So, if you’ve never heard of ayahuasca (and many haven’t, don’t worry), do us all a favour and have a quick Google right now. In fact, fuck it, I’ll do it for you.
Right, now that we’re all on the same (Wikipedia) page, I’m going to talk for a bit (probably quite a long bit) about my experience with ayahuasca. In part, it’s because I always meant to write it up and I haven’t, but mostly it’s because it’s soon going to be impossible to talk about The Crisis without referencing it. So here we are.
In 2016, I was not-very-happily (we’ll get to this) living in New York. I’d never heard of ayahuasca until February of 2016, when Suzanne (of Things I Love About AMD fame) told me about it. Shortly afterwards, the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon worked its magic and it felt I was hearing about ayahuasca constantly. (You’ll now inevitably see references to the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon everywhere – you are WELCOME.) It felt – as I’ve been compelled at other times in my life, including now – that this was something I was meant to do.
I did some cursory research and, as much as it is perfectly possible to take ayahuasca in some random dude’s basement in Brooklyn, almost immediately realised that if I were to do this, I would be Peru-bound. As much as I was super keen to do it, I was aware that this was Some Hardcore Shit and I wanted to put myself in the safest hands possible.
Luckily, there is basically a Trip Advisor for ayahuasca retreats. I spent HOURS scouring this mutha and settled on a place called Selva Madre.
Factors influencing my decision:
- Their shaman, Don Lucio was spoken about in hallowed tones. He was clearly A Boss.
- No dormitories, everyone had their own little hut – some people actively look for a more communal experience, but I knew I would need some Alone Time.
- This also meant No Shared Bathrooms.
And that was about it, apart from General Good Vibes. So off I went.
So, we begin
This post, then, is going to be a general overview of my arrival and my fellow hallucinophiles at Selva Madre, then I’m going to do a post for each of my 4 ceremonies, where we’re going to go deep. Even so, it’ll likely be a blissful relief from ALL MY PAIN for you, Dear Reader.
If Peru is the home of ayahuasca, Iquitos is its hearth. And this hearth keeps going even with year-round 90% humidity. It is also in the middle of fucking NOWHERE. There are literally no roads in or out. You can fly, or go by boat. This would prove to be an issue when there was a storm on the way back and I got stranded. But I’m getting ahead of myself. So. To Iquitos I flew, via Lima. A night’s stay in one of those forgettable I-just-needed-somehwere-to-sleep-overnight placeholder hotels and off to the appointed meeting place to meet the crew and the 9 strangers who were to be my companions on this journey, not only of sight and sound, but of the mind.
This is a spoiler-filled castlist:
Ronald – our translator and all-round Passepartout
Katarina and Leo – She’s a Greek ex-gameshow hostess in her 20s with a nascent clothing line and 75,000 insta followers (I’d link to this, but I can’t remember her surname). She is NOT AT ALL interested in being here. Leo is her boyfriend (late 30s, Greek, raised in South Africa). He had bought her a trip to Macchi Picchu for her birthday, then thrown in an additional 10-day stop-in at Selva Madre because he’d always been curious about ayahuasca. Katarina will flout any rule going, gives zero fucks and has a generally horrible time. The ayahuasca doesn’t work on her at any of the 4 ceremonies.
Leo is there because he’s not sure he should carry on with his current career – he runs a company that gives people on low incomes in Africa access to spread-betting. I don’t think, in Leo’s shoes, that I’d need to travel nearly 11,000 miles (I had to Google this) and drink noxious fluids to recognise that I was Kind Of A Shitbag, but each to their own. He had no firm plans for reform on departure and I can only assume is still living it large on unethically purloined wads of cash.
Katarina and Leo have the hut next to mine and fight constantly. I don’t follow either of them on social media, but Leo’s Facebook suggests that they have now parted ways. This is sad, if only because it opens up the opportunity for each of them to make another person miserable.
Michael – Michael is 23 and a Kiwi. This is his second stint at Selva Madre, the trips bookending a 6-month South American tour. I initially like Michael very much, but then by Day 3ish, realise that he is, in fact, a total bellend.
