A Year After Ayahuasca
A Journey of Healing, Connection, and Self-Discovery
A good friend asked me to write about ayahuasca. Instead of focusing on immediate effects, he was interested in the longer-term, sustained changes in me and my behavior that came out of this experience. These effects can only be appreciated in hindsight; as it's been almost a year since my jungle stay, I'm ready to humor my friend.
The ayahuasca retreat and the subsequent solo travels have been so intense and so incredible that I've started thinking about them as a rite of passage of sorts. Indeed, a few days ago I listened to Dr Martha Beck's podcast where she talks about rites of passage that many indigenous cultures subject their young males to, and I found many parallels to my journey. What Dr Beck describes often looks like a survival camp: adolescent boys are taken to a forest and essentially abandoned for several days, only it’s worse than that. These boys need to survive on their own by making fires, building shelters, and hunting together. But they also need to withstand incredibly stressful conditions manufactured by their elders: scary noises, confusing signals from the environment, and traps. This is because, Dr Beck continues, indigenous cultures tend to believe that males are born highly individualized, consumed by their egos. They don't pay much attention to their communities or care about humans around them. Boys try to be as independent as possible and make do on their own, often by brute force. These trials are designed to teach them the opposite: that however strong and self-sufficient they are, they cannot survive by resisting. To survive, the boys need to let go, trust the process, and learn to rely on each other. Rites of passage of this kind are not unlike early stages of military training that tend to be similar around the world: young cadets are humiliated, scared to death, and put through impossibly taxing physical training. These experiences break down the egocentricity of adolescent boys, allowing them to admit that they cannot survive alone, at the same time showing them that they can withstand the unbearable, but only if they open up and trust each other. Rites of passage help them mature and ultimately heal them. These boys-turned-men are not scared to ask for help and have a newfound sense of empathy that allows them to connect with and care about others. They are ready to become members of their respective communities.
My ayahuasca journey was strikingly similar. Going to the Santuario in Peru I was incredibly excited but also apprehensive: I've been wanting to do ayahuasca for a couple of years at the time, but I also took a huge risk going there. I remember thinking about it on the way there: I was carrying about 2000 USD in cash and a bunch of expensive gear. I was with people whose language I couldn't speak, in an area with no reception, getting deeper and deeper into the jungle, at that moment by a boat on a river full of piranhas. No one really knew where I was and when I was going to come back. It would have taken them so little to stab me, take my stuff, and have piranhas enjoy my lifeless body. I was going to spend two weeks taking a weird hallucinogenic substance that makes you sick, where no one speaks English and so without anyone to talk to, with all the time in the world to contemplate my existence. I get goosebumps even now, as I'm writing this. But that, as I realized later, was a part of the healing process. Even at that point, there was nothing I could have done to protect myself. It didn't matter who I was, how strong or how accomplished I was. All I could have done was to subject myself to the will of my guide, my shaman, and the people of the jungle. I had to trust the process, I had to believe that these people meant me well. I felt weirdly at ease, accepting of whatever might happen.
I felt similarly during my second ceremony. My first ceremony, which I describe here, was the most profound in terms of insights. The second one was the longest, most painful, and perhaps taught me the most about myself. I took an incredibly high dose, mostly because I felt no effects for several hours and I kept asking for more. But also because that's who I am as a person: eager, intense, and willing to push myself beyond any limits when working toward a goal. When ayahuasca finally kicked in, some 3.5 hours after the first dose, I found myself in hell. What followed were perhaps the worst 16 hours of my life, ever. It was pure agony, pure intensity. It felt like an anaconda invaded my body and was trying to wriggle out of my skin. My brain was melting. I thought I was dying, and I believed it. Time didn't exist. What felt like hours turned out to be minutes (I had my watch on), and the trip seemed like a pure, endless inferno.
What is incredible about this experience, though, is that I felt safe throughout. Not safe in the sense that nothing bad was going to happen to me, quite the opposite — I thought I was actively dying. But I felt that the tribe was watching over me. That I am not alone. That I am, in some peculiar way, held by some higher power, and therefore safe. That whatever is happening to me was meant to happen, that I am being taught a lesson. That there is a presence over me, looking after me. Even when I was convinced I was dying, that these were my last minutes on Earth, I was calm, accepting of it. In that moment, I fully accepted my self, my life, my struggles. I felt grateful, I had no regrets.
This, I imagine, is how someone going through a rite of passage might feel like. That state of mind is important because a lot of what trauma is is about being disconnected from the processes, about trying to resist but having no real means for that; it's about helplessness, about being lonely. Paraphrasing Gabor Mate, trauma is not what happens to you, you see, but rather what happens inside of you as the result of what happens to you. But what happens inside of you is much more complex than what happens to you: because it's influenced by many other things: by how you're feeling, by your emotional conditioning, and whether you have a secure base in general. If something terrible is happening to you but you have a sense of agency and can fight back at least mentally, you are less likely to develop a chronic traumatic response. But if you feel helpless, like you cannot speak up, or like you have no influence over what is happening to you, boy, that's a different story. Note that the difference is purely mental. It's not about whether you can move physically and actually change the situation you're in. It's about your attitude, your sense of agency and meaning.
