Ayahuasca Medicina

A motley crew of ten would be astral travelers assembled at about 5pm to take a bus to our departure point. There was an intense collective anticipation in the air. Everyone appreciated the intensity of the journey we were about to take together – a journey that did not require a passport, or even leaving the room. After passing the town of Pisac in the Sacred Valley in Peru, we alighted and trenched across a corn field and up several Inca terraces to a simple house. It had one room, whitewash walls, wooden beams supporting the roof and no electricity or running water. The room was bathed in the gentle glow of the candles. We all laid out rugs of the floor, claiming our spot for the night. We sat cross legged on the floor leaning against the stone wall - our own personal Avatar pilot cubicles. We were then issued vomit buckets and sacred leaves, oils and smoking tobacco to help purify and protect us. We were also told not to speak or touch each other. The voice was only for singing, and the physical body had nothing to do with this experience.

After an elaborate purification ritual, including blessing coca leaves with good intentions and giving them to each other, we were each in turn given our first drink of Ayahuasca. It was a large shot glass of thick dark putrid liquid. Before drinking you were to gather your intentions and ask the Ayahuasca what you wanted from it. While I was skeptical about the problem solving abilities of a psychedelic, I decided to give it a try. I asked for it to be gentle; to show me beauty, love and light; to show me what I should try to get out of my travels; to show me how to have the happiest possible life; and to show me what I needed to work on to be a better person. Buen Viaje – travel well. Bottoms up.

I immediately felt nauseous, and knew I needed to refrain from vomiting for at least half an hour to allow the Ayahuasca to be absorbed. I started smoking my hand rolled cigarette of sacred tobacco and chewing on my stash of blessed coca leaves in an attempt to abate the feeling. It did not work. I broke out in a hot sweat, stripping off almost all my layers of clothing, and tried to hold on. The girls next to me offered me the scented oil, saying ´if you feel nauseous, smelling this helps.´ ´I am nauseous´ I managed to rely bluntly with wild eyes and a sense of impending vomit. If I so much as reached for the bottle I was certain I would vomit. However, somehow the feeling passed quite suddenly, and I started putting my jackets back on one by one.

After everyone had drunk, the candles were extinguished, and we were left in the silence and darkness to connect with the Ayahuasca. Waves of nausea came and went as I repeated my questions about what I wanted to get out of the experience. It was a way to distract myself. While I said I trusted it, the nausea made me beg for it to be gentle. After a while the songs and chants began, guiding us into the trip. Most people sang along, but I felt too sick to open my mouth and join in. That and the chants were in Spanish and I did not know the words. This heavy presence then descended on me. I was a strong feeling, but not what I expected. I thought about whether I would drink more when it was next offered , but I could not make up my mind because I felt so nauseous. Then the lead Shaman´s voice drifted out through the dark, ´Zack, you want more?´ ´Yes´ I answered before I even had a moment to think. Ayahuasca had decided for me.

After the second drink, while the intense nausea kicked in again, so did intense visuals. The whole world totally contract into my mind, where there were psychedelic patterns of infinite colour and detail too beautiful to be real. While my mind was in heaven, my body was rapidly descending into hell. I felt like I was being poisoned, and my toes began to twitch. Then my feet full on became possessed by some spirit. Completely beyond my conscious control they were writhing and twisting themselves around each other like serpents. Oh no! What have I got myself into? This is too much. But then the serpent rose up into my stomach and out of my mouth into the puke bucket. I immediately felt much better, and the visuals were left in full force. I was able to influence these incredibly intricate colourful patterns, and I was now feeling euphoric. This phase of the trip went on for what felt like forever, but was actually only about an hour and a half. I was euphorically writhing in visual delight, accompanied by chanting and singing which matched the visuals to perfection. I even joined in for a couple of chants, which gave me an intense sense of group unity and connectedness. It felt so good.

I then, for the first time since the vomiting, opened my eyes and remembered were I was. Everyone was slumped along the walls singing. i had come out of the trance, and thought that maybe it was wearing off. if that hour and a half was all there was to the experience i would not have been disapointe - but I wanted more.

I closed my eyes and started following the songs again, and quite suddenly i was back in it in a big way. I was no longer seeing the visuals with as much vividness as before, as if with my waking eyes. I had moved somewhere deaper into my mind, something more akin to dreaming. However, I was now seeing more images of things with meaning rather than just beautiful patterns. I followed followed each nuance of the singer´s voice and or the instruments with the upmost intensity and appreciation. You think you appreciate music on weed or party drugs? That is nothing compared to Ayahuasca, where you feel the music is a part of you even more than your own conscious thoughts. I totally lost myself in the connectedness of everything. I cannot overstate how powerful and healing live interactive music can be. Every now and then the lead Shaman would walk around the room clearing it of any negative energies or spirits with the healp of a condor feather which he would flap around. One time, despite the room being almost completely pitch black, he sensed the girl next to me nd accross from him was in trouble, and immediately went over to help. The next morning the girl confirmed that at that very moment she began going into a dark place lamenting about how much pollution there is on the Earth, and that he was able to get her out of it when he came over.

However, walking around in a dark room littered with half filled puke buckets comes with its own risks. Almost every time the Shaman did his rounds warding of the bad energies he would accidentally kick a bucket. By some miracle none were completely knocked over, but in the light of morning there was certainly evidence of some slopage. Sometimes when a bucket was kicked, everyone would laugh. For me it was the juxtaposition between the profoundness of the experience and the baseness of slopping vomit. I do not know what it was for anyone else, but they all certainly found it hilarious.

