Journey through ayahuasca

GABRIELA WIENER

We look like funeral shrouds taken from their graves. Ten or twelve people sitting in the
floor of the room, in a circle and in the dark. Occupying a central place is the healer.
Smoke a mapacho - the typical tobacco of the Peruvian jungle - and blow the smoke over the edge of
a bottle filled with a viscous liquid. First, he takes a sip and then calls us
one by one. I am scared. Those who have taken ayahuasca say that the taste is
repugnant and the first effects -stomach pain, nausea, dizziness, chills-
hard to bear. Everyone thanks God and drinks the contents without hesitation. I am the
last. I sit with my eyes closed, savoring that indefinable bitterness that goes through me
leaving without saliva.

Days before, the healer had asked me to follow a preparatory diet: I had to
to abstain from pork, fats, spicy food, alcohol, other drugs, pills, and relationships
sexual, all of which, he told me, neutralized the action of the plant. But that was not the worst:
One night before the session, I found myself vomiting next to a group of strangers.
who, like me, were forced to ingest an Amazonian brew and eight liters of water
to expel the waste that the Western world leaves in our body. The 'purge',
as the healers call it, it is the step before taking ayahuasca and it is almost as
important in the regeneration of the body and the spirit like the latter. The brew that
what we drank was nothing but an extract of tobacco, flowers, and other plants with effects
vomitive. From time to time, and to my absolute scandal, the teacher would come over to see
the content of our buckets and diagnosed all kinds of ailments: from stress
even renal colic. Upon returning home, and despite the, let's say, tortuous nature of the matter, one finds oneself
it feels genuinely clean, as if we have suddenly been freed from a great weight
whose very existence we were unaware of.

I arrived early at an address in the La Molina district. How was it possible that in this
high-class neighborhood, surrounded by walls and gates, outside to officiate a ritual to summon
The invisible forces of nature? It had to be a scam. To finish destroying
my idyllic idea of an authentic, magical, and selfless shaman, I have paid the equivalent of
about 20 euros for something that, according to all testimonies, is priceless.
But I am here and there is no turning back. I only have a slight discomfort in my stomach and
a huge desire to leave here instead of continuing to participate in this farce. I don't see
nothing yet. The stomach pain increases. Some begin to vomit. They say that after
From the vomit, visions arise. I still saw nothing.

First news

I had heard about ayahuasca at university, always under a halo of mystery.

Before trying it, I used to take all that as a joke. One of my best friends from that time
She drank since she was a child. Her mother is an anthropologist and a healer would come every so often.
to officiate a session in her own room. My friend used to arrive at, for example, our class
about Kantian philosophy and tell me that the night before he had turned into a leopard,

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I had flown over medieval Europe or discovered that I spoke Mandarin Chinese. I used to
asking him to invite me to participate as if I were asking for something as simple as a
I can't forget her phrase: 'I don't think you're ready yet,' as if it were about
of something transcendent. According to her, taking it could dramatically change your life. It was not
a drug for escapists, not for the brave. Apparently, it was not taken just to see
snakes and flashes of colors.

Later I found out that many people used it to explore their inner selves, to detect
through visions, their traumas and problems, like a plant psychotherapist. To
it seemed that ayahuasca provoked a state of such expansion of consciousness equivalent to
self-analysis. It was a way to heal the mind and the soul, if it is true that they can be cured.
There are also people who started to believe in God based on their experience with the
plant. A woman told me that if religion had spoken to her about God, ayahuasca did.
he had presented in person. A man assured to take care of pending matters
with the souls of their deceased relatives. Some saw distant and unknown ones
ancestors. According to various testimonies, drinking it allows one to travel long distances and
diverse epochs, crossing the universe, the personal and the cosmic. There are those to whom ayahuasca
has revealed to them their mission in this world and the faces of their children before they are born, those who have
discovered that they could speak in another language, solve trigonometric formulas, or sing
good.

They all had a common revelation, they had all heard a voice that responded to their
questions. What revelations awaited me? Had the moment arrived? Was I
Ready? At least I was very eager to ask the ayahuasca a couple of things.
I went to the house of La Molina. But on that occasion, the plant and I would not connect.
except for some distant little lights and a bit of nausea, the feeling resembled that of the
marijuana. Disillusioned, I left at dawn.

