I have been working with plant medicine for more than three years now and I posted about my first Ayahuasca experience in Peru. I received mostly great reactions from friends. I also got some negative feedback and lost a few friends over it.
I have also decided to restart my YouTube channel for those of you who like videos so here is today’s video and you can subscribe to my YouTube channel if you like.
What you find online and in books about plant medicine is mostly misleading, scary and poorly documented. It is most of the time the exact opposite of my own experience. I know some of my friends and family are worried about me and either trying to make me stop my progress or simply disappeared as friends. I guess this means they aren’t real friends if they cannot have some compassion, patience and understanding for my work. I will not have any hard feelings if you decide to stop following what I publish or take some distance.
I will just hope that you look at the positive changes. Each time I drank a cup or did any of the many medicines I tried I felt better or got improved as a human being. I have stopped drinking entirely for nearly two months. It is new and hard (being French I really like my glass of wine) but I intend to keep going and also hold the other parts of the dieta I learned recently. I hope my friends can watch the improvements instead of focusing on the negatives.
I am in now way suggesting anyone should try or recommending anything. I share my own personal experience as I think the world would be better if everyone would try at least once in their lives. I am aware of the contradiction “I do not suggest you try” but at the same time I am convinced absolutely everyone should.
The tribes I worked with live until 110 years old without the common cancer, Alzheimer and other widespread diseases of our western world. The older adults from the tribes look 10 years younger than the western older people I know at the same age and have a much more fast and vivid brain. They start giving ayahuasca to kids very early regardless of the fact that the human brain keeps evolving until age 27. I have played and talked with many children in the tribes and they are among the happiest and best young human beings I have had the pleasure to meet.
I call it work because there is not much entertaining about it. It involves deep introspection, recollection of past trauma all the way up to childhood, vomiting and other purging, intense body reactions that can lead to loss of consciousness and some of the “medicines” are actually dangerous if they are not applied by highly experienced masters from tribes that learned them over generations. Who you do it with is more important than what you actually take.
If you read and listen to me please take it as my own personal experience and keep all the critical mind necessary to understand that your own experience might be very different if you try. Each time I drank a cup of ayahuasca I had myself a totally different experience. It can be wonderful and the best feeling and visions in the world (my first cup) as very dark, scary and uncomfortable (my second cup one day after) that makes you never want to do it again. Yet, I did it again and have always been really happy to see the positive changes both in my physical body and my mind. I would say the most impressive effects are on your mind and spirit and how it makes you calmer, less needy and generally happier. I am feeling great and very light.
There are major risks and basics to know if you decide to start drinking the medicine. Who you do it with. Ask the background of the “shaman”. What’s his lineage? Is if from or originating from an indigenous tribe? How long has he or she spent learning the techniques and prayers? How long has he or she spent in the Amazon forest? Where are you going to do it? It can be wonderful as well outside of the forest but I would highly recommend to do it in nature, the environment is very important. How many ceremonies has this person lead and how many people? Which friends do you know have worked with him or her? How was their experience? I do not know of any major incidents of anyone drinking ayahuasca ever. All the issues I know about are either with “shamans” that had insufficient training or way worse, that something else other than the two plants composing the ayahuasca brew has been added to it. Anything except water added to the brew can be dangerous or even cause death.
Before considering drinking ayahuasca I would recommend at least a week with no alcohol, drugs of any kind including from plants (weed is forbidden in many tribes for example), no red meat or no meat except chicken, no sugar if possible including fruits and no coffee. The absolute “no no no” is any anti depressant of any kind. Any medication affecting the brain should be stopped months before. More surprisingly, the masters I worked with also ask no sex (including with yourself) before and after ceremonies (a week before and after is a good practice). Sex they say is the most powerful energy we have and we need to keep it for ourselves to go through what the medicine will drive us to. Tribes also believe that each time you have sex with partner you carry their negative energy and that should be avoided close to a ceremony. They say that Ayahuasca is very exclusive and “she” (always presented as feminine energy or mother nature) doesn’t work well with other energies. Students in long term dietas say they are “married to ayahuasca” and observe the dieta for a year or more. It is highly recommend to observe the same diet at least a week after. I have been on the dieta for two months as I write this and intend to keep going.
I have friends who told me they would like to try but avoid the ceremony around it. I would say that the ceremony is even more important than trying any medicine. Masters use powerful prayers and techniques to prepare the brew, the group taking it and protecting them. It generally comes with wonderful songs and instrumental music that enhances or even starts visions. What you see will be very different depending on who you do it with. I would absolutely never consider just “drinking a cup” without a proper ceremony and master with me.
I also recommend checking the legality of the substance you are thinking about in the place you are going to do the ceremony. Most countries where the Amazon forest belongs such as Brazil or Peru legalized it or tolerate it in ceremony, religious or medical use. This is one of the main reasons why I went many times to the Amazon forest. Many countries unfortunately never did the homework to understand the difference between plant medicine and drugs.
Alcohol is generally impossible to find in the Amazon tribe villages I stayed in. There is little sugar and fat (no butter, no milk) and they often joke at soda and processed food as “poison from the western world”. It’s a cultural difference. We eat and drink sugar, milk, alcohol without thinking about it as a drug or something bad for us and without thinking about the millions of sick people in our world.
Ayahuasca is known to be absolutely not addictive and in fact helping stop any addiction to any substance (it helped me completely reduce and then stop my alcohol consumption). Some drug addicts take it once and never touch their drugs ever again.
Ayahuasca also self regulates the quantity you take. If you take too much or there is too much in your body you will just get rid of it through vomiting or going to the bathroom. The more you take the more difficult it gets to drink more. Your body knows what to take and it is very interesting to see the shamans offer more medicine during the long ceremony nights and absolutely no-one is willing to take more. Most “shamans” will also feel you and know exactly what to give you. If your first cup is only filled in with a third of a glass, just accept it and go slow. See what it does. It generally is safe to try a little and see what it does as it is very powerful. If you feel good and want to have some more, go for it with the same caution. There is no “over-dose” possible as your body will reject it by itself.
Feeling bad during ceremonies is part of the “work” and it is the medicine either fixing something physically or spiritually. Accept it and go through it focusing on the fact that you will get better. A cup lasts two to four hours generally and there are no side effects after or recovery time like too much alcohol can do. You might just be tired and sleep before waking up feeling great and full of energy which has always been my experience.
With these words of caution, I will share how incredibly healing my experience has been and how it changed me.
Thanks for reading my words of caution, my next post will be a detailed story about my life changing first cup in Peru in the Amazon forest, almost exactly three years ago.
Notes-I asked if you could introduce yourself in my previous note but comments are turned-off on substack. I will post a dedicated conversation soon.-if you’re in San Francisco please join Erin Granat’s preview of her new documentary about… death! It’s on Monday October 28 at 7pm at The Laundry 26th Street in SF and I will be there. Say hi if you come! Erin was first to introduce me to the Yawanawa tribe three years ago so she is very special to me. -currently reading: When Plants Dream: Ayahuasca, Amazonian Shamanism and the Global Psychedelic Renaissance
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