Life and Death at My Ayahuasca Healing Retreat

in #life8 years ago

Ayahuasca? Is it safe? Can It heal? Should you be worried when one person in your group kills themself?

Ayahuasca the vine with a soul. Ayahuasca is mixed with another plant Chacruna (high in DMT-dimethyltryptamine- a neurotransmitter found in all mammals, normally only small amounts are produced in the pineal gland) to make a traditional medicine drink which changes our consciousness.
It is usually drunk with a shaman to hold space for all who partake. The experience can become highly hallucinatory
The recorded use of the medicine mix is at least two thousand years.
More and more people are hearing about the results people have in treating addictions, healing chronic or terminal disease and healing psychological problems rapidly.

The medicine reveals a new and grander self and this meeting of minds can be enjoyed by anyone.
Traditionally, healers use it to interconnect with natures wisdom, and legend has it that the plants themselves told the first users to combine them even though they do not grow well next to each other.
It is used to find the deep psychological blocks that are at the root of our illness or dis-ease.
Most of us know the deep causes of our own illness but we cannot confront them so we do not move forward.

Anyone can use Ayahuasca to deepen their self knowledge, enter fully into the knowing of eternality and the unending divine majesty.
Also we can see in ourselves, the deepest rot, the fear, the pain, the shame.

I heard it was good for answering questions.
I wanted to go and find out some answers .

When you are "on it" and youre high youre flying but I felt as straight as a librarian. I could have talked to your mother. I was alive, like an ancient warrior, alive to the leg twitch of a beetle. Alive to the changing directions of breeze. Of the currents of the brook lolling into the dam.
Alive, pure and clear, like a high note sung by a child.

You see everything, all your fear and hate and fear and anger and fear. For some its overwhelming at the time, but in the weeks and months following it a self honor grows at having faced that concentration of your essence.
Ayahuasca is not a party drug. Even though I used it with between 10-20 people each time, most of us had mostly solitary experiences under a big canopy in the jungle.

As all psychedelic experiences which can be used to heal chronic stuckness in psychological or physical problems, the aya mix brings the unconscious or subconscious to the surface to be examined. Similar results can be gained with breathing practices, magic mushrooms and iboga.

The Shipobo tribe have a long rich tradition of shamanism and using ayahuasca.
Outside Iquitos, in Northern Amazon of Peru, a shaman named Eladio Melendez Garcia was working with an Australian woman to guide people wanting to try Ayahuasca. The treatments were for around 2 weeks, with about 8 sessions of ayahuasca, a tobacco cleanse and a san pedro journey. It was a pretty reasonable price but out of my budget until I saw they had a workers program and I could go and massage there and volunteer duties for the guests in return for a reduced price stay

Sure I had to clean vomit buckets, ashtrays and diarrhoea mattresses but, someone has to do it.
The thing about aya is it makes you purge, most people vomit, some hurl and some HEAVE, some sound as if they are exorcising demons, and not so few that you think they could all be acting.
I never saw anyones head turn more than 270° but I did have my head down in a bucket often.

I have so many qustsions about everything I had to apply.
A few days later I had an invitation.
I have had some pretty stellar experiences/spiritual awakenings on mushrooms both in Australia, and Mexico, so I was very keen to try this exotica. I have lost my mind once or twice tripping balls but Im not afraid. The matrix always comes creeping back.

Of course at these places its highly uncool to call it tripping. Its journeying.
I was trippidyhephopping.

I took hardly any photos or video at this time, because, I figured people might want their privacy. And then, with what happened, I kind of had to repress the whole experience for years to escape confronting the pain.
I hardly even knew the guy who died... but I know myself

I really enjoyed my time at the centre. I was up early cleaning toilets, vomit buckets every second day after the sessions the night before, sometimes twenty colorful little buckets of chuck. First you had to pull out the wads of vomit marinated loo roll and bin that, mmm soo absorbent, then rinse the campbells into the garden.

