | profound ayahuasca experience

You’ve probably watched a few Netflix documentaries on Ayahuasca. Maybe you’ve heard about the experiences of a celebrity like Lindsay Lohan with this mind-expanding plant medicine or you’ve read the bestseller How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan. Or perhaps your previous experience with other psychedelic plants has piqued your interest in Ayahuasca. You’re not alone. From Los Angeles to New York, from San Francisco to New Zealand, countless people are jetting off to the Amazon jungle or to Peru’s Sacred valley for the opportunity to enter the ceremony room and drink this powerful brew.

If this sounds like you, you might have realized that an encounter experience with mother aya is not to be taken lightly. Ayahuasca experiences can vastly range depending on not only the individual, but the circumstances under which it is consumed [1]. This is, after all, a natural psychedelic drug that induces a powerful altered state of consciousness. 

Before we get into the personal ayahuasca experience stories of two of our team members here at Behold Retreats, we want to share some important information (especially if you’re at the start of your research journey) about this medicinal plant, originating from the Indigenous communities of South America.

What is Ayahuasca? 

Ayahuasca is a South American plant medicine consisting of a concentrated liquid which is made by brewing together the Banisteriopsis Caapi vine (b caapi, also referred to as the ayahuasca vine or sacred vine) and the leaves of the Psychotria Viridis shrub (p viridis or the Chacruna plant) [2]. These leaves contain the naturally occurring psychedelic substance DMT which is responsible for the well-known visionary effects that can occur in an ayahuasca session [3]. 

Ceremonial ayahuasca has long been used both socially and in a ritualistic setting as a spiritual medicine for deep healing and spiritual awakening amongst the Indigenous people of Latin America, especially in the region of the Amazon Basin [4]. 

Ayahuasca brews can vary depending on the shaman or medicine person serving the medicine, therefore, we highly recommend inquiring about the exact ingredients of the tea used in the ayahuasca ceremonies before consuming it to avoid any possible dangerous side effects of ayahuasca or contraindications [5]. 

Ayahuasca brew during ayahuasca ceremony | ayahuasca experience

What are the Benefits of Ayahuasca? 

Ayahuasca, amongst other natural psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin mushrooms (magic mushrooms), has been making major headway in the mental health field [6]. Psychedelic research from highly regarded institutions such as Harvard University show their enormous potential for treating mental illness, drug abuse and addiction [7]. Many studies show the positive effects of psychedelic treatments for recurrent depression, anxiety, and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) [8]. 

Ayahuasca users have reported an increase in quality of life, improvement of depressive symptoms, and enhanced spiritual connection [9]. They are less likely to continue with substance abuse and more likely to adopt healthy lifestyles, leading researchers to look into ayahuasca as a possible addiction treatment [10]. Those who have undergone an ayahuasca treatment often are able to address childhood trauma or other past traumatic events, so that the root cause of their depression, anxiety, or other issue can be healed. 

If you are interested in learning more about ayahuasca healing, we recommend that you read some of the work of Dennis Mckenna and Terence Mckenna, Roland Griffiths, Michael Pollan , Paul Stamets, and Robin Carhart-Harris.  There are also many publications on Google Scholar citing the use of psychoactive drugs for the treatment of anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns.

What are the Risks of using Ayahuasca?  ‍ ‍ ‍

Generally, ayahuasca is safe - if you are being properly medically screened and you are working with a guide who is well experienced and educated. Danger can arise if a person is not screened as a suitable candidate for the medicine work. There are also many people claiming to be “shamans” who are taking advantage of the increase of ayahuasca use in the mainstream. Again, this can pose a very serious risk, from sexual assault, to lack of safety and ethical behavior, to the addition of harmful ingredients, and more [11]. 

There are also high risks for those with a background of psychosis themselves or in their family history, that can lead to persistent psychotic symptoms [12]. Certain medications, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants (SSRIs), are extremely dangerous to be used in combination with Ayahuasca and can lead to serotonin syndrome, for example [13]. 

Additionally, those who are not supported in the preparation and integration of an ayahuasca trip, especially those with mental health concerns, run the risk of not only having a bad experience, but of suffering in the aftermath too

Check out our article here for more in-depth information on this topic:  “Is an Ayahuasca Retreat Safe?”  
For information on how to choose a retreat center and what to look out for to stay safe, check out our comprehensive GUIDE . 

Where Can I Consume Ayahuasca? 

With international ayahuasca consumption and ayahuasca ceremonies on the rise, it is no surprise that a new term for this phenomenon, “ayahuasca tourism” has been coined. People from around the world are embarking on spiritual pilgrimages for their ayahuasca soul quest. 

Given that Ayahuasca originates from South America, you will be able to find legal and traditional ayahuasca retreat centers in the Amazon Rainforest, mainly Peru, Ecuador and Brazil, as well as in Central America in both Costa Rica and Mexico. Some people combine a trip to the sacred Machu Picchu in Peru with their ayahuasca ritual or ayahuasca ceremonies.

If you are unable to travel to one of these destinations for your personal journey, you will also be able to find a retreat center in Portugal, where Ayahuasca is decriminalized.  Unfortunately, Ayahuasca is illegal in the United Kingdom, USA, Canada, and pretty much the rest of the world - so searching for “ayahuasca experience near me” might not give you the results you were hoping for.

In North America, you can still attend legal ayahuasca ceremonies at a Native American Church or a similar ayahuasca church such as Santo Daime, who have been granted an exemption to use ayahuasca as part of their religious ceremony. A few popular North American retreat centers are listed here in our blog post, but proceed with caution when looking for such a retreat center, as many illegally. 

Now, for the part you came here for. The up close and personal experience stories with Mama Aya. 

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The Ayahuasca Experience: The Jaw-Dropping Stories You Don't Hear About

Sara’s story: .

We all have our blindspots. We all tend to have a favourable bias towards ourselves. 

So here I am, a year ago, day in and out, reading about ayahuasca and other medicinal plants such as san pedro and the infamous magic mushroom, speaking to ayahuasca retreat participants about how important it is to prepare, to have no expectations, and to have full support after the plant medicine journey. And I did, and still do, sincerely believe all of these things to be true.

Everyone should follow these suggestions. Well, except me. 

I am somehow immune in my mind. No... how could it be?  I’ve done my mental and emotional work! I have had an outer body psychedelic experience of love and bliss with a powerful hallucinogenic drug. I spoke with a deity and asked her as many questions about the universe as I could, I experienced past lives… so my ayahuasca experience will be similar, of course. 

What a humbling moment in my life to meet mother ayahuasca. 

Don’t get me wrong, I did prepare in many ways and I was supported with my integration. But I neglected a very important detail. 

My intention for the ayahuasca ceremony was to understand how energy healing works. I began practicing energy work recently at the time and was curious to know more. 

So in my mind, I was expecting visuals of what energy looks like in the body, how I can see it move, where it’s blocked, how I can work with it. 

It is always recommended to set an intention, but also to let go and release expectations. She will show you what you need to see, and it might not make sense at first, but it is not something to analyze, just to be grateful for, to feel, and to integrate. 

And what did I do? I set expectations. 

I was also very much aware that ayahuasca is known to bring back traumatic events to relive in some way, shape, or form. To have a different perspective on it, to release it, to feel it. Whatever the individual needs.

I had a trauma I was well aware of, but naive me went in thinking that I had already dealt with and processed this wound. It was already healed. 

I also knew that surrender is a big theme with ayahuasca, and many people struggle to surrender and let go in the experience. The ego keeps them fighting. 

Again, I, Sara Verre, so already aware of my ego and thoughts, so experienced with meditation, could not possibly have any issues with surrendering the ego. 

You see, the ego is extraordinarily sneaky and a master manipulator. 

I spent 2 weeks preparing, cleaning up my diet, meditating with my intention, practicing emotional release techniques, and repeating affirmations, the whole bit. 

The day of the ayahuasca ceremony, I was nervous - but excited.  I was meeting three other women for the ceremony, two of whom I just became recent friends with. We arrived at the ceremonial space around 11 am. 

Our healer, Tanya, who works for Behold Retreats is a true medicine woman, shamanic, but relatable in a western sense having spent much of her life in Amsterdam working as a clinical psychotherapist. I bonded with her the moment I met her, I loved her humor, her rawness, and her ability to be both spiritual and practical. She was inspiring to me. When the opportunity came to experience an ayahuasca ceremony with her and these women, in a safe, empowering container, I was over the moon ecstatic. 

We began with a check in;  How will the next 24 hours look? What are our intentions? How do we feel? She opened the ceremonial space shortly after, we meditated together, sent intentional prayers asking for the support of the elements, the spirits, and our ancestors. 

We then began cleansing with rapeh. Well my goodness .. an unexpected blow to the brain with tobacco powder through a pipe. A sensation I have never felt in my life before. It felt like my brain was burning. After the pain subsided, which was truthfully not very long, I was in complete surrender, giggly, relaxed, and floating. 

We then received a paste, made of ayahuasca and bobinsana (a heart-opening master plant). To my surprise it actually wasn't so bad taste-wise, just a bit sticky on the teeth. We then had a small cup of ayahuasca tea. We laid down on our mats, threw on our eye masks, and enjoyed the music that Tanya began to play.

She began with drums, and throughout the 9 hour, yes NINE HOUR, journey, she played a variety of instruments, piano, rattles, drums, and sang (very beautifully I might add). The music was an integral part of the journey, each sound and vibration taking me into different worlds, ideas, dimensions, feelings. The music ignited something in the medicine, it was magical to look up and see her singing at the piano, a beautiful angel to guide us on this deep journey. 

Stepping it back a little again, after the first ayahuasca tea I didn’t feel so much for an hour. I was given a second cup and some help to relax into it. I could feel the medicine start to pull me in. I wanted to go with her. Something was stopping me. I breathed, I meditated, but the tension became more powerful. It was clear a fight was occurring and I didn’t have any say. 

I became so frustrated. Why was I not going into the journey?  What was this in between place that I was in? Was I going to be stuck here for the next 5 hours?? Does ayahuasca even work? Have I completely gone down the wrong path? Was I wrong? Am I losing my mind? Will I be stuck in this mindset forever?!

DEEP self-doubt began to surface here. Fear. Anxiety. I felt these emotions so deeply, in the very core of my being. I started to panic. How long has this been? Hours now? I sat up and begged our guide for help. She told me that this was my work, my process, and I had to go through it. 

I sat on my knees, wanting to pull my hair out. Crying and crying. I started to feel sick. Waves of nausea. Sticky, heavy, energy started flowing out of me, from my stomach to my throat and I began to gag. It felt like throwing up without actually throwing up. Energetic puke. Balls of negative energy just came out of me non-stop for what felt like hours. 

I layed back down as the effects effects of ayahuasca started to soften. I was covered in tears. And then, she took me. And I began to (maybe) understand why my ego fought for so long. It was trying to protect me from what I was about to experience. I also realized how stuck in my own head I have been, this need to analyze and control reality was very apparent.

It felt as if I went hyper speed through my mother's and father’s lives, from childhood to adulthood, experiencing their fears, their suffering, their triumphs, their learnings. I instantly had immense compassion for them. The journey continued moving into my father’s family. 

My uncle who had recently passed appeared to me with a bright light surrounding him, smiling. It was beautiful. But then the pain came. Immense emotional pain. It was his, I could feel it. There was some spiritual connection to my dad and to his childhood. Something traumatic in nature that I couldn’t understand, just felt. There was something he wanted to tell my dad but he couldn’t and never did. It wasn’t so clear. It might have been pain in the years leading up to his death, as he struggled with opioid addiction. 

I then felt a very dark, heavy, pain that I knew was not mine, and yet was inside me, or coming through me to be released. Ancestral pain.There is no way for me to properly understand this, but it felt as if all the traumas from the generation before me in my dad’s family line were coming through my body. I cried.. No, I sobbed hysterically, and continued to vomit air. 

I was angry. Why was this happening? WHAT the F**K was happening and why was I going through this? There can’t possibly be a need for this? This is not the type of mystical transformational experience I was expecting. (Key word: expecting)

I came out of that experience, listening to the voice of Tanya, and the sound of a light-hearted reggae song come on through the speakers. I looked up from my puke bucket; one of my fellow journeyers had just spent a couple hours throwing up real puke in the bathroom, another was in silence, one in tears. And Tanya continues to say  “wherever you are right now, take a moment to join me right now for a little dance.” 

I couldn't help but burst out laughing. Cry - laughing. But laughing, at the absurdity and intensity of this moment. A bit relieved. Together. 

I then floated into what I like to describe as a matrix of consciousness, or some sort of void that had both everything and nothing at the same time. FINALLY a break. And a cool one at that. It was like a vast black space filled with complex geometric patterns, and I was floating there in the emptiness - well, not as myself, I was no longer there, but as this part of the matrix. It felt a bit empty, but very calm. Peaceful. 

My thoughts started to come back in a looping pattern. I was trying to figure something out, and after swirling around in the space of nothingness, I came right back to the start of my initial thought. Over and over again. Which became so amusing I couldn’t help but laugh. Was this life? Do we just keep trying to figure things out to be reminded there’s no figuring anything out? 

I waved out of this space and came back into my body. I sat up, relieved that the journey was over. How long had it been? 7 hours? I sat there disoriented, noticing that some of the other women had moved around, and were coming back to this realm as well. 

But then, I felt a pull. A strong wave was pulling me back. AGAIN?? Come on. 

This time I was confronted with that trauma I mentioned earlier. When I was 18, I was drugged and raped. At the time of course, I had no idea what this really meant, how to process it, or what to do really. So when the bruises faded and the blood was gone, I pushed it away, like it never happened. If I didn’t feel it, how could it hurt me? I was stronger than that, happier than that. I love my life and I’m so grateful for it. So why would I dwell on this? 

Well here I was, 10 years later, seeing my 18 year old self -  hurt, wounded, crying. I felt her pain. I felt it so deeply I screamed out in desperation. Tanya came to me, rested her hand on my face, and she in that moment became my mother. My mother’s touch, her energy, her presence was there with me, holding me, keeping me safe. And I felt the power of my grandmother, and her mother, and support of my female ancestors helping me heal. I hugged my 18 year old self, who was still a child in many ways, and I held her tight and let her cry. 

I began to see some visions of a black panther, strong, independent and vibrant. She was showing me the way, giving me strength. I heard angelic spirit voices. 

I came back to reality. I felt like someone had thrown me into a live hurricane and was being found by rescuers under the rubble.  

How to process what just happened? Could I even speak? 

There was suddenly some light food out on a table. I slowly put a cracker in my mouth. Ahhhh earth. It felt good. Grounding. 

We all met in a circle. And our shaman takes out her talking “dick” stick, a coral rock she found in Bali, that looked exactly like a penis. When it got to my turn to share. I sat there with the dick in my hand, and couldn’t stop laughing. Nothing coherent was coming out of my mouth whatsoever. I managed to get the words “If I can just say one thing..,” and then gave up. 

Later, Tanya told me that I was the warrior of the group. Not that that made me feel any better about what happened, but it’s always nice to be seen isn’t it? 

In the days that followed I was a complete wreck if I'm being perfectly honest. I was crying all the time, I even managed to call my ex boyfriend in tears because he was one of the only people who knew about the abuse. I didn’t even tell him I had taken ayahuasca, I just told him that I relived the trauma. He was there for me, and told me it was probably about time that I felt it. I am eternally grateful for him that night. 

I continued working with Tanya to help integrate the experience. Nature, art, rituals, space, boundaries and softness. I also did vocal liberation and family constellation therapy with the ancestral trauma in mind. 

After my transformational experience, I still didn't understand why this needed to happen. I was frustrated and angry. 

It wasn’t until I slowly let go of what I wanted out of the experience and allowed whatever was present to be seen that I began to heal. I started to feel and understand that the emotions were stored in my body, manifesting as physical ailments, behaviours, limiting beliefs.  For example, unconscious feelings of being unsafe, detachment from emotions and relationships, feeling unworthy, creative blocks, are all linked to this trauma - and other experiences of course. I realized I had been suppressing and repressing most of my difficult emotions. 

A year later, I've become softer to my emotions. I allow them to come instead of repressing them, and I am gentle with myself. I still feel the trauma, but I let go more and more every time it resurfaces. I do not suppress, I allow and I release. I cry a bit if I need to and I give my inner child a big hug. I feel. 

Tanya mentioned to me the other day that she’s seen a big shift in me this last year. That I hold a softer space.  I am in touch with my feminine. And I feel it too. I feel lighter, less restless, and more safe. There is less fear of not being enough or doing enough, and a new found inner strength.  I feel that my root chakra and sacral chakras have released blocked energy. I feel more in a creative divine feminine flow and my relationships are thriving.

So back to energy healing. My intention. I really did get just what I needed, and wanted. Emotions and trauma are stored energetically in the body. And to heal, is to allow those emotions and traumas to be processed and released from the body instead of wasting energy trying to keep them down. This is energetic healing.  ‍

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Drew’s Story:

My first experience with Ayahuasca was truly one of the most profound and transformative experiences of my life. 

I had heard about Ayahuasca sporadically in my late teens. By my early twenties, I had sat with hallucinogenic drugs such as psilocybin mushrooms, LSD, and pure DMT (the active ingredient in Ayahuasca). All of these experiences had helped me to gain a deeper sense of self-awareness, come to terms with some of the traumatic events that I had gone through in my adolescence, primarily the death of my Father, and had given me and understanding that my potential was far greater than I could perceive given my lifestyle at the time. I was drinking consistently, neglecting my personal health and wellbeing, and generally selling myself short in terms of where I was investing the majority of my time and energy. 

Two weeks before my 21st birthday, I was in a bad snowboarding accident. I fractured my neck, and suffered a severe concussion, the result of which was an inability to work or practically interact with reality in a functional way for about 45 days. During this time, I dropped out of school, lost my job, and laid alone in my room with the shades drawn and fell into a miserable and rather existential depression.

What was I doing with my life? What was the point of existence if it led to this degree of suffering and misery? How would I ever “figure it out” and make something of myself? 

This is where my mind was when I ran across an ad on my Facebook feed for an Ayahuasca experience in Costa Rica.

Having had previous experiences with psychedelics, and knowing that I needed a massive shift in terms of my mindset and lifestyle, I decided to take a leap of faith and a month later, found myself arriving in Costa Rica. I was full of apprehension and excitement. I had never traveled out of the country before. I had never invested in my own development and healing. I had never gone on a pilgrimage, and this is exactly what I was doing. 

The medicine retreat experience I encountered was quite lovely. We spent a few days doing yoga, hanging out on the beach, and preparing for the Ayahuasca experience itself. I truly had no idea what to expect, and what I experienced was far beyond anything I could have imagined. 

The night of our first ayahuasca ceremony, the group gathered in the ceremonial temple space and sat in a circle to receive the medicine. One-by-one, we all made our way to the altar to receive the brew from our shamanic guide. After I drank the medicine, I returned to my space and began to contemplate what I was doing sitting on the ground in the jungle with a group of strangers drinking psychedelic tea. Admittedly, many doubts began to make their way into my head about if I was actually crazy for embarking on such personal journey. 

That first night, I spent the majority of my time in physical discomfort. I felt very nauseous, and had the sense that the room was spinning, and that I was falling into an endless pit of darkness. When I closed my eyes, the vertigo would get to the point where I felt like vomiting, at which point I would get up and go walk around the area outside of the temple hoping to find some relief.

After about an hour and a half, I explained what I was feeling to the shaman, who encouraged me to drink more medicine. I drank a second cup, and all the symptoms I was experiencing before intensified. At this point, I really began to doubt myself. It was obvious to me that practically speaking, I had not been showing up in my life in a way I respected or appreciated. I found myself feeling very angry with myself for the lack of attention I had been paying to the trajectory of my life, and resigned to a sense of hopelessness that allowed me to at least find peace with my physical discomfort. “At least this will be over soon, and I can get back to trying to figure things out when I’m home” was the general texture of the thoughts I was having at that point.

Eventually, the physical discomfort got to a point that if I laid down, I would feel as if the entire world was spinning uncontrollably, and this led me to needing to stand out by the fire. The shaman came out to ask me how I felt and I expressed that I was not feeling great. She asked me if I had purged yet, to which I replied in the negative. She told me to drink one more cup of medicine to get myself to purge, which I was highly resistant to, but I figured, what the hell, I’m already here and feeling miserable, it can’t get any worse, right?

The third cup of medicine worked like a charm. No sooner after I swallowed the final dose, it came right back up. I had to physically stop myself from puking all over the sacred altar and re-swallow what my body was trying to reject, until I was able to make my way out of the space and projectile vomit all over a tree. As soon as I had cleared the tea from my stomach, I began to feel a sense of normality take back over. I felt grounded. Everything stopped spinning. It was a bit anticlimactic, and left me feeling rather depressed and down. I spent some time sitting by the fire contemplating the 3-4 hour period that had just passed. At this point, I chalked the experience up to a doozie, and began to contemplate how I was going to move forward in my life.

During this contemplation, our shaman once again came over to ask me how I was feeling. I told her I felt pretty normal, and she asked me if I was willing to try something called rapé. I had never heard of rapé, and she explained to me that it was a ceremonial form of tobacco that would help me open my third eye and truly experience the magic I was looking for. I was all for it. Then she pulled out a giant curved horn and told me to place one end of it in my nose. This was an odd request, but I complied. 

She proceeded to blow an ashy powder so far into my nose I was sure it was going to come out of my ears. The physical sensation was quite overwhelming. It felt like my face was melting off, and the tears and snot that flowed out of me seemed only to confirm this feeling. After she blew the tobacco into my one nostril, she told me she needed to do the other one as well. I begrudgingly consented, and when she administered the second dose, everything began to change.

I began to perceive a vision of a giant golden dragon making its way towards me. As I closed my eyes, the dragon became as real as anything I had ever seen, and I realized that the transformational experience I had been searching for may have found me after all. I made the conscious decision to allow whatever was happening to happen, and over the course of the next many minutes, I felt my consensus reality slip away and be replaced with this shimmering golden dragon. I felt the urge to try and ride this magnificent creature, but realized that by doing so I would need to leave my body behind. Instantly, I got up out of my body and proceeded to climb atop the back of this giant golden dragon. It spread its wings, and together we flew away. 

At this point in the experience, I completely lost touch with any sense of my physical body. The dragon and I flew through one of the most beautiful valleys I had ever seen. We rose up through a spectacular mountain range, and ultimately made our way so high in the sky that the blue turned to black, and the Earth fell away beneath us. Once we had made our way into this black abyss, the dragon left me, suspended in darkness. alone. 

At this moment, I fell into a memory from my childhood. I was standing with my Father, and he was embracing me. I felt the texture of the memory as if it was actually happening at that moment. From here, I remember feeling my Father emerge into the memory with me, and together we were able to share a moment of reconnection that truly blasted my heart wide open. He told me that he was proud of me and the man I was becoming. He explained how painful it had been for him to leave the realm of the living knowing that his children were unprepared. He asked for my forgiveness, and together, we spent what felt like years simply embracing one another in love. 

The next thing I remember, I was waking up, tucked cozily into my space within the temple. There was soft music playing, it was dark, and I felt a supreme sense of peace that I had previously never encountered. The magic of Ayahuasca was apparent to me at this moment, and I was truly baffled when trying to understand what I had just been through. As soon as I came to, the shaman declared the end of the ceremony. That was night one.

Night two was a very different experience. As soon as I drank the medicine, I felt the effects of ayahuasca creep up and then take over. I perceived a bright green light in the center of the space, and I allowed myself to be pulled into this light. Once the light had overcome me, I found myself face-to-face with the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. 

She very politely introduced herself to me as Ayahuasca, the spirit of Mother Earth, grandmother to all of Life, and asked me if I had any questions to ask her. Boy, did I. We spent the better part of an hour going back and forth about the meaning of life, the purpose of existence, the nature of the human condition, and my own personal journey. I asked every question I had ever had, and she answered all of them thoroughly. 

Eventually, and embarrassingly, I actually ran out of questions to ask (not the best look when given the opportunity to have all your existential questions answered by what I could only describe as a deity). At this point, I went up to one of the shamans and asked him how I should proceed given that I had gotten all of my questions answered. He laughed, and told me that if I wanted to have more powerful visions, that I should drink more medicine. 

At this point, I wasn’t sure what to do. I had already received more than I could have possibly asked for, and in that, the concept of “more” didn’t fully register. Still, I heeded his advice, and proceeded to ask for another dose. Once I drank the medicine, I went back to my space and very slowly felt myself die. 

One breath at a time, my heart rate slowed, my breathing calmed, and then all of a sudden, I died. There was no fear associated with this death. Truthfully, there was no sensation associated with it at all other than a lightness and a sense of peace. I felt myself rise out of my body, this time with no control over the process, and from there I was pulled into the green orb of energy that I had originally perceived in the middle of the space. As soon as I merged with it, I found myself in Heaven, literally. I was encompassed by a thick and warm golden light, I felt as thought I was one with existence. At that moment, I understood exactly what people meant when they referred to “God”. 

As soon as this realization became clear, I was sucked out of this heavenly realm like a vacuum, and I was spit out into a Void of infinite proportions. Within this void, there was nothing. It was pure and utter emptiness, and it was me. I was nothing. What had previously existed as a sense of self, was now replaced by a sense of infinite blackness, and this is where I remained, infinitely. 

At some point, the awareness that this emptiness had not always been empty became present. I remembered the realm of golden light that I had come from, and as I did, a small pinprick of that light emerged at the core of this infinite blackness. I raced towards this infinitesimal speck of light, and as I did, it grew. The closer I got, the bigger the light grew, until eventually, I felt it pushing against the edge of the infinite darkness, enveloping what had moments ago been nothingness with pure Love. 

Once the light reached the limits of its expansion, the black hole of nothingness disintegrated, and then instantly re-emerged at the center of the light, and swallowed it whole in a single instant. As soon as nothingness had once again taken over the light, a small speck reappeared near the core of the void, and instantly filled it to totality. I fell back, feeling the space of a trillion miles open up between myself and this process of light enveloping darkness, just for the darkness to be enveloped by light, and watched with wonder as I perceived the totality of reality creating and destroying itself, over and over again, infinitely. 

At some point, I woke up back inside the ceremonial temple grinning ear to ear, fully at peace. I knew that I was forever changed, and simply allowed myself to bask in the sense of Love and wonder that had been left with. I understood myself in relation to all things on a level I knew I could never articulate or describe, and I have been grateful to Grandmother Ayahuasca ever since for the gifts she gave me in our first meeting. I could process this one experience for lifetimes and never get to the bottom of it. 

Get the most out of your ayahuasca experience, read more about ayahuasca here!

Feeling called to work with psychedelics in a safe, beautiful, therapeutic, and legal environment.

We would be honored to assist you in choosing the best retreat experience for YOU. Behold Retreats facilitates expertly held retreats with Ayahuasca, Psilocybin mushrooms, and 5-MeO-DMT (Bufo Alvarius). Reach out to us to set up a complimentary discovery call.  Aside from a free call, we can also offer you comprehensive psychedelic preparation and integration from our team of qualified therapists, coaches, and psychologists.

References:

[1] Kjellgren, A., Eriksson, A., & Norlander, T. (2009). Experiences of encounters with ayahuasca—“the vine of the soul”. Journal of psychoactive drugs, 41(4), 309-315.

[2] Domínguez-Clavé, E., Soler, J., Elices, M., Pascual, J. C., Álvarez, E., de la Fuente Revenga, M., ... & Riba, J. (2016). Ayahuasca: Pharmacology, neuroscience and therapeutic potential. Brain research bulletin, 126, 89-101.

[3] Brito-da-Costa, A. M., Dias-da-Silva, D., Gomes, N. G., Dinis-Oliveira, R. J., & Madureira-Carvalho, Á. (2020). Toxicokinetics and toxicodynamics of ayahuasca alkaloids N, N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), harmine, harmaline and tetrahydroharmine: clinical and forensic impact. Pharmaceuticals, 13(11), 334.

[4] Luna, L. E. (2011). Indigenous and mestizo use of ayahuasca: an overview. The ethnopharmacology of ayahuasca, 2, 01-21.

[5] Guimarães dos Santos, R. (2013). Safety and side effects of ayahuasca in humans—an overview focusing on developmental toxicology. Journal of psychoactive drugs, 45(1), 68-78.

[6] Labate, B. C., & Cavnar, C. (Eds.). (2014). The therapeutic use of ayahuasca.

[7] https://www.massgeneral.org/psychiatry/treatments-and-services/center-for-the-neuroscience-of-psychedelics

[8] Carhart-Harris, R. L., & Goodwin, G. M. (2017). The therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs: past, present, and future. Neuropsychopharmacology, 42(11), 2105-2113.

