My Ayahuasca Experiences

For information on where to try Ayahuasca in Pucallpa, click here.
My experiences with Ayahuasca varied but not to the extent that my wife Jun´s did. Her very first time and her first time with a second curandero, Jun exhausted superlatives in her attempt to capture how wonderful she had felt. In contrast, her last three nights were not so positive and the penultimate one was especially bad, so much so that she requested the help of Don Marçial to help her get through her bad trip. This seemed to be largely due to fear resulting from a lack of physical strength. The brew overwhelmed her.

It has been said that using words to try to describe the ayahuasca experience is an exercise in futility. My worry is more related to the fact that listening to other people describe a dream they had can be painfully tedious. I will try to avoid that fate by remaining general.

My encounters ranged from feeling nothing to undergoing a mammoth horror show, which, however, I would not describe as a bad trip because at no point was I afraid or paranoid. On the whole, the adventures consisted in large part of random memories plucked from the depths of my unconscious mind and served up for my consideration; the vast majority of these were negative: incidents of violence, bullying and maltreatment that I had inflicted or suffered.

Beyond this – especially when I increased my dose on my third night with Don Marçial – the episodes included scenes of imagined horror which could have been from a film like “Hostel” or “Saw” and hypothetical dangerous or threatening situations that challenged my ability to respond. If this all sounds gruesome, I am afraid that is because it was. The fact is though that I was never “lost” to the extent that I had no control over the reels playing through my mind.

Whilst there were a few recalled memories that brought a smile to my face, the main positive I got from my experimentation was confirmation of my successful transition from child bully and coward to the man I am today. I am aware that this may seem a modest achievement but IMHO, in a very un-Peter Pan way, many people never manage to grow up.