Then I had to clean the hair out of sinks. wipe toilets, remember to wash my hands, then carry and serve all the meals, wash up after, do it all smiling. Im good at stuff like that sometimes. I dont have kids so I feel ive missed out on my fair share of vomit.
Plus being the middle of three kids very susceptible to car sickness i had to sit in the middle and vomit into a bucket all my childhood, then just put the lid on the bucket and drive on. Mum and Dad trained me so well they didnt even have to stop. Unless my brothers were grossed out and vomited at the same time and i couldnt get the bucket uder both of them fast enough.

It was truly an honor to meet and serve the people I met during my time... I stayed for two groups over a month, and made some friends i will love for life. Everyone was raw, vulnerable, and tripping balls, spewing and pooing together. There was absolutely no dignity.

To prepare for taking aya you want for at least two weeks before to get off all refined foods, sugars salt, fats, drinking, smoking and weed, as all of these things lessen her effect.
I cheated a bit as I was travelling through Colombia and there were too many treats I wanted to try, but I managed well for the last week.

When I arrived at the centre I was comfortable straight away around the people. There was always tea all day and so many interesting people. The staff, the Peruvian ladies in the kitchen became great friends even though we understood not all of what each other were on about.

My room was shared with a magical mystical Aussie girl called Heather. We each had a shitty single saggy bed with our colourful Peruvian bed sheets and that was it for furniture. And a constant rain of tiny invisible ants or roof rat fleas dropping from the woody tambo roof into our beds.
There are some times where you are glad you have no lover to share the misery.

The first ceremony was a tobacco ceremony, to purge your guts and prepare them for the aya mix.
About 2pm I got blessed, smoked, smudged and misted by shaman Eladio then given a cup of river sludge thick black coffee that tasted like the stuff they squeezed out of the smokers lungs in the 1980s anti smoking campaigns.

I was instructed to relax, take the afternoon off.
After drinking this
As someone who has smoked cigarettes since teenage years I thought "I got this"
Went back to my tambo, sat in my bed with a little 2 litre ice cream bucket and heaved until it was full, walked to the verandah, tossed it, and filled it up again 5 times over the next 10 hours.
To say I felt clean the next day was an understatement. It was like I convulsed myself out of many bodies.
In my sad little bed however it was just me and about 20,000 amazonian so-see-ants, so when I woke up all the other old dead bodies I had shuddered out of had been eaten ; )

Massaging the patrons was the best part of my time there. Getting to know everyone as their server, bringing meals and cleaning dishes was satisfying, but working on them in the one thing I specialise in was more gratifying.

I was massaging a woman, Sam and she was telling me all about her dog who had recently passed.
Sam told me she had had a rare form of leukemia, and the doctors had told her she would need chemo and radiation... but while she was waiting for treatment, her dog had contracted the exact same form of leukemia, and died, and hers then had cleared up when she went back for the next treatment.
She was such a beautiful woman, self caring, loving, pretty, warm, generous, appreciative. She went on to tell me how her husband David,of 15 years, was arriving the next day and they were having their anniversary there.

Our first trip... sorry journey was to be the next day.
My first trip was average. I was pissed off! I came halfway arond the world for what?
It wasnt what Id heard, hoped, wished, I just vomited a bit and fuck all else happened.
A few others went off a bit but they were just annoying me and i wanted to cocoon myself and sleep

Next trip I really went. Yessssss
So we, all 21 of us in a big circle on mattresses in a huuge tambo.

There are candles and the shaman is singing and blessing the mix. You have an ashtray, a thick stack of natural tobacco cigarettes (think camel unfiltered but twice as thick, heavy, dark and rough), a sick bucket, if youre lucky and I´ve done a good job-without someone else old crusty innards remains, a blanket and a wall to lean against. You go up and get your cupful of thick sweet riversludge ayahuasca soup with an afterpong of old nuns fungus feet. You block your nose and chug and you curtsy if you feel the urge, then you sit back down.

Our medicine at the centre was the strongest around, made by a local legend called Ron Wheelock. Ron had studied under shamen such as Don Agustin Rivas Vasquez and Don Jose Coral Mori, the teacher of Pablo Amaringo and Eduardo Luna.
Ron is known as "the gringo shaman" and is now after 17 years the only one working independently of his teachers.