[9] Hamill, J., Hallak, J., Dursun, S. M., & Baker, G. (2019). Ayahuasca: psychological and physiologic effects, pharmacology and potential uses in addiction and mental illness. Current neuropharmacology, 17(2), 108-128.

[10] Bouso, J. C., & Riba, J. (2014). Ayahuasca and the treatment of drug addiction. The therapeutic use of ayahuasca, 95-109.

[11] Peluso, D., Sinclair, E., Labate, B., & Cavnar, C. (2020). Reflections on crafting an ayahuasca community guide for the awareness of sexual abuse. Journal of Psychedelic Studies, 4(1), 24-33.

[12] Palma-Álvarez, R. F., Grau-López, L., Ros-Cucurull, E., Abad, A. C., Dualde, J., Robles-Martínez, M., & Roncero, C. (2021). Psychosis induced by abuse of ayahuasca: a case report. Revista Colombiana de Psiquiatría, 50(1), 43-46.

[13] Callaway, J. C., & Grob, C. S. (1998). Ayahuasca preparations and serotonin reuptake inhibitors: a potential combination for severe adverse interactions. Journal of psychoactive drugs, 30(4), 367-369.

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The brutal mirror

What the psychedelic drug ayahuasca showed me about my life.

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When I finally puked on the fourth night, I felt an odd sense of pride.

Inside the loud, stuffy ceremony room, people were laughing, crying, chanting, gyrating, and, yes, vomiting, around me. When my time finally comes, I think: Just aim for the bucket and keep your ass above your head like the shaman told you.

I try to wipe my face but can’t grab the tissue paper because it melts every time I reach for it. Nearby, a man starts to scream. I can’t make out what he’s saying on account of the shaman singing beautiful Colombian songs in the other room.

I finish vomiting and start crying and laughing and smiling all at once. Something has been lifted in this “purge,” something dark and deep I was carrying around for years. Relief washes over me, and I slowly make my way back to my mattress on the floor.

For four consecutive nights, a group of 78 of us here at a retreat center in Costa Rica have been drinking a foul-tasting, molasses-like tea containing ayahuasca, a plant concoction that contains the natural hallucinogen known as DMT.

We’re part of a wave of Westerners seeking out ayahuasca as a tool for psychological healing, personal growth, or expanding consciousness.

I flew to Costa Rica hoping to explode my ego. And I was not prepared for what happened. Ayahuasca turned my life upside down, dissolving the wall between my self and the world. I also stared into what I can only describe as the world’s most honest mirror. It was a Clockwork Orange -like horror show, and it was impossible to look away. But I saw what I needed to see when I was ready to see it.

Ayahuasca exposes the gap between who you think you are and who you actually are. In my case, the gap was immense, and the pain of seeing it for the first time was practically unbearable.

An ayahuasca boom

Ayahuasca remains a fringe psychological medicine, but it’s slowly working its way into the mainstream. Until fairly recently, you had to travel to South America if you wanted to experiment with the plant, but now ayahuasca ceremonies are popping up in the United States and Europe.

Indigenous people in countries like Colombia and Peru have been brewing the concoction for thousands of years, mostly for religious or spiritual purposes. It’s considered a medicine, a way to heal internal wounds and reconnect with nature.

It wasn’t until 1908 that Western scientists acknowledged its existence; British botanist Richard Spruce was the first to study it and write about the “purging” it invokes. He was mainly interested in classifying the vines and leaves that made up the magic brew, and in understanding its role in Amazonian culture.

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Ayahuasca emerged again in the early 1960s with the counterculture movement. Beat writers like William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac all described their experiences with ayahuasca, most famously in Burroughs’s book The Yag e Letters . Scientist-hippies like Terence McKenna and Timothy Leary then went to South America to research and experience the drug firsthand. All of this helped bring ayahuasca into Western culture, but it was never truly popularized.

Today, the tea is having a bit of a moment.

Celebrities like Lindsay Lohan , Sting , and Chelsea Handler have spoken about their experiences with it. “I had all these beautiful images of my childhood and me and my sister laughing on a kayak, and all these beautiful things with me and my sister,” Handler told the New York Post after her first ayahuasca trip. “It was very much about opening my mind to loving my sister, and not being so hard on her.”

Handler’s experience appears to be common. The scientific evidence on ayahuasca is limited, but it is known to activate repressed memories in ways that allow people to come to a new understanding of their past. In some cases, it helps people work through memories of traumatic events, which is why neuroscientists are beginning to study ayahuasca as a treatment for depression and PTSD. (There are physical and psychological risks to taking it as well — it can interfere with medication and exacerbate existing psychiatric conditions.)

What I was looking for

My interest in ayahuasca was specific: I wanted to cut through the illusion of selfhood. Psychedelics have a way of tearing down our emotional barriers. You feel plugged into something bigger than yourself, and — for a moment, at least — the sensation of separation melts away.

Buddhists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers have all made persuasive arguments that there is nothing like a “fixed self,” no thinker behind our thoughts, no doer behind our deeds. There is only consciousness and immediate experience; everything else is the result of the mind projecting into the past or the future.

But this is a difficult truth to grasp in everyday life. Because you’re conscious, because it’s like something to be you, it’s very easy to believe that a wall exists between your mind and the world. If you’re experiencing something, then there must be a “you” doing the experiencing. But the “you” in this case is just an abstraction; it’s in your mind, not out there in the world.

I spent about five years as a philosophy graduate student and another few as a teacher. I understood these arguments in intellectual terms but not in experiential terms. I’ve tried meditating, and I’m terrible at it. My mind is a parade of discordant thoughts, and as a result, I’m rarely present — in conversations, during meditation, in daily life.

One way to escape this trap, I hope, is to get the hell out of my head.

There are many ways to reach the truth of non-selfhood. Think of it as a mountain peak, with meditators and certain spiritual traditions ascending different sides. Psychedelic drugs offer a kind of shortcut; you get a glimpse of this higher truth without all those years of serious, disciplined practice.

That shortcut is what I was after.

Night 1: dread

The approach at this retreat center, called Rythmia, is all-encompassing. During the day they pamper you with all the luxuries of a wellness retreat — massages, volcanic mud baths, organic food, yoga classes, colonic cleanses. Then at night, you drink ayahuasca and put yourself through emotional and physical hell.

One of the first things I was told is that I had to enter the ayahuasca ceremony with a clear goal or question in mind: What do you want to learn about yourself?

The trained facilitators who led the ceremonies recommend that you begin with a simple request: Show me who I’ve become.

The question implies that at some point you lost yourself, that when you were a child, your soul was pure, open, uncorrupted by culture. As you enter society, you lose that childlike love for the world. You start to judge yourself by external standards. You compare yourself to friends, neighbors, and peers. You develop an ego, an identity, and your well-being becomes bound up with these constructs.

There’s nothing new about these ideas, but they strike me as true all the same. So I decide to focus on self-discovery.

It’s now 5:15 pm, and the first ceremony starts in 15 minutes. I’m terrified. “Do I really want to see what I’ve become?” I keep asking. I’m pretty sure I won’t like the answer — almost no one does, it seems.

The doors open, and all 78 of us here for this week-long session pour into the ceremony room, called the “flight deck.” The room is big, divided into three sections, and there are two bathrooms on each side. It’s dimly lit, and mattresses are lined up on the floor against the walls. The beds are only a few inches apart. At the foot of each mattress is a roll of toilet paper and a blue or red bucket.

I pounce on the first mattress I see; it’s near the door and just a few feet from the bathroom. I feel safe here. To my right is Chad, a photographer from Ontario who looks as nervous as I am but somehow seems more prepared for this. To my left is a giant window that opens to a view of the courtyard.

There’s a nervous collective energy. Almost everyone here is doing ayahuasca for the first time, and we’re all scared shitless. They announce the first call to drink, and I make my way to the front of the line. One by one, we take our cups, silently reflect on the intention for the evening, and then drink.

It’s my turn to drink. The stuff is nasty, like a cup of motor oil diluted with a splash of water. I throw it back like a shot of cheap bourbon.

We’re instructed to sit up and lean against the wall after the first cup. The tea takes at least 30 minutes to work its way through the body. I sit quietly for 45 minutes, maybe an hour, and then I lie down on my mattress and wait.

Nothing happens. I feel a little dizzy but nothing overwhelming. I go outside, walk around a bit, feel my feet in the grass. Then they announce a call for the second drink. I remember the mantra here: “Drink, don’t think.” If you can hear the call, if you can move your body, you drink. So I awkwardly drag myself out of bed and head to the front for a second cup.

About 30 minutes pass, and I start to feel ... strange. I can see colors, shapes, and shifting shadows on the wall. I’m nervous that something is about to happen, so I go outside and gather myself. I settle in one of the hammocks and stare at the stars.

Suddenly the stars start to spin in a clockwise direction. Then a little faster. Then, for reasons that escape me, I start yelling at the moon. So it goes, for what feels like an hour or two. I keep hurling those two questions at the heavens but get no answers, no insights, just silence and spinning.

I walk back inside and collapse in my bed. For the rest of the night, I see sporadic visions of geometric figures, a few flashes of light, but that’s about it. Then one of the assistants starts to ring a gentle bell.

It’s 2 am, and it’s time to close the ceremony.

ayahuasca trip stories

Night 2: “Don’t fight the medicine”

The next day I realize why I had no great revelations on the first night. I couldn’t let go. I thought I was prepared for the trip, but anxiety got the better of me. As soon as I thought something — anything — was about to happen, I tried to think myself out of the experience.

Tonight will be different. I’m going to stay in the moment, stay with my breath, and see what happens.

The facilitator is Brad, a kind, aggressively tanned guy from Indianapolis who was trained in ayahuasca by a tribe in Peru. The facilitators play an important role each night, even though there isn’t much one-on-one interaction. They set the tone, guide the ceremony, explain where the medicine came from and how it works, and they assist the people who need it throughout the night.

Brad tells us to let go and give in. “Don’t fight the medicine,” he says. “Just listen.”

It’s cooler tonight, but there’s a warm breeze rolling through the room. Most of the people around me are scribbling last-minute notes in their journals; others are sitting stoically waiting for the first call.

I take my first drink around 7:30 pm, though I can’t know for sure because phones and electronics are shut down as soon as you enter the flight deck. My intention is the same as it was the first night: Show me who I’ve become.

I can tell quickly that this will be different. It’s 30 or 40 minutes after the first drink, and already my senses are overwhelmed. Every time I open my eyes, the space around me starts to fold, kind of like what Einstein describes in his theory of relativity. But it also looks like a tightly woven spider web, and when I move my hand it starts to bend.

Before I know it, they make the call for a second drink. “Don’t think, drink,” I keep telling myself. So I stumble to the front and drink another cup. Then things get weird.

I roll onto my right side and see Andrea, a woman from Toronto, struggling to vomit. Brad, the facilitator, had said the Peruvian and Columbian tribes that use ayahuasca see purging — vomiting, diarrhea, crying, laughing, and yawning — as a vital part of the healing the drug brings. When you purge, you’re expelling all the nastiness — the stress, the anxieties, the fears, the regrets, the hatred, the self-loathing.

All of a sudden, Andrea has 40 or 50 yellow snakes gushing out of her mouth and into mine. And then I’m immediately racked with the worst nausea I’ve ever experienced. First I curl up in the fetal position and then I spring onto all fours and try to puke. But I can’t get it out. I stay on my knees for another five or 10 minutes waiting for something to happen. Nothing.

Then I lie back down, roll onto my left shoulder, and am flooded with a resounding message for the rest of the night: It’s not about you! Andrea’s pain and suffering — the snakes — had passed into me, and that was the whole point.

For the rest of the night, maybe another three hours or so, I lie there thinking about how selfish I often am, and about the symbolism of the snakes. The feeling was so powerful that I started to cry. (Side note: people cry a lot on ayahuasca.)

The next day, Andrea tells me that she never managed to purge but that her nausea suddenly disappeared, after which she drifted into a peaceful half-sleep. I don’t know if that occurred around the time I saw those snakes, but the thought of it kept me up that night.

I’m not bothered by the thought of taking on her pain; it’s the whole wild scene — the snakes, the nausea, the visions. I can’t explain any of it and yet it was unshakably authentic.

ayahuasca trip stories

Night 3: m aking love to my wife for the first time — again

I’m halfway through this thing, and so far it’s not at all what I expected. I still haven’t had to confront my past in the way I anticipated I would.

The third ceremony is led by two women. The facilitator is Abby, a young, quietly authoritative woman from Cincinnati who’s assisted by Kat from Montana. Both trained in Peru.

Abby begins by telling us that tonight is about the feminine spirit. “It’s a celebration of creation,” she says, “of birth and renewal.” The idea is calming.

I strike up a conversation with the guy next to me. His name is Brad and he’s another Canadian, a publisher from Toronto. This is his second trip to Rythmia, and he tells me that he plans to sell his business after this. “My whole identity is tied up in that,” he says, and “I don’t want that anymore.”

Before I can respond, there’s the first call to drink. The brew is thicker tonight, and it tastes like wax and vinegar. It hits hard and fast. I am hallucinating within 20 or 30 minutes.

I see myself floating in my mother’s womb, suspended in fluids and flesh. And then I see her life — it’s not quite like a movie; it’s more like a series of flashing visions that are just clear enough to resonate. I see her pain, her confusion. I see how hard it was for her to have me at 20 years old, and how little I’d thought about that.

I see her and my father, in a college apartment, wondering what the hell they’re going to do next. I realize how fucking terrified I would have been in that spot at that age. A wave of compassion washes over me; whatever resentments I was holding on to drop away.

Then the call for a second drink comes. I drink, walk outside, and then go right back to bed.

The scene shifts and I’m floating in what I assume is a kind of primordial soup. I think I’m a vibrating particle now, and string theory suddenly makes sense in a way I could never explain (I suck at math).

Abby starts to sing songs called icaros, which are performed in ayahuasca ceremonies throughout the Amazon. I sink deeper into a trance. My mind is speeding, and my body is frozen stiff. But a calm takes over me, and I start to smile and laugh.

I roll back onto my right side, and suddenly I see my wife’s face. I relive the first time we made love. We’re in college near a lake on campus. I can see our bikes behind us, the water in front of us, the blanket beneath us, and the grass all around us. I can smell the air. I relive this moment, understanding finally what made it so special.

There was no ego. I wasn’t an isolated “I,” a separate person with a separate consciousness. The feeling, I imagine, isn’t much different from what advanced meditators experience when their sense of self disappears. You simply have no awareness of anything but your body and the moment.

But then the vision turns dark.

I start to see every moment of our relationship in which she reached out to me and I missed it. I see her asking me to go to a meditation class, and I decline. I see her pause to ask me to connect at the peak of a mountain after a long hike in Boulder, Colorado, and I shrug it off. I see her ask me to go dancing at a show near our apartment, and I watch myself mindlessly decline.

I see myself stuck in my own head, my own thoughts, my own impulses. And I see the disappointment on her face. I see her see me miss an opportunity to reconnect.

Then I relive all those moments again, and this time I see myself do or say what I should have done or said. And I see the joy on her face. I see it so clearly that it hurts. I see how much time I wasted, how much love I withheld.

I’m crying again, this time even louder, and the smile on my face is so big that my jaw hurt the next day. And I think about how I’m going to look at my wife when I get back home, and how she’ll know I’m seeing her — really seeing her — for the first time all over again.

Then the bells start to ring, and it’s time to close the ceremony.

ayahuasca trip stories

Night 4: t he most honest mirror you’ll ever see

I knew the fourth night would be rough when I saw the ayahuasca brew (each night it’s a slightly different recipe from a different tribe or region or tradition). It was so thick and oily that you couldn’t drink it. Instead, you had to force it down like paste.

The shaman, an Israeli man named Mitra, tells us that it was a 5,000-year-old recipe taken from one of the oldest Amazonian tribes in Colombia, where Mitra was trained. He’s tall, with a shaved head and an assured demeanor. He looks like he could demystify the cosmos and dunk a basketball at the same time.

This final ceremony is longer than the rest. Normally, we gather around 5:30 pm and finish by 1 or 2 am. This time we meet around 7:30 pm and don’t finish until sunrise the next day.

Mitra hands me my first cup, and I fall back to my mattress. I think it’s maybe half an hour before I slip into what I can only describe as the most vivid lucid dream.

I watch my entire life unfold as though it were projected on a movie screen. But it wasn’t my whole life; it was every lie, every counterfeit pose, every missed opportunity to say or do something true, every false act and ingratiating gesture, every pathetic attempt to be seen in a certain light.

The highlight reel is way longer than I imagined.

I see myself as a child groveling for attention from the “popular kids.” I see my 12-year-old self throwing a tantrum in the mall because my dad wouldn’t buy me the Nautica shirt that all those popular kids were wearing. I see myself in high school pretending to be something I was not, and I see all the doubts piling up inside me. I see all the times I self-censored purely out of fear of judgment.

I see myself building my identity based on what I thought would impress other people. On it went — one trivial act after another building up an edifice of falsehood.

I should note how unpleasant it is to see yourself from outside yourself. Most of us aren’t honest with ourselves about who we are and why we do what we do. To see it so clearly for the first time is painful.

The movie rages on into college and adult life, with my self-consciousness expanding. I see myself not looking into the eyes of the person I’m talking to because I’m playing out all the ways they might be judging me. I see myself pretending like my hair wasn’t thinning years ago and all the times I tried to hide it. And every time, the reason for posing was the same: I cared too much about what other people thought.

The experience made me aware of how often we all do this. We do it at home, at work, at the grocery store, at the gym. Most interactions are either transactional or performative. No one wants to make eye contact, and most of the time people freak out if you really try. We’re too self-conscious to listen. We’re thinking about what we’ll say next or how we’re being perceived.

All the posturing destroys any chance for a genuine connection.

The movie ends, and I’m exhausted. The meaning of the previous two nights is clearer now. I needed to feel small and connected before I could appreciate the absurdity of self-involvement. I had to relive those fleeting moments of union to see what made them so transcendent. And I had to go straight through my shame and regret to get beyond it.

When the ceremony finally ended, I sat up in my bed and starting scribbling notes to myself. Before I could finish, Mitra walked up to me and asked how I was doing. I tried to explain what happened, but I couldn’t.

He just kneeled, put his hand on my head, and said, “Happy birthday.”

The day after

I leave the retreat center around 11 am on Saturday to board a shuttle to the airport. With me are three people from my group.

One of them is Alex, a garrulous guy from London. I think he’s in his mid-30s, though I can’t recall. He’s got this dazed look on this face, like he just saw God. His eyes are on fire with excitement, and he’s already planning his next visit.

“When are you coming back?” he asks me. “I don’t know,” I say. He doesn’t quite believe me. Everyone, he assumes, is coming back, either here or to some other place like this. I’m still processing what happened; the thought of the next “trip” hasn’t even occurred to me yet.

We reach the airport, say our goodbyes, and then part ways. I’m standing in line waiting to go through customs, and I’m surprised at how relaxed I am. The line is long and slow, and everyone around me is annoyed. But I’m moving along, passport in hand, smiling for no particular reason.

Typically, I am one inconvenience removed from rage. Today is different, though. When a loud man rolls his heavy suitcase over my open toe, I shrug it off. Brief encounters with strangers like that are pleasant; the awkwardness is gone.

I’m not in my head, and so things aren’t happening to me; they’re just happening. It’s probably too much to say that my ego was gone — I don’t think it works like that. But seeing myself from a different perspective offered a chance to reassert control over it.

People say that a single ayahuasca trip is like a decade of therapy packed into a night. That’s probably an overstatement, but it’s not altogether wrong. In four nights, I feel like I let go of a lifetime’s worth of anger and bitterness.

ayahuasca trip stories

At the time of this writing, I’ve been home three weeks. The ecstasy I felt in the days immediately after the trip has worn off as I’ve slipped back into my regular life. A tension has emerged that I still don’t quite understand.

I’m happier and less irritable than I was when I left. The tedium of everyday life feels less oppressive. Part of the reason is that I’m less anxious, less solipsistic. I really do find it easier to see what’s in front of me.

But there’s something gnawing at me. I want to go back to Costa Rica, and not for the reasons you might expect. Forget about the ayahuasca, forget about the tropical vistas, forget about all that. This experience was possible because a group of people came together with a shared intention. That creates an emotional intensity that’s hard to find elsewhere. Every person looks right at you, and you look right back.

But real life isn’t like that. I ride the Metro to work every day, and lately I’ve tried talking to random people. It’s a lot harder than you think.

A man sat across from me the other day wearing a Tulane hat (from the university in New Orleans). I used to live in the area, so I looked at him until he looked back, assuming I’d strike up a conversation. But once we locked eyes, I could sense his agitation and we both turned our heads. Nothing weird or hostile — just clumsy.

I’ve spent years making an heroic effort to avoid awkward exchanges, so I get it. But I’m honestly worried that in a few weeks or months, I’ll be that guy again. And in retrospect, this whole journey will feel like a brief holiday of awareness.

I asked my wife the other day if I seem different to her after the trip. She said that she always felt like she had to force me to offer my attention, especially in those quiet, simple moments, and that now I give it freely. I do find it easier to listen since I returned, and it’s amazing what a difference that can make.

I keep thinking about this idea that a night of ayahuasca is like a decade of therapy. Do you pay a price for taking this kind of shortcut? Are the effects short-lived? Maybe.

I know it’s hard to be in the world without being of the world. And the world is a lonely place full of lonely people. You can’t change that, but you can change your orientation to it. In my case, psychedelics made that a little easier.

And what of the self and the ego? I believed these things to be illusions before I took ayahuasca, and now I’m certain that they are. But what does that actually mean in day-to-day life? Not as much as it should. The ego might be a fiction or a construct or whatever you want to call it, but the sensation of it is near impossible to shake.

Even after taking what is arguably the most powerful ego-dissolving medicine on the planet, I still live in a world that reinforces the story of me all the time. There’s no easy way around all that.

I don’t know what life will be like in six months or a year, but I think ayahuasca was the greatest thing that has happened to my marriage. It wasn’t about becoming a better person; it was about appreciating the role my wife — and other relationships — play in my life. I had to escape my head to see that.

Now that I’ve had some time to think about it, I’d say ayahuasca is the best and worst thing I’ve ever done. I spent a week staring down all my bullshit and all my insecurities and it was totally liberating. But it was also terrifying and not something I want — or need — to see again.

A question worth asking: If you looked into the world’s most honest mirror, what would you see?

Editor’s note: this story was originally published on February 19, 2018.

Editor: Eliza Barclay Photos: Kainaz Amaria Photo illustrations: Javier Zarracina Copy editor: Tim Ryan Williams

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What It's Really Like to Join an Ayahuasca Retreat Alongside Spiritual Experts

By Michaela Trimble

Ayahuasca Retreat What It's Really Like—And How to Choose One

For a few twilight hours in a remote jungle of the Spanish Caribbean , I ceased to exist. On my first-ever ayahuasca retreat, a medicine journey that was facilitated by a local healing couple I met while traveling, I curled up inside a sleeping bag beneath a canvas tent structure, with a warm heap of wool blankets on top of me, and was lulled into one of the most transformative awakenings of my life. Over the course of one night, I was transported far and wide, and into a realm I never knew existed.

I didn’t go to the Caribbean seeking ayahuasca; it found me. After befriending a medicine woman who introduced me to the two experts, I ended up extending my trip by a week in order to experience the substance for the first time. Though the word ‘ayahuasca’ wasn’t part of my vocabulary before this 2016 experience, I’ve since participated in other ceremonies. I’ll always regard this initial experience as a new starting point of my life. It was the moment that set me along my spiritual path, into a life full of big adventures and endless wells of creativity—and I have the learnings of Indigenous experts with cultural and spiritual connections to ayahuasca to thank for that. The Western world’s recent scientific research on ayahuasca's benefits prove what Indigenous cultures in the Amazon Basin have always known: The plant is a highly powerful, transportive substance that can be used to treat physical and mental ailments, and experiencing it with the help of those practiced in its traditions can expand the mind in ways you might have never thought possible.

I didn’t go to the Caribbean seeking ayahuasca; it found me.

My first ayahuasca experience went something like this: After a shaman cleared my nostrils with rapé—a dried, powdered tobacco snuff that’s shot up participants’ noses with a pipe to begin a ceremony—I drank my first of three cups (the plant is brewed into a tea and ingested). Little did I know, as the bitter, mud-like brew slid its way into my system, that I was about to go on the ride of a lifetime. Over the course of about six hours, I took on a series of forms: a nameless bird; a snake in a pit of other snakes. I even lost all concept of my own appearance—what qualities my face had, from my nose to even the color of my eyes.

I mentally traveled back in time to meet the first ancestor of my entire lineage, who danced in the woods morphing between two forms—that of a wolf and a man—before being suddenly transported to a cave full of drawings I couldn’t decipher but somehow understood. Next, I was whisked away in flight, sweeping across the snowy peaks of the Andes as the mountain range broke apart below me, almost like a game of Tetris. I saw Machu Picchu spinning on an axis of geometric cubes, twisting and turning as what appeared to be Lego-like warriors jumped in and out of the structure. Then, in a moment of engulfing hilarity, I lay in a fetal position completely consumed by laughter.

A ceremonial maloca a wooden ceremonial structure with a thatched roof  at Mama Yura Healing Art Center in Peru

A ceremonial maloca , a wooden ceremonial structure with a thatched roof, at Mama Yura Healing Art Center in Peru

Curandera Daniela Riojas during a dieta ayahuasca retreat in Pucallpa Peru

Curandera Daniela Riojas during a dieta ayahuasca retreat in Pucallpa, Peru

The ayahuasca plant recently became part of a greater movement to decriminalize psychedelics in the United States, which has seen a rise in acceptance of the substance and others like it. Popular shows like Netflix’s  How to Change Your Mind (or any of  Michael Pollan ’s psychedelic-therapy books, upon which that TV series is based) question why many psychedelics were considered Schedule I drugs in the first place (as ayahuasca still is) and examine how they can be used to treat mental illnesses and expand the mind. The substance is also seen by many as a spirituality tool, and according to the  Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life , nearly 27 percent of Americans considered themselves spiritual—not religious—as of 2017. Though there are still many unknowns regarding the full effect of ayahuasca on the human experience, if my own is any indication, the mental and emotional gates this plant can open seem promising. But how does it actually work?

The Indigenous origins of ayahuasca, and how a ceremony works

It’s important to respect the use of the plant, and Indigenous people who have used it for centuries, as the cultural harbingers of its healing qualities. Ayahuasca is considered medicine, and should not be used recreationally or without the supervision of practiced healers who have studied the medicine in countries where it is legal and there is a cultural connection to the substance—such as Peru, where the plant originates. The same is true of Mexico and Colombia.

According to the  Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), ayahuasca's psychoactive properties are most commonly derived from  Banisteriopsis caapi , a vine containing monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), and the leaves of  Psychotria viridis, or other plant containing  N,N -dimethyltryptamine (DMT). It’s believed that the DMT found in ayahuasca activates the DMT naturally found in a person’s pineal gland, often considered the third eye portal amongst the spiritual set and Indigenous healers. Many healers and shamanic practitioners believe this leads to the vision quests that ensue after ingesting the brewed version of ayahuasca, and why participating in ceremony is a way to connect deeper to your truest self.

Ayahuasca journeys can range from one-night events to multi-day  dietas , which usually require a participant to refrain from any intense physical stimulants such as sex, alcohol, and rich foods for a period of time. Most ceremonies are held in a  maloca , a wooden ceremonial structure with a thatched roof, and begin at sunset and end the following morning before dawn, lasting around five to six hours. In my experience, a ceremony usually includes fewer than 20 participants and begins with some type of cleansing initiation through the use of tobacco snuff, such as  rapé , or  mapacho . After ingesting the medicinal tea, most participants will experience a purging reaction, which could include vomiting or even a bowel movement. Participants can drink three cups—each about the size of an espresso shot—throughout the night. Shamans and healing elders usually sing  icaros , or prayers through song, to facilitate a sense of calm and tranquility. While some ceremonies observe a practice known as noble silence, many rituals encourage participants to emote as necessary: crying, screaming, and purging included.

While no two ceremonies are the same, an ayahuasca retreat will typically follow a spiritually-similar thread that’s meant to evoke the utmost calm and protection of participants. If you do feel called to take part in a ceremony, it’s important to do your own research to find the right experience for you: I’ve traveled hours into the rainforest for ceremonies and walked away without participating because it didn’t feel right. Your intuition is often your best guide when deciding whether you feel safe with a certain facilitator or not. Here, a trusted selection of healers and retreat centers to consider for your ayahuasca journey.