With the botany book

Ayahuasca is a substance attributed with virtues of sharpening the

imagination and telepathic powers, which indigenous healers use to
search for lost objects, especially, they say, "bodies and souls". In the Peruvian jungle the
they call her 'little mother ayahuasca', because she is believed to have feminine wisdom and a
maternal quality. In Quechua, ayahuasca means 'rope of the dead', which alludes to
its power to connect us with another dimension. Its botanical species is the Banisteriopsis.
caapi can be found in the Amazon region: in Peru, Brazil, and Colombia.
It is not true that it is a single plant; the concoction known as ayahuasca is the mixture of
two plants: the vine (ayahuasca) and another medicinal plant - which could be chacruna or toé -
which contains the substance called dimethyltryptamine (DMT), the same that produces the
night dream. The healer cuts good portions of each and boils them until
get that thick drink.

To talk about it, it is preferable to use the term visionary substance or entheogen.
(term that means: that generates God within me), instead of describing it as
simply hallucinogenic or psychedelic. Its ingestion does not alter the senses, but

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produce states of ecstasy at the same time as an intuition of the deep and transcendent. Of
In Brazil, there are three syncretic religions that regularly use ayahuasca.
in their liturgies as a means to access the divine. In the indigenous communities of the
In the jungle of Peru, shamans drink ayahuasca to detect and cure diseases.
They assure that the causes appear to them in visions and also the cure. Hundreds of
years and without having read a single book on botany, the natives know the properties of the
plants and their infinite combinations.

The effects of ayahuasca have also been tested in addiction treatments. In the
In Peru, there is a therapeutic community where dependence on cocaine or the
ecstasy, with ayahuasca. It is also used with amazing results to combat
fears, anxieties, and acute depressions; as a supplement in therapies for patients of
cancer, and recently in AIDS patients, since, as is known, the immune system
is closely linked to a person's emotions and spirituality.

And how are telepathic phenomena, communication with ancestors explained?

feeling of union with the universe? Jeremy Narby, Swedish anthropologist, found that the
the double serpent-shaped form of the vine matched that of DNA, so he launched
the hypothesis that ayahuasca allowed glimpsing the particles of DNA with all the
genetic information about our origin and, apparently, about our destiny.

Letters of the yagé

During the days of my first experience, I read The Yagé Letters, the letters that William Burroughs wrote to him.
sends in 1953 to his disciple, the poet Allen Ginsberg, from Panama, Ecuador, Colombia and
Peru, where he recounts his journey through the Amazon jungle in search of ayahuasca, known
In Colombia, such as yagé. Burroughs talks about going after 'the final high', after seeking it.
failing in heroin, marijuana, and cocaine. The same book mentions the
the author's response to Howl, written seven years later, from Peru, reporting on
his own visions and terrors with the same plant and asking it for advice.

Ginsberg writes of his vision of the 'Great Being': 'I felt like a snake vomiting the
a universe or a jíbaro with a tooth headdress that would vomit upon understanding the Assassination of the
Universe, my imminent death, the imminent death of all. (…) The entire hut seemed
stripe of spectral presences suffering transfigurations upon contact with a Unique Thing
that was our destiny and that sooner or later it would have to kill us." Ginsberg breaks into
weeping while remembering his mother, who died far away, perhaps suffering, and decides, in an act
revolutionary for your life, having children.

Too horrible for me, still, to accept the fact of total communication with
let's say the whole world, an eternal seraph male and female at the same time, and I a lost soul
seeking help," wrote the beatnik. His experience, it seems, was full of dread.
I know people whom the voice of ayahuasca has played pranks on or told jokes to.
very good, but in the same session he showed his dead children. As he tells him
shaman to Ginsberg, 'the more one saturates with ayahuasca, the deeper one goes: one visits'
the Moon, we see the dead, God, we see the spirits of the trees.

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I also wanted to go deep. I wasn't going to give up at the first attempt. According to the
understood, I could only achieve that in the jungle. Taking the plant to the city is to take it out of its
ritual context, and doing it without the protection and knowledge of a shaman is madness.
A friend of mine, a young poet, burned himself alive. He locked himself in a room, tied himself to the
bed and soaked her body with gasoline; then she set herself on fire. They say that in a session she
the end of his life had appeared to him, which entailed a mission: the plant had ordered him
that it would catch fire on a twentieth of December, in the middle of the summer solstice, time of
changes and rebirths. The truth is that my friend had been drinking alone for a while, without the
guide of a healer. In his last days, he had a strange expression that seemed to all of us
of happiness.

But the white man who ventures into the remote thicket of the South American mountain in
search for the powerful psychotropic plant is already a romantic idea. More and more, the
shamans move to big cities, they earn in dollars or euros and arrive by plane
with a bottle of ayahuasca under the arm to heal diseases, almost always required
by wealthy people who have already tried everything. If Burroughs had been a beatnik.
since the new millennium, he would never have moved his ass from the filthy sofa in his room.
junkie.