About 45 mins later all the action starts, eyes open or closed. In all my lives I couldnt begin to draw the imagery of one of those trips, let alone a months worth, but suffice to say most of the time I was taking lectures from 20 ft tall fluorescent yellow and green stick insects with the occasional cameo from a man with an actual jaguars head. They all spoke telepathically as did every creature in the entire forest. At once. No problem

When I first arrived, the first few trips, the first few nights in my bed, in the healing space, at the dining table...the bugs were driving me crazy. Ants of about 40 species, dragonflies, mosquitos, bees, wasps, lizards, geckos, mice, armadillos, possumicey things, roof rats, bats... to say they were giving me the shits.. I was wishing death upon myself. I was visecrally angry about all these annoyances for nearly my first week on the property... they had warned me it was rough, and remote, and I had assured them I was tough and able to cope, and here I was all Penelope Pittstop

Well this night on my second trip I became the forest. I entangled with the jungle. I breathed in ants and out of my nostrils crawled cockroaches, into my ear slithered snakes and out of my mouth flew flies. Under my arms slithered lizards and silverfish slipped in the cracks of my crossed legs. This night I melded with all. And it was glorious. Nothing could touch me or disturb this exctasy I had of joining with all my worst enemies... nothing, that is, except... who the faaark is making all that groaning noise???

As I slipped from my cool jungle connection consciousness back into my sitting up straight dancing upper body to the songs off the shaman, the whistles, the instruments beating against the old wood floor, the whole jungle chirping along through the mesh walls. No moon. Not a single glimmer of knowing the dancing shaman sent his song at me except to feel his proximity in the stillness being warmed and moved and spun in sweetest ways around us, his song and his breath bathing us one by one in ancient traditional songs to heal and accompany this major energetic realignment.

WHO IS THAT YELLING OVER THERE... I wondered to myself as I listened and came back into Elissa.
I realised, it was David, and he was just yelling, over and over and over... NO... NO... NOOOOOOO
A few others were yelling, crying out and screaming at times. One beautiful boy had to be chased and restrained as he ran outside and into the bush to escape whatever was bothering him. He was yelling at people and things and times and places I knew were not there, or here and now, but there were a few grown men, who were straight and there to help in these circumstances. You really cant have people running off on their own in the jungle

Then the first guy was brought in and another young guy lost his mind, had to run outside and get reigned back in. Al the while these dramas were going on, David was constantly yelling Noo... NOOO ...NOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I mean over an hour, maybe two...
at first I was feeling for him, I was sitting there with worms crawling out my nostrils and bats burrowing headfirst into my ears and I thought, this guy is like the baby that cries, and releases the stress valve of the whole families emotion... what a legend, he´s facing the fears of this whole group, it sounds like...

After a while it mad me laugh out loud heartily, and I didnt care that it juxtaposed his insane fears. I started to laugh about the fact that he was the source of all that he was screaming in fear of.
Ok I guess you had to be there. To me it was hilarious. Maybe I was scraping some salvage of sanity back from this melting man

Into the second hour I was starting to be annoyed by his contant screams of "No NOO NOOO", i mean it just didnt stop, like a cartoon I wanted to go over and locate the sound in the dark and swing at it... poke it like a piñada.
I was racking my brains for the scariest things I could ever possibly imagine, that i could be forced to watch, i envisioned every scary scenario I could, torturous of me , my family, friends and for the life of me I had finished after about 20 minutes, this guy was moving into hour three

Apparently its not the shamans job to go hold his hand or help him through, as the shaman is singing, holding the space for all the healings to occur, and if he stops for one, the others miss out, but he definitely did go and spend a lot of time with the yelling, crying, busted David screaming NOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I was thinking... "No what? Why dont you just say YES and see what happens, it cant be any worse than this NO you keep harping on about".

After a whirlwind psychic trip around the world and a visit to a few friends and family, a few more small insects, rodents and hairy spiders penetrating my head orifices, the tripping seemed to meld a bit more with regular old, no-animals-in-my-head-reality and I noticed there hadnt been any songs for a while... everyone had piped down, leopard man had snuck back into the log, and someone lit a candle.

I was full of joy and glee! I had finally tripped balls on aya! It was a small adult milestone but a strong one.
I saw David sitting on the step by the door and i said to him " thankyou for your suffering, thankyou for being like the baby of the family letting out the sadness and the pain of the whole group... isnt it beautiful, everything... like every single part has its place, the cockroaches and the maggots and the rapists and the murderers and the pedophiles, the ants and the spiders... its all necessary and it all works to help something else, evolve, or die, or grow!"