Editor’s note: All experts below have agreed to be included in this article. All three nations included below legally permit the use of ayahuasca.

Temple of the Way of Light's Maestra Laura picks leaves for a ceremony

Temple of the Way of Light's Maestra Laura picks leaves for a ceremony

Iquitos, Peruvian Amazon

Located about two hours into the rainforest (by car and then boat) from downtown Iquitos, in Peru’s Amazon Basin, the  Temple of the Way of Light is a healing center offering 12-day ayahuasca retreats, with six ayahuasca ceremonies over the course of the experience. In the plant’s region of origin, local Indigenous healers lead the ceremonies at this center’s rainforest setting, many of whom travel by boat from their home communities located further up the Ucayali River—a tributary of the Amazon.

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Operating according to Shipibo Indigenous tradition, each ceremony is held by a team of four Onanya (the Shipibo language word meaning a person who has wisdom). Each of them has studied the healing modality for a minimum of ten years to equip them to safely and responsibly deliver ayahuasca healing. During ceremony, the oni (a word that means wisdom in Shipibo, but is used as a synonym for ayahuasca), is served while Shipibo healers sing songs; together, the experience is meant to purge negative, heavy energies from the body, also known as mawa niwe .

Bacalar, Mexico

Hosting multi-day ayahuasca retreats in the lagoon-side town of Bacalar, in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, is Peruvian-American healer and curator Amalia Moscoso , who brings together medicine men and women, facilitators, and shamans of all backgrounds to create each of her experiences. The retreats also infuse additional healing elements that complement each guest’s medicine journey, from a temazcal sweat-lodge ceremony to  janzu therapies, a water-based healing meditation. Her offerings also include cognitive workshops to assist in mental, emotional, and physical integration and rewiring to create neural pathways in the brain.

Valle del Cauca, Colombia

In the verdant hills outside of Cali, in Colombia’s southwestern bounds, the Colombian healer Taita Edwin leads healing ayahuasca ceremonies at his family’s private farm. During Edwin’s spiritual ceremonies, the medicine, or ayahuasca, is treated as a sacrament, a link to the spiritual realm, with a focus on creating a safe space and allowing people to surrender to their processes with deep compassion, love, and care. Besides an opening and closing prayer, there is no strict structure to the ceremonies. However, each does include two or more sharing circles so that everyone can express themselves, find clarity, and find common ground in the shared experience. More information can be found by  reaching out directly via email .

Pucallpa, Peru

Along the Ucayali River in the town of Pucallpa in the eastern bounds of Peru’s Amazon Rainforest, Indigenous Mexican healer and facilitator  Daniela Riojas leads ayahuasca ceremonies in partnership with the Onanya of the region. After first participating in an ayahuasca ceremony in 2015, Riojas, an artist and musician by trade, began her extensive studies of the plant and its medicine during apprenticeships with master healers that included participating in multi-day  dietas . The ceremonies she facilitates include holding space through icaros , prayers that embody the healing power of the region’s plants and animals. Each experience is held during the night in a ceremonial  maloca to help facilitate each participant’s journey inward.

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What happens when you go to an ayahuasca retreat a first-timer’s guide.

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A side by side of a shaman and a South American rainforest.

A golden sun appears on a bed of molten-brown, churning thick liquid, like molé. The heat is oppressive, leaden.

A disembodied voice in my head, not mine, says, “Guatemala.” 

No, not Guatemala, I respond. 

In that moment, I have no idea what “Guatemala” means, but I know I don’t want to see it.

At night, at an altar lit by fires, stands a Mayan priestess in a headdress. She has a small knife, and she uses it to cut the heart that she will consume out of an infant in a sacrifice.

In an instant I recognize the priestess. She is me.

Disgust coils in my stomach.

I crawl to the edge of the bed and purge into the bucket. It looks red, like blood.

This is my third night of drinking ayahuasca. 

The night’s visions began with … a puppy, a terrier puppy trying to lick my face.

Aw cute. 

Wait. What the hell?

Shaman Taita Juanito blows smoke on  guest's face.

Is that my dog? Whose dog is that?

Why is the dog?

It’s not your dog. It’s not someone else’s dog.

It’s just a dog, expressing love. For you.

The Mother, or “Pachamama” as they call her, has a sense of humor.

The message — in this case, of the dog — is that you will be held in an unconditionally loving embrace, even as you “meet yourself” as a matter of course while taking the plant medicine.

Welcome to psychedelics.

I came to Costa Rica to do ayahuasca, after a friend suggested plant medicine during the collective freak-out at the beginning of the pandemic. A coach in LA suggested Rythmia as the only medically licensed place in the world to do ayahuasca. Admission requires that you pass a medical intake — if you have a heart condition or a history of psychotic disorders, you won’t be able to drink the medicine, and you have to prepare with a protocol that requires a strict diet — no alcohol or drugs for a period prior to arrival. The stay is medically supervised throughout. This setup is friendly and accessible to Westerners as it combines a therapeutic approach in a luxury resort carved out of the Costa Rican jungle where pumas and pythons roam. It’s all in aid of creating what in psychedelic circles, dating back to the 1960s, is known as the optimal (mind)set and setting necessary for a productive journey, or “trip.”

Psychedelics such as psilocybin (mushrooms) are being studied anew in clinical trials — built on research that was halted in the early 1970s with the war on drugs — for their proven benefit in a therapeutic setting for the treatment of Alzheimer’s , PTSD , anxiety and depression , addiction and eating disorders , among other health conditions. Among the entheogenic plants, ayahuasca will be a more complicated journey for approval for common use in the US given its religious ceremonial component . The hallucinogen in ayahuasca that makes it illegal in the US for common consumption is DMT (Dimethyltryptamine), classified as a Schedule I controlled substance — illegal to make, buy, possess or distribute. So seekers travel to countries such as Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Costa Rica for multi day ayahuasca retreats, costing an average of $3,500 a week at Rythmia, where participants are monitored for safety and have their psychoactive brew prepared by experienced shamans.

Ayahuasca is made from the stem of a vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) and a shrub (Psychotria viridis) found in the Amazon rainforest, a formula presided over by indigenous tribes to form a plant medicine that is a sacrament taken from a young age in these communities for purposes of healing. That’s why they call ayahuasca “Pachamama,” or Mother Earth, a goddess they worship.

Taita Juanito playing guitar.

The shamans at Rythmia are trained by a Colombian tribe called the Inga, descendants of the Inca, who are ethnobotanists and masters of  yagé . According to “The Medicine,” a 2019 documentary featuring the Ingas’ spiritual leader Taita Juanito, when conquistadors arrived on South American shores, their priests drank ayahuasca and then forbade its use. The natives then hid the plant medicine they had been using for hundreds of years. 

But now, the tribes feel it’s time to share.

“I loved what it did for me.” Miley Cyrus

When the DMT in the shrub combined with monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) in the vine is blended into a tea and taken orally, it blocks the brain’s default mode, allowing new connections and pathways to form, achieving an altered state of awareness.

The Hollywood community re-discovered it more than a decade ago. Ayahuasca was introduced to modern culture in 1963 with “The Yage Letters,” in which Beat generation authors William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg chronicled their journeys with the psychedelic tea in the Amazon through the 1950’s. Early adopters like Paul Simon tried ayahuasca after a failed project, releasing the song “Spirit Voices” about his experience in 1990, and Sting credited it in his 2005 autobiography as the closest thing to a religious experience he’d ever had. But more recently, many were quietly turning to the plant medicine not only for healing trauma but for creativity. Reports from ceremonies conducted privately in living rooms say the yield has included not only suppressed emotions and memories, but things like the “Game of Thrones” opening credit sequence. 

A side by side of Miley Cyrus and Will Smith.

Since late 2020, celebrities as diverse as Chris Rock and Miley Cyrus have gone public about their use, with Cyrus telling Rolling Stone that, in 2013, the snakes took her to Mama Aya. “I loved what it did for me,” she said.

Most recently, Will Smith detailed eight pages in his 2021 memoir “Will” about taking the tea in more than 14 trips on a retreat in Peru after having marital problems. 

 “This was my first taste of freedom,” he wrote. “In my fifty plus years on this planet, this was the unparalleled greatest feeling I’ve ever had.” But Smith’s revelations come with a disclaimer: “I do not condone, nor do I suggest the use of ayahuasca or any substance without professional medical prescription and supervision.” He shared that of his 14 trips, Mother Ayahuasca showed up in eight, and in three of the six where she did not “were among the most hellish psychological experiences I’ve ever endured.”

Megan Fox told Jimmy Kimmel that on her second night of her ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica she went to “hell for eternity.” People interpreted that as meaning she had a bad experience. What she explained was that ayahuasca “surpasses anything like talk therapy” and makes you surrender to “your psychological prison that you hold yourself in, your own version of hell.”

A shot of Megan Fox on Jimmy Kimmel.

In other words, there is value in the unpleasant trip. She said she had “a real ego death.” Ayahuasca is said to be the closest thing to a near-death experience. Having to fight to survive “death” is a common experience in psychedelics and one that confronts you with fears and discomfort and forces you to push through. The reward is the calm of wisdom and gratitude on the other side.

My first “pinta,” as they call visions, after the very first cup I took, was of vines that writhed and coiled in and around one another like snakes. They were technicolor green, cartoon-like and they looped and writhed seemingly to the beat of the songs being played in the  maloca , the ceremonial space where the ayahuasca ceremonies are performed.

The retreat involves drinking the tea four nights in a row. By the seventh day, some sort of breakthrough will have occurred. Ayahuasca is like 10 years of therapy in a few hours, some say. The active ingredient breaks down your defenses to let the suppressed, repressed emotions and memories come up. It’s been proven to improve neuroplasticity of the brain, forming new pathways. The experiential nature of the “trips” makes realizations stick. People tend to make significant life choices in the days, weeks and months afterwards. Many report they were positive.

Shaman preparing at an ayahuasca retreat.

My first two days were spent easing in with orientation and preparing for the first night of drinking. Yoga in the morning, and the first of several breath work classes, a technique that can achieve the same altered state as ayahuasca. Guest speaker Ben Decker taught a class on meditation and led us through an eye-gazing exercise. The facilitators each spoke about their own experiences with ayahuasca and how they came to be involved in the retreat, and offered up lessons in the importance of preparing the mindset and intention setting before the ceremony. We received an introduction to plant medicine and what to expect, and the exact location and number of the bathrooms.

During each of the four nights of the ceremony, the group of 60 lined up outside the  maloca,  and at 5:30 pm, they were let in and free to take a spot on one of the beds lined up around the room. A bucket and toilet paper sat menacingly at the base of each one.

I took a seat between a magazine writer and a hedge fund manager.

The shaman presiding over that night’s events called the group to gather and gave a freestyle pep talk to prepare for the ceremony.

Beds at the Ayahuasca retreat.

They then sat and watched as the shamans and assistants prepared the ayahuasca and performed the ritual of blessing the medicine. The shamans, facilitators and musicians all drank the medicine, too.

The drinking began after sundown. The shaman called for people to come and receive the first cup. People lined up and brought their ceramic shot glass to be filled with the sludgy brown brew. They stated their intention, drank in front of the shaman and then returned to their bed and sat upright for 30 minutes, waiting for the medicine to make them “drunk.”

And so it began.

For some, it begins earlier than others. I met someone who, as soon as they put back their first cup of medicine, threw it back up on the shaman.

The shaman’s response? “Did you get any of that?” 

An exterior of a maloca at night.

The first-time drinker went on to do 68 more ceremonies over five years — at 75, you qualify to become a shaman — so that kind of mortifying reaction turns out not to be a deterrent.

Ayahuasca facilitators have seen it all. For those preoccupied with losing bodily functions in front of strangers, fact: There will be purging. We are encouraged to bring our bucket with us when we leave our bed. 

But purging looks like a lot of things: crying, peeing, vomiting, evacuating, shuddering and yawning. We will be conscious of all these reactions approaching and be able to act on them. Best piece of advice all week from Rythmia founder Gerry Powell: Do not trust a fart. Also, you’ll learn to be so glad when you do purge. Because the prevailing wisdom, as a facilitator who attended to me explained, is you’re getting rid of stuff that doesn’t serve you and making room for what saves you.

Side by side of a Banisteriopsis caapi vine and a Psychotria viridis shrub.

The main mantra is “Don’t think, drink.” The only real way you can screw up your experience is by not drinking. One of my neighbors spent the better part of one night arguing during his trip with the ayahuasca lady in his head about whether to drink a second cup. It was not a good experience.

Over the course of the evening, you’ll experience a tremendous amount. Or possibly just one significant thing. Or very little. The ceremony is accompanied by a soundtrack of recorded and live music that has an uncanny ability to match up with the trip. Some people have what’s called a “nada,” where they fall asleep and wake up when it’s over. They just have their realizations at a later date. 

The main piece of advice that got me through was: If it’s coming, it’s going. That means that if fear comes up, it’s being released. 

 “This was my first taste of freedom. In my 50-plus years on this planet, this was the unparalleled greatest feeling I’ve ever had.” Will Smith

The ceremony ends sometime after midnight, when the lights come up. The group then gathers again for volunteers to share their experiences. That’s a whole other journey of insight that isn’t even yours but makes a huge impression. Some of it, you may have seen, some you heard. I kept my eyes tightly closed per the protocol of minding your own business in the ceremonies, and you should drink enough medicine that you’re deeply in your own trip.

Someone could be wailing in a life-changing epiphany, and you don’t want to interrupt it by touching them and mewling, “Are you OK?” Of course they’re not OK. You’ll find out later. In the postmortem, we heard hair-raising tales from a professor about her journey boarding a spaceship that turned into a slave ship so eloquent on healing generational trauma among nations that we all wanted to ask if they were available later on Audible. 

One young man had a rather dramatic group effort by the shamans and witnessing guests and overnight shed a chronic cough that was the symptom of the cancer, as well as his fear of death.

“I know I’m going to live,” he said on the morning of the seventh day.

People’s experiences tend to be profound. Over the course of the week, you find out that they are there for a wide variety of reasons: racial trauma, sexual abuse, suicidal thoughts, sleeping pills no longer working, porn addiction, anxiety, stage 4 cancer. 

After the shaman’s post-ceremony counsel, you head to bed and try to sleep to get ready for the next night. Or you sit and talk more to your new friends about what went on. Because nothing is as bonding as a night spent barfing up a lung next to someone — let alone four nights.

My fourth night was presided over by a visiting shaman trained by the Colombian tribe who brought their proprietary brew. In his prep class, he talked about the  yagé  you’re taking as “a drop of pure consciousness.”

I had developed a cold by the third night and opted not to drink the medicine but was encouraged by the medical staff to attend the ceremony “and help other people.” 

I lined up when everyone went up to get their first cup. The shaman said, “Who told you that you couldn’t drink?” 

“No one, I just have a cold, and I’m worried I won’t be able to breathe.” 

“The medicine will clear that right up,” he said, adding that I could come up if I heard the call for the second cup.

I went back to my bed and promptly fell asleep. 

When I woke up, they were laying out pillows for the healing circles. 

A couple got married in a ceremony performed by the shaman in the early hours of the morning. After that, I was brought up for a private healing by the shaman, because I had missed joining the circle. “You didn’t come up for a second cup.” 

I said I fell asleep, and remembered that I had eaten dinner at 7 pm. You’re not supposed to drink on a full stomach, I said. He shrugged, which is Shaman for “Don’t be a pussy.”

“Let’s get to the healing. Close your eyes. Be good.” The author’s shaman

“What was your intention?” he asked, brown eyes boring right through me. Perhaps catching a glimpse of the Mayan priestess in me. I suddenly felt like a huge liar: It had been to help others, hadn’t it? He asked how the week had been for me and where I was from, and I answered nervously feeling like I was lying. 

“Let’s get to the healing. Close your eyes.”

He performed a cleansing ceremony with chants and noises and liquids sprayed and feathers with a noted physical emphasis on my heart area. Tears rolled down my cheeks.

When he was done, he looked at me, and I think he said, “Be good.”

For the next 24 hours, I went on to feel inexplicably uncomfortable and guilty, unhappy in my own skin. I watched others celebrate, swimming and dancing by the pool after dinner, giddy with joy.

The next morning I went to yoga. There in the  maloca  where the ceremony had been the day before, I sobbed through the poses. Tears not blood. A piece had fallen into place. It was forgiveness.

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Shaman Taita Juanito blows smoke on guest's face.

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ayahuasca trip stories

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Frogs, brain noodles and a lot of vomit – I took ayahuasca and finally found inner peace

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By Miranda Larbi , Freelance Lifestyle Reporter

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I’m drowning in mud, my brain has turned into noodles, and I’ve just tipped a bucket of my own vomit over my head.

This is the reality of doing ayahuasca, a transformative hallucinogen.

Despite a terrifying trip involving ghosts, broccoli, and frogs, I’m so glad I did it. I’ve finally found inner peace and my life has radically changed.

But let’s rewind a bit.

There’s nothing like turning 30 back at your parents’ home, after breaking up with a long term partner, while working a job that could finish any minute, to have you on the verge of a third-life crisis.

At 30, I felt further away from knowing what was going on with my life than I did at 20.

Constantly plagued by stress and anxiety, I knew something had to change but had no idea what that drastic measure would be until my sister told me about an ayahuasca ceremony she had attended in Brighton.

Her story and, well, the  universe compelled me to buy a ticket to Peru and convince Metro.co.uk’s incredible illustrator Ella to do the same. A couple of months later, we found ourselves in the middle of the Peruvian forest with the Shipibo tribe.

Preparation and the ayahuasca diet

Ayahuasca is a medicine that Amazonian tribes have used for thousands of years. It contains the psychoactive chemical DMT – the world’s most powerful hallucinogen – and is traditionally used in times of crisis, lethargy and grief. Locals drink it when they want answers or to connect with their dead relatives. Some people do eight-week dietas [the commitment you make to doing ayahuasca, from preparation to actually taking the drug] dedicated to certain plant spirits which can involve doing 30 ayahuasca ceremonies over two months.

But whether you’re doing a full 8-week dieta or a one-off ceremony, the ayahuasca journey starts before you take a sip.

You’re supposed to stick to a specific diet to prepare your body for the medicine and it can start a month ahead or in our case, three days.

As a vegan, I don’t eat the vast majority of the foods on the banned list anyway, but it’s important ahead of drinking the medicine that you avoid sugar, salt, oil, alcohol, drugs and sex (you’re also supposed to swerve dairy and pork).

The first three make sense given that you’ll probably throw up at some point so you’re preparing the body with bland foods to make it a more gentle process. The booze, drugs and sex are about rebalancing your energies, making sure that they’re compliant with the healing nature of the medicine.

The forest that surrounds the city of Iquitos is an ayahuasca and medicine hotspot and there are lots of retreats and centres you can visit for a taste.

We were fortunate, thanks to ayahuasca-guru and healer James, to get a place for three days at a healing school affiliated with the Ayahuasca Foundation, where we were to do three ceremonies.

The retreat dished up vegetable broth or oats in the morning with limes and boiled eggs, while lunches consisted of lots of carrot, beetroot, boiled potatoes, rice, limes, dhal and eggs, and sometimes boiled chicken and fish.

We weren’t allowed to use our phones or any technology during the retreat – hence the lack of photos of what on earth I looked like while I was tripping out and covered in my own vomit.

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What it’s like to take ayahuasca

On the day of the ceremony, you have your breakfast and lunch and then fast for about seven hours before the ceremony is due to kick off – stopping drinking water an hour before. You want to make sure that your body isn’t wasting energy digesting and dealing with external things when it wants to be wholly concentrating on mobilising the ayahuasca.

The ceremonies are always in the evening so that the visions you get are stronger and more visible. The Maestro (in our case, a Shipibo healer called Enrique) invites each participant up to take their medicine by shining a torch in their direction.

The taste? A generous description would be marmite mixed with bile. Some hard nuts can drink two cups but I challenge anyone to down a full cup without gagging.

After everyone’s gone up to drink, the Maestro starts to smoke mapacho – a powerful, healing tobacco which not only offers protection but also gets you higher. Once he’s sufficiently high, he starts singing, sharing his high with everyone else. The moment he opens his mouth, you’ll find yourself slipping under.

It’s worth saying that every trip is different and not everyone will get visions every time. The first ceremony I did, I only drank half a cup and nothing happened – I had a blockage that stopped the medicine from working. Maybe I wasn’t as open to the medicine as I thought I was.

On the second day, however, I drank more and I was fully ready to submit. I prayed to the medicine to teach me something about myself and within about 15 minutes of drinking I was under.

They say with ayahuasca that you should set your intention before you drink and that there’s no such thing as a ‘bad trip’ – only lessons and teachings from the plant that you work through.

Purging (being sick) is a vital part of the ceremony and acts as a way of releasing negative energy and things buried deep within your subconscious. Some devotees take certain medicines alongside ayahuasca with the express purpose of being sick so that they remove even more of that energy. I vomited within minutes of the Maestro singing and experienced quite a few vomcanoes over the course of the trip.

The trip started with me sitting on the leaf of a plastic flower, part of a big wall of intricate plastic flowers that slowly moved towards a gate. As it moved closer, my eyes dilated wider and wider until my vision became pixelated and I burst through the gate into another world.

My trip was divided into two parts: the terrifying and the ecstasy.

I started with visions of being a frog living in a stained glass pattern – along with Ella who was belching and eating flies.

We were quite beautiful in our kaleidoscope of green and amber glass, chilling with the sun coming through our little bellies. Every time the music and singing changed, I genuinely felt part of my throat twitch like a frog’s. If only Ella would take a break from eating flies, I thought, this would be quite a nice life.

But pretty quickly, other things started to happen – and quickly. I started seeing loads of broccoli and moving between different patterns and thinking that my mind was bending. I struggled to articulate that feeling and was only able to say ‘brain noodles’.

The faster these loops between broccoli, being a frog, and brain noodles got, the more panicked I became and before too long, I was deep in a manic episode of darkness, screaming out for help and for it to stop. I was being enveloped, drowned in mud.

I was being asked to say my name and struggling to get the word out, sporadically yelling out ‘MIRANDA’ when I managed to get my mouth around the vowels. As a way of trying to get control over the situation, I started to build a plastic layer in my mind to trap all the dark stuff beneath and to give me a break but I was aware that I had just sectioned off part of my mind and that everything awful was still continuing.

I became convinced that I was going to be one of those mad people who were lost in a trip forever and wound up completely insane. I knew that if I ever came to, I’d be the sort of person who loses their job, friends, family and anything else familiar.

That part was all about the fear of losing control, of going too fast, of losing my identity. Things about my family came up and about the way we treat each other which manifested in horrible, dark ghosts and visions.

I was continuously falling forwards, my upper body moving before my feet could catch up. I felt horrendously sick and scared.

Meanwhile back in the real world, the Maestro called for me to be handed water – which I promptly threw over myself – before being given more which I eventually managed to drink.

After that, I was violently sick again and again, each time falling face-first into my bucket, which in my vision saw me falling through into the dark place. Terrified, I was gripping my bucket so hard that my fingers cracked the sides.

In the end I picked up my bucket, which contained litres of sick, and tipped the whole lot over my head.

And then everything changed.

My visions cleared into beautiful, peaceful bliss.

The ghosts turned to dust, which I blew away as I came to settle at the foot of a beautiful oak tree in the middle of a dark, safe forest. The soil was warm and soft and all around me was beautiful foliage and nature. My heart swelled with peace and gratitude and I realised that I was home – that this was where I was at my happiest.

I started walking through woods which were full of birds and little critters, reminding me of how important veganism, nature and environmentalism is to me. I also realised that so much of my stress comes from living just enough for London life when my true happiness is based in the natural world. Trying and struggling to say my name in the darkness had been a sign that I had lost myself but this part of the trip was about finding what makes me, me. I saw the alphabet bouncing around in all different colours – a nod to my key skill and passion: writing.

The next bit involved me standing in front of a mirror and reflecting on having broken the sick bucket. All my life, I’ve been told to slow down, to avoid running too fast after years of accidents and to be ashamed of my strength (at school, I was forever getting in trouble for unintentionally being too rough). This mirror showed me the potential athlete I could be, wearing incredible trainers and looking really muscular. A voice told me that the only thing that was holding me back from running faster, being stronger, and feeling more confident in my body was me – it was all there for the taking. As they said that, my body was filled with new, crimson blood.

Eventually, everything sped up again until it all went white.

‘Day One’, a sign said.

A timeline showed that everything before this day had been erased and that today was the first day of the rest of my life.

I came back to soil at the base of the tree, curled up with woodland creatures and safe in the knowledge that I was where I needed to be in nature. The ghosts of old had left and I finally started to come around to the room; the ceremony had ended and my friends were chatting.

I tried to open my eyes, but found that I had X-ray vision and was still seeing kaleidoscopes. I just about managed to crawl into bed with Ella and lay there (still covered in my own sick, I should point out) blissfully smiling at the journey I’d gone through.

I felt like I’d run a marathon and my sleep was deep. I woke up the next morning feeling refreshed – there was no comedown, only an afterglow.

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What I learned from doing ayahuasca

It was the most intense, life-changing experience of my life and going through that with anyone automatically makes you a soul family.

The terrifying moments made the high even higher; I felt like a weight had been lifted from my chest.

Sure, I was wet and putrid-smelling and I was pretty shellshocked by what my subconscious had brought up but I also had an overwhelming sense of calm. It was probably the first time since I left university that I felt truly at peace. I’ve never felt the serenity and contentment that I felt in the afterglow of the ceremony. I’ll do ayahuasca again for that alone.

They say you can ask ayahuasca and the plants for favours but they’ll give you what you actually need. On the first night, I learned patience – nothing happened because I wasn’t open to it. On the second intense night, I learned more about standing in my power than I could ever imagine, and in the afterglow, I learned gratitude.

Every day the ayahuasca offers new teachings; the end of the ceremony is only the start of the transformation.

I need to be more proud of who I am and I need to take responsibility for my body. My trip taught me that unless I learn to love myself, I’ll continue to attract the wrong kinds of relationships and interactions – we manifest what we hold onto inside.

If my passion is the environment and writing, then that’s what I should be pushing more to do – not getting sucked into random career avenues that don’t offer anything other than a mediocre salary.

I’ve begun to understand that when it comes to stress and stress-related ailments, there may be an element of manifesting issues. Brooding and dwelling on negative emotions and situations is a cornerstone of anxiety but I’m starting to work on reframing the conversations I have in my mind. My job is stressful but I hope to go back to it with better coping mechanisms than tearing my hair out at my desk.

Round two – with San Pedro

A few weeks later in our travels, we decided to dip into plant medicine again – this time trying San Pedro.

Ayahuasca is known as ‘Grandmother’ and San Pedro is ‘Grandfather’ – so they have a relationship. San Pedro is a cactus grown mainly around the sacred valley and unlike aya during which you’re only about 20% conscious (if that), with San Pedro, you can move, talk, and function.

This time, the ceremony took place in the middle of a beautiful garden above Cusco. Setting our intentions, we supped the green sludge and then settled down to write our intentions, to meditate and just relax.

Two hours later, as I was coming up, I found myself being led to a tree. Sitting under it, I found a crusty twig wrapped in gnarly, black skin. I started peeling and twisting and uncovering fresh flesh beneath.

Suddenly I had this awakening that I was this twig; I was clinging onto so many old anxieties that simply didn’t matter. Overwhelmed, I put my forehead to the ground and wept with relief. Relief that all the relationship stresses, work issues, family strife, politic angst just didn’t matter anymore – I had chosen to cling onto them and had made them a part of my identity. Being free was a choice that I could make simply by choosing to shake off the shackles.

I cried with relief a number of times during the day. I still feel two stone lighter.

The interesting thing was that the beginning of this trip was the end of my last one – finding comfort, communion, and connection in nature. For me, God hasn’t existed in churches necessarily but out in the wilderness. God is in the wind, the mountains, the intricate designs of petals.

Our San Pedro house was covered in images of various deities, including Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and at one point, we were invited to do a light activation workshop to find the colour of our auras and to ‘meet’ our divine maker.

It may sound odd but out here, religion and plant medicine are really intertwined. Peruvians are both incredibly Catholic and rely upon plant spirits on a daily basis. There are big communities of ex-pats who end up in places like the Sacred Valley, looking for healing and connection who although aren’t religious, say that they know God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit are real because they’ve met them.

For me, God is PachaMama (mother earth) and plant medicine has really provided me confirmation about my place in the world.