Shamans and bad witches

The ayahuasca came to the city, but I went to the jungle, at least for a few days, like
Burroughs or Ginsberg. For me it's easier, I live in Peru. A flight of an hour and
the media drops me right in Pucallpa, the paradise of ayahuasqueros. I'm only worried about the
warnings about shamans. It is known that a shaman is the ceremonial
intermediary between the plant and us, someone who evokes the mystical trance to heal and
to predict. Unlike the white coat doctors, the traditional healer considers the
internal drama of each person. He is the one who travels to the realm of the invisible, invents stories
symbolic to explain the world, organizes the ritual to access the superhuman plane and
invoke the energies that are making us sick.

Perhaps because of the discourse of comparative religions, we sometimes forget that shamans
they are people like us. Someone told me that the most famous shamans have been
absorbed by the system and provide ayahuasca in luxurious European hotels. There are many who
they move to the city, abandoning their women; they get drunk and live a contrary life
to ayahuasca. Its spirits have been contaminated and can no longer be a good help for
no one.

But what is truly distressing is the figure of the 'malero', a kind of healer who has fallen into
the dark side, a bad wizard in summary. Due to pure ignorance, one could find themselves cat by
hare, or worse: demon for hare. Of course, not all shamans are like that. To be
shaman, the majority undergo their mystical transmutation by entering the forest for
months, undertakes very strict diets to learn the powers of each plant. In the
healing sessions are sacrificed, and feels pain, and allows himself to be devoured by the spirits of animals
ferocious while in a trance. I have been advised to look for Rosendo.

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Marín, an unknown healer in the environment whose spirit is pure and radiates.
kindness. Will Rosendo be that character from the Amazonian legends, will he be my wizard?
green?

About red earth

My period has come, with my luggage ready and the ticket purchased. I've been told that it doesn't happen.
Can you take ayahuasca during menstruation? According to healers, they are energies that
they collide with each other. This "polluting waste" disrupts the plant. And I thought that the
ayahuasca had a feminine gender. I have finally decided to go. I arrived in Pucallpa today.
Friday afternoon. Pucallpa is 475 kilometers northeast of Lima and is the capital of
Ucayali department. Its name means 'reddish land' in Shipibo, the dialect.
from the area. I am about to agree with everyone who told me that this was the
the ugliest city in Peru: a kind of large market that one must stay away from several
kilometers to notice the horizons of forests and rivers typical of the Amazon. The air is indeed
quite jungle-like: hot, invasive and sticky. I settle into a simple hostel and I
I am heading towards the port of Yarina. My idea is to find Rosendo in the native community of
San Francisco de Yarinacocha -where most of the shamans live- that same day,
interview him and propose the session for tomorrow night.

I try to call Rosendo at the only community phone in the village, but the lines were
blocked. It's almost six in the evening when I find out that boats no longer leave towards
San Francisco. Someone says: let's hit the road!, but at the stops the drivers
they sleep soundly on their tillers. No one wants to take me. A few meters away, appears
the cause of so much indolence: the desolate image of the enormous wounded tin animal
death in the middle of the road. A few days ago, due to the rain, the bridge fell that
connects Yarina and San Francisco. I cannot ignore the symbolism of the fact: the idea of
bridge, rope, connection to the other side, defines ayahuasca. And the bridge was broken!

Resigned to return to the hotel, I take one last look at the boats arriving from San
Francisco. A man shouts "ride, ride, boat ride through ecological areas", and, for me
Surprise, the next thing he says is: "Consult with shamans." Now I had before me the
last stop of the drug tourist, trying to sell the perfect excursion that included taking
ayahuasca with a native shaman. He knows them all. Except, of course, for Rosendo. He says that the
The famous shaman, Guillermo Arévalo, has his house in Yarina. You just have to find them.
I take a motorcycle that serves as a taxi. It could be a night without ayahuasca but with trails.
interviews with famous shamans. The taxi driver knows where the bothersome brothers live. I touch
several times uselessly and I am about to withdraw when a truck
Cherokee goes out to the step and stops at the door. A beautiful mestizo woman gets out and the
The taxi driver informs me that she is Guillermo's wife. She had passed by coincidentally.
pick up some things from that house, as they were not living there these days, but at their shelter in
I am Pasto. At this point, it no longer seems like just a streak of good luck. Some power (?
ayahuasca? (a sorcerer?) attracts me. The woman agrees to receive me, but adds that I will only have
an hour to interview him because the teacher will start a work session at nine.
Tonight will be hard as she has to treat a relative who is suffering from cancer, she confessed.
With the same taxi driver, I make a nine-kilometer detour from the road to the shelter.