I enthusiastically told him "isnt it amazing there is NOTHING to fear, except FEAR itself! it is all necessary and has to be here!!! Its all just recycling!!!!"

The poor man looked at me, he was so ragged, as if he had been dragged down a mountain by a giant hungry eagle, like he had fought for life but nearly died in the fight and was wishing he had...
He asked me "are you psychic?"
I said, "not particularly, but everyone is" and I just had to get back to my own comforting energies so I skipped off down the dark path on the moonless night, barefoot in my white dress back to my own silent soft bed in the jungle. Back to my space. Away from all that fear.

The next day I saw David on the verandah. Since we had only met while tripping he wasnt sure if it was me. He asked "was that you who spoke to me afterwards last night?" I said, yes. He said "you must be psychic because you really helped me.". I didnt understand what he meant really but we talked for a while and I learnt he was a doctor. He worked in one of the highest security prisons in the UK with the worst murderers and pedophiles.
He told me "lady ayahuasca was trying to take my hand and show me my death, and i just refused, i just kept refusing to go with her i didnt want to know...."

The day after there was another ayahuasca session but it was my turn to stay up and guard the house. So they all went off. David had been missing since the afternoon and Sam assumed he was taking some time for himeself. Everyone went and had their journey and around 11pm when they all returned and we realised David was missing still we started to worry. I worried a lot.
Sam was of the headspace that sometimes he did weird things like this, and maybe he had jut gone into the bush to be wild... we should just sleep and worry if he doesnt show up by morning
It was too much... you cant leave a lost man out overnight in the jungle, something could kill him, he might have sprained an ankle.. so a few of the men went out searching with the dogs. The rest of us sat up with Sam.
She was keeping a positive outlook but i was scared. The jungle was right there 10 feet away and anyone could walk 100 metres and get lost... i dont know what is there that could kill him but i knew animals that could definitely debilitate him.

Maybe an hour later the men returned with no news. He hadnt returned to us so after some tea they went back out
again. Maybe an hour after that they returned with Davids wristwatch and his shirt which had bloodstains on it.

They quietly asked Sam if this was the property of David. They had looked around for a while but didnt find his body. they hoped he was back at camp

When they realised he was still not home they went back out again. They returned to us with the very sad news around 4am that Davids body had been found. He had cut his carotid artery in his neck, and his femoral artery in his groin, and bled to death in the riverbed.
The detectives and police showed up at first light. It was so horrible those hours when his body was out there and we were at the house and his wife had to wait for the light to identify him.
They didnt find a weapon but they found an empty plastic toothbrush case, which they say may have been used to transport a knife or scalpel, as he was a surgeon.
That made some speculate that perhaps he was planning on killing himself beforehand. I personally think something very deep occurred to his soul to make him carry it out, even if it was preplanned .
To me it was such an insult to his wife Sam to kill himself at their anniversary healing retreat.
But we people are complicated, thats for sure.

I felt terrible for his wife for so long. She took it with grace. Respectfully. Not personally. She showed a spiritual maturity I am sure I could not gather from myself. I would have ... well i dont know what i would do... how can you get over something like this. She stayed around for the rest of the retreat. She had a lot of business with the police in Iquitos and a lot of legal fuss before she could move hs body or address funerals with family etc.

They had just finished building their dream home together in the woods, with all personal touches and flourishes, and now it would be a sad place for her, as well as happy eventually, I hoped.

I always wanted to have a healing centre, where people can come and get themselves well, but this experience put me off it. People who think they are sick, are often really quite fine and just being dramatic. People who think they are well, often pretty sick.

It was a terrible sadness for all at the centre. The shaman Eladio, I wanted him to know we considered not his fault, but I wanted to ask him so much. He took it in his stride and accepted pretty quickly that it was Davids free choice. He wasnt on ayahuasca at the time, in fact it was about 48 hours after he had it that he ended his life.
Shamen dont impress me when they try and act supernatural. I studied with and then dated an Australian Origine Shaman and learnt a lot about their ways.