I am finally at peace and I’m more confident than ever in my spiritual connection both to the earth and to a higher power.

I was drowning. Now I feel like I’ve been offered a life raft.

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Journey of the Soul: My Ayahuasca Retreat Experience

Temple of umi

By Temple of Umi

Ayahuasca wellness retreat USA

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Embarking on a spiritual journey can be a transformative experience that takes us to the very core of our being. And when it comes to exploring the depths of our soul, few things can compare to the power of an Ayahuasca retreat. Join me as I recount my journey of the soul, delving into the profound insights and life-altering revelations that unfolded during my Ayahuasca retreat experience. From the moment I arrived at the picturesque retreat centre, nestled amidst the lush rainforest, I knew I was in for something extraordinary. 

Guided by the shaman’s wisdom and supported by a tight-knit community of fellow seekers, I embarked on a voyage that would challenge, heal, and ultimately lead me to a profound sense of personal growth and spiritual awakening. Through vivid visions, deep introspection, and the ancient medicine of Ayahuasca, I discovered a newfound connection to myself, others, and the cosmic web that binds us all. So, come with me as I share the transformative power of the Ayahuasca experience and its profound impact on my journey of the soul.

What is an Ayahuasca retreat?

An Ayahuasca retreat is a guided spiritual journey that involves the consumption of Ayahuasca, a powerful plant medicine used by indigenous Amazonian cultures for centuries. Ayahuasca is a brew made from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and the leaves of the Psychotria Viridis plant, both of which contain psychoactive compounds. The mixture is traditionally consumed in a formal setting under the guidance of an experienced shaman.

An Ayahuasca retreat offers a unique opportunity to explore one’s consciousness, gain deep insights, and heal emotional and spiritual wounds. It provides a safe and supportive environment for individuals to connect with their inner selves, confront their fears, and experience profound personal growth.

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Benefits of participating in an Ayahuasca retreat

The benefits of participating in an Ayahuasca retreat are numerous and can have a lasting impact on one’s life. Ayahuasca has been known to facilitate healing on physical, emotional, and spiritual levels. It can help individuals gain clarity, release trauma, and overcome deeply ingrained patterns and beliefs that no longer serve them. Plant medicine has the potential to induce profound visionary experiences, allowing participants to access higher states of consciousness and gain a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them.

Moreover, Ayahuasca retreats typically occur in beautiful natural settings, often in the heart of the Amazon rainforest or other serene locations. Being surrounded by nature’s beauty can enhance the overall experience and contribute to tranquillity and connectedness.

My decision to embark on an Ayahuasca retreat

The decision to embark on an Ayahuasca retreat was not one I made lightly. I had been on a personal journey of self-discovery and spiritual exploration for several years, and I felt called to delve even deeper into the depths of my being. After extensive research and soul-searching, I finally embarked on this profound journey.

I chose a reputable retreat center that offered participants a safe and supportive environment. The centre was nestled deep within the Amazon rainforest, surrounded by pristine nature and the sounds of wildlife. The testimonials and reviews from previous participants were overwhelmingly positive, further affirming my decision.

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Preparing for the Ayahuasca experience

Preparing for an Ayahuasca experience is crucial to ensure a safe and transformative journey. In the weeks leading up to the retreat, I followed a strict diet that excluded certain foods and substances that could potentially interact negatively with the Ayahuasca brew. This included avoiding alcohol, caffeine, processed foods, and certain medications.

I also engaged in various spiritual practices to cultivate a mindset of openness and receptivity. I practiced meditation and journaling and spent time in nature, allowing myself to connect with the energy of the plants and the earth.

The Ayahuasca ceremony – what to expect

The Ayahuasca ceremony is the heart of the retreat experience. It is a sacred ritual conducted by the shaman, who guides and facilitates the journey. The ceremony usually occurs at night in a specially prepared space within the retreat centre.

Participants gather in a circle, and the shaman begins by invoking the spirits and setting the intentions for the ceremony. The Ayahuasca brew is then distributed, and each participant drinks their portion. The shaman and their assistants provide support and guidance throughout the ceremony, helping participants navigate their experiences and ensure their safety.

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My personal Ayahuasca journey

I was filled with excitement and apprehension as I drank the Ayahuasca brew. I closed my eyes and surrendered to the medicine, allowing it to take me deep within myself. I immediately started to feel its effects—a sense of warmth spreading throughout my body and heightened awareness of my surroundings.

Visions started to appear, vivid and otherworldly. I traveled through realms of light and darkness, encountering various beings and symbols with deep meaning. Emotions surged through me, and I was confronted with aspects of myself that I had long suppressed or ignored. It was an intense and cathartic experience as I faced my fears and allowed myself to release the emotional baggage I had been carrying for so long.

Integration and the Aftermath of the Retreat

The Ayahuasca experience continues beyond the ceremony itself. The work begins in the days, weeks, and even months following the retreat. This integration period is crucial for making sense of the insights and revelations gained during the journey and incorporating them into daily life.

Following the retreat, I spent time reflecting on my experiences, journaling, and discussing them with fellow participants. I also sought support from integration coaches and therapists who specialized in working with individuals undergoing Ayahuasca experiences. These professionals helped me process the emotions and insights that had surfaced, guiding how to integrate them into my life.

Ayahuasca retreat locations and options

Ayahuasca retreats are offered in various locations worldwide, with the Amazon rainforest being the most traditional and sought-after destination. However, due to the increasing popularity of Ayahuasca, retreat centers have also emerged in other countries.

When choosing an Ayahuasca retreat, it is essential to do thorough research and consider factors such as the reputation of the center, the experience and qualifications of the facilitators, and the overall safety and comfort of the environment. It is also important to inquire about the ethical sourcing of the Ayahuasca brew and the centre’s commitment to sustainability and respect for indigenous traditions. Click here for Our upcoming retreats’ location and registration.

Conclusion: The transformative power of Ayahuasca

My Ayahuasca retreat experience was nothing short of transformative. It allowed me to dive deep into the depths of my soul, confront my fears, and heal the emotional wounds holding me back. Through the power of Ayahuasca, I gained a newfound sense of clarity, purpose, and connection to the world around me.

However, it is essential to note that Ayahuasca is not a magic pill or a quick fix. It is a powerful tool that requires respect, reverence, and a willingness to do the inner work. It is not for everyone, and it is essential to approach it with caution and informed consent.

That being said, for those who feel called to explore the depths of their being and embark on a journey of self-discovery, an Ayahuasca retreat can be a profoundly transformative and life-changing experience. It is an opportunity to connect with the wisdom of ancient traditions, tap into the collective consciousness, and awaken to the limitless possibilities.

So, if you find yourself drawn to the path of Ayahuasca, I encourage you to embark on your journey of the soul. Embrace the unknown, surrender to the medicine, and allow yourself to be transformed. The Ayahuasca experience can open doors you never knew existed and guide you toward personal growth, healing, and spiritual awakening.

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frequently ask questions about ayahuasca Retreat Experience

What is ayahuasca.

Ayahuasca is a sacred plant medicine traditionally used by indigenous cultures in the Amazon region for spiritual and healing purposes. It is made from a combination of plants, typically including the Ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) and the leaves of the chacruna plant (Psychotria viridis).

What can I expect during an Ayahuasca retreat? 

During an Ayahuasca retreat, you can expect to participate in ceremonies led by experienced spiritual guides or shamans. These ceremonies typically involve drinking Ayahuasca and entering into a meditative state. Ayahuasca is known for its profound and transformative effects, including spiritual insights, emotional healing, and heightened consciousness.

Is Ayahuasca safe? 

While Ayahuasca has been used for centuries in indigenous rituals, it is essential to approach it with caution and under the guidance of experienced facilitators. Ayahuasca contains potent psychoactive compounds and can induce intense experiences. It is not recommended for everyone, especially those with certain medical conditions or taking specific medications. Researching and choosing a reputable retreat center with trained facilitators who prioritize safety and provide proper integration support is crucial.

What are the potential benefits of an Ayahuasca experience? 

Ayahuasca has been reported to offer a range of potential benefits, including spiritual insights, emotional healing, increased self-awareness, expanded consciousness, and a sense of connectedness with nature and the universe. Many people also describe it as a catalyst for personal growth and transformation.

Are there any risks or side effects associated with Ayahuasca? 

While Ayahuasca can be a profound and transformative experience, it is essential to be aware of potential risks and side effects. These can include intense emotional and physical purging, challenging experiences, temporary heart rate and blood pressure increases, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Following safety guidelines, disclosing relevant medical information, and having proper support during and after the experience is crucial.

How should I prepare for an Ayahuasca retreat? 

Preparation for an Ayahuasca retreat typically involves physical, mental, and emotional preparation. This may include following a specific diet or avoiding certain substances before the ceremony, engaging in mindfulness practices, setting intentions, and reflecting on your motivations and expectations for the experience. Retreat centers often provide detailed guidelines for preparation.

How can I integrate my Ayahuasca experience into my daily life? 

Integration is a vital part of the Ayahuasca journey. It involves processing and integrating the insights and experiences gained during the retreat into your daily life. Integration practices include journaling, meditation, therapy, creative expression, and seeking support from integration professionals or community groups. It is essential to honor and apply the lessons learned in a supportive and sustainable manner.

How do I choose a reputable Ayahuasca retreat center? 

Choosing a reputable Ayahuasca retreat center requires thorough research. Look for centers with experienced and trained facilitators, prioritize safety measures, provide pre and post-ceremony support, and have positive reviews or testimonials. Ask questions, seek recommendations, and choose a center that aligns with your intentions and values.

Can Ayahuasca be used for recreational purposes? 

Ayahuasca is a powerful spiritual and healing tool and should not be approached as a recreational substance. It is intended for intentional and ceremonial use under the guidance of experienced facilitators. It is essential to approach Ayahuasca with respect, reverence, and a sincere commitment to personal growth and healing.

Are there any legal considerations regarding Ayahuasca? 

The legal status of Ayahuasca varies from country to country. It is considered illegal in some places, while in others, it may be legally used within specific religions.

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Whether you are on a self-discovery quest or seeking to heal your soul and spirit from past trauma, we hold spaces for you as you go through this healing journey. We honor your courage and applaud your decision to get closer to the universe. We are here to serve you in the utmost sacred process toward true consciousness. Journey well!

Ayahuasca retreats USA

Ayahuasca retreats USA , Temple of UMI. Whether you are on a self-discovery quest or seeking to heal your soul and spirit from past trauma, we are holding spaces for you as you go through this healing journey. We honour your courage and applaud your decision to get closer to the universe. We are here to serve you in the utmost sacred process toward true consciousness. Journey well!! Learn more.

Ayahuasca is a powerful plant medicine used for centuries in traditional Amazonian shamanic practices. Discover what it is and how it works in this guide. Learn more.

The Healing Power of Ayahuasca Plant: A Comprehensive Guide

The Ayahuasca plant, scientifically known as Banisteriopsis caapi, holds a revered place in indigenous cultures of the Amazon rainforest. This potent botanical treasure has been used for centuries in sacred rituals and shamanic practices. Ayahuasca has gained significant attention in recent years as an alternative form of therapy and spiritual exploration. This article delves into the fascinating world of the Ayahuasca plant, its history, effects, and potential benefits. Read now!

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Ayahuasca retreats near me in New Jersey.

Ayahuasca retreat in New Jersey, Whether you are on a self-discovery quest or seeking to heal your soul and your spirit from past trauma, we are here, holding spaces for you as you go through this healing journey. Learn more.

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What is Shamanism?

Shamanism is a religious practice system historically connected with indigenous and tribal civilizations. It involves the concept that shamans have a connection to the otherworld and possess the power to heal the sick, communicate with spirits, and transport the souls of the deceased to the hereafter. Learn more.

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Understanding Ayahuasca Ceremonies: A Comprehensive Guide

Ayahuasca ceremonies are an ancient spiritual practice used by indigenous peoples in South America’s Amazon basin for generations. Ayahuasca is a psychedelic chemical dimethyltryptamine-containing brew prepared from the ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) and other plants (DMT). Learn more.

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Our yoga instructor Jose at the Onaya Center in Santa Helena, Peru.

The ayahuasca diaries

Therapy was too expensive. Religion? Too dull. Wellbutrin XL, obtained by mail from Turkey, was good for a while, but it messed with my sleep. Meditation, in theory, was the answer. In practice, it was like trying to do one-man crowd control at a rave. My children brought me joy, in their first days. As the miracle hardened into routine, I tried to remember what the older women we'd run into on the street always said: It all goes by so fast .

Still, I could feel myself becoming distant and numb. I habitually tuned my family out, present only in the physical sense. Turning off my phone didn't stop my brain from endlessly swiping through past mistakes and roads not taken. The part of my brain that neuroscientists call the "default mode network," which turns on whenever there isn't an immediate task, was making a lot of embittered noise. I had trouble celebrating the victories of my friends. The more successful they were, the more distant I became. I developed an unhealthy obsession with our finances; my limbic system became intertwined with market volatility. On numerous pandemic mornings I had trouble waking up, having stayed awake all night in my office, playing online poker with people I hadn't seen in person for more than a year. I indulged in petty hypocrisies, privately condemning those stubborn idiots who refused to wear masks, then turning on those virtue-signaling buffoons who wore them unnecessarily. I was often angry for no reason.

Knowledge of what I was like wasn't sufficient to change the behavior. It just made me ashamed. When my 3-year-old son banished me from his room, proclaiming that I was a "bad guy," I knew what he meant. Routine updates to my operating system were not helping. I needed a hard reset.

And so, on a Thursday evening in late May, I left my two children in my wife's care so I could travel hundreds of miles away to drink ayahuasca. I convinced my boss to let me write an article about it. Ah, so you want to go get stoned in a cave , he responded, before giving me the green light. I know it sounds like a typical reporter move: Find a cool thing to do, and then chronicle the experience. But please understand: I didn't drink ayahuasca so I could write an article about it. I wrote an article about it so I could drink ayahuasca. I was desperate to drink ayahuasca — I had been for several months, in fact — and the formality of an assignment would help me out at home. I could chalk up the trip as work.

Ayahuasca, which can be roughly translated as "spirit vine," is a drink made from two plants that grow in the Amazon — the bark of banisteriopsis caapi, a thick, tree-climbing vine, and the leaves of psychotria viridis, a coffee-like shrub. The vine contains DMT, a hallucinogen. The shrub contains alkaloids that allow the DMT to be absorbed through the stomach. There is archaeological evidence dating its ritual use to 1,000 years ago, though some anthropologists believe that the current form of ritualized drinking — in which ayahuasca is referred to as "medicine," to be imbibed in a ceremonial circle — is an artifact of mestizo culture, formed by contact between Indigenous people and Europeans. The drug has become so popular that there's now a cottage industry of luxury ayahuasca resorts, and ayahuasca has earned a reputation as a foul-tasting New Age emetic, a kind of party drug for linen-clad crystal-cleansers who buy palo-santo sticks on Goop. From where I sit, it's more like a psychic highlighter, singling out the people you love the most and showing you how to love them more.

It was the memory of my first time with ayahuasca, 10 years ago, that had drawn me back. In those days, as an untethered 33-year-old, I considered the experience to be an end in itself. I'll try it and see what happens. Now, at 43, I told myself I was bringing my soul into the shop for some routine maintenance. It was as sensible as the 120,000-mile service that was now due on our battered Toyota Rav4. Rotate the tires. Check the fluids. Change the filters. Take out the kid seats. Suck all those Cheerios and stale french fries into the cosmic Shop-Vac. Whoosh! Good as new. It was like joining Costco. The long drive out West would be worth it, once I returned home with my trunk full of Kirkland-branded epiphanies. Viewed in this light, leaving my family to consume powerful hallucinogens with a group of strangers in a cave was the responsible thing to do.

That first time, back in 2012, I drank ayahuasca with Eduardo, who called himself a shaman. He was born in Peru and lived in Puerto Rico, but he sometimes flew in to serve ayahuasca to circles in Los Angeles and New York. He had us lay on the sawdust floor of a barn-like outbuilding in upstate New York. We came forward, one by one, and drank from a white plastic bottle, and then Eduardo played a wooden flute through the night. We each had our own blanket and water bottle along with a small bucket for vomiting. It took a while for the drug to kick in. I remember crying for several hours when it did, overwhelmed by emotion and memory.

Later, when people asked me what it was like, I'd compare it to the cover art for "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." There is this vast commonwealth of people, all standing at attention. These are all the people in your life. An unseen hand is plucking each of the golden strings that bind you to the others. One by one, all the people on your personal "Sgt. Pepper's" album cover step forward and say their piece. You relive some of the moments you've shared with them. You are made painfully aware of the ways in which you've fallen short.

Meanwhile, here on the physical plane, you're lying on the floor in a kind of fever dream, stricken by a substance that your body believes to be poison. The only thing keeping you together is Eduardo, playing "The Sound of Silence" on his flute. The sounds of crying and vomiting amid the music remind you of the others who are there with you in the room, suffering as you're suffering, all stuck in the same existential predicament that ayahuasca has brought to a boil of unbearable acuity. That predicament merges with the feeling of physical illness. It's more or less what I imagine my deathbed will be like: a mixture of suffering and regret, followed (one hopes) by some trace beams of clarity and transcendence shining through the cracks.

That first time around, I was especially focused on Eva, my live-in girlfriend, who was lying on her own sleeping bag across the room, in the sawdust. My visions, such as they were, had started with a shimmering pointy light, in the shape of a compass rose. It was hovering in the corner of our apartment, near some stuffed animals, looking down over our lives. Sometime later, when I came to, I sat up and saw Eva looking at me across the dim room. I felt thirsty. She walked over and gave me some of her water. I took this to be a clear indication that we should get married.

The most seductive thing about ayahuasca is how it leaves you. I don't mean its physical exit, the vomiting and diarrhea that often accompany the experience. What I mean is the afterglow. There's the enhanced perspective that's a feature of many drugs — returning to the surface, from semi-oblivion, can allow one to view everyday life with fresh eyes. But ayahuasca messes with your brain in ways that create a window for making positive changes. The drug has just riffled across your brain's 5-HT2A serotonin receptors like a mallet scaling a xylophone. The stem cells in your brain, according to one study, are migrating to new zones and planting colonies of freshly minted neurons. For the next few days, particularly if you stick with the strict pre-ceremony diet, you have a heightened sense of mindfulness and malleability.

At least I did. For starters, I changed the way I approached decisions. I began setting aside my obsessive need to weigh every possible scenario and data point and started listening to my intuition. This was possible because I could now distinguish, albeit sporadically and imperfectly, which of the many competing voices in my head was the authentic one. I was prepared to make my own judgments, and to accept the risk of being wrong.

There were other changes as well. At the time, Eva and I were living in a walk-up railroad apartment in Brooklyn. I cut back on my evening beers; Eva never really returned to alcohol at all. We became more conscientious about what we ate and how different foods made us feel. We also decided to switch my office, which was in the largest room, facing the street, with our bedroom, a darker and narrower space. We sold our futon and bought a proper Ikea bed. As anyone who has cohabited will tell you, this was about more than just moving furniture. We were renegotiating the balance between us. Post-ayahuasca, it no longer felt like a negotiation. The adversarial tug-of-war between our competing desires became more of a clumsy, three-legged race toward the horizon. It would be another couple of years before we got engaged, but it was then, in the period of reflection after the ceremony, when the decision firmed up.

This time, I wanted to go with Eduardo again, but he had left the New York circle. Instead, a friend of a friend linked me up with an ayahuasca sangha, a Buddhist word for a spiritual community. The preparatory emails from the group's leader showed sensitivity to the little things. We were instructed to put green masking tape over our flashlights, so the harsh glare wouldn't interfere with anyone else's visions. There was a detailed questionnaire to make sure we weren't taking antidepressants or any other drugs that could cause a dangerous reaction. We were encouraged to cultivate "the gentle witness within," who could gently nudge us "back into alignment with healthy practices." We were told to eliminate a long list of foods from our diet.

The group seemed to embody what I'd admired in Eduardo's circle — a combination of ceremonial formality and communal informality. Actually, this one sounded more organized. That New York group that had meant so much to me was, in retrospect, a chaotic ring of flotsam in orbit around Eduardo, our shamanic lode star, and his supply of white plastic bottles. For the upstate ceremony, Eva and I had stuffed ourselves, along with six other ayahuasceros , into a speeding BMW driven by a glowering man from Prospect Heights for whom ayahuasca had evidently brought no peace. We had been interviewed, pre-ceremony, in the back of a crystal shop and then released the following morning, after our psychic exertions, into a gray dawn, where the only sustenance to be found was in the food court of a dying mall.

Eduardo's ayahuasca was the real thing, and he took care with how he ran the ceremony. But we'd unknowingly fallen in with the kind of ad hoc group that should be avoided. I learned this the hard way a couple of years later, after Eduardo had left, when I, still buzzed from my first ceremony and incessantly proselytizing, recommended the circle to a friend. She had a bad experience, learning after the fact that what she'd taken wasn't actually ayahuasca but a combination of different hallucinogenic plants. As with any drug trip, taking ayahuasca is only as safe as your dealer. You're putting your trust in whoever is sitting behind that little altar on the floor, pouring out the shots.

I arrived at the sangha on a Friday afternoon. It was located in a remote area of a Western state. A cluster of buildings clung to the side of a hill, poking their eaves out of the afternoon mist. "Is this the church?" I asked the young woman with close-cropped hair who answered the second door I knocked on. In the United States, many ayahuasca circles organize as churches to provide a legal shield for the brew's DMT, which the Drug Enforcement Administration has classified as a Schedule I controlled substance, on par with heroin and LSD.

After introductions were made, and some polite queries about the chain of contacts that had brought me there, I was made to feel welcome. I unloaded my groceries in the fridge — all meals would be potluck. A sangha member I'll call Eli, who had been with the sangha for a while, showed me to a small wooden box in the kitchen. To cover the ceremony and two-night stay I put $450 cash in an envelope, sealed it, and wrote my name on the outside.

We had a couple of hours before the first drink. There was time to unpack and set up our things in the ceremony room, a windowless cave cut into the hillside. The group was mixed. There were some young, blissed-out hippies with feather earrings from the local countryside, and some older ones who were living stoic, lonely lives in campers. There was a guy in his 30s who called himself Sky Wolf. Sky Wolf traveled around with a backpack full of psychedelics. He had the aggressively spontaneous demeanor of a dedicated weirdo, someone who treats everyone he meets as an audience to be charmed with his theories and shtick. When we met on that first day, Sky Wolf was mainly concerned with making sure there would be an opportunity to play his Tibetan singing bowls during the ceremony. He volunteered to gather firewood for the hearth that would keep us warm through the night. One of the younger women handled the task of explaining to him that the logs he came back with were wet and green.

Sky Wolf probably resembles the kind of person you might imagine in an ayahuasca circle. In fact, he was the bohemian outlier in the group. The younger attendees were wild in a cooler, low-key way, and we elders were largely professionals. There was a middle manager, an elementary-school music teacher, and a doctor. There were also people who had come to the sangha for support as they wrestled with the worst of life. They were coping with addiction, family trauma, and the unexpected deaths of loved ones. Ayahuasca was part of their tool kit. Their stories are not mine to tell. But they did put mine into perspective.

I felt like a wealthy outsider. The rental-car agency I used had randomly assigned me a brand-new electric car. For the ceremony, I had brought a Seven Generations woolen blanket, a collaboration among Nike, Pendleton, and a Navajo artist. Some portion of its $319 retail price, I was told, would go to support sports programs in Indigenous communities. I busied myself setting all this up in the cave, near the entrance.

Beside me was another newcomer to the sangha, James, a construction worker and father of four whose thick arms were covered in tattoos. As we made small talk, I rattled off my preparatory diet — no coffee, alcohol, sex, salt, sugar, meat, or vinegar and few grains for two weeks. Cutting out coffee had been especially hard. Without coffee, my brain sank into a moody fog. That morning, in an especially surly mood, I'd forced an airport barista to remake my smoothie when I saw her pouring a bottle of mango "cocktail" — mango juice plus sugar — into the blender. I thought relating all this to James would help us bond over our shared diet hardships. But as it turned out, he had done little preparation. He ate steak for dinner most nights. He hadn't even decided to attend the ceremony until that day.

"Winning at life doesn't look so good," he said.

"What?" I asked.

"I said, winning at life doesn't look so good."

"Ah," I said. The ayahuasca hadn't even left the bottle and already my gentle witness within was holding up a mirror. I saw myself, a brash East Coast dad, so focused on his own neuroses that he had mistaken them for actual, real-life problems. An asshole, in other words.

We lay there in silence and waited.

Ayahuasca tends to arrive accompanied by lore. Without the lore, the shaman is nothing more than a bartender, serving up a drink that is just another drug, a hallucinogenic kombucha shorn of any context. Of course, the context itself can be problematic. American versions of the ceremony often have a kind of escapist, dress-up quality, making it easy to fault ayahuasca tourists — myself included — for cultural appropriation. But the drug itself is so strong, so psychically devastating, that you need ceremony as a kind of a symbolic buffer through which to process it.

Sadie, our host for the weekend, was a tall, slender woman in her early 60s with decades of experience guiding ayahuasca circles. She had learned about ayahuasca from a Quechua healer who had settled in the area and occasionally led ceremonies alongside Sadie, here on her land. She didn't call herself a shaman — the word, she said, was a red flag — but a facilitator.

Sitting on her heels before us, she guided us through what we should expect and how to comport ourselves. We shouldn't talk or write too much about our experience; instead, we should cultivate the gemlike insights and let them grow within us over time. We should spend time contemplating the chain of lost people and languages who had developed ayahuasca. We could never repay the debt we owed to them. She said her bottles contained a special "sky ayahuasca" with elements from Ecuador and Peru that she had been saving for years. We should be at least a little bit nervous, she said — "ayahuasca likes humility." She seemed to be tiptoeing toward a kind of syncretic New Age pantheism, in which ayahuasca — or "grandmother," as she called it — was much more than a substance but a holy, sentient spirit, a link to the wisdom of the past. To show appreciation for grandmother, we were to drink every last drop that was offered to us, using our fingers and water to clean the glass.

Students of psychedelia call these kinds of preparatory incantations "set and setting." They have a big influence over what follows. Ayahuasca is especially partial to rooting around in short-term memory for material. My first hallucinations, with Eduardo, had included a vision of an editorial cartoon from a George Shultz biography I'd been reading the day before. This time, I had made a point of swiping through photos of my kids on the plane and reading a printout of Ecclesiastes.

"Are you sensitive to your substances?" Sadie asked, when it was my turn to sit before her.

"No," I said. I sounded peeved; I realized I had taken the question as a kind of challenge.

Sadie poured a full cup of brick-colored slurry and I drank it down. It tasted peppery.

I crawled under my blanket. Half an hour passed in silence. Then, behind my eye mask, star-like pinpricks stood out against the black. A green face, effervescent like smoke, slipped in and out of view. But the moment I focused on what I was seeing, the vision stopped. It was just an overture, driven in part by my expectations. I was back in the cave, listening to the sangha breathe.

Soon I was feeling quite sick. I started to worry I'd taken too much ayahuasca. My heart raced; I could hear it pounding in my ears. I was nervous about what I would write afterward. I had felt lucky to be able to take this retreat for work, to be compensated for participating in an exercise many would doubtless consider to be the height of self-indulgence. I had gone off to get stoned in a cave. But that night, lying there on the floor, I became cognizant that I had brought the burden of work with me into the cave. Already, I was engaged in the reportorial exercise of bagging and tagging each random thought as it arose, putting it on the scale and peering at it through my loupe. How many carats is this one? Will it ring true to others, or is it only for me? Is it a discard or a keeper?

I felt myself being squeezed, crumpled up like a bag of chips. The thoughts were chips breaking into smaller and smaller pieces. I thought of Ivan Ilyich, on his deathbed, "thrust into a narrow black sack — a deep one … farther and farther in." Underneath the material world, I saw, there were these lineages, these traditions. There they were, branching off through time, a canopy of trees. Some were explicitly religious. Some were militant and patriarchal. Others were disguised as civil institutions or artistic practices. All involved inculcating values and practices between the generations, an alternate form of human reproduction. All — even the most misguided and violent traditions — were attempts to cling to the sacred , despite everything .

That phrase seemed to almost glow like a spiritual headline under the loupe, insisting that I put a frame around it. What did it mean? To try and make something lasting, something beyond the self-interested and transactional, in the face of certain knowledge that it will be in vain. The point was to gesture to the sacred, "to dance with it," as the doctor in the sangha had told me, even if it could not quite be touched. I had forgotten that the sacred was even out there; now I remembered.