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The driver's comments focus on the Cherokee given by a gringo, and on that
road built exclusively to reach the shelter, which "surely has cost you a
"Mineral". Upon arrival, a lantern light comes forth. It is him. With a serene smile he greets me.
to pass without asking questions. There is no doubt now: either a spirit has told him that he would arrive or his
A woman has called him on the mobile. Matter of faith.

Visions of hell

Guillermo is a dazzling being: he has studied in Brazil, he is a traveling shaman who

travels the world giving seminars, and has even acted as himself in several movies.
Swedish and Dutch women. At the end of the conversation, she invites me to participate in the ceremony.
Not following the original plan fills me with fear. I try to listen to any intuition that comes to me.
let me know if this is the place, if this is the shaman, but nothing is clear. Finally, I accept. And
I enter a cabin that, according to Guillermo, has been built in the place where a fell.
ray. At one end is the sick person in a kind of large cradle suspended in the air by
bed linens and completely covered with sheets.

I don't know whether to mention my menstruating condition to the shaman. By now I

it seriously worries that if the woman insists on being part of the ritual with the
menstruation can harm the power of the shaman and attract negative energies. It can even
he says that the shaman can perceive if the girl has not had the decency to tell it.
these guilt and sufferings, but already seated around the ritual table, I approach Mr.
Guillermo whispered in his ear: teacher, I am on my period, can we continue?
the shaman puts on a sour face, then nods and lets me decide. I sit down and I...
I prepare for the trip. I didn't know what was awaiting me.

That night I saw with horror a spectacle of dead animals, decomposed fetuses and
theatrical violations. The sick person has poked her head out from among the white sheets and I have
I believed I saw in your face the visage of someone dear, who looks at me with cruelty and reproach.
Is it a consequence of my menstruation? Someone next to me won't stop crying like a madman, and
is so close to me that I think it is the cry of an aborted baby. They chase me for a
devastated city, I try to escape by jumping over puddles filled with shattered bodies and
bleeding. The Cashinahua ethnic group believes that fear is good for getting rid of the negative and
to heal, but I couldn't understand how this could have anything positive. I don't know if I am
conditioned by everything I have heard, but this could be an evil sorcerer. I have been
attracted by the darkness.

I search for the shaman, but he has disappeared. I think I will never get out of here. The hours go by and
it does not dawn. I can only think about black magic. I imagine the cabin as a coffin. We
it's sealed, I'm sure. We are dead and death is that desperate insomnia in
a more desperate black eternity. It's a bad trip, without a doubt, like flirting with the
madness. Suddenly, some white and bright figures, moving among the trees, make me
to think that I'm still in the dream, but no, I'm with my eyes open, and they must be the
blessed spirits of the forest announcing the dawn. As soon as it lightens I rush to the
door. Obsessed with the idea of the coffin-cabin, I almost had a heart attack when

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Behind the door appears a huge black dog barking aggressively and blocking me.
the step.

The jungle television

In this new dawn, I am the last to wake up. Rosendo Marín's wife makes
Clay dishes, the daughters breastfeed the grandchildren and the children chase lizards. I leave from the
mosquito net like a white womb. I am exhausted but happy. At Rosendo's house,
curled up among the members of her family, I have awoken from my last journey of
ayahuasca. On my third time with the sacred plant, I have exchanged the opulent shelter for the
the modestest hut in San Francisco, a hill without electricity planted with plants
visionaries. This is where I have arrived fleeing from the sorcerer and looking for the healer. I had the
a feeling that Rosendo was keeping the medicine for my imaginary ailments. The
the second trip had left me more beyond than here. They say that ayahuasca is the television of
the jungle. And I needed to change the channel before turning it off. To go to bed at least
with a banal image.

As soon as I landed in San Francisco, I was warned not to waste time.

looking for him, that Rosendo was drunk somewhere on the island. I remembered the bridge
destroyed, the telephone lines blocked, the detour of nine kilometers. Now my
the shaman was a drunk! A strange energy had prevented by all means that
It will arrive here. Although it seems incredible, it usually happens among shamans: they steal each other's clientele.
battles of supernatural powers. Rosendo calls them "damages". But he wasn't drunk. More
gently rocked her youngest daughter in a hammock. Clearly, that image on the television struck me.
it seemed like the end and the beginning of something, a fleeting sign of irreverence towards death. I thought of
the situations that await us without us, poor mortals devoid of magic,
we can neither guess it nor prepare for it. I thought this peace had been waiting for me since the
beginning. I received my dose of ayahuasca. I closed my eyes without fear.