For me, this grand gesture of traveling half the world and subjecting myself to an arduous and risky process was a part of the (healing) journey. It wasn't just about ayahuasca, but rather about putting myself first, showing myself that I deserve to be helped and healed and that I can go to enormous lengths to give myself whatever it is I need. As a consequence, I've woken up a sense of courage and agency in myself that I didn't know existed. I've also become incredibly open to other people. For many years I've been feeling lonely. I always craved genuine connection with others, but I never knew where to find it or how to get it. I felt a lack of agency, yes, but I was also afraid and therefore closed off. I didn't want to get rejected, to get hurt. And I didn't have access to my authentic, true self; the energy I was projecting was that of a cornered, wounded animal, so no wonder connecting with others felt foreign, out of reach. After ayahuasca, I wasn't scared anymore. The door to my heart has flown open, and anyone was welcome: if not to settle, then at least to come in and take a look. It became easier for me to walk up to people and talk to them, without any expectations. There was no cherished outcome, as Liz Gilbert says. And how people react to me changed, too: where before there was caution and being guarded, now people responded with a smile, willing to share their story, and inviting me to be a part of it. The three weeks of solo traveling in Peru and Bolivia after my ayahuasca experience have helped me to integrate these effects: they were perfect for practicing the agency I've discovered, but they also supplied me with unlimited opportunities for connection — something I reveled in.
The following year unfolded under the themes of authenticity, agency, courage, openness, and exploration. It was so much easier to make decisions, I noticed, especially big life decisions that would have paralyzed me for days before. I started hearing this quiet voice inside me that just knows what is good for me. Where before there was fear around not knowing what to do and making the wrong choice, where there was constant calculation and analysis of costs and benefits, now there was peace of being and, sometimes, calm clarity. Clarity is different from certainty, though. It's not like all uncertainty disappeared. In fact, I'm still not sure what I want in life or even day to day. But that's ok, because I don't have to know, and I'm at peace with it. Along the way, I also understood that whenever I am unable to make a choice, there exist some conflicting needs within me, and I can usually attribute them to different parts of my being. Maybe I (my ego, my head) want to make progress on something and therefore work, but my inner child would rather hang out with friends and is afraid of rejection if I were to decline. The inner voice I hear allows me to identify these inconsistencies, and make decisions despite the uncertainty I might be feeling. In these cases, often making the choice tells me if it was the right now: do I feel lighter after making the decision? Or do I keep coming back, thinking about other choices?
What followed is that I was not afraid to do things differently. Gone were my tendencies to stay at home alone and feel sorry for myself. Gone was the fear of abandoning or hurting my career to do the things I wanted to do. Gone was the shame of not being able to lead a "normal adult life" with planning things far in advance. Gone was the desire to please others, to pretend I'm someone I'm not Instead, there was a strong desire to discover who it is that I am, what it is that I want to do, and to find out what my life really is about. And that the only way to find out was to try things. Even before coming back from Peru, I decided that it was going be this year that I will change my job to be realigned with what I care about. That I will start studying things I'm excited about, that I will start writing, that I will find my community, and that I will figure out what it is that I'm after — but without putting pressure on it, or myself. Funny enough, I also decided that I will finally move out of London and then went back on it — it turned out it wasn’t align any more.
The open state of mind and courage I felt also extended to relationships. After coming back, I decided I was ready to fall in love, to engage in a serious relationship, but also to be myself, unapologetically, whatever happens. I wanted to embrace how open, honest, and sensitive I am, and to express all my emotional needs. I quickly discovered that the relationship I entered (or any relationship, for that matter), cannot meet all of my needs, especially the ones for connection, which I expressed and kept looking for genuine non-romantic connections outside of my primary relationship. In the process, I started dancing, and I eventually discovered how important non-sexual touch is for me.
As I reengaged in relationships and navigated what worked for me, I made what could be called mistakes, though I see them more as necessary steps in my healing journey. I went through a phase where I felt the need to express every emotion without a filter, allowing them to govern my behavior. At the time, I thought it was acceptable—perhaps even necessary—to let my emotions spill onto others and, at times, expect those around me to manage them for me. In retrospect, maybe that was part of my process. It taught me how people react to emotions and the effects this can have on relationships. Over time, I realized that accessing emotions and being ruled by them are two very different things. This understanding helped me see that suffering is optional and manageable.
Victor Frankl captures this insight beautifully in Man's Search for Meaning, where he writes that suffering is like gas — it fills its container no matter how much or how little there is. Everyone suffers to some degree, and if suffering is pointless, we should minimize it. But if it’s unavoidable, we must accept it. If suffering stands between where we are and where we’re meant to be, it shouldn’t deter us. No matter how small, suffering will consume our attention if we allow it, but it is ultimately up to us to manage it. Suffering doesn’t have to dictate how we interact with the world.
In the end, my ayahuasca experience wasn’t just about the ceremonies or the jungle setting. It was a profound turning point in how I relate to myself or others. This past year wasfilled with challenging experiences, deep reflections, and life-altering decisions. I’m still in the process of integrating what I learned from my ayahuasca: it taught me to accept my body, my life, and my self. It taught me gratitude — to feel joy simply for being alive. It gave me courage where there was fear, clarity in place of doubt, and connection instead of loneliness. Ayahuasca didn’t give me all the answers, but empowered me to ask the right questions—and to trust that the journey itself is the answer.