I thought about the word "grandmother." I wish I knew more about my own. My father's father, whose Masonic ring was on my left middle finger, had died before he was 50. He was raised almost exclusively by his mother, who ran the family business selling men's clothes across Oregon. My own mother, who had taught elementary school, often spoke fondly about the time I'd peed off the side of my bed, onto the carpeted floor, as a toddler. The carpet was blue. The stain persisted for years. But it didn't seem to make her angry. She thought it was funny. I was grateful for her ability to participate in a toddler's exuberance. It was something for me to emulate. Two hours before, on a video call with my own family, my 3-year-old son had shown up nude and peeing on the kitchen floor. Good for him. Of course, he didn't have to clean it up.

I thought of different women who had taken care of me at various points in my life, wanting nothing in return. I owed a lot to them. There was also truth in something Eva would say when she was angry, that I was looking to her to be another mother. I had tried to care for friends who turned out to be bottomless pits of need. Who was there to care for Eva? I knew her story well now. She had been through a lot.

I had brought along some talismans from my family. My son had made me what he called a "love," a LOVE postage stamp wrapped around a foam earplug. From my 15-month-old daughter, I took a wooden teether. From my paternal grandfather, I wore the Masonic ring, and I wrapped all these things up in a pouch that had been carried by my maternal grandfather in World War II. But there was nothing from my grandmothers.

Fishing around in Eva's box of personal relics before I left, looking for something to take with me, I had run across a tiny blue elephant, made of soft plastic, with a tattered string running through its nose. It was familiar. I asked her about it. She said I had bought it from a child on the street, years ago, and then given it to her. It was special enough to have made it into her box of relics, but not special enough for me to remember what it was. She didn't seem angry that I had forgotten, or at least not surprised. I tend to forget a lot of things. She had gotten used to the absence of my presence, to me not really being there. What else was I forgetting?

Eva and I had gotten married on the 25th day of May. Today's date was something like the 19th or the 20th of May, maybe the 21st. I had gotten so bogged down in the distractions of the everyday — Lao Tzu's "10,000 things" — that I had forgotten about my wedding anniversary.

I felt relieved. Remembering my anniversary in this way would justify my absence from home, fill my reportorial bucket, and support the case for ayahuasca as a salve for the woes of midlife. I was the gray-flannelled man from the W.H. Auden poem, emerging from Grand Central Station:

From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; "I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work"

Auden was being sarcastic, of course. He was mocking the emptiness of bourgeois existence. But in that moment, in the cave, it didn't feel so bad. I thought about Ecclesiastes, a more gentle witness. He praised those who rejoice in their labor and their portion, despite it not adding up to anything, really.

I felt some fluid pooling in my left ear. I tasted it. It seemed to be a congregation of tears that had run down my cheek. I had been crying for a while . I heard the sound of vomiting. Rounds of music on the guitar and ukulele emanated from the self-anointed Giggle Choir, the young hippies who had made camp in the far corner. Sadie told us to keep blowing our noses, so we could breathe, and to stay hydrated. My water bottle was empty. I sat up and brushed James' shoulder.

"I'm sorry to bother you," I said. "Do you have an extra sip or two of water?"

"Take the whole thing," he said, handing me his bottle. "It's yours."

Midnight approached. Finding ourselves able to move and walk again, we stumbled up, one by one, to the kitchen, for some bread and soup. It was the first time in many years that I had found myself in an informal setting among strangers who, in addition to being under the collective influence of the same drug, had no professional agenda. Sadie had brought in some locals she'd worked with to serve as helpers during the ceremony. It had been their unenviable job to guide us to the bathrooms if we needed it, and to deal with our purges.

"That was easy!" one of them exclaimed. "It was only a five-bucket night."

The next day I joined the early risers to help cook breakfast, which was followed by a sharing circle. One by one, we spoke about our experiences the night before. I talked about remembering the anniversary and was advised that I needed to do something about it that day. There was some back-and-forth about whether there had been too much music. The consensus was that the music pulled us back into the room and made things easier, but it also tended to interfere with the depth of individual journeys.

Afterward, the doctor showed me and a couple of others some tai chi moves. Elsewhere, there were spontaneous breakouts of group yoga, hikes, and jogs. I found myself telling Sky Wolf about the grounding bleakness of Ecclesiastes. He asked me to bring the printout down from my room; I obliged. Gus, a puckish millennial from the Giggle Choir, helped me figure out how to charge up my electric rental car. I drove away in search of an anniversary gift for my wife. Nearby, I found a glittering necklace with a silver clasp and beads made out of something called hydroquartz. What was hydroquartz? I didn't care. The necklace was beautiful. Franklin, an older poet, held the necklace up to the sunlight and assured me that my wife would love it. Then he offered to share a cigarette made of mapacho, wild tobacco. It was heady stuff.

The second ceremony got underway shortly after 5. As on the night before, we lined up in the middle of the cave. I found myself missing the serving style of Eduardo, who summoned us up one by one. I hadn't slept much the night before and soon slipped into a kind of dialed-up dream state. I started thinking about the mountains, these mute immensities, and my own relative smallness. I felt myself shrinking and being slowly overcome by awe. At that moment it seemed that all the world's religious traditions were elaborate buffers, sunglasses made of metaphors and stories, clumsy words, all intended to keep believers from looking directly at the fact of their own tininess. The awe was tipping over into terror. The mountains become a succession of many-headed monsters, glowing against the black, sprouting pagan symbols that branched out of their foreheads. I had shrunk down to the point I was no longer there. I had been absorbed into what seemed at that moment to be the ultimate underlying reality, something alien, violent, and indifferent to our species.

I was in there, somewhere, flailing in the dark. I found the switch and turned it all off, returning to the cave. Sky Wolf was playing his singing bowls. The sounds made trails up and down, a graph of thin brass-colored lines dancing between the walls.

I needed to pee. But I could not stand up.  

"James," I said, struggling to get the words out. I reached out and touched his shoulder. "I need to take a leak."

James pulled me to my feet. Together we stumbled toward the mouth of the cave. Outside, nature blazed. There they were again, those fucking mountains. The late afternoon was fading into twilight. A cow's skull leered at us out of the grass from beneath two trees.

"Do you think you can make it on your own?" James asked. His eyes were bleary. We were in three places at once.

"I'm not really sure," I said. The bathroom was no more than 20 steps away. "I think I can."

"OK," James said. "I'll wait for you here."

"Take this," I said. I reached into my pocket and handed James a torus-shaped piece of beechwood. Here and there, tiny indentations pocked its smooth surface. "Hold it for me while I'm gone."

Standing at the latrine, I thought of the "Double Rainbow" YouTube video , in which Yosemitebear62 is reduced to ecstatic tears by an unmediated confrontation with the sublime. No sunglasses. I thought of my old friend, Scott, who, many years before, had declined an opportunity to drink ayahuasca. Scott said he didn't want to "get slapped around on the astral plane." Both James and I were getting slapped around.

At the mouth of the cave, James held the torus up to the fading light.

"This is beautiful," he said. "What is it?"

"It's my daughter's teether," I said. I pointed to the little bite marks. "Take it. I want you to have it."

"I can't do that."

"Please," I said. "Don't worry about it. It's from Amazon dot com. We have nine more." I was crying again. I clasped his hand around the teether. "Take it."

We returned to our blankets. A couple of hours passed alone in the dark. I missed the teether.

Sadie instructed us to sit up and hold hands in a circle. We turned our thumbs to the left. That way, she said we would be both giving and receiving energy — "not narcissistic, not codependent." James took my left hand with his right. He was still holding the teether. As the circle broke, wordlessly, he let me take it back.

Sky Wolf was crawling around on the floor. I leaned over and told him how much I had enjoyed his playing of the bowls. He pulled me into a hug and leaned in close. "The joy is in the silence," he whispered.

Sadie had warned us about the comedown. The blissful escape from your regular environment comes to an end just as your serotonin system is catching its breath. Just ride it out, she'd said, and we'd eventually get back to a state that was an improvement on our pre-ceremony one. One of the older hippies crumpled into a ball of tears before we even said our goodbyes. It hit me at the airport. My red-eye was delayed by several hours. I called my parents hoping to be a renewed fount of love and gratitude. It turned out I was the same person as before. I Googled hydroquartz on my phone. It turns out that hydroquartz is a fancy word for laboratory-derived glass. The necklace I'd bought my wife for our anniversary was made of glass beads.

Sadie was right. It got better. The sangha was located in one of those pockets of rural America untouched by mobile data coverage. Now, logging on back home, I was once again confronted by the many bad things happening in the world. So I decided to take a step back from Twitter, to avoid drinking the psychic equivalent of a 64-ounce atrocity-flavored Slurpee every 15 minutes. 

Eva and I also made some changes. Nothing too earth-shattering. I started helping out more at bedtime. The old pattern, where my office wound up in the biggest room, had repeated itself in our new place. So once again, we decided to switch. I still got angry, but I could often figure out what it was that was bothering me. My son may still think I'm a bad guy, but lately he has been gracious enough to keep that opinion to himself. This morning, on our way to day care, he spontaneously thanked me for moving our family to Philadelphia.

There have even been a few moments, usually when walking outside, when I've felt something I hadn't felt for a while — a delicate quiet, an emptiness. It will take more than ayahuasca to rewire me to be "fully present." But for now, that's something I can continue to work on.

I don't want to overstate the changes, or claim they'll be permanent. It's possible they are made of hydroquartz — that outside the walls of the ceremony room, their shine will gradually fade away. On the other hand, maybe hydroquartz has gotten a bad rap. Who's to say whether a synthetic crystal, or a substance-assisted insight, is incompatible with authenticity? Eva seemed to like the necklace.

Mattathias Schwartz  is a senior correspondent at Insider. 

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  • May 17, 2023

Transformative Healing: Seven Personal Journeys Through Ayahuasca Ceremony

An image of a ceremonial Ayahuasca setting, depicting individuals seated in a sacred circle, the soft glow of candlelight illuminating their faces as they embark on their transformative journeys

Introduction

The realm of Ayahuasca, a traditional Amazonian brew, is one of intense spiritual exploration and healing. Today we're diving deep into the personal narratives of five individuals who discovered immense transformation in their lives through Ayahuasca ceremonies.

Story 1: Emily's Path from Trauma to Triumph

Before the Ceremony

Life for Emily was a battlefield, haunted by the ghosts of past trauma. Despite therapy and medication, her past held a relentless grip on her present. Desperate for a fresh start, she turned towards an Ayahuasca ceremony.

During the Ceremony

Emily’s journey was one of confronting her deepest fears and traumas. The comforting rhythms of the shaman's icaros guided her through the cathartic process, allowing her to revisit her past without fear.

After the Ceremony

Emerging from the ceremony, Emily felt like a butterfly breaking free from its cocoon. She experienced a newfound strength and resilience, finally able to make peace with her past.

Story 2: Sam’s Journey from Disconnection to Self-Love

Despite being successful professionally, Sam felt an inner void, disconnected from his true self. No amount of success seemed fulfilling. Sam’s path crossed with Ayahuasca when he felt a strong calling towards the spiritual realm.

In his ceremony, Sam experienced a deep dive into his subconscious, unraveling layers of self-imposed barriers and judgment. The shaman's icaros served as a healing soundtrack to his voyage into self-discovery.

Post-ceremony, Sam cultivated a strong sense of self-love and acceptance. The ceremony ignited a deep internal transformation, empowering him to connect more authentically with himself and others.

Story 3: Lara’s Voyage from Grief to Acceptance

Lara had lost a loved one, and the grief had engulfed her. Despite time, the sorrow remained raw and crippling. On hearing about the healing potential of Ayahuasca, she felt a glimmer of hope.

Lara’s journey through the ceremony was akin to a storm, filled with emotional turbulence. Yet, with the shaman's guidance and the healing power of icaros, she confronted her grief and loss head-on.

The ceremony concluded, and Lara felt a profound shift. She found acceptance and peace, allowing her to heal and find closure. Ayahuasca helped Lara transform her grief into a source of strength and compassion.

Story 4: Mark’s Transition from Existential Crisis to Enlightenment

Mark found himself in an existential crisis, questioning the meaning and purpose of his existence. Traditional therapy offered little solace. Ayahuasca appeared as a beacon of hope.

During his Ayahuasca journey, Mark faced his existential fears and questions. Amidst the supportive environment and guided by the shaman's icaros, he embarked on an introspective journey into his soul.

Emerging from the experience, Mark felt a deep connection with the universe, which answered his existential quest. He began perceiving life through a lens of interconnectedness and purpose.

Story 5: Ava’s Progress from Self-Doubt to Empowerment

Ava was shackled by self-doubt, constantly belittling her abilities and achievements. Traditional therapeutic routes yielded limited success. Ava was drawn to Ayahuasca, hoping to shed her self-limiting beliefs.

Ava's ceremony was a metaphorical battle with her insecurities. The guiding shaman and healing icaros enabled her to confront and address her doubts and fears.

Post-ceremony, Ava felt a profound shift in her self-perception. She felt empowered, embracing her strengths and potential. She attributed this transformation to her Ayahuasca journey.

Story 6: Julie's Journey from Despair to Hope

Living a life consumed by anxiety and depression, Julie felt trapped in her own mind. Despite pursuing various therapeutic approaches, she couldn't break free from the crippling weight of her emotions. The prospect of an ayahuasca ceremony offered a beacon of hope in her darkest times.

The ceremony was a challenging ordeal for Julie. She confronted her fears, anxieties, and past traumas during the experience. The healing songs of the shaman provided a comforting guide through her journey, echoing her personal struggles and triumphs.

Emerging from the experience, Julie found herself in a drastically different mental landscape. She felt lighter and more at peace, with her chronic anxiety noticeably alleviated. This transformative experience gave her the tools to approach life with newfound optimism and strength.

Story 7: David’s Path from Addiction to Liberation

David struggled with alcohol addiction for years, causing numerous health issues and straining his personal relationships. Traditional treatments offered little help. Feeling desperate, David turned to ayahuasca as a last resort.

The ceremony was intense, as David came face-to-face with his addiction. Guided by the icaros and the shaman's wisdom, he confronted his self-destructive patterns.

Post-ceremony, David reported a significant shift in his desire for alcohol. He felt freed from his addiction and motivated to maintain this newfound sobriety. Today, he credits ayahuasca with saving his life and relationships.

These stories are testament to the profound transformations that an Ayahuasca ceremony can facilitate. Whether dealing with trauma, grief, self-doubt, disconnection, or existential crisis, these individuals found their answers within the Ayahuasca realm. Explore more about the integration services offered by TripSafely and sign up for our weekly newsletter at www.tripsafely.com .

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What to Expect from your First Ayahuasca Experience

You can read a hundred or more Ayahuasca stories, and you still won’t really know what to expect from your first Ayahuasca experience. “Expect the Unexpected” is a trite, but accurate summation of all the most important aspects. Yet while every journey is unique there are some themes that are common, and it’s helpful to have some solid ground to stand on before jumping off into infinity.

Common Experiences with Ayahuasca

The tea is not the most delicious drink you will taste – Many people who have tried ayahuasca find that the more times they drink ayahuasca the tougher it is to ingest. Some centers provide lime and ginger to overcome the feeling of nausea that may be induced by the tea.

There will be some degree of purging – Nausea, vomiting, and crying are all possibilities. So are other effects. Most centers provide a bucket and have bathrooms located near the ayahuasca ceremony room and helpers available to get you there and back if you need them.

So far, so bad…round about now you might be forgiven for wondering why anyone would choose to put themselves though the ayahuasca experience. But in fairness, if you were to judge childbirth purely on a description of the physical experience, no one would do that either. And many people report that ayahuasca has given them something akin to rebirth. As with childbirth, there are things you can do ahead of an ayahuasca ceremony that will help you get the best from it.

Preparing for Ayahuasca

Physical preparations – A period of healthy diet and no alcohol, tobacco and caffeine will definitely make the physical side of your ceremony easier. The less toxins you have in your system before you drink the tea the better.

Emotional and spiritual preparations – Your mental state going into your ayahuasca experience will have a profound effect on what happens during it. Meditation, relaxation, breathing exercises or yoga are all recommenced ways of centering yourself before your first, or indeed any ayahuasca journey. Reading accounts of those who report nothing but mind-numbing terror is only going to make you have the same reaction, so you should not indulge in such activities as watching news or anything that may disturb your mental balance.

Do it when you’re ready – How do you know you’re ready? It is common to hear people talking about the “call of ayahuasca” and just knowing that it was the right time. This call comes in the way of a feeling or an intuition. You may start reading and hearing about ayahuasca everywhere and all of a sudden.

You can look for retreats that offer activities which are complementary to ayahuasca without being overly stressful. Remember that ayahuasca itself is a very intense experience, so having a lot of other activities can lead to draining your energy. This is undesirable because your energy is vital to a productive and deep ayahuasca experience. Some centers such as Spirit Vine in Brazil offer workshops during the retreat that help you prepare and navigate the ayahuasca ceremony which is very helpful for people who are new to the experience or are looking to go deeper into it.

After you do your research and find a center, here are some signs to check if it is the right time:

  • You feel that you can trust the center and the facilitators where you will be attending
  • You are ready to commit to the diet
  • You have an intention to transform a certain aspect or your whole life
  • You are ready to follow through and do the work to make the changes in your life based on the insights and information received during your ayahuasca retreat

On the Night of your Ceremony

You should be feeling serene, expectant and peacefully prepared to accept whatever it is ayahuasca shows you. You should also be in a calm and supportive environment with experienced facilitators or shamans who you have confidence in. Ayahuasca ceremonies are generally held at night in a ceremonial hut known as a Maloca. You should be provided with a comfortable mattress to sit or lie on. Having basic physical comfort is a great way to begin your journey with ayahuasca, if not then it may create unnecessary reactions that lead to a bad trip.

How Long will it Last?

There’s no hard and fast rule, but somewhere around about 4 hours is the normal length of the ceremony. The effects of the revelations provided by Ayahuasca usually last much longer. For that reason there’s a lot to be said for taking Ayahuasca in a well organized retreat, where you’ll have the time and support needed to process the experience. It is also advisable to take some time off after the retreat to relax and reflect on the insights received during the retreat. Choosing a place with natural surroundings and a low stress level is very beneficial to this process.

More Information

Learn more about Preparing for Ayahuasca and the Ayahuasca Diet .

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Psychedelic Stories | Snake: The Spirit of Ayahuasca

My rational mind told me that I should be absolutely terrified, but I felt no fear at all. As his consciousness merged with mine, I knew instinctively that he meant me no harm.

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I ‘d seen the snake only once before, on my first trip to the Amazon nine months ago. He appeared during my first ayahuasca experience, darting back and forth like some elusive creature of myth. At the time, I had struggled to maintain my concentration long enough to determine if the mysterious serpent was friend or foe. I had the feeling the snake was evaluating me as well, though he vanished as quickly as he had appeared, kept at bay by my intense fear and apprehension.

There was none of that fear or anxiety now, this being my second trip down to the jungle city of Iquitos to experience the ayahuasca medicine. As I caught my first glimpse of the snake slithering past in my peripheral vision, I felt only gratitude that I would get a second chance to interact with the majestic beast. My initial hesitation had been dispelled in the months prior by reading accounts of fellow psychonauts describing the benevolence of this great spirit and the benefits that could be attained by forming a relationship with the creature.

The night of my second ayahuasca experience, an army of shaman surrounded us, creating a wall of sound with their icaros, protecting the large ceremonial maloka. That night, their voices were needed more than ever. It was a full-moon ceremony, which meant the already powerful ayahuasca was made even stronger by celestial energies. All of this created a perfect environment for another meeting with the snake. After just an hour, the energy in the maloka was already reaching a fever pitch. The interplay between the icaros and the ayahuasca created a vibration in the room that was indescribable. It was almost as if the whole maloka was humming to a frequency that I was tuned into.

As the ceremony progressed, I could sense the reptilian presence creeping closer to me as his energetic field brushed up against my own. A slight tinge of paranoia crept into my mind as the snake approached. My subconscious did not want to relinquish control. I didn’t know if I was really ready to let this spirit inside; the possibility existed that this serpent was malevolent and meant me harm, but I tried to silence such fears.

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“What do I have to lose?” I asked myself as I finally let go of my apprehension and mentally allowed the snake access to my being.  As soon as I did, the fear completely vanished. I knew that I had just put my trust in something that would not harm me.

By now, the reptile was circling the perimeter of my body and head like a whirlwind. I could see it getting closer and start to move faster. As it approached, I could make out its features more clearly. The snake was brown and spotted, thick and robust, resembling an anaconda. Suddenly, his approach stopped and he ascended into the air up out of my field of view.

“Was that it?” I wondered, as an eerie calm came over me. Perhaps, he had performed his work and departed painlessly.

However, this proved not to be the case. Suddenly, he reappeared above me and began to descend down through the crown of my head. My rational mind told me that I should be absolutely terrified, but I felt no fear at all. As his consciousness merged with mine, I knew instinctively that he meant me no harm. The snake continued his descent down my esophagus, through my chest, and finally settled in my stomach. What was so remarkable about his movement was that I could physically feel the entire process take place and my body respond in turn. The snake began rapidly darting around the inside of my stomach, gobbling dark matter with his mouth as he moved. I decided to simply surrender, giving the snake free reign of my body. I knew that whatever he was eating was foreign energy, and I was glad to be rid of it. As he swam around in my guts, I could feel every movement. When he would hit the wall of my stomach, the lining would protrude outward as he reversed direction. His serpentine shape seemed able to change size at will, depending on which crevasse of my belly he needed to penetrate.

Then all of a sudden he became much larger. His body outstretched, and he coiled himself around my entire stomach. The feeling was jarring, like something had totally commandeered my being. I was no longer in control, just a passenger in my own body. His head moved up into my skull, and I found myself gazing into his red eyes. His tongue darted in and out of his mouth with excitement. Again there was no fear, just calmness and gratitude. At this point, he began gently cradling and shaking my whole body like I was an infant that he was consoling. I was in awe. I felt totally cared for and protected. I hadn’t experienced this feeling of unconditional love and safety since I was a child.

With deeper concentration, I could see why he was doing this. He was shaking little black bugs loose from my body. All different kinds of insects—worms, spider-looking creatures, beetles—were flying off my energetic body and into the ether. I knew that whatever these parasitic creatures represented, I did not want them inside me any longer. I could feel tension throughout my entire body release as this process continued.

In the middle of this cleansing, one of the facilitators came to the front of my mat and whispered in my ear, “How are your visions?”

“I have a snake inside me,” I told her quite plainly, as if it was completely natural.

She laughed sympathetically. “That’s good,” she said. “It’s the spirit of Ayahuasca.”

I nodded with a knowing gesture. She sang me a beautiful song and then stepped back as the snake continued its work. The bugs were getting bigger and it was starting to become quite hectic. I could feel the itch of nausea creep over me as the parasites increased in strength and tenacity.

Sensing my physical disturbance, the snake began to move its tail. Without warning, he violently constricted his whole body as if he was ringing out a towel. My stomach was forced inward, and the vilest green vomit made its way up my esophagus guided by the tail. I barely made it to my bucket but watched as the green ooze exploded from my mouth. Instantaneous relief percolated throughout my entire system as the purging stopped.

I thanked the snake profusely. I felt lighter, like some leech that had been draining me was finally expelled. I sat there for a moment and tried to catch my breath, stunned from what I just felt ripple through all of my senses. I was heaving and exhausted, but calm. It felt like spiritual surgery had just been performed on me, and I was now in the recovery ward. After I regained my composure, I was ready for more work. I still could see that the snake was inside of me, but it was mostly dormant, only occasionally moving within my bowels. He seemed tired as well.

I was in no hurry to be rid of the snake. I enjoyed his company. His primal energy was strong and aggressive, but he used his strength to protect me. I felt a fraternal connection to the reptilian creature inside me, almost like a big brother. After spending some time being mesmerized by the snake, my gut started to ache again, and I knew it was time for some purging in the other direction. By that point, I was coherent enough to make my way to the restrooms located just outside the maloka.

I stumbled out into the humid night, opened the stall door, and plopped myself down on the seat bracing myself for whatever was to come. At this point, the snake became active again and started swimming around in my lower intestines. I’ll spare you the graphic details, but the snake exited in just as dramatic a fashion as it had entered. At that point, I felt total relief, like everything was in its right place inside of my body. I had just experienced a physical and spiritual flush of epic proportions. I was completely rejuvenated.

I knew that the main part of my journey was over for the night. As I returned to my mat to relax and listen to the sounds of the jungle, I reflected on my experience. There was no doubt in my mind that I just had an encounter with a spirit. What the snake was was another question. He wasn’t angelic or ethereal like most benevolent spirits are portrayed. He was primal and instinctual—an animal spirit, a creature of the Earth. The facilitator described the snake as the “Spirit of Ayahuasca.” That seemed reasonable. The anaconda is an incredibly frequent vision for many travelers on the vine, especially when journeying in its native habitat.

Whether it was an animal spirit, a shared vision in the collective unconscious representing our primal nature, or actually the Spirit of Ayahuasca wasn’t my concern that evening. All I know was that there was a benevolent force helping to purge my body of negative energy, and I was eternally grateful. This is a fundamental characteristic of ayahuasca, which distinguishes it from other psychedelics. Ayahuasca guides you and will provide assistance, especially if you ask.

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Ayahuasca Easy

Ceremony 5 at Santuario Huistin (Maestro Egne)

Ayahuasca Trip Report from Santuario Retreat, Pucallpa, Peru.

A description of my fifth ceremony at Santuario Ayahuasca Retreat nearby Pucallpa Peru where I helped another attendee who was struggling with the strength of the medicine, encountered the ‘red devil’ of my shadow/ego and was attacked by a dark spirit made of black gas. This one was full of excitement in hindsight!

I had my cup of Ayahuasca at 750pm – for some reason I took note of the exact time. Usually, I lie down but this time I sat up and contemplated my intention for this ceremony which was “show me love”.

Turns out Ayahuasca had other plans for my visions and lessons tonight. No love showing para mi!

About 15 minutes in my friend who was also in ceremony was struggling with the strength of the Medicine. She was finding it difficult to get up. I could tell she was in a bad way as Arturo, the diminutive apprentice to the Shaman, helped her up. It hit her so quickly that I wasn’t even hallucinating yet.

there were only 2 people in Ceremony and two shamans. A very intimate ceremony indeed. Santuario is often like this in my experience of around 3 weeks total being here. They don’t have scheduled retreats where everyone can only start at the same time but instead, people come when they want. They are always open for business. This means that often people can have very intimate ceremonies with only a few others. I really like this aspect.

On top of that Santuario is a really tranquil place where there are no apparent rules, no meeting times. You show up for meals when you please and more or less do as you like. The only enforced start time is ceremony but even this tends to vary between 730 and 8 pm. It’s my kinda place. The medicine is also strong and the healing benefits are legitimate! This place impresses through its effectiveness and the strength of medicine.

Speaking of the strength of Medicine. Back to my friend. I was particularly worried about her as she had taken a few Ibuprofen earlier that day – not the best idea while taking Ayahuasca. While I didn’t know of this particular drug being an issue you should refrain from taking any pharmaceuticals when you are nearing an Ayahuasca ceremony.

I wrote another article here explaining why some drugs can interact badly with Ayahuasca and pointing to some particular drugs to avoid. While ibuprofen isn’t on the list specifically try to avoid any pharmaceuticals.

Back to my friend, Arturo (the diminutive apprentice) was outside with my friend at this stage and popped his head back in to get the Shaman. The Shaman left the Maloca leaving me all by myself. Seen as I was the only one there I figured I’d get up and help too. Arturo was pretty tiny and found it difficult to lift my friend. She was having difficulty balancing in order to walk to the bathroom. I picked her up and took her to the bathroom twice. After 15 minutes or so of this and letting her get some fresh air the Shaman and I went back to ceremony and Arturo stayed to help her. They came back in a few minutes later after she was feeling better.

I was finding it difficult to get back into it. The ibuprofen and wondering if I would need to help again was playing on my mind. The Shaman was singing an Icaros by now and I heard him say in Spanish ‘concentrate’. A sign for me to sort my shit out and focus. I obliged and started to see the now normal lights and shapes against my closed eyelids as the Ayahuasca took hold, but I would have to wait a little longer for much to happen. My friend was in a bad way. Not like before but she was being loud and moaning a lot. She was obviously going through something. The Shaman focussed his attention on her. It seemed as if he was singing just to her. The private treatment and the advantage of being in a small ceremony. Arturo was singing now. Holding the space as it were and I was hallucinating seeing small geometric patterns and shapes. Not the craziest visions I’ve had but my ceremony was just warming up.