Finally it is happening: I have the exact impression that my arteries and veins are stretching almost
until breaking, branching and bending like climbing plants, it is the luminous
highway on which I am about to slide. I can see my body, the fragile but
constant beating of my internal organs, a music as primitive as the first song
from the cradle. I feel like I am in front of a computer that is showing me the connection of my most...
hidden, now bathed in a golden green liquid, by a new energy that me
I travel from one end to the other. Such a degree of self-awareness brings me joy.
endearing and immediately a powerful guilt for having doubted the healer. Me
I regret being always like this, for suspecting everything and everyone, for my little faith, my tiny
hope, my pedantic sarcasm, my overflowing cynicism. I cry for that such ugly defect that
It is pride, that illusion of having everything under control. When I am scolding myself
lately and hating myself, something inside me says: but what an ugly flaw it is
self-pity, how paralyzing; and I decide to forgive myself and, even better, I decide to laugh at myself
same to laughter.

I went from being a superwoman to seeing myself as a seed, my modesty is such that it almost makes me
disappear. I have never felt so fulfilled, without censorship, without disapproving of myself at every step.

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In addition, the release is accompanied by a feeling of physical well-being. Suddenly, I
It is clear why some say that taking ayahuasca is like psychoanalysis.
instantaneous and accelerated. A sensation of peace dominates me, the peace, I suppose, that comes from the
knowledge, because at this moment I believe I understand some mystery. I can acknowledge that
There is something greater than me and I am a part of that something. I am awake: I keep listening to the
birds, the chants of the shaman and the sounds made by my companions next to me. It's the best
similar to daydreaming. Everything turns blue. They say that this color indicates the arrival of the
spirits. I talk to my family and friends, with the living and with the dead. I ask them for forgiveness.
to all the people I have betrayed or whom I have not loved enough.
As I meditate on this, I hear for the first time a very ancient voice, which seems
having been ignored for years Is it the voice of ayahuasca or my own voice? A voice that
answers questions, tough yet at the same time sweet and comforting like a mother's voice.
I can ask you about my present, my past, and my future and you answer me, for me.
disconcertment, with all kinds of incredible news. I begin to feel weightless, light.
My mind, perhaps my soul?, can float until it situates itself over my body, as in the
ghost movies. I am sure that he can leave forever and let go of that burden.
of body, which right now still writhes with strangeness and cold. I see Rosendo
singing beautiful comforting songs, blowing smoke from tobacco into my head
protector, a great green wizard tackling each of my ghosts.

Epilogue

I respect the people who appear on television explaining how God saved their marriages.
in ruins or freed them from an incurable disease, but I always felt skeptical towards
those who claimed to have seen the light. And the so-called trip reports of consumers of
Hallucinogenic plants generally have that smell of revealed truth and balance of a book.
self-help. Instead of encouraging me, they usually desensitize me. That's why, after
I drank ayahuasca, I didn't want to tell anyone. Only now can I say it: it's true.

The most incredible thing is the conviction, which no one will be able to take away from me, of having been a witness to the
absolute, of the lost mystery of nature, perhaps of the mystery of our origin. By
there are those who say that the ayahuasca trance is a simulation of one's own
death. But unlike European rationalism, which sees death as a terrible end,
the culture of ayahuasqueros invites us to see it as a principle, as a change of
energy. Death is good news about the world that awaits us beyond life.
A journey for which ayahuasca seems to prepare us. At this point, I am no longer afraid and
I hope that Ginsberg, wherever he is, doesn't either.

When the narrator of the story "The Aleph" by Jorge Luis Borges goes down to the basement of a house
and everything appears to him, absolutely everything that exists in the world, all the places from
all the angles, he says: "I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tidal waves, and armies; I saw all the
ants that are on the ground (...). I saw the circulation of my dark blood." Those lines
I kept turning over in my head trying to explain to myself what had happened to me in the days that
they followed the experience. I thought: "Borges must have tried it. There is no way he hasn't done it.
"The Aleph" written 'without taking it.' Although it is possible to think that he arrived at that vision to
through imagination. For some writers, it is not necessary to experience it to write it.

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Even more so if throughout the centuries the Totality with a capital letter has not only been a recurring
literary fantasy, but also philosophical, mystical, and ultimately human. For some, the
literature is like Borges' basement, the place of revelations, the door to the everything
immeasurable. For others, it is Christianity, Zen Buddhism, Deepak Chopra, the Internet, or
the ayahuasca.

Yo, daughter of Marxists, never baptized, called "heretic" at six years old by my own.
grandmother, guest of stone at the masses for the deceased, I found an unknown dimension
who had dwelled inside me forever. How could someone who saw nothing suddenly
Did he believe he saw everything?