Ayahuasca-inspired art by Pablo Amaringo When it hits me, the room has already gone dark. Behind my closed eyelids, a scene unfolds. From out of the darkness comes a light--pale, glimmering, dancing in the velvet depths of the night. I am following a deer through an underground forest. Its horns arch, and from them grow tiny flowers and vines that curl upward in tendrils. Small white lights that look like illuminated raindrops hang on the ends of each one. Everything is very quiet, and my own breath moves through me like a soft, gentle voice. I am aware, on some level, that this thing has begun. * * *  Let's rewind. We'll go back two hours. I am sitting in this room for the very first time, talking with a circle of people who are describing to me what my first experience with ayahuasca might be like. They use words like "sacrament" and "medicine." They talk about "the Mother." They tell us that there is a "Quiet Room" if we need to be pulled away from the group. I am beginning to feel frightened, and a little strange. I wonder if I'm going to vomit. I wonder how deep this will go. This all seems kind of religious. They start talking about hydrating before the events of the evening get started. "Is drinking water during the ceremony not allowed?" I ask. I drink a lot of water. "Oh, no," says one woman with soft eyes. "It will just make you purge."  Ok, no water for me. * * *  Gaia, Alex Grey We have to go back farther now, a little deeper into the past. Just a few years back, I hadn't done psychedelics. I smoked pot very occasionally, and I mostly hated its effects. My go-to mind altering substance was a fancy cocktail. But I was curious. I'd dated people who had a lot of experience and who told me I should try hallucinogens. But the rumor mill that has swirled around psychedelics since the 1960s was still churning ferociously, and I imagined the worst case scenarios. What if I lost control? Forgot who I was? Slammed through a window? Or, maybe the scariest one: what if I had a terrible experience that I could never undo, accessed some part of myself that should stay locked up? Plus, I'd never had great luck finding drugs, and who knew what people were passing off as psychedelics these days.  But I've always been a seeker. Of knowledge, adventure, new experiences. And things like this have a way of unfolding that, in retrospect, can feel a lot like fate. I came across Jeremy Narby's book, The Cosmic Serpent, in which he details his own experiences with ayahuasca from what seemed like a fairly objective, scientific perspective (Narby has a PhD in Anthropology). I bought the book and read it, fascinated. But towards the end I put it down. I can't remember why. Maybe because it started to get a little too spiritual. Besides a highly individual neopagan practice I developed in my adolescent years and then abandoned, I had always been a fairly non-religious person, and a childhood in the South made me wary of anything with a whiff of God in it.  My interest in psychedelics stayed alive, though, as I seemed to attract people who knew quite a bit about it. One boyfriend experimented with smart drugs and introduced me to Erowid. A friend did mushrooms and said it was the darkest experience of her life (and told me I was too fragile to "handle" it). Another boyfriend had lived a punk-rock lifestyle that seemed totally in line with psychic experimentation. We would smoke weed and watch movies that seemed suddenly very deep (watching movies is about the only thing I can hande when I smoke weed). After I finished school, I met a fellow who had an affinity for psychedelics, which he used to help him with an alcohol addiction. The idea of using these substances as a treatment was new to me, but as I began to look into it, I realized that psychedelic drugs have been undeniably shown to help people with addictions, trauma, and even the fear of death.  Then I did mushrooms, and those doors of perception blew wide, baby. I became acutely aware of the sentience of all things and my networked place in the cosmos. I listened to music and saw colors, images, whole worlds. There were faces in every cloud and tree, smiling at me, but in a particularly impish way. I had the feeling that things could turn dark, but my partner and I had put a lot of thought into "Set and Setting" and the dose I had taken was relatively small, so I never felt too worried.  The experience changed my life. It was as if I had finally been able to glimpse the full, intricate beauty of this world and my place in it. And while part of me wondered whether it had all just been a trick of my mind, another part of me realized that my mind was just as much a part of this world as everything else within and around me, and this substance had touched it in a profound way. I started thinking about ayahuasca again. Then, I met someone who had done it. Who did it. Regularly. We became very close, and eventually I received an invitation. "You should do it," he said. "I'll put you in touch with the right people." I said yes. There was an interview process. And then I got an email. I drove out into the countryside, the Blue Ridge Mountains flanking me, holding me in a kind of embrace. And then, I was there. * * *  Ayahuasca is a Hispanicized Quechua word that is often translated as "the vine of death" or "the vine of the soul," because taking it is thought to bring you closer to your ancestors--and to death itself. It's a plant-based substance that has been used in indigenous culture in the Amazon rainforest well before their first encounter with Spanish and Portuguese missionaries in the 16th century. Ayahuasca and Chacruna cooking. Source: Awkipuma, Wikimedia Commons. It's actually a mixture of two plants. The ayahuasca plant itself (Banisteriopsis caapi) is the primary ingredient and is where the combination gets its name. While any substances in the mixture are considered sacred, ayahuasca itself, from my understanding, is "the sacrament." Ayahuasca is also believed to be medicinal, and its purgative qualities are thought to be healing.  Ayahuasca is usually mixed with other plants that contain N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a strong hallucinogenic compound that the body typically metabolizes relatively quickly (I'll talk more about my experiences with pure DMT another time). When I have taken ayahuasca, the DMT-containing plant has been chacruna (Psychotria viridis). While ayahuasca is thought to be the primary plant in the experience, chacruna brings on the visions that are often also essential to the trip. Preparation of ayahuasca. Source: Heah, the English Language Wikipedia. Ayahuasca is actually a MAOI-inhibitor. There's a lot of technical stuff I could go into here, but the important thing is that this fact allows the DMT to be orally active and makes the DMT experience last for several hours, stretching out what is normally a 10-15 minute trip. The indigenous peoples who use ayahuasca say that this combination, which would be almost impossible to stumble upon randomly, was given to them by the plants themselves. The plants are cooked together and are boiled down into a concentrated brew which is ingested by ceremony participants. Then the games begin.  * * *  Prepared ayahuasca. Source: Sascha Grabow from the Wikimedia Commons Opinion on this varies, but for me, ayahusaca never tastes good. Imagine boiling down tree bits with mud for several hours and then drinking that. You're supposed to try to keep it down for at least 30 minutes to ensure that you got enough.  Ceremonies are led by a shaman who has been trained in the indigenous methods of preparation and ritual. I admit that I was a little surprised and suspicious to discover that the shaman who would be leading our ceremony was American. As soon as I saw him, though, my doubts fell away. This man was serene, kind, and very, very present. Some people just fade out of their own lives, losing themselves in various substances, practices, even other people. This guy was, simply, completely there. He made a point to speak with every new person, offering words of support and encouragement. When I finally went up to drink, I still felt terrified--but I was also reassured. I went back to my seat, which was actually a blow-up camping mattress over a yoga mat, covered in blankets and with a kind of ridiculous number of pillows. I settled in, made sure I could reach my bucket (oh, my bucket) easily from where I was, and tried to breathe.  To be continued...Source: Shamanic Ayahuasa Circles