Bad spirits ‘leaking’ into me (gulp!):

The Maestro (another word for Shaman) was singing to my friend for what seemed like a long time, maybe an hour. She was being very loud at first. Whatever the Maestro had found in her was being exorcized. She eventually became quiet but not before whatever was in her (a bad spirit I assume) tried to get into me!!

As she was being exorcized I began to believe that whatever was in her was trying to get into me. It was subtle at first but eventually, I understood what was going on as a dark ‘gas cloud’ began to be noticeable against the darkness of the Maloca. It was emanating from her. As time went on it became more insidious as it made me yawn. At first, one, which didn’t seem strange, but then 3-4 times in a row which was weird.

I understood that it was dying and as such, it wanted to get into me so it could live on. I had the feeling that it was not doing well in the face of the Icaros and it desperately needed a new home. Soon after the yawns, I felt a stronger onslaught from it. My left side of my upper arm, shoulder and chest started to feel hot and almost like a tension or pressure was acting on it. I understood this to mean it was another attack or attempt to get into me from the spirit.

At this point, I said “no” in my head and even physically motioned a pushing action with my arms as if I was pushing it away from me. I was a little worried, I started taking big deep breaths and saying (what now seems silly to write about) “I am strong, you won’t get into me”.

I did that several times and as I did so I felt my resistance to it grow and its strength decrease. I won, I thought, but I felt unsure about my victory. Had I vanquished it or did a little bit of it get into me? I couldn’t tell.

Eventually, my friend got quiet and I assumed the spirit was dead or ‘snapped up’ by the Maestro somehow. Slowly I went back to my ineffective intention and tried to focus on the Icaros to get back into the zone.

The Icaros are very important and while not sure I understand precisely how they work if you focus on them you can start to hallucinate strongly. I think if the Icaros as the voice of Ayahuasca. Even if that ain’t true (it’s just a feeling I have) it’s useful to think like that and rest assured that focussing on them is a good thing in an Ayahuasca ceremony.

A short time went by, I started to feel little popping sensations in my upper abdomen, just below my ribs in the center of my abdominals. They felt a little bit like small muscle spasms which I get from time to time. I don’t normally get them here though. I felt as if the Maestro was healing me.

I’m aware that Ayahuasca can often times focus a lot on the gut so when things are happening here I think that’s a sign of healing and eventual purging of bad spirits via pooping them out.

Did some of my friends’ bad spirit get into me after all? Was the Maestro on clean up duty? Was he mopping up whatever bad spirit has briefly got into me despite my fighting it? I had a feeling he was and it did.

Ego dissolution:

The popping and the healing went on for a while. How long I don’t know. Duration is hard to keep I find when on Ayahuasca. After however long this went on for, I was then shown my ego. It seemed to be under attack or that’s how it felt. It might be more accurate to say that it was being poked and prodded and investigated and I think this caused some mild anxiety. Hence the feeling of insecurity I felt and my feeling of being attacked.

Ayahuasca showed me how the aggressive side of my ego was developed. Yes, that’s right, I can be aggressive sometimes. Usually verbally but when I was younger physically too.

Ayahuasca showed me that I needed to be aggressive when I was a young child. In between having,

  • a Dad who could ‘go off’ randomly and with a lot of aggression (usually verbal and emotional but on a couple of occasions physical),
  • being the youngest of 4  ( I had to physically stand up for myself fairly regularly),
  • as well as growing up in a rough neighborhood (getting into fights at school)

these things added up to mean that I needed to be aggressive to get by in my childhood.

I think Ayahuasca wanted me to understand this such that I could let it go and in replacement of it insert more humility. I understood that while at one time I may have needed this aggressive side I now didn’t so much. Ayahuasca then proceeded to show me what this dark side of my ego was and also started to poke and prod at it such as to bring it to the fore.

I had a vision of my torso. Muscles tensed, vibrating a lot. It felt like my ego was enraged. My torso was changing colors, yellows, reds, greens and shaking violently. I started to feel anxiety. An anxiety I remember feeling at various times in my life. When someone made fun of me, when I was worried or scared by my Dad. It was a familiar feeling.

Next Ayahuasca antagonized my ego further. I think in an effort to further define it for me, so I knew what my ego being triggered felt like and could relate to all those times I had felt those similar feelings before. I became fierce. The aggressive part of my ego was on display. I was sitting up at this point and remember flexing my back muscles in preparation for a perceived conflict. I felt detached from it though. I could perceive it as something separate from me. I was at arm’s length from my enraged ego.

I think this is what people call ego dissolution. I remember feeling as if the Maestro was aware that the dark side of my ego was angry. He was slightly on edge or had taken notice at least. What if I couldn’t control it? Would they be in danger? He had to decide. Stranger things have happened in ceremony and more violent too. I’ve seen them.

Turned out the anger was fleeting. Ayahuasca was just poking and prodding me. I should be clear, I haven’t been in a fight for 15 years. so it’s not like I’m really that unpredictable. I suppose my reason for mentioning it was that I had a distinct feeling that the Maestro was aware of my anger even though it was pitch black and I wasn’t making a noise.

I started to visualize my ego as a small red, super angry and violent devil in a cage. He had spikes all over him. He was uncontrollable in a way and yet I felt as if he was also not in danger of becoming uncontrollable. A strange feeling. He was separate from me. I held him in his cage on my right side. He was a part of me. I felt familiar with him. I knew him. In hindsight, I feel a lot of love for that little guy. He got me through some tough times and was once super relevant for my life.

During this time I again had the feeling that I was being operated on. As if I was in the presence of something. I think that something was Mother Ayahuasca. I must have been lying down by this point as I felt her looming over me. Going to work on me.

Soon after I received my limpieis (cleansing) and was given my Mapacho (wild tobacco cigarette) which I would later smoke as part of the ceremony. The Maestro lit if for me and performed a few more ceremonial actions like blowing smoke from the Mapacho on me. My hand’s neck and head specifically.

This is usually when I purge but I was finding it difficult. I smoked my Mapacho, hunched over my ‘spew bowl’. Holding the smoke in as I thought that would make me purge more. No such luck. Eventually, I understood that I needed to eat some of the Mapacho – a ‘tradition’ that goes back to my first ceremony where I had 2 thirds of my Mapacho upon Ayahuasca’s instructions. You can read about that here if you like.

A Mapacho is like a giant cigarette. Not quite a cigar but maybe as thick as 2 or 3 regular cigarettes. As soon as I did eat a little of it, I threw up immediately 3-4  times. Success!

Now I write this I’m reminded that the feeling of anxiety I got during this ceremony was similar if not exactly the same as the paranoia I get when I smoke too much weed. Which in my case can’t very much at all. A couple of puffs will get me very stoned and very anxious most times. I wonder what weed is doing? Is it also separating my ego from the rest of me? Perhaps just not as gently as Ayahuasca might do?

Despite throwing up and feeling anxious at least with Ayahuasca you get the sense that she’s walking you through ego dissolution. A bit like walking around a museum, she’s taking you on a tour, showing you the way things work in your brain. Making sense of the things she’s showing you along the way. That’s how it felt to me anyhow. I feel like this was a relatively weak dose compared to my previous ceremonies and as such, I really could take the visions slowly and get a lot out of them.

That brings up an interesting point. More Ayahuasca and stronger doses aren’t necessarily better. Sometimes you gotta go slow to go fast. To take the time to understand what’s being shown to you instead of having a crazy ride. The weaker dose became a theme and the rest of my ceremonies got more and more mellow and slow.

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  • Nov 17, 2019

My Ayahuasca Story

Updated: Aug 30, 2023

I first heard about Ayahuasca from a friend. Her clients’ stories of recovering from depression, anxiety, and trauma sparked my curiosity. The more I learned about Ayahuasca, the more I grew determined to have my own experience and to form my own opinion. After careful consideration, I chose a spiritual retreat in Holland facilitated by a world-renowned healer and international bestselling author.

I had all my intentions ready several weeks before my trip to Holland. I knew exactly why I was going there and what I wanted to accomplish. Three weeks before my trip, I started keeping a strict diet and focusing on my intentions. While, for the most part, my life went on as usual, I started noticing some new developments – directly related to my intentions. I shrugged them off as mere coincidences.

The day of my first Ayahuasca ceremony had finally arrived. I was in Holland, surrounded by over 30 people from all over the world who had come to experience healing and magic. After hours of introductions, excitement, and nervous anticipation, we all gathered in the ceremony hall. It was a few minutes past 7 p.m. The hall was dimly lit. Over 30 mats, each covered with a white sheet, had been placed around the perimeter. Each mat had a white pillow. A black bucket and a roll of paper towels stood right beside it. Beautiful music was playing in the background. Most of us were wearing white clothes. One by one, we approached the main shaman for a small glass of brown liquid. We took it back to our mats and waited. When everybody had a glass, the shaman reminded us to focus on our intentions before drinking the liquid. We drank, lied down, and waited. Ten minutes later, we drank another shot of brown liquid.

[One brown liquid was Ayahuasca, the other one was “the inhibitor” (MAO inhibitor intended to prevent the DMT from breaking down). I am not sure what we drank first. To me, both brown liquids tasted about the same. I find it difficult to describe the taste. Just thinking about it makes me feel a little nauseous. Yet, based on what I had read on the Internet, I expected Ayahuasca to taste worse.]

The main shaman started guided meditation. Gradually, I began to feel a little weak and dizzy. I closed my eyes and saw what seemed like rapidly changing images of humans and other beings. They were so small and so far away that I wasn’t sure if I was actually seeing them. I wondered if this was the beginning of my journey. I kept on waiting. One by one, people around the hall started purging. Several minutes later, I heard someone a few mats over to the left giggling. The giggle grew louder as more people joined in, and quickly turned into a laughing chorus. Soon a few people in the opposite end of the hall started laughing. Then another group joined in – as if the energy ricocheted though the hall, affecting new groups of people. When the laughter subsided, I started hearing a variety of other sounds. People were talking, chanting, singing, screaming, dancing, and making all kinds of unusual sounds and movements. The hall had come alive.

Two hours later, following other people, I went for a “booster” – another shot of Ayahuasca. I continued to lie down and wait. My mind was working as usually. I was paying attention to the action around me and listening to the beautiful music in the background. I could hear the shamans helping people to face and work though trauma. I was keenly aware of the unusual smell that had spread throughout the hall. I wondered how I would describe it to my friends. The only word that came to mind was “sacred.” To me, Ayahuasca smelled sacred. I felt calm and peaceful – the way I usually feel. I was patient. It was nice to just be.

By dawn, everyone around me had calmed down, and had either fallen asleep or left the hall. I went back to my room for a quick sleep. Around 10 a.m., we met for breakfast, after which we went back to the ceremony hall, split into two groups, and started sharing our experiences from the night before. Everyone was overwhelmed with impressions and emotions. Everyone was open and vulnerable. I heard the most incredible stories of healing and transformation, and the most profound insights and revelations about this life and beyond.

I was the only one in the group without a single psychedelic experience. Yet, I didn’t feel left out. A quiet voice inside was telling me to be patient. Still, I wasn’t sure what to make of my experience. I decided to have a quick chat with the main shaman. He advised me to surrender to Mother Aya, to go on a journey, and to face what I needed to face. He promised to help me if I needed help. I agreed. I spent the next few hours preparing myself for the second Ayahuasca ceremony. I checked every part of my psyche for signs of fear. I prepared a strong intention to surrender. I was determined to follow the shaman’s advice.

Despite my efforts, I didn’t have a single psychedelic experience for the rest of my trip. Although I drank four or five shots of Ayahuasca, I didn’t experience any noticeable changes. Nonetheless, during the second Ayahuasca ceremony, a very unusual story unfolded, which involved several people including me. In some ways, everybody in the hall was involved. I still feel like I've stepped into a movie... This story became the answer to my main intention. Over time, I had all my questions and intentions answered.

I don’t know why I didn’t have any psychedelic experiences, even though the Ayahuasca we drank was quite strong – according to the shaman who had prepared it and based on other people’s reactions. Perhaps the DMT was broken down by my digestive system, instead of going to my brain, or certain serotonin receptors in my brain were not sensitive enough. Or, perhaps, Mother Aya knew best what I needed… I can think of several reasons why it was better for me not to go on a psychedelic journey. As one reason, instead of getting overwhelmed with impressions and emotions, I needed to stay focused and learn as much as possible from others. And I did. Here are just a few examples of what I learned:

Everything we see, think, and feel is an illusion. Time is an illusion. If nothing is real, why not take the drama in our lives easier? Why not just enjoy this game of life, learn from our challenges, and grow? [Easier said than done, right? I know – both as a psychotherapist and a fellow human being...]

Our thoughts are like carriages in a passing train. If we simply observe them, they come and go. If we engage with a thought, we jump on the carriage, and it becomes our reality.

We are all connected. We are all One. When we are judging others, we are hurting ourselves because a part of what we dislike in others is in us or is a reflection of us.

Love and forgiveness can heal all wounds.

I learned a lot from other people’s shares, from observing the shamans’ work, and especially from my conversations with one of the shamans – a lovely, insightful, and caring lady who had prepared our Ayahuasca. I had the privilege to spend my last two days in Holland with her. The more we talked, the more she helped me to connect the dots in my story, and the more we grew convinced that it was better for me to not have gone on a psychedelic journey. She told me that Mother Aya was very gentle and respectful with me. The quiet voice inside me agreed, “This was not the right time to go on a journey.”

Despite the lack of psychedelic experiences, I got what I had gone to Holland for and more. I met and connected with incredible people. I heard incredible stories. And I certainly got my magic…

Disclaimers : This post is not an endorsement of Ayahuasca as an alternative to a medical advice from your doctor or other professional healthcare providers. The information here is not intended to serve as a therapeutic treatment. You are advised to consult your professional healthcare providers before deciding to try Ayahuasca.

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How our retreats restore emotional well-being, ayahuasca and the “bad trip”: the role of complex experiences in the ayahuasca experience.

ayahuasca bad trip

Is there such a thing as an ayahuasca “bad trip”?

The concept of a “bad trip” is rooted in psychedelic and LSD culture, where people may experience disturbing or negative psychological effects during their travels, or “trips”. However, applying this terminology to the realm of Ayahuasca requires a more detailed approach. The work done by plants such as Ayahuasca is fundamentally different from what is commonly referred to as a “trip”.

In the traditional cultures of the Amazon, the Teacher Plants are treated with deep respect and sacredness. They are not used lightly or for fun, as they have a deep spiritual meaning.

Ayahuasca is work, not a trip

We prefer to use the term “work” instead of “trip” when discussing the Ayahuasca experience. This emphasizes the intention and effort required throughout the experience. Working with ayahuasca is always aimed at achieving the goals of a person, usually in the field of self-development, self-knowledge, physical and mental well-being.

The term “bad trip” does not capture the depth of meaning and potential for growth in an ayahuasca retreat. Difficult experiences are not inherently negative; instead, it provides people with the opportunity to delve into their psyche and gain valuable information.

Difficult experience when working with ayahuasca:

1. confronting inner demons.

One of the hallmarks of the Ayahuasca experience is its ability to uncover hidden emotions, traumas, and unresolved issues that need attention and resolution.

While this process can be uncomfortable and emotionally taxing, it ultimately paves the way for healing and catharsis. Awareness of one’s inner demons and their “working through” in one form or another (through letting go, fighting, stepping over, etc.) leads to deep emotional release and personal growth.

2. Dissolution

Dissolving one’s ego or sense of self can be a disorienting aspect of the Ayahuasca experience. This sensation can cause a feeling of loss of control or merging with the greater cosmic reality. This dissolution is unsettling at first, but can provide a wonderful insight into the nature of existence, expanding one’s horizons beyond the individual self.

3. Symbolic visions

Ayahuasca work is often accompanied by vivid and symbolic visions, sometimes containing complex or frightening images. While these visions can be intense, experienced Ayahuasca users interpret them as opportunities for transformation and growth. These symbols can represent aspects of the subconscious that can be accessed and provide opportunities for self-exploration.

going beyond the individual self, ayahuasca visions

4. Physical discomfort

Physical sensations such as nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea are common during an Ayahuasca experience. While these experiences may be unpleasant, they are an essential part of the cleansing process and are not inherently harmful. Physical discomfort is a form of cleaning, allowing people to get rid of emotional and psychological burdens. Read more in the article:  Ayahuasca – effects on the body. What is a cleaning?

Integration and personal growth

Rather than calling difficult experiences a “bad trip,” a more constructive approach is to take them as an invitation to self-exploration and personal development. In this context, the concept of integration becomes paramount. Integration involves becoming aware of and incorporating the insights gained during the Ayahuasca retreat into daily life. This process turns difficult moments into catalysts for positive change and growth.

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The work was amazing. Ayahuasca helped pull out the most stuck traumas that I didn’t even know about, remove the blocks that prevented me from walking through life with confidence and calm, being truly alive, being myself. I could not achieve such a result by working with a psychologist (I am not at all belittling their work now); in a retreat, the work occurs with great intensity and efficiency.

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Ayahuasca: What it Feels Like, Where it Comes From, and How it Works

  • By Sam Woolfe
  • Medically approved by Dr. Jonathann Kuo
  • June 27, 2022 January 31, 2024
  • Ayahuasca Articles ayahuasca treatment psychedelics psychedelics side effects
  • With 0 comments

Gulp down the tea. Settle in. Close your eyes.

Feel your body more intensely, including your roiling stomach. The music may feel richer and deeper than normal. You may feel the presence of something you don’t normally feel: whether that’s a deeper connection to your body , your feelings or Something Bigger Than Yourself.

Notice the colors: bright greens, reds and yellows. Notice the shapes and patterns: triangles, diamonds, and intertwining arcs.

Westerners have called the Amazonian tea “jungle television.” And it’s true: your first ayahuasca trip can be like seeing your first movie or concert or going on your first roller coaster: powerful, strange and invigorating.

People imagine themselves flying through the universe and touching the sun, climbing their own spinal column into their own light-filled brain, or swimming through an ocean of neon seaweed.

Just like cinemas and amusement parks, ayahuasca can leave you feeling a lot of different things: happy or sad, scared or joyful, with a head rush or an upset stomach–it all depends on how well the experience is built, how you were feeling when you started, and whether you’re the type of person who likes that sort of thing.

A Deep, Lasting Change

For many people, ayahuasca is much more meaningful than a TV show or a merry-go-round. Instead of experiencing something that’s happening outside of you, ayahuasca can change the way you feel from the inside out. For sure, the drug changes the way you feel for a few hours; for some people, it changes the way they feel forever.

The ayahuasca experience is, for these people, one of the most important experiences of their lives. This psychedelic brew can induce powerful visions, emotionally heavy realizations, and long-lasting changes to one’s attitudes, lifestyle, and mental health.

Several indigenous tribes of the Amazon basin have traditionally used ayahuasca for healing and divination. But now people from all over the world, from all walks of life, are interested in it for overcoming many sorts of personal or emotional struggles . Ayahuasca retreats have surged in popularity over the years. There is also a growing body of research suggesting that ayahuasca can, in fact, be an effective way to treat certain mental health conditions and addictions.

Interested in joining a Psychedelics Clinical Trial? Sign up here now and we will connect you with a clinical trial in your area when one becomes available.

In this guide, we are going to be delving into the diverse aspects of this brew, looking at its cultural context, effects, legality, and benefits. With a fuller understanding of ayahuasca, you can be more prepared for the experience (if you’ve decided to join an ayahuasca retreat) or get a better sense of whether this is the right experience for you.

What Is Ayahuasca?

What kind of brew is ayahuasca exactly? Well, it is traditionally a combination of two specific plants native to the Amazon rainforest: Banisteriopsis caapi (also known as the ayahuasca vine, caapi, or yagé) and Psychotria viridis (or chacruna ).

According to Mags Tanev , writer and Ayahuasca expert based in Medellin, Columbia, “In some cases, other plants may be added to the brew, such as Justicia pectoralis or Brugmansia. These can produce powerful effects, so it’s advised to make sure that the brew you’re drinking is made up of just the ayahuasca vine and the DMT-containing leaf – whether it’s chacruna or chaliponga.”

Ayahuasca is known to have a strong, bitter taste, and can sometimes be very thick.

The Pharmacology Of Ayahuasca

Chacruna contains DMT, which is a powerful psychedelic compound. But if you eat chacruna leaves on their own, nothing will happen. You won’t have a DMT experience . This is because a certain enzyme in the body — monoamine oxidase (MAO) — breaks down DMT when it is taken orally, preventing it from entering the bloodstream and, in turn, the brain. So no psychedelic effects occur.

On the other hand, if you smoke or vaporize freebase DMT , you can experience the intense subjective effects of the compound.

Ayahuasca is an orally active form of DMT due to the presence of caapi. This vine contains a few harmala alkaloids (harmine, harmaline, and tetrahydroharmine), which act as monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs). This means they prevent MAO in the body from breaking down DMT, allowing it to be orally active.

DMT is a tryptamine psychedelic, the same class of compounds that psilocybin, psilocin, ibogaine, and 5-MeO-DMT belong to. However, as we will see, the ayahuasca experience is distinct from the DMT experience in some ways.

The Traditional Use Of Ayahuasca

While the origins of ayahuasca use are still uncertain, the researcher Bernd Brabec de Mori suggests ayahuasca use emerged in the Tukano region in the southern Colombian Amazon.

We don’t know exactly for how long indigenous communities in the Amazon have been using ayahuasca. Its use may be thousands of years old. Some of the oldest evidence of ceremonial usage comes from a 1,000-year-old shamanic pouch , discovered in Bolivia, containing both harmine and DMT. The harmine may be from the caapi plant.

Western Encounters

Euro-Americans have been trying to understand ayahuasca for hundreds of years, with varying levels of success.

The first written accounts of ayahuasca use come from Jesuit missionaries who explored the Amazon basin, beginning in the 17th century. These missionaries described this traditional usage in negative terms, believing it was diabolical. Jose Chatre y Herrea, who provided the first written account of ayahuasca in 1675, described the indigenous people using the brew as liars and sorcerers.

The priest Pablo Maroni provided the second recorded report of ayahuasca use in 1737, which he witnessed along the Napo River and its tributary the Aguarico River. He said ayahuasca was:

“An intoxicating potion ingested for divinatory and other purposes and called ayahuasca, which deprives one of his senses and, at times, of his life.”

In 1755, Franz Xavier Veigl, the head of a Jesuit mission to Quito in Ecuador, traveled down the Napo River to Maynas, Peru, where the Napo meets the Amazon. Here he also encountered ayahuasca, which he remarked was used for “superstitious practices” and “witchcraft”.

More Neutral Views of Ayahuasca

Other explorers and scientists have since traveled to the Amazon and witnessed the traditional use of ayahuasca, without demonizing it in the way that Jesuit missionaries did.

For example, in 1858, the geographer Manuel Villavicencio published Geografia de la Republica del Ecuador , mentioning an experience he had with ayahuasca, which he described as “flying to marvelous places”.

Modern Views of Ayahuasca

We have also gained an understanding of ayahuasca through more recent written accounts provided by Richard Evans Schultes, Terence and Dennis McKenna, Claudio Naranjo, and Wade Davis.

Traditionally, certain indigenous tribes of the Amazon — such as the Asháninka (Peru), Shipibo-Conibo (Peru), Napo Runa (Ecuador), and Takana (Bolivia) — use ayahuasca for the purposes of accessing greater knowledge and healing.

In terms of gaining knowledge, shamans (also known as ayahuasqueros , vegetalistas , or curanderos ) will use ayahuasca as a tool for divination: determining the hidden significance or cause of events and foreseeing the future. It is believed this information comes from unseen realms.

When it comes to healing, Luis Eduardo Luna points out that its traditional uses include:

“Identification of illness origin, shamanic journeys to restore soul loss, extraction of pathogenic objects, and shamanic fights with the animated agents of illness.”

Traditionally, ayahuasca has also been used in warfare.

While Western tourists travel to the Amazon to partake in ayahuasca ceremonies, that doesn’t mean these take place in a traditional context. For instance, ayahuasca tourists at a retreat often want to use the brew for dealing with psychological issues such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and addiction.

Indigenous communities may regularly use ayahuasca to treat mental problems, but it is also frequently used to treat physical ailments, social issues, and spiritual crises.

In Brazil, a number of modern religious movements have been established, which include ayahuasca as a sacrament.

The most well-known are Santo Daime and União do Vegetal (UDV). These are syncretic religions that combine Christianity with other beliefs.

For instance, Santo Daime also draws on African animism, Folk Catholicism, Kardecist Spiritism, and indigenous South American shamanism. They are also known as ayahuasca churches because the brew is central to the religion.

RELATED: What Should You Wear to a Psychedelic Experience? How Clothes and Shoes Impact Your Trip

The Ayahuasca Ceremony

Ayahuasca ceremonies can differ depending on if they take place in a traditional or retreat context. Often, however, traditional aspects will be present during ceremonies that Western tourists participate in.

Ayahuasca expert Mags Tanev adds, “Depending on where and with whom you’re taking part in an ayahuasca ceremony, your experience can differ greatly. For example, a ceremony held by traditional Shipibo healers in Peru will include the use of icaros, mapacho (tobacco) for cleansing, and agua de florida. Participants will likely also be following a specific plant dieta throughout the retreat as well as taking part in ayahuasca ceremonies.”

In many Colombian traditions, instruments such as the harmonica, guitar, flute, and drums may be used during the ceremony, with songs often sung both in Spanish and the native language of the taita (another word for healer). The taita also sings icaros, plays the harmonica, and uses a waira (a collection of dried waira sacha leaves, used to clear negative energies and harmonize the space) during the ceremony.”

Tanev continues, “In Brazil and Colombia, you may be given rapé (pronounced rap-eh or hap-eh), a sacred Amazonian tobacco snuff, before taking the ayahuasca to help you feel more grounded and centered going into the ceremony.

In neo-shamanic circles, where the ceremony leader is not indigenous, the experience may vary further. It will likely include some traditional aspects such as the music and icaros, especially if the facilitators have trained with an indigenous Amazonian lineage, but may also incorporate some non-traditional aspects of new-age culture.”

A Traditional Ayahuasca Ceremony

Early accounts from Jesuit missionaries and later observations from ethnobotanists both confirmed that, in some indigenous societies, only the shamans consumed ayahuasca. The main purposes of its consumption were communion with spirits, magic, divination, diagnosis, and healing.

Traditional ayahuasca ceremonies are highly ritualized , and they tend to include various elements.

The Invocation Of Spirits

Chantre y Herrera observed that shamans would drink ayahuasca and then invoke the presence of spirits.

According to him, the brew would make the shaman pass out in a catatonic trance, at which point his soul would leave his body and the summoned spirit would deliver its message by speaking through the shaman. When the ceremony ended, the shaman would reveal what he had learned through his journey to the spirit world.

Shamans have also traditionally drunk ayahuasca in order to cross over into spirit realms and attain powers of divination.

Shaman In Ecuadorian Amazonia During A Real Ayahuasca Ceremony Model Released Images As Seen In April 2015

By conveying these messages to community members, shamans can help to strengthen the community, which leads them to be revered.

In indigenous societies, ordinary community members may drink ayahuasca in cases of serious illness. In these healing ceremonies, the shaman will also take ayahuasca for its divinatory effect, so he is able to diagnose the illness and ascertain the cure.

mayan people shaman plant ayahuasca medicine doctor ritual jungle amazon magical in ecuadorian amazonia during a real ayahuasca formal picture as seen in april 2015 mayan people shaman plant ayahuasca

Witchcraft (Brujeria)

Using ayahuasca, shamans have been known to wage spiritual wars with each other through sorcery or defending their patients against it.

There is a belief that the most serious illnesses can be attributed to the dark magic of evil brujos (sorcerers). The defending shaman would drink ayahuasca, figure out which brujo had sent the tsentsak (magical dart), and attempt to send it back and heal the sufferer.

We have already seen how the Jesuit missionaries discovered this particular use of ayahuasca. However, there is little mention of it on ayahuasca retreat websites, which makes sense, as few are interested in that kind of use.

Westerners tend to perceive ayahuasca shamans as healers, not sorcerers engaging in witchcraft.

Community Building

Other accounts of traditional ayahuasca use show it has been used for strengthening communal bonds. According to anthropologist Janet Siskind, among the Sharanahua indigenous peoples, all (male) community members would drink ayahuasca.