Who knows what ayahuasca wanted to show him, but too strange that two days later he would take himself there voluntarily.
I felt for the owners of the healing centre. They want to bring people to this wonderful place for this terrific healing experience and they feel responsible if one goes and bleeds himself to death.
The food is not that bad. ; )

Years ago I saw a documentary about a psychic surgeon healer in the UK. He performed "operations" on people by just imagining he was removing things like cancers. He was being rubbished but he saw up to 30 clients a day, sometimes for 5 minutes, didnt want to know their names but just where the problem was... he was known for sending people back to their oncologists cancer free. When asked about what he did he had such an interesting response... he said
"when people come to me with cancer, and they go away, and their cancer is cured, well, then Im very happy for them... and when people come to me with cancer, and then they go away after Ive treated them and they die, well, Im very happy for them, either way Im happy for them to go through whatever process is next for them in their own spiritual journey.
That always stuck with me how we cannot have ego attachment to the outcomes, besides doing what assists best when the energies are all pointing the right polarity.

The rest of my time at the retreat was heavy. I was so sad. We were not encouraged to tell the second group what had happened to one member of the first, but when one asked me, what is the worst that can happen, I told her, well, last week someone killed himself, but that was 48 hours later, so it probably wasnt the ayahuasca."

Either way I tell people who want to try ayahuasca to take her very seriously. Its not all beer and skittles and although I had some wonderful journeys and had confirmation that what I already knew, I already knew, it is not going to solve all our problems and life is really about constant management of our competing self loving and subversive selves.

One married christian pastor from the mid-west who was struggling with his sexuality, one woman worrying she wasnt kind enough with her kids, one young lonely guy, one highly strung vet who had never even smoked a joint before, one guy grew up in Israel stressing whether he was ready to marry, one guy had a traumatic time watching his parents have a traumatic time, all of these people came and went better, not just for the ayahuasca, but for the brief but deep connections, laughs, talks, food, life and death shared and scared.

I have never seen a ghost nor do I ever want to. I suppose I believe people who say they see them. I believe spirit may be there but please dont ever make me see one.

After all that wisdom and learning the worst thing was I was ssoooo bloody scared of seeing Davids ghost, that i could no longer even step outside my hut to take a pee at night. I had to sneak a vomit bucket back to my room so i could piss inside and empty it quietly in the mornings.

I had told David theres nothing to fear and then i became so afraid of dead David.

Sort:  

Just an exceptionally detailed experience. The range of emotions. wow. I loved the reference to Penelope Pittstop :) . I don't want to over-praise, but this shit is great stuff.

thankyou for taking the time to comment and enjoy @celcius100 : )

Good story, @elissahawke. Very interesting your experience report on the ceremony . I confess I did not know, but it sounded like the Santo Daime ?

i dont know santo daime? Is it maybe what we call damiana? bellflower? Ayahuasca is a very unique trip from mushrooms or LSD or San Pedro cactus, that i have tried, similar energy but much more visuals thats why its great to do in the dark

Santo Daime is the name of the sacrament given by a syncretic Brazilian church (that goes by the same name) and is essentially ayahuasca, though prepared a little differently and usually not as refined (it's still made from a vine-containing MAO-Inhibitor and Chakruna, leaf that contains DMT).
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Mestre Irineu founded the religion, an afro-brazilian rubber tapper who went into the jungle for work and learned from the indigienous about Ayahuasca and then had a vision where the Queen of the Forrest came to show him the religion and the design of the ceremonies.

Ah I have heard about this, and they all wear white when they do ceremony i think, and they take ceremony to europe, in spain and portugal and england too now, they have the legal right to give it as a religious healing, thanks for reminding me i must look more

There are many reasons why aya isn’t for me right now, but I do love reading accounts of the journeys people have taken, especially this one which you referenced briefly in an old Anarchast. I’ve always wanted to hear the whole story.
But seriously – you wore a white dress for purging?

i always liked to dress up for the spirits. and you are not out of control spewing like a drunk person, its quite civilised... i doubt i will ever do it again... just the thought of the smell makes me throw up in my mouth

Great report! I have written one about my 5-meo-dmt experience. Welcome to have a look. :)

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