During this time some of the people, particularly the women, were literally moaning with pleasure, and sometimes we broke into the most heartfelt group laughter of my life. People would say out loud in Spanish, ´how beautiful,´ ´how pretty´, ´thank you,´or simply ´wow´. It was so cathartic. We were all so greatful. At one ponit someone literally cried with happiness. It was like a six hour orgasm.

At one point the lead Shaman spoke out and said to the girl next to me, ´I just saw a ray of light shoot into you, so you need to sing for us.´ ´Uh, ok,´ she replied hesitantly. This American girl from Texas with no musical training then began to spontaniously compose the most delicate beautiful acapella song - all in Spanish! Despite speaking only a little Spanish, at that moment I understood what she was singing about perfectly. Everything that needed to be said was said by the music, and the message was beyond words to describe. After she finished there was a deap silence for a few seconds before everyone started gasping and saying ´wow´, some gently and reflectively, some emphatically and with gusto. The next morning she confirmed that she composed the song on the spot without any conscious effort, and that she had asked the Ayahuasca to give her a song. Apparently it is not uncommon to spontaniously compose songs when using Ayahuasca, and a couple of the people in the group had also had the experience at other times.

Soon after the lead Shaman, who´s speciality is doing spirit readings of people, said to the girl next to me that he saw her spirit: it was a North American Indian totem pole with carved heads of a bear, an eagle, a bison and many other animals. He said it was a very powerful spirit. ´Wow. Thank you so much,´ she replied estatically. She had told me before the trip that she hoped he would be able to do some reading of her and that throughout the night she had been having many similar visions connected to North American Indians. After a period of silence, the Shaman said to another woman, ´And your spirit is felion.´ After a dramatic pause, the woman said ´ok,´ in a rather blasé tone. We all burst out into raucous laughter. The contrast between the two responses was so dramatic, and both were equally correct. Over-joyed or indifferent. There was no judging. Ayahuasca does not take itself too seriously that it´s profound insights cannot be laughted at.

Even after hours of this new phase of the experience, I was still equally under the influence. Howvever, as it progressed it moved more into a phase of insights and the answering of my questions. I needed to learn the language of how to ask questions and how to understand the answers, and over the night I got quite good at it. I could think up really specific sub-questions to my general questions, and they would be answered immediately  with incredible clarity. The general message I got was that I was on the right track in Life, but I just needed to actually do the things I know I should do. It confirmed that a lot of specific things I already thought I should do to be happy in my life, as well as gave me many more very specific ideas. For example, it told me that my spirit animal was a wolf, even though  never particularly had am affinity with wolves before, and that I needed to get an image of a wolf howling at the full moon to incorporate into my nightly meditation routine. It also gave me a vision of how good my life would be if I actually did even half of the things I know i should do. It also told me that I should take the sleeping bad I borrowed from the hostel lost and found because it would be useful for the next phase of my travels in Bolivia. The only question it did not answer despite me returning to it many times, is what specifically I should do for my career.

It then began providing me with opportunities to practice the primary lesson of overcoming lazyness or fear and just doing it as soon as the thought comes to you. After hours without moving i suddenly needed to urinate, and it said ´go outside and pee now.´ straight away I appreciated that it was an opportunity to practice the lesson that I already intelectually understood. But understanding and doing are two very different things. I was so comfortablre and my body so paralysed that I did not want to move. After several attempts and the passage of several minutes, I was eventualy able to get up and go outside. It was near to a full moon and huge mountains surrounded the building on all sides. It was beautiful. Later in the night it told me I needed to touch the girl next to me on the shoulder and say, ´thank you,´ because she was the one who convinced me to come and I was feeling so greatful. However, we were told not to touch each other. So i hesitated, even though I knew it was the right thing to do. But again, after several failed attempts where I decided to do it but then did not, I reached over and touched her on the shoulder. She put her hand on mine and we exchanged the most genuine, hearfelt thank yous I have ever experienced.

Later in the night, after the longest and most epic shaker solo by the lead Shaman, silence descended on the group. For some reason I opened my eyes and about half the group were curled up on the floor, the other half slumped low on the wall. It was time for sleep. The Shaman told us the next morning that he was really getting into his shaker solo with his eyes closed, and when he finished and opened his eyes he realised that half the people were asleep. There was no way I could sleep yet. I sat up straight and contemplated the silence for a while longer. I eventually inserted my non-responsive body between the puke buckets on the floor and fell asleep.

I awoke at first light and watched the others begin to stir and get up as I reflected on the experience. Everyone I watched did a double take as they sat up,  with mouths partially open and a look of wonder in their eyes. It was like that twighlight phase between being awake and asleep; like that scene in Inception where they all wake up back on the plane and are reunited with their bodies and the physical world after such a significant period of separation. Whenever I made eye contact with someone there was this intense unspoken, unspeakable, communication and understanding that the experience we just shared was truely epic. After we were all up we bured a food offering to say thank you to Pachamama, or Mother Earth, who provided us with the Ayahuasca that purefied our souls, and even our life itself. They we breakfasted. A great variety of exotic fresh fruits, bread, avocados and cheese that were delightful to all the senses. We all talked about our experiences, but mainly just reveled in out contentment and sense of connection. Nothing needed to be said. Words were a crude tool compared to the power of the Ayahuasca.

Back in town after the bus ride back was like walking on an alien planet. To be fair, I was in Peru though. Truely the most pleasurable, most interesting, most educational and most transformational night of my life. Now I just need to incorporate the lessons into my daily life and just do it. First step, steal this sleaping bag.