Ayahuasca / All In My Head / Mother of All Purges / A Hell of a Journey \\\

I couldn't pick a title for this blog / and, appropriately, it seems like no matter who you talk to regarding their ayahuasca experiences, it's something impossible to summarize or explain \

It dissolves the borders of normal every day experience // the degree to which it dives into the depths of your soul, dreadfully dredging up the dregs from below the thin surface of your consciousness \\

Mother Ayahuasca is like a well meaning but overly nosy and painful houseguest, that peers into the deep forgotten corners of your house, the basement and attic of your soul /// and reveals it for only you to see. The gravity of which can be, to put it simply, transformative or life changing \\\

A beautiful jungle spot, just a river boat ride 15 minutes out of Rurrenabaque

The Bolivian Amazon - the scene of my first ayahuasca retreat in its ancestral setting

Mother, I say? Yes, well, let me elaborate / ayahuasca is an ancient ceremony going back well before science began "healing" people. It was, and still is, in some Amazonian tribes, a rite of passage for youths entering adulthood. There is a lot of ritual involved - the central substance of the ceremony is Mother Ayahuasca. However, the ceremony is normally preceded by Father Tobacco. Both plants, in Amazonian lore, are considered teacher plants with ancient knowledge \

How ancient? Mother Ayahuasca actually consists of two plants: chakruna contains the psychoactive ingredient dimethyltryptamine, or DMT. It so happens, // coincidentally or not \\ that humans have receptors for this molecule in their reptilian brains, and naturally produce DMT during birth and death. It also happens, coincidentally or not, that in the very same jungle one finds the plant ayahuasca, whose contents necessarily inhibit the liver which would otherwise deactivate the DMT molecule after ingestion of chakruna.

Everyone should do ayahuasca once in their life, though few will be lucky or bold enough to do so, as the experience is becoming rapidly commercialized and losing its integrity. I did two ceremonies /// Why two? Because it's such an amazing experience, as I have up til now so obviously described? \\\

Well, the answer to that is no, not necessarily. Allow me to patiently expand on this.

The ants here understand their role & purpose in life. For everyone else, there's ayahuasca

You see, the stories you always hear about ayahuasca experiences are those of people having stunning visual experiences, like real life dreams / it's like being in your own private Imax theatre, and the director, Mother Ayahuasca, is screening the movie of your life, a visual manifestation of your subconscious desires and fears. It's nearly a 5 hour movie, but you come out of it feeling like days, perhaps months, pass by.

However, the stories you never hear about ayahuasca experiences are many more. That's because everyone reacts differently to it. The most significant story you never hear is of people not having visual hallucinations at all, which is actually quite often for first timers.

Mother Ayahuasca is a strong purging agent, and she more often performs intense physical purging during one's first encounter with her. This is why one must begin preparing up to one week before ayahuasca, by eating a clean diet. This is why, around 1 hour into the ceremony, one normally purges the brew by throwing it up.

Phillip, my Shaman during my first ayahuasca ceremony - Rurrenabaque, Bolivia

But okay, without further ado, let me share with you my own /// personal experience \\\ to the highest degree of which it is possible (which is really not very possible).
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Warning: written content contains painful and potentially disturbing physical descriptions
Note: it may be possible to write, but is impossible to fully describe one's ayahuasca experience
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Okay, let's begin.

My experience was a fairly unique one. Trust me when I say it was not in a good way... one ceremony facilitator told me that out of 500 or so ayahuasca ceremonies that he's witnessed in his life, he's seen less than 10 cases like mine.

What is my case, you ask? It is this: I did not purge Mother Ayahuasca within the first few hours after ingesting it. I did not purge her at all during the entire 4 to 5 hour ceremony. In this time, I experienced some visual hallucinations but far short of what I expected, short of the stories you hear.

It was only until after the ceremony, and after having been in bed for at least an hour, that I woke up seeing colours and geometrical patterns spinning my visual field into a frenzy - and then I knew I had to throw up. However, by this time, the brew had left my stomach and entered into my intestines. As a result, I dry heaved nothing. At this failed attempt, I managed to walk, staggering sickly like a zombie, to the toilet.

This is where my two experiences diverge. After the first ceremony I was able to purge Mother Ayahuasca through pooping. However, for the second ceremony, I was also dealing with constipation.

Stuck in my body, Mother Ayahuasca was furious and searching for escape. In the process, she tortured my senses. She kept my head spinning and disoriented. I heard her tribe in the distance, a combination of a constant low hum with some rhythmic drumming, coming to attack my village. She weakened my body to the point of surrender; I barely had the strength to move.

In this state of everything is impossible, my mind was grappling for sanity. I talked to myself. I lost composure. Sometimes, a sane monologue would return to my head. At other times, I nearly broke down and started to cry. Desperate, with no solutions, I crawled several times between my bed and the toilet, stopping along the way to sit on the floor; the very definition of insanity itself.

Darkness took over my mind. At one point, I had fleeting hallucinations of people I cared about disintegrating into skeletons. Zombies and other demonic figures floated in and out of my peripheral consciousness. At one point, I felt the darkness wrap itself around me like a blanket... and I embraced it. I became one with it. I wondered if I was made of darkness itself.

My mind, strangely clairvoyant, in this way rambled on and on / my body, physically tortured, endured on and on / and Mother Ayahuasca pushed on and on / and on and on like this, we endured this dysbiosis \\\

Eventually, Mother Ayahuasca summoned a way out. She submitted me to fits of dry heaving and, with every gag I felt the brew being pulled up out of my intestines and back into my stomach, where I finally threw it up. Impossibly, Mother reversed my pathways of digestion to force an escape route.

Eventually, I also fought through my constipation to eliminate most of the blockage down there. She still hummed and drummed in my head, making what's left of her presence in my body felt. But, almost 2 hours after waking up, enduring a physical and mental torture I had never before experienced in my life, I finally felt enough relief to get some sleep \\\

A ritual burning, the morning after my second experience - Urubamba, Peru

The next morning, I explained it all to my wonderful facilitators over breakfast. After much wise support and encouragement, I took to rest my still weakened self. But Mother Ayahuasca wouldn't let me rest. The breakfast riled her up, and she spun me back into nausea through the morning.

At one point, I felt ready to wretch the rest of her up. I found the toilet and gagged... nothing came out. But it felt like I purged something invisibly, because Mother seemed finally satisfied with my efforts, and made no more complaints. She quieted her humming and drumming, and I spent the rest of the day resting in relative peace.

The next morning, the second after the ceremony, I woke to very faint humming and drumming, impressed by Mother's persistence. But as soon as I got up, I made a toilet break to finally purge myself of her completely. And so ended my physical journey with ayahuasca \

Jhon / Janneke, my beautiful ayahuasca facilitators at Willkamayu

They say that Mother Ayahuasca does what it needs to do for you, shows you what you need to see. Despite my reservations about this sentiment, Jhon, pictured above, who witnessed around 500 ceremonies in his life, convinced me that this applies still to my situation; that Mother doesn't discriminate. Despite my unique relationship to Mother, and the adversity that ensued, I learned a lot about myself and my own ability to endure and struggle. The second ceremony drew closure on the first, which left more questions than answers.

Jhon convinced me to accept what Mother did for me in the end, and I eventually did come to accept the results for myself. After this deeply humbling experience, I had an amazing week to wrap up my 2 and a half month trip to South America. And after that week I felt very ready to go home and return to find some grounding. \

Hiking with Jhon and Janneke's dogs upon my recovery two mornings later

My recovery hike and amazing view - Urubamba, Peru