The Tukano community in Colombia would also hold ceremonial dances while under the influence of the brew, and ethnobotanist Jonathon Miller Weisberger reports that the Waoranis in Ecuador would take ayahuasca in order to sharpen their senses and reflexes and become better hunters and warriors.

Rite Of Passage

In her major study of mestizo shamanism in the Iquitos area in Peru, anthropologist Marlene Dobkin de Rios noted that some indigenous societies would use hallucinogenic plants, likely including ayahuasca, as a rite of passage. This would be to mark the passage from youth to adulthood.

As she writes:

“The plants were used for their hyper-suggestible properties, in order to create a state in which the moral and social values of the tribe would be easier to accept and assimilate. The visions or dreams were subsequently interpreted by the elders of the community in a way that agreed with the specific beliefs and values of the society – which reinforced in the young ideals of society to make them more fit to survive in their culture.”

Shamans also traditionally use icaros (songs, sung or whistled) before, during, and after ayahuasca ceremonies. These shamans claim they were taught icaros by the plants themselves, and they use the songs to invoke or summon the spirit of a plant or animal. Each shaman will have his own set of icaros.

Susana Bustos, who has researched these songs, writes that “Icaros are the curanderos’ weapons of healing, their sources of personal energy, symbols of their power and wisdom, and inheritances for their apprentices.”

It is believed that icaros positively influence someone’s ayahuasca journey. As Anja Loizaga-Velder and Armando Loizaga Pazzi state in The Therapeutic Use of Ayahuasca (2014):

“Icaros are meant to deepen or steer the ayahuasca trance, inducing and modulating visions and emotions and stimulating subconscious material on different levels.”

These songs have many purposes, nonetheless, including:

  • Evoking good plant spirits
  • Protecting the ceremony from evil spirits
  • Enhancing or mitigating the effects of ayahuasca, particularly visions
  • Diagnosing or divining the cause of an ailment
  • Divining a treatment for an ailment or sickness
  • Calling in healing energies to treat an ailment
  • Strengthening feelings of love between two people

Ayahuasca Retreat Ceremonies

If you join an ayahuasca retreat, the ceremonies include certain aspects of traditional ceremonies, such as an indigenous, trained shaman leading the ceremony, as well as the use of icaros.

How Ayahuasca Retreats Differ From Traditional Ceremonies

Retreat centers.

Many retreat centers ask participants to follow a strict diet and period of abstinence (called the dieta ) before, during, and after the ceremony. However, this typically won’t be for as long as is traditional.

Dietas traditionally last eight, 15, or 30 days, but for Western visitors, the period is usually much shorter. Furthermore, not all retreats ask you to follow the dieta.

It is not always the case that an indigenous member of an Amazonian community will lead the ceremony at a retreat; sometimes, a Western shaman — trained in the tradition — will do so. Westerners have also teamed up with shamans in the Amazon rainforest regions to form ayahuasca healing centers.

In ayahuasca ceremonies outside of South America, like those found throughout Europe, it is more likely that the guide or shaman will be a Westerner. Often, these guides are not trained in the traditional way that ayahuasqueros are, the latter of whom will spend years training to be a healer and months following a strict diet and lifestyle of abstinence.

Differences in culture and worldview may also affect how the ceremonies are conducted. Ceremonies at retreats can be much more minimalistic and less ritualized than a traditional ayahuasca ceremony.

As already highlighted, the intentions behind ayahuasca ceremonies at retreat centers often differ from those involved in traditional ceremonies. In the former case, people may join an ayahuasca ceremony to deal with personal issues, such as:

  • Treatment-resistant depression
  • Relationship issues

Many ayahuasca retreats also include the use of other psychedelics, such as San Pedro cactus , as well as other activities and treatments, including meditation, yoga, breathwork, and massage.

The Problem Of Fake Shamans

You should be aware there is the problem of “ fake shamans ” or pseudo-shamans operating within the ayahuasca industry. These are people who don’t have shamanic training but who pose as shamans, offering ayahuasca ceremonies to tourists. They see ayahuasca as a business opportunity.

When something goes wrong, these pseudo-shamans don’t know how to help the person. Participants in shady ceremonies have been victims of robbery, molestation, rape, and have become violent or sick.

Anyone thinking of traveling abroad to join an ayahuasca ceremony, therefore, needs to do thorough research into the provider. It’s best to read reviews of an ayahuasca retreat center beforehand, rather than turning up in Iquitos in Peru and signing up for a ceremony that a vendor or so-called shaman there is offering. Ask us directly for advice by emailing us here .

What To Expect At An Ayahuasca Retreat

Here is a rough idea of what to expect when you join an ayahuasca retreat:

  • Day 1 : Arrive at the retreat center. You have your orientation and you are introduced to the staff members, who explain what to expect over the coming days. You can ask any questions you have and you’ll have time to relax before dinner.
  • Day 2 : Breakfast in the morning, then spending the rest of the day relaxing, perhaps having some treatments, and then preparing for the ceremony that will begin in the evening.
  • Day 3 : There will be time for self-reflection and discussion. If you have signed up for multiple ceremonies, then there may be another ceremony in the evening, or in the evening on day four.
  • Day 4 : If a San Pedro ceremony is included, this would typically begin in the morning, as this is a long-lasting psychedelic. If the retreat includes only ayahuasca ceremonies, then this one would again begin in the evening.
  • Day 5 : On the last day, you will also have time to discuss and integrate your experiences.
  • Day 6 : You will have breakfast, then return to the nearest town or city to head home or continue your travels.

What is an Ayahuasca Session Like?

In terms of the ceremony itself, it will typically be led by an experienced shaman who is familiar with both taking ayahuasca and giving it to others. You will take the ayahuasca with every other participant at the retreat, in a designated ceremony room. Here you will have your own area to sit and lie down.

At some point in the ceremony, the shaman will invite each participant to come up to him or her and take a cup of ayahuasca. You will then drink it and return to your area.

After each person has drunk the brew, there is a waiting period.

Within 20-60 minutes, you may feel nausea and the urge to vomit, which is perfectly normal. After you vomit, you should feel better. You will have a bucket for vomiting. If you vomit early in the session, you might not feel the ayahuasca quite as intensely, since you’ve lost a lot of the medicine.

The lights may be turned off during the ceremony, with just some candles burning. The darkness can help you to better see the ayahuasca visions. The lights will be turned on at the end of the ceremony.

Rising and Falling Effects

Most ayahuasca journeys have an arc. They intensify for a while, plateau, then taper off. If the dose is high enough, people lose touch with their surroundings and their normal way of thinking and experiencing the world. People forget that they’re a person on a mat in a room. In the Western way of thinking, the drug has changed the way their brains and bodies operate. In the Amazonian view, a spirit has overcome them.

After four to six hours, the effects wear off, and people typically come back to their normal way of thinking and feeling.

Many people find it hard to sleep after ayahuasca sessions. Many feel happier the next day. People call this the “reverse hangover.”

Santo Daime and UDV Ceremonies

A Santo Daime ayahuasca ceremony will involve the following:

  • Singing hymns that praise divine principles
  • Christian prayers
  • Silent, seated meditations
  • The wearing of a ceremonial white uniform
  • Drinking Daime (ayahuasca) at intervals, with vomiting embraced as both emotional and physical purging

During a UDV ayahuasca ceremony, known as sessions , participants (including adolescents) will drink Hoasca tea (ayahuasca) and arrive at a state of mental concentration called burracheira .

Brewing sacred ayahuasca medicine amazon

During the sessions, UDV members study the spiritual teachings and doctrine of Mestre Gabriel, who founded the religion with the aim to “bring peace to the world” and “remove evil from people’s hearts”. The aim of the sessions, through the use of Hoasca tea, is to reconnect to values such as family, fraternity, peace, and love.

The Ayahuasca Experience

Now that we have seen what different ayahuasca ceremonies look like, you will likely want to know what to expect from the experience itself.

There are many kinds of ayahuasca effects, including physical, perceptual, emotional, psychological, and spiritual effects.

Physical Effects

Taking ayahuasca can have a range of possible physical effects, including the following:

  • Dilated pupils
  • Increased heart rate
  • Increased blood pressure
  • Nystagmus (rapid rhythmic movements of the eyes)

Perceptual Effects

As with other psychedelics, ayahuasca can affect your sensory perceptions, the way that things look, sound, and feel. But when you take ayahuasca at a retreat, you will likely take a dose that is high enough to induce visions. Common visions feature:

  • Memories of events in your life, including traumatic or repressed memories
  • Fantastical and otherworldly places
  • Places in historical time
  • Imagined points in the future
  • The Earth and the kinds of events currently taking place on it

Emotional Effects

Ayahuasca can induce various emotional states, which can be pleasant or unpleasant in nature. The emotional effects of ayahuasca may include the following:

  • A feeling of emotional release
  • A stronger connection to one’s emotions
  • Contentment

It should be noted that it is common to experience different emotional states during a single ayahuasca experience. These moments can include mental discomfort, as well as periods of elation or calmness.

Psychological Effects

One of the most powerful and healing aspects of an ayahuasca experience is the ability to think differently and take on new perspectives. The psychological effects of ayahuasca include:

  • Increased self-awareness
  • Increased self-confidence and self-esteem
  • Facing personal demons, such as negative thought patterns and behaviors, as well as past mistakes
  • Reinterpreting conflicts within oneself and with others
  • Deciding to make changes in one’s life

Spiritual Effects

Ayahuasca is a powerful psychedelic, and it is common for many people to experience mystical effects when taking it. These include:

  • Making contact with “Mother Ayahuasca”, a motherly type presence that users feel imparts wisdom, lessons, messages, care, and healing. The messages are often ecological in nature, relating to the destruction of the planet and the need to protect the environment
  • Out-of-body experiences
  • Feeling oneself transform into an animal
  • A feeling of unity, such as feeling unified with all of humankind, the environment, or the entire universe
  • A sense of being outside time and space
  • Ineffability
  • A sense of sacredness or the “divine”

Is Ayahuasca Legal?

It should first be noted that ayahuasca is illegal in many countries — in most countries, in fact. Let’s explore why this is the case, and then outline where the brew is legal and where legal retreats operate.

Why Is Ayahuasca Illegal In Many Countries?

Caapi is legal in most countries, as harmalines are not controlled substances. Most countries prohibit the sale, possession, transportation, and cultivation of ayahuasca because the brew contains the psychedelic compound DMT. It is specifically the DMT found in ayahuasca that renders ayahuasca illegal.

Why is DMT illegal? Because in the 1960s lawmakers lumped DMT in with other mind-altering substances young people used and older people were afraid of, like LSD and cannabis. In 1970, the U.S. federal government classified DMT as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act. It remains in this category, as well as in similar categories elsewhere in the world.

For instance, in the UK, DMT is a Class A drug. This means DMT sits in the legal category of drugs that includes cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine.

Ruth Chun, a lawyer at Chun Law Professional Corporation and director of psychedelics company Entheon Biomedical Corp, explains:

“In 1971, following the passing of the Controlled Drugs Substances Act, the United Nations passed the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, requiring member states to control enumerated substances, including DMT. By classifying substances as Schedule 1 drugs, the Convention categorized certain drugs as having a serious risk to public health and no recognized therapeutic value.”

The sale, possession, transportation, and cultivation of DMT or ayahuasca carry the highest legal penalties. However, the plant Psychotria viridis , which contains DMT, is legal in most countries (except France).

Is Ayahuasca Legal In The U.S. And Canada?

Ayahuasca is legal for UDV members throughout the U.S. and legal for members of the Santo Daime religion to use in ceremonies in California, Oregon, Massachusetts, and Washington State. Santo Daime members can also legally use ayahuasca for religious purposes in Canada (specifically in Montreal and Toronto ).

In 1999, U.S. customs officials seized a shipment of ayahuasca and raided a UDV member’s office. Following this incident, the UDV fought court battles in order to stop the U.S. government from interfering with its religious use of ayahuasca.

After long legal battles, the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that UDV members in the US could legally use ayahuasca as a religious sacrament. Native American Church (NAC) members have fought similar legal battles in the country, arguing that their religious use of peyote should be exempt from federal law . These battles have also been successful.

Ayahuasca has also been decriminalized or legalized in the following cities, counties and states:

  • Oakland, California
  • Santa Cruz, California
  • Washtenaw County, Michigan
  • Washington, D.C.
  • Seattle, Washington

This means that a person will not face prosecution for possessing or using the psychedelic brew in these cities.

Where Is Ayahuasca Legal In Central And South America?

There are several countries in Latin America where ayahuasca is legal:

  • Costa Rica : Ayahuasca is fully legal.
  • Bolivia : The brew is legal as it is considered an integral part of indigenous culture.
  • Brazil : Ayahuasca has been fully legal in the country since 1992.
  • Colombia : There is no legislation regulating ayahuasca, although ayahuasca retreats are popular in the country and receive no interference from the law.
  • Ecuador : Ayahuasca is legal as traditional medicine .
  • Peru : Ayahuasca is legal as traditional medicine .

Is Ayahuasca Legal Anywhere In Europe?

In most European countries, ayahuasca is illegal since it contains DMT. However, it is possible to use ayahuasca in some countries in Europe without interference from the law.

Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001 , making it the safest place in Europe to drink ayahuasca from a legal standpoint. In Spain (where the UDV and Santo Daime are active), it is rare to face prosecution for using ayahuasca. Many ayahuasca retreats take place in the country.

Spain never experienced a process of decriminalization based on a political decision. Nevertheless, drug use and possession of small amounts have always been free of criminal penalties. Therefore, Spain has long had a policy of decriminalization in place.

According to National Police Spokesman Rafael Jimenez:

“If you are consuming any drugs in private, you are not breaking any law. And then if you are caught taking drugs in public places, this is an administrative, not a criminal offence.”

When it comes to legal ways to experience ayahuasca, there are essentially two options. The first is to participate in a legal retreat that includes one or more ayahuasca ceremonies. The second option, which is likely not practical or desirable, is to join a religion in which ayahuasca is a religious sacrament.

Otherwise, there are underground ayahuasca retreats that take place throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. But you should be aware of the legal risks involved.

Additionally, some people, living in countries where ayahuasca is illegal, will drink the brew in their homes. But keep in mind that ayahuasca is a powerful psychedelic, so it is often recommended to have a guide or support at hand.

Ayahuasca Contraindications

People can’t agree on which drugs mix badly with ayahuasca, if any.

Some experts allege that certain drugs and medications have been found to not be compatible with ayahuasca. A common piece of advice is that you should avoid drugs that affect your serotonin levels, like SSRI antidepressants such as Prozac. (That includes Fluoxetine, Sertraline, Citalopram, and Paroxetine.) Excessive serotonin during ayahuasca can cause changes in blood pressure, loss of muscle control, accelerated heart rate, confusion, restlessness, nausea, tremors, high fever, seizures and passing out.

Other medical professionals say it’s just as dangerous to stop taking your anti-depressants. Take a lower dose of ayahuasca, some professionals suggest, to avoid any potential problems.

Some retreat centers and religions don’t see any issues with taking SSRI’s and ayahuasca at the same time. Here is a scientific paper analyzing the relationship between psychedelics , pharmaceutical drugs, and serotonin syndrome. The answers are not straightforward.

Some practitioners says ayahuasca interferes with herbal medicine and supplements like:

  • St John’s Wort

Other medical conditions such as high or low blood pressure, advanced diabetes, mental illness or having recently undergone surgery should be considered, in addition to:

  • Bipolar disorders
  • Schizophrenia

How To Prep For Ayahuasca

If you’ve never tried ayahuasca, it is hard, in a sense, to prepare for the experience. On the other hand, having some psychedelic experiences under your belt — as well as some idea of what to expect — will provide a good level of preparation.

Firstly, don’t travel to Latin America and expect the ayahuasca experience to be a fun, adventurous, bucket-list activity to do.

Ayahuasca is not a recreational drug.

While it may induce intensely positive states of mind, this does not mean you’ll have an easy-going experience where you just see pretty patterns and laugh with others.

Ayahuasca can offer people a profound psychedelic experience, involving visions, confronting past trauma and difficult memories and emotions, and losing one’s sense of self, time, and space.

If you are expecting just a wild ride, like some sort of psychedelic rollercoaster, then you may find yourself unprepared for what will actually occur. But if you understand that the experience can be highly personal, emotionally challenging, and even disturbing at times, then you will know that everything you’re experiencing is normal.

Side Effects

Ayahuasca is known to result in nausea and vomiting, and — in some instances — diarrhea. Yet many ayahuasqueros do not consider vomiting to be a “side effect”, but rather an important part of the ceremony. Purging is seen to be a form of physical, psychological, and spiritual cleansing.

You can prepare for ayahuasca’s side effects by expecting them to occur. This way you won’t be shocked if you start to feel very nauseous and want to vomit, and then end up vomiting multiple times. This doesn’t mean you’ve been poisoned or that you’re in any physical danger. Also, knowing that you will feel better after purging can help you get through it.

Practical Aspects

You can also prep for ayahuasca by thinking practically about the retreat you’ll be joining. This means:

  • Understanding the legality of the retreat. If ayahuasca is not legal in the country where you’re planning to visit, are you comfortable with that?
  • Making sure you have time to settle in the country the retreat is in. For example, if you’re traveling to Latin America for an ayahuasca retreat, you might want to spend some time resting and exploring before the ayahuasca sessions begin. This way, you won’t start ceremonies with pre-existing jet lag or travel-related stress.
  • Ensuring you have a clear itinerary of how to get to the ayahuasca retreat.
  • Taking everything with you that you might need.
  • Having enough money available for any additional travel costs.

Psychological Aspects

There are different ways you can psychologically prepare for an ayahuasca experience.

Set Your Intentions

You can prepare for ayahuasca by setting your intentions. Think about why you want to take ayahuasca and what you hope to gain from the experience(s). Your intentions might include the following:

  • Improving mental health issues
  • Facing trauma
  • Confronting difficult emotions
  • Enhancing your spiritual life
  • Dealing with a personal or existential crisis

Set Aside Time For Integration

At an ayahuasca retreat, you will have time to process your experience and talk about what happened. This refers to psychedelic integration , which is when you try to make sense of what happened and apply the lessons and insights to your everyday life. The latter could involve making changes to your attitudes, beliefs, habits, relationships, career path, hobbies, plans, and goals.

However, integration can be a long process, not something that gets “completed” in just a day after an ayahuasca trip.

While it is an ambiguous term, generally the point of integration is to achieve a positive transformation in what you’re like as a person, how you view the world, or the important aspects of your life.

Be sure to prepare for more than just the experience itself, but also for the period after it. This may entail many questions, heightened emotional states, confusion, and uncertainty.

For the purposes of integration, many ayahuasca users find it helpful to seek out a psychotherapist who is knowledgeable about psychedelics or altered states. Joining a psychedelic integration circle can also be helpful, as this will allow you to hear about others’ experiences, as well as receive feedback from them about your own experiences.

Of course, being able to discuss the experience with anyone who is open-minded, non-judgmental, and supportive can help you during your process of integration.

Know How To Handle A Challenging Experience

Ideally, you will have trained, experienced facilitators present with you during your ayahuasca experience. As well as looking after your physical safety, they can help you navigate any challenging aspects of the experience, such as states of anxiety, fear, panic, or confusion.

You can also prepare for ayahuasca by learning techniques for handling difficult experiences — or a “ bad trip “.

These strategies can include:

  • Mindfulness: noticing what is occurring during the experience, without being either attached or aversive toward it.
  • Focusing on your breath: consciously taking deep breaths is a form of mindfulness that can anchor you to the present moment, alleviating some distress you might be experiencing.
  • Acceptance: embracing what you are experiencing, rather than wanting challenging emotions or visions to disappear. This is also known as “letting go” or not resisting. It is especially helpful when experiencing intense states like ego death or ego dissolution.
  • Self-compassion: showing kindness toward yourself.
  • Reminding yourself that you are safe and not in any danger.
  • Telling yourself that what you’re experiencing is due to the effects of ayahuasca and that you’ll be sober again in a few hours.

You don’t need to be a highly experienced meditator to prepare for ayahuasca’s more challenging moments. Simply being aware of the above techniques, practicing them a bit beforehand, and recalling them during an ayahuasca trip can prove to be incredibly helpful.

How Long Does Ayahuasca Last?

The ayahuasca experience will typically last 4-6 hours. This is a medium length of time when it comes to the duration of psychedelics. For comparison, here is how long other psychedelics last:

  • DMT : 5-30 minutes
  • 5-MeO-DMT : 15-45 minutes
  • Psilocybin : 4-6 hours
  • LSD : 8-14 hours
  • Mescaline : 8-16 hours
  • Ibogaine : 8-24 hours

As we can see, ayahuasca lasts much longer than the smoked or vaporized DMT experience. It will last for around the same amount of time as an experience with psilocybin mushrooms. The experience certainly won’t last as long as the effects of LSD, mescaline, or ibogaine.

You can expect to feel the first effects of ayahuasca after 20-60 minutes, with peak effects lasting 1-2 hours, and continued but less intense effects lasting for 1-3 hours after that.

Ayahuasca Benefits

People don’t often take ayahuasca just to try it and say they’ve done it. Usually, people are hoping to gain some specific benefits from the brew: An alleviation of emotional distress or a drastic change in their lives.

Mental Health

Many people use ayahuasca because they struggle with a mental health condition, perhaps one that has not responded well to conventional treatments. Anecdotally, ayahuasca users report significant improvements in their mental well-being after their experiences. Scientific research supports these claims, too.

In a 2020 study, published in Scientific Reports , researchers gave ayahuasca to participants who had never used it before. The aim was to see how their mental health changed as a result.

In the first mental health assessment of participants, researchers found that 45 percent of users met the criteria for a psychiatric disorder. These conditions included depression, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and substance abuse/dependence.

After ayahuasca use, over 80 percent of the naïve users with a diagnosable mental disorder showed clinical improvements. These benefits lasted up to six months.

There are many other studies that focus on how ayahuasca can be effective in ameliorating a specific mental health issue. Let’s explore some of this research.

A 2015 study showed that ayahuasca can result in significant reductions in depressive symptoms in patients with recurrent depression for 2-3 weeks. This is a type of depression characterized by intermittent depressive episodes — patients with this condition will recover from an episode of depression, only to experience another one later on.

While symptoms may have returned for these participants, a 2018 follow-up study revealed that most patients found the ayahuasca experience to be beneficial.

A 2019 placebo-controlled study, published in Psychological Medicine , found that ayahuasca can cause rapid and significant antidepressant effects in patients with treatment-resistant depression.

A 2021 study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders showed that 94 percent of survey respondents experienced some, great, or complete resolution of depression symptoms following ayahuasca use. The same was true in 90 percent of cases for anxiety symptoms.

However, a small minority reported worsened depression (2.7 percent) and worsened anxiety (4.4 percent). Moreover, there were limitations to the study:

  • It was cross-sectional (meaning we can’t confirm a causal relationship — we don’t know if it was the ayahuasca itself that caused the changes)
  • It relied on self-reporting, which can be unreliable
  • It used questionnaires sent out on ayahuasca groups and forums, where individuals with positive reactions are more likely to be active, leading to a possible selection bias

There is less evidence that ayahuasca can improve PTSD symptoms compared to major depression. Nonetheless, the potential of using ayahuasca to treat PTSD is an existing area of study.

In a 2018 paper in Frontiers in Pharmacology , researcher Antonio Inserra outlines his hypothesis for how ayahuasca may heal traumatic memories.

Inserra states the following: “As Ayahuasca alkaloids enhance synaptic plasticity, increase neurogenesis and boost dopaminergic neurotransmission, and those processes are involved in memory reconsolidation and fear extinction, the fear response triggered by the memory can be reprogramed and/or extinguished.”

Other researchers in the field believe that ayahuasca can act in a similar way to exposure therapy. This is one of the common treatments for PTSD. After trying ayahuasca tea, it is common to face deep-seated traumas that can cause PTSD symptoms.

Through this exposure, people can learn to accept the trauma and reframe what the traumatic event means to them. As with exposure therapy, this helps people to live with traumatic memories without feeling distressing fear in response to them.

Nonetheless, it’s important to note the challenges that people with PTSD may face when joining an ayahuasca retreat.

A 2021 study on the risks and benefits of ayahuasca for trauma survivors found that, “while most people found the experience to be helpful and healing, people are reporting unfavorable responses to ayahuasca, particularly those with a history of PTSD.”

One common reason people join an ayahuasca retreat is to beat an addiction to alcohol, benzodiazepines, opioids, or stimulants. Several centers using ayahuasca to treat addiction claim higher success rates than those achieved through conventional types of addiction treatment.

In a 2013 study , researchers found that ayahuasca-assisted therapy (ayahuasca combined with psychotherapy) led to reductions in alcohol, tobacco, and cocaine use. There were also statistically significant improvements in mindfulness, hopefulness, empowerment, and a sense of meaning.

The above are positive psychological changes that can help people overcome addiction and stay sober.

A 2019 follow-up analysis of this study revealed that participants began to notice negative patterns that fed into their addictions. Researchers highlight that these insights were linked to reduced substance use and cravings.

A Note Of Caution On Using Ayahuasca To Treat Mental Health Issues

Ayahuasca, like other psychedelics, does not mix well with certain mental health issues . You should avoid using ayahuasca if you have a diagnosed psychotic disorder, such as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or psychotic depression, and perhaps if you have a family history of one of these conditions.

It is also recommended to not use ayahuasca during the manic phase of bipolar disorder.

Major Changes To One’s Life

During an ayahuasca trip, you have the opportunity to think about your life from a number of different perspectives. This can help to destabilize and restructure some of your core beliefs. The correct decisions you should take in life may suddenly become clear.

The Global Ayahuasca Project , carried out by University of Melbourne researcher Dr. Daniel Perkins, highlights that some of the major decisions people make following an ayahuasca retreat include:

  • Ending unhealthy relationships
  • Entering healthier relationships
  • Starting new careers
  • Lifestyle changes, such as giving up drinking or drug use
  • Dietary changes
  • Healing interpersonal conflicts

You will often find anecdotal reports of people making changes like these following an ayahuasca retreat.

Ayahuasca retreats can offer an intensely emotional and introspective journey. When people integrate the insights they have gained, they find that this translates into concrete, positive changes in their lives.

Sam Woolfe

Sam Woolfe is a freelance writer based in London. His main areas of interest include mental health, mystical experiences, the history of psychedelics, and the philosophy of psychedelics. He first became fascinated by psychedelics after reading Aldous Huxley's description of the mescaline experience in The Doors of Perception. Since then, he has researched and written about psychedelics for various publications, covering the legality of psychedelics, drug policy reform, and psychedelic science.

Dr. Jonathann Kuo

This post was medically approved by Dr. Jonathann Kuo

Jonathann Kuo, MD is a Board Certified Pain Medicine Specialist and Anesthesiologist. He is the founder of Hudson Medical Group (HMG), an innovative and cutting edge healthcare system that combines Medical, Wellness, and Mental Health in the treatment of Pain.

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Taking Ayahuasca When You’re a Senior Citizen

Some older adults are dabbling in this powerful psychedelic, which is mostly illegal in the United States.

ayahuasca trip stories

By Casey Schwartz

At 74, the venture cap italist George Sarlo might not have seemed an obvious candidate for an ayahuasca experience. Mr. Sarlo, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who arrived in the United States in 1956, has had great professional success as the co-founder of Walden Venture Capital. He lives in an upscale San Francisco neighborhood, in a large house with an unobstructed view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

And yet something was always lacking. Mr. Sarlo’s father had disappeared from their Budapest home in 1942. He had been drafted in a forced labor battalion, an experience he did not survive. At age 4, George had told himself that it was because he was “a bad boy” that his father had left that day, early in the morning, without saying goodbye. He believes that he never recovered from that early loss.

Mr. Sarlo’s close friend, a doctor, told him about ayahuasca, a psychedelic brew made from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, native to the Amazon. Used for centuries in sacred healing traditions throughout Central and South America, ayahuasca is now gaining popularity around the world, featured in recent headlines about the habits of Silicon Valley, though N, N-Dimethyltryptamine or DMT, the active ingredient in an ayahuasca trip, is mostly illegal in the United States (there are a couple of exceptions, under religious exemption). Ayahuasca tourism is thriving, with more and more people happy to fly thousands of miles to take part in weeklong ceremonies in Peruvian jungles, or to seek out more luxurious contexts, like a four-star resort that comes complete with masseuses, pools, and state of the art fitness centers. And, notably, ayahuasca’s increasing popularity knows no age limits: many of those now showing interest are squarely in Mr. Sarlo’s own demographic.