This is the pivotal moment: Michael and I have been talking about his tour of South America. I ask him where he likes best and he replies “Colombia”. This doesn’t surprise me – virtually everyone I know who’s travelled around South America says this. I ask him why it was his favourite:
M: The people are just so incredible. You know? They, like, have nothing and it’s, like, they’ve rejected material wealth and instead they’re all just really focussed on love and family, without any of that other bullshit. You know?
This does, indeed, sound great. Turns out that Michael is so enamoured of Colombia that he plans to move there one day. We chat a bit longer and he says that after Peru, he’s headed back to NZ, where he does guided tours around Christchurch to earn some cash. (This was a few years after after the earthquake, when disaster tourism was still rife). I ask why he doesn’t move to Colombia, seeing as he’s made his decision (I’m uncomfortable with inaction after a decision has been made, hence my frustration as I type this during my current state of limbo).
M: I mean, I still want to have a nice house and everything. You know?
Oh. Ok. I get it now. You want to go live amongst the beautiful souls who’ve rejected material wealth and embraced family values, but from a comfortable distance, looking benignly at them from your big house on the hill? Twat.
Also, ayahuasca is an incredibly introspective experience. Anyone not undergoing severe trauma (which Michael wasn’t. Believe me, we’d have heard about it if he were) who wants to do it more that once every 5-10 years is an egomaniac of proportions that I can’t even contemplate. Take a moment to marinade in that. EVEN I.
Anyway. That was Michael. Bellend.
Kate – Kate is the first person I meet. She’s beautiful, doll-like, Russian, living in Vancouver but desperate to move to the US (this is just before Trump got elected) and absolutely mental. And, again, I type this as someone who’s currently deemed at critical risk to their own wellbeing. She is the kind of mental that I can relate to as mental. She is elusive about her job, saying only that she “works online”. I would imagine she has 100,000 Only Fans followers by now. She has come to Selva Madre after falling into some “bad habits” with drink and drugs. She has taken ayahuasca once before. She is, and will remain, a total enigma.
Sergei and Karina – Russian couple in their 40s, living in New York (I have no idea why Russians are so big on ayahuasca). They’re there because both their daughters will leave home soon, so they’re coming to the retreat to ask Mother Aya* where they should move to. Yep. Sergei is as quiet as Karina is forthcoming. They largely keep to themselves, but they are unfailingly warm and kind in any group setting. By the end of our collective stay, Karina has a powerful vision that they should move to Texas. They are, I believe, still living in New York, so we can’t call the trip an unqualified success.
*Mother Aya is the term by which some practitioners refer to ayahuasca, believing her to be the spirit goddess that enables our communion with the spirit world through the ayahuasca ceremony. This belief wasn’t prevalent at our retreat, but the brew did have an uncanny knack of sorting out the pure-of-intention from the chancers.
To wit…
Ross – Scotsman living in New Zealand. Mid 30s. Works in insurance, but does stand-up comedy on the side. Yes. A heady combination, I’m sure you’ll agree. He’s relatively coy about his intention for the first few days, but then it comes out that he’s essentially come for stand-up material of the lowest common denominator.
One of the side effects of ayahuasca – and a key part of its role in the ceremony – is ‘purging’. You drink the ayahuasca (more of this in a moment), wait for it to take effect (around 30 mins), trip balls, then at various points, you’ll get a strong urge to throw up. Under no circumstances should you try to restrain yourself – under the ayahuasca belief system, puking is how you rid yourself of any negativity or useless stuff that your mind or body are holding onto. So, you have to let it go. Sometimes, this will express itself in what is euphemistically termed ‘rectal urgency’, i.e. there is a moderate chance you might shit yourself mid-ceremony. And did I mention that white attracts ‘good’ spirits, so you’re encouraged to wear all-white when you’re taking ayahuasca. Yep, welcome to the Soil Your White Pants Party, boys and girls. Saturday night’s alright for shiteing.
So Ross had come along to the retreat with a view to later regaling sparsely-attended bingo halls across NZ with gritty tales of comedy bowel movements.
I’m going to go into relentless detail about the ceremonies later, but as part of Ross’ bio, I’ll say that he, like Katarina, had no effects from the ayahuasca. You can take as much as you want, within reason, but where Katarina refused more than the initial cup full, Ross was chugging back pints of the stuff, and got NO EFFECTS.
