My Ayahuasca Experience
In the early summer of 2021, I took part in an Ayahuasca ceremony. I was not fond. Let’s get into it.
Thoughts on Psychedelics
To begin, I am not against the use of psychedelics. However, I do not believe they are as useful as they’re generally perceived to be by those who staunchly advocate for their use.
Perception is a funny thing, capable of all madnesses and subject to all stupidities. Long have we been fascinated with using psychedelics as a means of exploring what is unknown, unseen, or unhealed in us. The appeal of them, I think, is rooted in the notion that they are a ‘fix’ to a baseline problem of the psyche. Psychonauts may lobby for them as a means of ending suffering, or at least identifying the source of such suffering. This may be true, but only in the sense of a finger pointing at the moon. The problem with psychedelics is that their effects are pure illusion. There is no substance, only the impression of substance. They are a fair representation of a straw dog when it comes to bridging gaps in meaning and forming new perceptions about the world.
People are not good at perception. We’re ‘naturals’ only in the sense that we literally cannot manage existence without some form of perceiving in order to better integrate our being with our environment. Our perceiving is largely coded in ancient survival instincts that we haven’t much use for now in our cozy societies. Thus, one may suppose that our daily anxieties stem partially from our inability to actualize our survival instincts in a meaningful capacity. Anxiety is not explicitly bad. It kept us alive for hundreds of thousands of years. However, we are not often faced with mortal threats on a daily basis, and so there is no place for our anxiety to go. Hence why doing shit often helps to relieve our angst. This is simplified, of course, and perhaps my own wrong perception; regardless, our perception is dysfunctional already without honesty or fact to impede us. Deeply dysfunctional. Instead of addressing the root cause of our dysfunction, some turn to extraneous means of assessing our perceptions via tripping: hallucinations intended to reveal some truths about ourselves.
As I’ve said, I believe this practice can be useful. Psychedelics have a long history of use in spiritual practice and medicine. They do aid in the process of healing via the conjuration or obliteration of pre-existent ideas and notions. However, there is no realization of health without intervention by many other means beyond tripping. They are a tool, and they aren’t even a particularly good tool because humans suck at perception, and so fucking with our perception via tripping is functionally akin to a percussive maintenance of the mind. Invoking illusion can be useful only so far as the illusions are useful, and they often aren’t. How many stories of psychedelic use tend to fall on the side of a comical aberration or horrific misappropriation of the senses? You, Sweet Reader, have certainly heard stories falling into one of these camps and less often have you heard of the human who achieved enlightenment through chugging DMT.
Now, I think it’s wretchedly stupid that psychedelic substances are so heavily controlled. It only serves their faulty mystique. Psilocybin, in particular should not be illegal. Mushrooms are harmless and frankly delightful. They are not particularly healing beyond the simple grace of their nature, but they are deeply charming and have provided many with deeply insightful experiences. Yet, these deep insights do not come so much from the mushroom as they do from the perceiver: the insight was there all along—you were just a bit dumb. At the end of the day, psychedelics are broadly just fun-with-space-for-insight (unless they’re not; bad trips suck), and unfortunately ayahuasca isn’t even fun—it’s just unpleasant (and not because of bad trips).
My Experience with Ayahuasca
I took Ayahuasca over two nights on a weekend at the end of May. Present were a shaman, my partner at the time, my parents, and a small host of other spiritually-minded folk we’d known for some time. I had been on the fence about going to a ceremony, and I was frankly against psychedelic use as a means of achieving spiritual liberation even then. Nonetheless, I had resolved to empty my mind of such judgements and sit in ceremony for the two nights. There were two reasons for this:
My partner was doing it, and I wanted to have that experience with them. I thought it would be interesting and useful to go through the trip in their company. When in Rome, perhaps, but I was also genuinely interested in ceremony because:
I wanted to see what it was all about, and I wanted to have my perceptions—my judgement—challenged (imagine the concept). There is a line in Dante: He comes to see what is suffered here. This was my mantra preparing for ceremony.
Leading up to the event we had spent almost a month in the customary diet one takes (not elaborating here) and had forsaken such things as alcohol and cannabis (my partner and I still smoked some CBD despite this rule). Additionally, I made a point to cultivate a mindset in anticipation of ceremony. I genuinely sought tranquility within myself and tried as best I could to approach serenity, non-judgement, and equanimity. I was rather successful in this, resting on the laurels of my Daoist studies. I learned more from the cultivation of this mindset than I would in ceremony, certainly, and I still maintain the garden I grew there.
The first night was remarkably simple. We took sananga in the eyes and had rapé shot up our nostrils. The sananga was fine, a rather inoffensive-if-unpleasant gritty eye-drop that leaves one feeling a bit teary and heavy. The rapé was frankly awful. I disdain the ingestion of tobacco in such a way. It is barbaric, uncomfortable, and certainly the most intense head-high I’ve ever experienced. It was the only time during the whole of ceremony that I nearly vomited (no, I never did purge, but more on that later). On the rapé I will note: I am fond of tobacco. Not cigarettes, god-forbid, but I love a well-packed pipe bowl and vibe with a decent cigar or cigarillo. Thus, once the discomfort of the rapé wore off and I was able to sit with the head-high, I was rather calm and felt at peace, secure in both the high and my cultivated mindset. After some quiet journalling and meditation1 while others received their doses, dusk came on and it was time for the main brew.