Mr. Sarlo himself was initially skeptical. Taking ayahuasca would entail a potentially distressing night of hallucinations, and excretions of all kind, especially vomiting. One of the most notorious aspects of an ayahuasca journey is the violent purging involved. But he still decided to head to Yelapa, a small village in Mexico, and swallow down the bitter brew.

That night, he saw a series of “old-fashioned photographs of soldiers in Hungarian uniforms,” he said, and black-and-white movie footage. But he was scared, and sick, and swore that if he managed to come out of the hallucination, he would never go back in. The next day, exhausted and uncomprehending, he told the shaman that he was disappointed he hadn’t found his father. The shaman told him he should try again the next night: on the Mexican Day of the Dead.

Mr. Sarlo decided it was worth one more try. He drank again. Very quickly, he saw a forest covered with snow. “There were dead bodies all over the place,” he said. “There was one skeleton sticking out of the snow. And somehow I knew that was my father.

“I don’t know exactly how we communicated because I didn’t see anyone alive but I heard his voice. He came to me and I asked him a very important question, which was: ‘why didn’t you say goodbye?’ He said, he thought he could get out of it, and be back the same day, so why wake up little George?

“I asked a second question: ‘Did you love me?’ He pointed at the skeleton sticking out of the snow.” The skeleton’s mouth hung open. “He said: look at me. That’s my last breath. And with my last breath, I blessed you and I promised to guard you all your life.”

Mr. Sarlo said that afterward, something shifted. He realized that his life had been “absolutely full of miracles,” he said. “It changed my life completely.”

Granny Takes a Trip

H is story is a testament to one strain of thinking about psychedelics: that, as Michael Pollan put it, “psychedelics might be wasted on the young.” Mr. Pollan, the author of the recent best seller “How To Change Your Mind,” a history of psychedelics and a chronicle of his own experiences trying them, said in an interview , “ It’s not that young people don’t have valuable experiences, they do. It’s that what psychedelics seem to be particularly good for is jogging us out of our grooves of habit and allowing us to acquire a fresh perspective on familiar things. And as you get older, you get mired in habits.”

Indeed, Mr. Pollan, who is 64 (and has written for The Times), said he was surprised by the number of people he encountered when writing his book in their 70s and 80s expressing interest in trying psychedelics. Though perhaps he shouldn’t have been: as he himself has written, one of the reasons to come to psychedelics later in life is to tangle with one’s own mortality. “This is a taboo topic in our culture, nobody talks about death,” he said. “And with ayahuasca in particular, which can sponsor some pretty dark journeys, people often come back with insights about death.”

Scientific data on older people using ayahuasca is elusive but anecdotal evidence is growing.

At Rythmia, a high-end retreat which offers ayahuasca ceremonies in Costa Rica, Gerry Powell, the owner, carefully tracks all the guests who come for a week of plant medicine. Since opening in 2016, Mr. Powell said that about 6,000 people had stayed at Rythmia; of that number, more than 15 percent have been 65 or older. Every week, he said, there is at least one person in their late 70s partaking of ayahuasca, if not their 80s.

Mr. Powell said the motivation for trying ayahuasca differs, as one may expect, according to age. It’s the younger guests, 35 to 55, who tend to come because of problems they’re having, strained relationships, blocked careers. But for the 65-plus demographic, the question is often closer to “What is my purpose?”

“There was a time when you would retire at 63 and be dead at 65,” Mr. Powell said. “But because people are living so much longer, you have more time to do things with your life. People want to feel purposeful.”

Wendy Portnuff, 75, who has attended Rythmia, first went to Costa Rica three years ago with her husband, Tom Lorch, 82. Ms. Portnuff, who lives in San Francisco, is a former manager at IBM who heard about ayahuasca from a friend who is a naturopath. She was intrigued, having been unhappy with her relationship to food for decades. “I had worked on it for so long. I needed to get out of me to complete the process.”

Her husband wasn’t interested in drinking ayahuasca, but came to Costa Rica to support her. When they arrived, he became curious about the experience, but wasn’t able to participate because of heart problems. ( At Rythmia all guests are screened in a medical intake both before and upon arrival.) As it happened, both husband and wife wound up having profound experiences that week. Ms. Portnuff, taking part in the nightly ayahuasca ceremonies, had an insight on the very first night that, as she said, “I had been denying my soul. And my soul was trying to speak to me. It was trying to say: ‘I’m okay.’”

Her husband went to a breath-work workshop and had a transformation: years of anger and dissatisfaction with the world melting away. The two say their marriage of 49 years changed dramatically that week. Three years later, they are still on their “second honeymoon. ” “I’ve gotten a new lease on life, ”Ms. Portnuff said. “I was thinking that my life is winding down — and it’s not. It’s speeding up. I’m excited every day.”

“There is hope for us old people,” her husband added. M s. Portnuff h as returned to Rythmia two more times to continue her ayahuasca explorations.

People might startle at the image of someone old enough to be their grandparents willingly embarking on a night of hallucinations and vomiting. But Sophia Rokhlin, co-author of the new book on ayahuasca, “When Plants Dream,” said when it comes to the tradition of drinking ayahuasca, nothing could be more natural. In countries like Ecuador, for example, among tribes who practice healing traditions with ayahuasca (more often referred to there as yagé), the dynamic Ms. Rokhlin has more often observed is this: the elders are increasingly the only ones drinking. “The use of ayahuasca and plant medicines is actually quite stigmatized and looked down upon by communities who are really trying to get a leg up in the capitalist economy,” she said. Younger members of communities who partake in ayahuasca ceremonies , she said, are more intent on building materially successful lives in a global economy than they are preserving their local rituals.

But in the United States, Ms. Rokhlin sees the growth of interest among the 70-and-up set as inevitable, for two main reasons: first, more and more scientific studies are being published showing that psychedelic agents have potential in treating persistent mental distress. In one small study of 17 adults, ayahuasca helped relieve recurrent depression. She said that scientifically backed research matters more to this older demographic than trippy “kaleidoscopic articles in Vice” extolling the ayahuasca experience. But as well, she said, for those “closer to the end than the beginning,” there is also an increasing sense that “there’s nothing left to lose.”

And some of these older users are baby boomers , after all, turning again to the kind of mind-expanding substances they remember, at least culturally, from their youth.

This isn’t to say there aren’t risks associated. Heart problems can be disqualifying. So can many prescription medications. Rick Doblin, the founder of Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (or MAPS), notes that for this older age group, a s maller dose of any psychedelic often suffices, as we can become more sensitive to drugs as we age.

Dr. Charles Grob, professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine, who has been researching psychedelics since the 1980s, said: “With elderly people, there should be some emphasis on being aware that higher doses may have a level of risk that would not be present with younger individuals. Particularly for cardiovascular problems,” such as arrhythmia. “There needs to be more research.” Dr. Grob advises older people to get a full cardiac work-up before using psychedelics.

Dr. Dan Engle, a psychiatrist in Boulder, Colo., warns that another risk for people in their 70s and 80s is the number of pharmaceutical drugs that are contraindicated for ayahuasca, including the most common form of anti-depressants, Selective Serontonin Reuptake Inhibitors (S.S.R.I.s). “But all of that said, ayahuasca is a visionary medicine and it can heal core psychological wounds,” Dr. Engle said. “At that stage in their life, in their 70s and 80s, ayahuasca can help people become present and have more acceptance.”

None of the medical caveats deterred James Kilkenny, 70. Mr. Kilkenny, a construction manager who lives in Manhattan’s West Village, began experimenting with ayahuasca over the last few years, after hearing about it from a friend who teaches yoga. He said that at this point, he’s done about 25 ayahuasca ceremonies.

He’s certainly not in it for pleasure-seeking. “Ayahuasca journeys for me are not fun,” he said. “They’re painful as hell. They can give you diarrhea and vomiting, sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both at the same time.” Beyond the physical, there’s the unpredictable emotions: At times he has felt trapped, fearful and isolated. “And you can’t think your way out of it.”

Yet Mr. Kilkenny said he has gained extraordinary insight. During one ceremony in Peru, he said he was transported back to the earliest sense he had as a kid. “I knew that my childhood, while it wasn’t abusive, was very very cold. It had very little approval or affection in it. What I saw that night was: picture an upside-down pyramid. That point of the pyramid was the first thought. The first thought was loneliness and need for affection and approval. And the pyramid going up from that was my whole life. So my whole life was based on that one moment, seeking affection and approval.”

For Mr. Kilkenny, what the ayahuasca journeys have provided him with is profound “information.” Now, in the moments when he recognizes his own need for validation , he is less inclined to act on it. This has meant that certain relationships have become untenable, like a longstanding romantic involvement that had a lot to do with “neediness.” The relationship’s dissolution made him sad, but did not crush him.

“My life is a lot quieter and it’s a lot more peaceful,” he said. “Less seeking, less grasping, less needing. Less fear.”

An earlier version of this article misstated the surname of the author of the book "When Plants Dream." She is Sophia Rokhlin, not Rohklin.

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ayahuasca trip stories

Aaron Rodgers was on Costa Rican ayahuasca trip when news of possible VP run broke, Pat McAfee says

Leave it to Pat McAfee to break the whereabouts of Aaron Rodgers when odd news about him broke.

Representatives of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirmed to Fox News Digital on Tuesday that the independent presidential candidate is "considering" Rodgers as his running mate.

Rodgers is reportedly open to the idea, and perhaps he's imagining what life would be like if he accepted the nod.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

McAfee, whose ESPN show Rodgers has become quite a notorious guest on, said Rodgers was in Costa Rica on yet another ayahuasca retreat when the news broke.

"The world found out when that man was in Costa Rica," McAfee said on his show Wednesday afternoon.

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Jordan Poyer posted a photo of himself and Rodgers at Playa Esterillos Este in Costa Rica. Both players have openly discussed their use of the drug, with the quarterback crediting his use of it to his MVPs in 2020 and 2021.

"They are ready to sit with the medicine," McAfee said.

"They said you don’t necessarily have to go attic and basement if you prepare for this entire thing. To be honest, thank you to Jordan Poyer for documenting this. That was a much nicer setup than whenever I heard these stories of the ayahuasca usage down in Costa Rica."

CHIEFS PRESIDENT SAYS 'LEAVING KANSAS CITY' IS AN 'OPTION' AMID STADIUM TAX VOTE

Neither Rodgers' agent nor the Jets immediately responded to a request for comment regarding Rodgers.

Rodgers has been outspoken about his support for Kennedy, even saying he would like to be in a tag-team match with Kennedy as his partner against Dr. Anthony Fauci and "Mr. Pfizer" Travis Kelce. When he dropped that bomb, he referred to RFK Jr. as "my man."

Last April, Rodgers wrote #kennedy2024" on his Instagram story, and supported him in another post on what was then Twitter.

Over the summer, when Kennedy and Dr. Peter Hotez exchanged words, Rodgers said Kennedy "would mop this bum." Hotez, who has long advocated for the COVID-19 vaccine, admitted he is "not as cautious about my diet as I should be," adding he is a "junk food-aholic," which is "terrible for my health."

Rodgers recently called Kennedy's "State of Our Union" video X, "presidential."

Kennedy will announce his running mate on March 26. Rodgers played just four snaps last season before rupturing his Achilles.

Follow Fox News Digital’s  sports coverage on X , and subscribe to  the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter .

Original article source: Aaron Rodgers was on Costa Rican ayahuasca trip when news of possible VP run broke, Pat McAfee says

New York Jets Quarterback Aaron Rodgers is on stage as Aaron Rodgers & Zenith unveil his limited edition design on October 30, 2023 in New York City. Randy Brooke/FilmMagic

Aaron Rodgers Was on Another Ayahuasca Vacay When RFK Jr. Veep News Broke

According to former NFL punter Pat McAfee, Rodgers’ frequent collaborator, the quarterback was blindsided by the announcement.

Noah Kirsch

Noah Kirsch

Wealth and Power Reporter

Photos of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers was allegedly in the midst of another ayahuasca vacation in Costa Rica when news broke this week that he is on the short list to be Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ’s running mate.

According to former NFL punter Pat McAfee, who frequently hosts Rodgers on his namesake ESPN program, “the world found out while that man was in Costa Rica…ready to sit with the medicine.”

McAfee said he spoke with a “source” about the situation—implying that the source was Rodgers himself—and said he is “not 100 percent sure” that “the quarterback for the New York Jets necessarily knew that The New York Times was going to be reporting that he was potentially going to be vice president.”

McAfee said he didn’t have the chance to ask many follow-up questions, since his source was “in the middle of something.”

Citing an Instagram post from NFL safety Jordan Poyer, which showed the athletes at a luxury site on Costa Rica’s western coast, McAfee said the accommodations were fancier than he had envisioned for an ayahuasca trip.

“That is a much nicer setup than I was expecting whenever I heard these stories of the Ayahuasca usage down in Costa Rica, because they're talking about being in a teepee and all this stuff,” he said.

Kennedy’s campaign announced on Wednesday that he will unveil his selection on March 26. According to The New York Times , former pro wrestler and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura is also in contention.

Rodgers generated controversy during the COVID-19 pandemic when he announced that he was “immunized” against the virus, suggesting that he had taken a vaccine. In reality, he was not, and had taken alternative medication instead.

Rodgers has since expressed skepticism about the safety of the coronavirus vaccine and has railed against former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci.

“Aaron really ruffled some feathers in the politics world,” McAfee said on Wednesday, referring to Rodgers’ comments on his program. “And I didn't necessarily love the feathers that were ruffled because I had to be in the middle of the storm.”

Representatives for Rodgers could not immediately be reached for comment.

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Should I Book a Trip Based on My Astrology Sign?

By Michaela Trimble

Image may contain Human Person Tire Wheel Machine Spoke Alloy Wheel Car Wheel Road Dirt Road Gravel and Car

Whether you’re a romantic and imaginative Pisces who loves to daydream by the sea or you’re a fiery Sagittarius who yearns to travel the globe in search of culture and adventure, there’s a chance you may enjoy your travels even more if you book trips according to your astrological sun sign. Your sun sign is dictated by the time and place you were born (download a free chart here via all-star astrologist Chani Nicholas) and many people swear by it as a defining aspect of their personality—that’s why there are about 30 million users on Co-Star alone.

The astrologer for British Vogue Alice Bell suggests considering the element of your sun sign as the easiest way to consider the best trip for you. “Fire signs like Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius will be more prone to adventure and getting out of their comfort zone,” says Bell. “Water signs like Pisces, Cancer, and Scorpio are looking for soothing trips near the water to help them relax, ground, and explore their innate inclination towards spirituality.” Likewise, air signs (Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius) find it natural to go with the flow and will have the most fun with travel that includes a dash of artistic stimulation, while earth signs (Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn) are all about scheduled sabbaticals with both structure and purpose—the earlier they can plan and book travel, the better.

Similarly, the life coach and astrologist Jenn Kosh suggests leaning into the archetypes of your sign as a way to experiment with your travels. “Each zodiac sign holds a set of archetypes—powerful inner forces that help account for each of our personality traits, fears, motivations, and preferences,” says Kosh. “These can also provide insight into the reasons we’re drawn to a particular location or type of vacation, or why we may feel repelled by it.” Kosh suggests first getting to know the archetypes associated with your sun sign, then tune into which ones feel the most exciting.

Here, find our guide to travel recommendations based on your sun sign.

Aries: March 21 – April 19

Out of all the fire signs, Aries tend to be the most delightfully rash. Aries archetypes include the athlete, the adventurer, and the warrior, as they have a strong desire to blaze their own trail and tend to be one of the hardest signs to slow down. They don’t have much patience to wait around and decide where to travel; instead, they lean on impulse and are likely to book last-minute trips on a whim, whether based on a deal or a desire. Because they are highly active and thrive in competition, they’d be well-suited for a more adventurous travel plan like an action-packed hike in Tanzania to the summit of Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa, with travel experts at MT Sobek ; they can even squeeze in a safari as a post-hike reward to see the Big Five in Maasai Mara during a stay at Angama Mara . They’d also be prime contenders for a solo trip to the Big Island of Hawaii to compete in an Iron Man competition.

Taurus: April 20 – May 20

While all earth signs value structure and purpose, Tauruses are bulls by nature and tend to be one of the most stubborn, orderly signs of the Zodiac. True earth dwellers, Taurus archetypes are the artist, the gourmand, and the gardener, as they tend to value stability and the calming effect that comes with a steady routine. Tauruses appreciate security and prefer to stick to what they know, yet they’re enticed by travel that is entangled with the arts and a healthy dose of earthly indulgence. An ideal trip for a Taurus would be a gourmand getaway through Provence, visiting wineries like the 1,500-acre Château de Berne estate and its Michelin-star restaurant Le Jardin de Berne. It’s even better if the trip ends in Paris, where Tauruses can go on a shopping spree and indulge in even more Michelin-star cuisine at Pléntitude , located at the luxurious Cheval Blanc Paris hotel , or, set in the Ritz Paris . Tauruses will love that both eateries are conveniently located near the Seine and only steps away from their next stop: the Louvre .

Gemini: May 21 – June 20

Geminis tend to be the most relaxed sign in the Zodiac, and can handle pretty much anything with ease: trip cancellations, last-minute plans, or a spur-of-the-moment adventure. With archetypes of the communicator, muse, and networker, Geminis’ biggest fear is to be alone. As such, they tend to travel in groups and are easily mutable to almost any plan, be it a laid-back getaway or a more action-packed itinerary. But because they are intellectual and tend to be the life of the party—they’re known to be quite the charming jokesters—they’d do well on a journey that expands their mind and also allows them to meet other outgoing travelers. Experiences like Summit at Sea would be great for a Gemini, as they value learning from experts while experiencing variety, or even a wild ride through the desert rave that is Burning Man , where Geminis can choose their adventure of the day based on their mood.

Cancer: June 21 – July 22

As the most family-oriented sign in the Zodiac, Cancers are likely to travel with a tight-knit group of friends or family. Archetypes of this sign include the rescuer, protector, and nurturer, as they are deeply empathetic and value quality time over all else. That makes Cancers fond of trips home to see loved ones or journeys to destinations where they’ve already been several times. They crave comfort, so novel travel destinations may overwhelm them; Cancers would most likely prefer feeling at ease during intimate getaways and in places where they have their own space to get cozy. Buyouts of villas, lodges, and homes would be ideal for Cancers. Some ideal plans include a cozy winter stay with their loved one at My Arbor in the Dolomite Mountains of Italy or an annual summer getaway with family to Es Bec d’Aguila , a farmhouse with an organic garden in Menorca, Spain.

Leo: July 23 – August 22

Overflowing with creativity, confidence, and the desire to take risks and to see and be seen, this fire sign is at home in their warm, bold nature and prefers their trips to match their vigor for life. With associated archetypes of the lover, the romantic, and the performer, Leos feel most at home in adventurous destinations that are vibrant, colorful, and contain a certain type of vivacity that makes them hum with life. A trip to India would be an ideal destination for a Leo, a country where they can go at a fast pace and be supremely extroverted. In Jaipur, Leos can delight at the red and pink sandstone Hawa Mahal palace and spend hours shopping the plentiful array of colorful textile shops during a stay at the Arto Deco-style Rajmahal Palace , and later visit the fast-paced city of Delhi, where they can hop a train to see the iconic Taj Mahal. If they need even more adrenaline, they can search for tigers in Ranthambore National Park during a stay at Suján Sher Bagh , or head straight to South Goa, where they can surf the waves at Agonda Beach.

Virgo: August 23 – September 22

All earth signs are suited for solo travel and advanced planning, but unlike Taurus and Capricorn, Virgos desire a touch of wellness in their travel. They’re known as the perfectionists, guardians, and organizers of the Zodiac, yet also the herbalists, healers, and hermits. These two seemingly conflicting archetypal pulls—the desire for perfection and also peace—can find harmony when combined on a trip that’s equal parts organized and wellness-oriented. Virgos may find a trip to a healing center an ideal reprieve from everyday life, especially one that has a rigorous schedule. A silent Vipassana retreat could do the Virgo good, or even a visit to a more structured wellness itinerary at Auberge Hacienda Alta Gracia in Costa Rica, where they can enjoy a cacao ceremony and a coffee-based body scrub in an herbal stone bath along the Calientillo River. Virgos would also delight in the new SIRO property in Dubai, where biohacking assessments are offered at check-in, as well as cutting-edge recovery treatments like cryotherapy, cold plunge baths, and IV drips.

Libra: September 23 – October 22

True aesthetes at heart, Libras are the lovers, chameleons, and socialites of the Zodiac. It can be quite hard to fully understand the personality of a Libra, as they tend to blend in wherever you put them and take on the personality of those they’re with. Similar to Gemini, Libras don’t like being alone. Masters of charm and diplomatic to their core, Libras can be quite relaxed when it comes to their travel plans and will usually go along with whatever the group consensus is—St. Barts or Saint Tropez, it makes no difference to them. As long as they’re with their crew, they will have fun wherever they go. If a Libra does take some initiative to contribute to travel plans, it will be a trip that explores the finer things in life: culture, art, and shopping. They would thrive while exploring the Danish Modern design movement of Copenhagen, or even on a trip to Japan to soak up the culture and shopping in Tokyo before venturing off to Naoshima Island in the Seto Inland Sea, where they can marvel at the installations at the fanciful Benesse Art Site .

Scorpio: October 23 – November 21

Known for their ability to navigate deep emotional waters and their intense desire to understand complex social dynamics, Scorpios tend to seek an educational component to their travel—and the thing they like to learn most about is themselves. One part alchemist, one part rebel, Scorpios identify as lone rangers on a quest to understand what makes them tick; they can often take on an inquisitive persona as truth-seekers and healers. While one of their biggest fears can be to show others their vulnerability, it can also be the thing that sets them free. Not scared of their darkness and complexities, Scorpios would do well on psychedelic retreats where they can dive deep into their inner world: a healing ayahuasca retreat experience with Soltara Healing Center in Costa Rica or a psilocybin ceremony with Beckley Retreats in Jamaica could be fantastic options for the ever-curious.

Sagittarius: November 22 – December 21

Sagittarians are the seekers, wanderers, sages, and scholars of the Zodiac. They are natural explorers who crave both culture and adventure; the more unknown the destination or obscure the topic, the better for a Sagittarius, as this balance keeps their attention and allows them to explore depths unknown, both literally and figuratively. Because they are fearless voyagers interested in learning and gaining knowledge, they will often be inclined to extended stays in another country. A journey through the wonders of Southeast Asia would be ideal for a Sagittarius: visiting the ancient cities of Bagan in Myanmar, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and Luang Prabang in Laos. They’d also be inclined towards sojourns through Bhutan—perhaps a stay at Gangtey Lodge to learn about Buddhist culture amid ancient monasteries—or even an adventure through Jordan with Experience Jordan , where they can hike the Jordan Trail from Wadi Rum to Petra, meeting and communing with Bedouins, the gatekeepers of the land, along the way.

Capricorn: December 22 – January 19

Out of all the earth signs, Capricorns have been awarded the reputation as the most Type A: plans, plans, and more plans! With the archetypes of the ruler, the tyrant, and the boss, they crave order, structure, and purpose. What sets them apart from other earth signs, however, is their draw towards tradition—think history, classical music, and a hearty to-do list to see the best of both. They don’t necessarily need any sense of novelty on their trip—no risk-taking, please—so old-world European destinations would be ideal for the Capricorn. They would love the Gothic Revival-style Hungarian Parliament Building in Budapest, the Baroque Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, and the medieval Charles Bridge in Prague. Their trip would be even better if they task a travel agency to handle their logistics like bespoke experts such as Black Tomato or Abercrombie & Kent .

Aquarius: January 20 – February 18

Though not necessarily loners, Aquarians are perfectly fine with standing out in a crowd even if that means they don’t fit in. With a desire for mental stimulation and variety at every turn—and most at home when they’re going against the grain to do something no one else has done before—this air sign would be the most likely to travel to space. Since going to Mars may be a few decades away, for now, Aquarians do well with off-the-beaten-path experiences that expand their mind and get them into the great outdoors. Some trip ideas for ever-expansive Aquarians could include traveling all the way to Uruguay for a stay at Posada Ayana , just to see the James Turrell installation Ta Khut (his first freestanding Skyspace on the continent), or skipping the typical hikes in Patagonia and opting for an expedition through the Cordillera Huayhuash in Northern Peru instead, where each day on the trail offers new views of cerulean pools set below snow-covered peaks.

Pisces: February 19 - March 20

Highly imaginative and deeply intuitive, Pisces desire space to dream and be the lovers and mystics they are; they’re known as the seers, healers, and poets of the Zodiac. Out of all the water signs, they are most likely to yearn for the world’s most alluring coastlines, lakes, and rivers for a spiritual reset. (They can go even deeper into themselves and experience profound transformation in the presence of water.) They like to go beyond the typical yoga retreat for a transformative experience like those offered by Cosmic Serpent in Mexico, where they can learn about Human Design and their astrological profiles in between steamy yoga classes with views of the Pacific Ocean. They would also love a multi-week Ayurvedic reset at Amrtasiddhi in Bali, an experience replete with daily spa treatments, yoga, and a custom health menu, or even a journey through the most mystical towns in Peru with Mountain Lodges of Peru , where they can meander through wildflower meadows rife with rivers and streams while learning the history of the Quechua people, a culture with fellow seers and seekers from which they can learn.

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NFL

Aaron Rodgers denies allegation he shared Sandy Hook conspiracy theories

EAST RUTHERFORD, NEW JERSEY - DECEMBER 03: Aaron Rodgers #8 of the New York Jets looks on during warm ups prior to the game against the Atlanta Falcons at MetLife Stadium on December 03, 2023 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers said he has “never been of the opinion that the events” surrounding the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School did not take place. Rodgers’ statement comes one day after CNN reported that the quarterback shared debunked conspiracy theories about the shooting not being real.

“As I’m on the record saying in the past, what happened in Sandy Hook was an absolute tragedy,” Rodgers wrote on X, formerly Twitter on Thursday. “I am not and have never been of the opinion that the events did not take place. Again, I hope that we learn from this and other tragedies to identify the signs that will allow us to prevent unnecessary loss of life. My thoughts and prayers continue to remain with the families affected along with the entire Sandy Hook community.”

As I’m on the record saying in the past, what happened in Sandy Hook was an absolute tragedy. I am not and have never been of the opinion that the events did not take place. Again, I hope that we learn from this and other tragedies to identify the signs that will allow us to… — Aaron Rodgers (@AaronRodgers12) March 14, 2024

Quotes by the quarterback shortly after the shooting, from the “Aaron Rodgers Show” on 540 ESPN Milwaukee, resurfaced this week.

“I hope that we can learn from this and learn from the signs more and not ever have something like this happen and keep this on our minds because these are things that affect all of us directly or indirectly and this needs to be something we learn from,” Rodgers said in a clip that was posted to YouTube by Fox6 News Milwaukee on July 11, 2013.

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CNN reported that Rodgers, who was reportedly approached by United States presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about serving as his running mate on an independent ticket , told CNN journalist Pamela Brown in 2013 that the shooting was a government inside job and the media was intentionally ignoring it. According to the report, CNN spoke to another person who shared a similar story, saying that several years ago Rodgers said,  “Sandy Hook never happened … All those children never existed. They were all actors.”

The shooting in Newtown, Conn., at Sandy Hook Elementary took place on Dec. 14, 2012, and resulted in the deaths of 20 children and six adults.

On Wednesday, Pat McAfee shared that Rodgers was in Costa Rica on a trip to use the psychedelic drug ayahuasca this week as news about being a vice presidential candidate broke. Rodgers appeared in a photo shared by Miami Dolphins safety Jordan Poyer on Wednesday via Instagram.

It is not clear whether Rodgers has formally been offered the position. Kennedy told The New York Times he and Rodgers have been talking “pretty continuously” for the past month. Kennedy announced Wednesday that he will announce his running mate on March 26.

Rodgers, 40, has made controversial statements in the past, including implying on “The Pat McAfee Show” that late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s name would appear in court documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Rodgers previously came under off-the-field scrutiny for comments regarding his COVID-19 vaccination status.

Kennedy, 70, has also expressed skepticism regarding the COVID-19 vaccine. He has become one of the leading voices in the campaign to discredit their use and has said that the government is using the vaccine as a way to exert control over the population.

(Photo: Al Bello / Getty Images)

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Mark Puleo

Mark Puleo is a News Staff Editor at The Athletic. Before joining The Athletic, Mark covered breaking weather news as a digital journalist and front page digital editor with AccuWeather. He is a graduate of Penn State University and its John Curley Center for Sports Journalism. Follow Mark on Twitter @ ByMarkPuleo

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