A further sidebar about ayahuasca – and something that I think is under-represented in anything I saw or read about it beforehand. It tastes absolutely fucking disgusting. I know a lot of words (I may be tediously repetitive in this blog, but honestly LOTS OF WORDS in my brain) and I can barely hope to do it justice.
Imagine if you will
- Some mulch (Btw, I defy anyone who grew up in the UK in the 90s who gets as far as ‘What Is Mulch’ not to start singing this to the tune of Haddaway’s seminal hit.)
- Some burnt coffee grains
- Some Stop & Grow (Other brands are available)
Mix all of that together, make it another 300% more disgusting, then rub your hands together with glee as White Privilege brings its cash to your third world country, in search of spiritual enlightenment.
It tastes horrid. Horrid is too small a word. It is, by far, the most revolting thing I’ve ever consumed and I’m part of the generation that used to get pissed on Mad Dog 20/20. Just writing about ayahuasca still makes me shudder at the memory today and my reminiscences are dulled by the 4 years that have passed since I last drank it.
And Ross was drinking literal pints at a time, gagging as he did so, TO NO AVAIL.
He left as he arrived: unenlightened and without anything especially funny to say.
Matt – Bless Matt. The baby of the group at (as I recall) 21 years young. From Oz and had struggled with his weight for most of his life. He’d lost around 80lbs by the time we all met, but had about another 30 to go. He was the youngest of a family of terrifyingly high achievers and had just struggled a bit with life. He took a lot of drugs – bought off the Dark Net, to my delight, as he was able to teach me the ins and outs of a Tor browser during our many patches of inaction between ceremonies – and was coming to the retreat to try to sort his head out. He was a sweet, sunny kid with a lot of demons at an early age. We’ve lost touch, but I still think of him once in a while and I hope he’s doing ok.
Johnny – I definitely saved the best until last here. Johnny is the only one of the gang that I’ve kept in touch with and I’m glad to call him my friend. He was the beating heart at our centre. As mentioned, there’s a lot of downtime when you take ayahuasca; you rest all day the day after a ceremony, so that you can process everything that happened. In common with most ayahuasca retreats in Iquitos (certainly at the time), Selva Madre had no internet reception and the only electricity was from the generator that ran for about 2 hours a day.
So we had to make our own entertainment most of the time. And Johnny made most of it for us. He’d always be on hand with a smile and one crazy story or another, out of nowhere:
“So, I was once in a band called Orangutan Gangbang…”
(This is absolutely true. This is them. Pro tip: turn sound to low before opening.)
“So, this one time, I had gotten HAMMERED and I woke up in a dumpster…”
“Did I tell you guys about the time my friend and I got drunk and tattooed one another?”
When we first met, Johnny told me he was there as part of his “journey of self-actualisation”. I decided that he and I were not to be friends. I could not have been more wrong. He has a heart the size of the planet and is one of the kindest, most empathetic chaps out there. He’s also a very gifted surrealist artist and you should check his stuff out.
If nothing else, please sign this petition that he’s put together, lobbying to paint Donald Trump’s official presidential picture.
Johnny fell hopelessly, unrequitedly, in love with Kate. So did Ross. It occasionally got awkward, but was a HOOT for the casual observer (yours truly).
Then our trio of Shamen:
Don Lucio – as I outlined above, this guy was the big draw for me. And he did not disappoint in person. Round, smiling and warm, he exuded a self-possession that made me feel immediately at ease. He spoke very little English, but Ronald was always on-hand to translate during our ‘appointments’ with him. Fortunately for me, Don Lucio was interviewed earlier this year by a nice lady, so I’ll leave the rest of the description of him and much of the retreat to, well… him.
Don Luis – Don Lucio’s son and Shaman-in-training. He spoke a lot more English and most of our day-to-day spiritual interaction was with him. He was as round, smiling and warm as his dad.
Shaman #3 – I’m really sorry. But it’s been 4 years and we only saw this guy at ceremonies, when we were all mostly focused inward rather than outward.
THANKS FOR EVERYTHING, SHAMAN #THREE – I WILL ALWAYS FORGET YOU.
And that’s as much fun-packed ayahuasca information as I think one post can handle. Tune in next time for My First Vomit In A Peruvian Bucket.
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