Many complain of the taste of Aya but I found it to be no more unpleasant than a poorly made cocoa. We went up one by one and drank our share and then went to rest and wait as the effects came upon us. The shaman did his thing—waving leaves, singing, drumming, etc. There was a lot of incense, scented oils, and a mapacho cigar (this last I did not partake in as the rapé had really been quite enough—gotta respect the plant). Eventually, someone began to vomit. This is one of the more famous aspects of these ceremonies: the vomiting, or purging. It is a key function of the healing process for those who practice ayahuasca ceremonies.
I hate vomiting. Hate. Not dislike or disdain or do-not-prefer. Hate. This was the primary reason for the cultivation of my mindset going into ceremony. I had no desire to vomit and so I had to make peace with the idea that I was very likely to do so. Ingesting ayahuasca is akin to poisoning oneself with a hallucinogenic emetic. It’s fucking intense and I knew that my body was likely gonna fold under the pressure, so I frankly confronted the notion I would be sick, I accepted it, and I found tranquility in knowing that once I started I would one day, hours later, stop. Except, I never started. Never during either night of ceremony did I puke. I was nauseated, yes, quite nauseated—especially on the second night—but never did my body give up that poison. A cultivated mind goes a long way, I guess.
But, I digress. Night one and someone begins to vomit. It was not so intense the first night. I do not recall much sickness but I also do not recall much at all after about an hour into the healing. I fell asleep. There was not much in the way of hallucination or even trippy thoughts. I recall stillness and peace of mind. Later, I recognized in my mental state something akin to no-mind (or, my impression of no-mind). I do not know if I ever fell asleep or simply checked-thefuck-out—like a zen sage or a dead man, I cannot say. When I came to a few hours later and everyone was finishing with their illness or relaxing and eating fruit, I received a number of impulsive thoughts:
There was something in this experience that felt extraneous to me, like I was being observed by another force. This is a common experience with DMT and many ceremony participants refer to Aya as I will here: She is a living spirit that visits in ceremony. I do not believe this is the explicit but rather the implicit nature of the trip that invites such a delusion. It is certainly a reflection of what is present already but does truly feel like an outside force. This would prove all too true the second night.
There was no way in hell I was doing the rapé the second night. Aya said no, and so I told the shaman no. This came from the sense that having it shot up my nostrils felt like a violation of both my nose and the poor plant. So we weren’t taking it the second night and so we didn’t.
I was actually way better at cultivating mindset than I’d given myself credit for and Aya had thought the same, curious at my stillness of thought and balance of perception. I recall specifically Aya taking strings of my thought—specifically, my influences—and examining them with great interest. This led to the impulse that suggested to me I should cultivate the same mind the following evening as Aya told me she wanted to show me something. This was important. To me, that night, Aya requested my serenity and trust for the second night.
The day following our first night passed like a blur. I recall none of it but I know I have a journal entry for its passing. We had passed the evening asleep in the ceremony room, my partner at the time permitted to nestle into me. They had suffered a wretched ego-death on their journey, but that is not my journey to tell. Still, they were quite nervous going into our second night, and I don’t think there was any way I could have eased their mind: wretched was their ego-death. I was not nervous. I’d fallen asleep/drifted into no-mind.
The second night was one of the strangest and arguably worst experiences I’ve ever had. Nothing bad happened to me. As I said, I did not vomit and hardly did I even move. Instead, I got trapped in my mind while other spirits took over me and used my energies to heal the other ceremony participants. Fascinating, but low-key awful. I was quite nauseous throughout this but not as nauseous as others clearly were: the purging was horrendous and I recall hearing all the retching, belching lot of them from the first hack to the last burp. My partner fortunately had a far better experience this night, though, and I am grateful for that.
Here is what happened:
Much as the first, we prepared with the sananga and rapé (the latter forsaken by me). Night came on and we took the brew. It was much the same as the first night: poor cocoa. I think most of us had a bit more for the second journey. Again, we waited for it to come on and when it did, I realized quickly that I had become immobile. Aya, the spirit who was a reflection of me, became a snake coiled in my stomach and wound herself down my legs, locking me in place. I recall shifting, stretching once or twice but this aside I know I did not move, and later—even after—I struggled to move. Physically, I spent much of the evening on my stomach as relaxed as I could possibly be and loosely clenching to a jade stone I have kept as a talisman since my late teens (a talisman of security and protection). Thence I was possessed by at least three spirits:
Aya — A woman, snakelike and overindulgent in the suffering of others. I could feel her pulling the sickness from them, healing them in their purging. I could sense the purges before they happened (which made the whole experience far more uncomfortable for me), and I could sense the delight she took in seeing them sicken so. I do not favour this spirit in hindsight. I felt used by her, my body hijacked and my own energies arrested for a purpose that caused great illness that night (truly, the purging was something…).
A wood spirit — This was something else, something that resided in the whole of my body and was terribly happy but quite stupid in the wisest way. He seemed to enjoy resting with me and reminded me of a swampy kind of spirit: the sort one might find in a wet cave and who is rather large but genuinely friendly. He spent most of the ceremony sleeping and mumbling nonsense to himself (using my mouth) and occasionally taking some irreverent delight in Aya’s proceedings. His opinion was that all the purging was quite good for everyone, and this confidence did help my own irritation at being used for the healing.
Me — I regard this as another entity only because I recognize that they were as much a function of the trip as the other two were. I was me, trapped internally and made to watch and listen as everything happened all around me. This fulfilled the promise made the previous evening by Aya that she would show me something. What she wanted to show me was her power. She told me this, offering to me the notion that everyone was weak and needed healing. Look, she said, look at how they need me. I did not favour this behaviour. I found it uncouth of the healer. Still, I had some respect for her: she was powerful but seemed to want my stillness to better facilitate her power. Even the shaman was purging (What a fool, said Aya.). And so, I was trapped there in nauseated contemplation as all unfolded around me and I could not control my body, my hands, my tongue, or my legs. I do not even know that I could have vomited if I wanted/needed to. That is how locked I felt.
This proceeded for several hours. I focused as best I could on my breath. I was in control of this alone: my breath. All around me the cacophony of illness resounded and caused me general discomfort (though, I’m sure their discomfort was far greater). I was aware of everyone there and of all their sickness. I was aware of who was sick and who was not, when they would become sick and why they were then sick. Many people spoke nonsense tongues, and some sang. I recall finding comfort in the singing, particularly in my mother’s song. I recall laughter, discordant and fey-like, from almost everyone present. This laughter was unnerving and unexpected. People are strange when they’re high.
Eventually, the ceremony ended. I still could not move. Everyone else remained sicker longer but physically recovered much faster than I. They had control of their bodies while I struggled to even speak coherently. At one point, the shaman came to me with a purging stick—a strumming stick he had me hold and fiddle. I could barely function and so my weak fingering and strumming was lost utterly on me. (“How are you doing that?” I recalled the shaman asking, and I responded, “Oh, it’s really quite simple.“) I felt condescended to by everyone as they struggled to communicate with me in my incoherence and all the while the Me stuck inside grew quite irritated by my inability to form words or express the thoughts I was (to me) clearly having. I felt alienated from everyone and remained so until I begrudgingly overtook Aya and the forest spirit in a valiant effort to stand and stumble to the door so I could get some fresh air. This concerned everyone and caused a commotion of condescension. Fortunately, something in my partner knew that I was able enough to do what I pleased and so they defended me and helped me outside. I sat on the hard dirt and gazed at the stars, still trying to speak and explain that I was really quite alright but that I had no control over my body or my voice and so it was quite difficult to settle everyone’s concerns. After gazing at the stars awhile I was able to find some composure (steadfast is the firmament and grounding is the night sky). I could not function well but well enough to express that I was okay. No one should be worried at all.
I sat outside for some time with my partner and my parents before being helped back in. Everyone fell asleep. I could not. I felt weak and immobile. I waited. I thought. Aya continued to visit me, speaking with me and turning things over in my mind, always curious about what she was finding. She brought me verses and asked about them and I identified: Shakespeare, Dante, Laozi, the Mesopotamians, Sappho, etc. She found my inspirations fascinating and especially cherished my closest philosophy: Daoism. Before she finally left, she told me that we would never meet again. She thanked me for the use of my body and my energy and assured me that everything I needed was in me already: there had been no need to commune with her in ceremony. She explained that she had wanted to show me what I had come to see.
He comes to see what is suffered here.
She told me also that I was in a unique position as a grounded person with an openness to the Unknown. She suggested that I develop my tech skills (strange, I know) and become an educator/leader. Then, she left. Moments later, dawn came. I wept. I was fucking exhausted.
I was, and am, grateful for the experience but I will never do it again: she told me as much (I told me as much, Sweet Reader). Integrating my experience was difficult. Still, I feel arrogant in my recollection and retelling. I’m sure many ayahuasca pundits would criticize my narrative and tell me I wasn’t open enough or was too jaded to receive healing. I assure you, that was not the fucking case. I gave myself to the plant wholeheartedly and she revealed truth to me in turn. It simply wasn’t the standard insight so common in others’ psychedelic experiences. Rather, I was given space/imprisonment to be a part of the healing, and then given the permission to seek my healing on my own terms. Despite feeling violated and used, I know that the decision of the plant came from a place of mutual respect. There was love there, just not an agreeable love.
I am not against psychedelics: I just think there are better tools.
Thank you for reading. Now, heal however you wish.
“Psychedelics are useful not for the hallucinations they give you but for the hallucinations they take away.” — Alice Cave
Mainly I journaled and meditated but I had also brought with me some comfort literature: Dante’s Inferno and the Collected Poems of John Keats. I did read a bit from these aside from journaling.