Four phases with ayahuasca

Rapture, breaking, healing and surviving.

This isn’t another post about how ayahuasca shows you the way but you have to do the work yourself. That’s true but you’ve probably heard that one. Nor is it a post from someone who’s drunk many hundreds of times. I’ve drunk a fair bit but there are plenty of westerners who’ve sat in ceremony on countless occasions and possibly have more insight, it’s hard to compare. Locals as well of course but you won’t hear their voice in your social feed. Also, many locals aren’t drinking like we do. I visited an ashaninka tribe deep in the jungle where the medicine is central to their culture, and the bruja (witch) I met had “only” drunk eight times in her life. Just to give it some context, that’s their normal. It’s not a score they keep track of.

All I can share is my experience drinking roughly weekly for a couple of years and what it’s meant for me and how I work. I haven’t sat in ceremony for a year and a half and I’m still integrating, so it’s a moving target, but here’s where I was and where I am right now. I’m referring to ayahuasca here as ‘it’ for accessibility but want to call out that on a shamanic level, ayahuasca is a ‘she’ – a feminine mother, or grandmother spirit, an anaconda on the astral plane, and an intelligent force of nature with her own intentions and wisdom beyond what I can tap into. So this is my best take on it.

Phase 1 - Rapture

Initially the medicine opened my eyes to other modes of consciousness and existence I’d glimpsed a few times before with mushrooms but this was much more astral. From the outset I found myself ‘flying through space’ having all kinds of encounters with different ‘beings’ and being both terrified and fascinated by what I was met with. It may have been something to do with the shaman I was working with, or my own priorities from a broader perspective, but I didn’t get anything about my childhood traumas or shadow attributes. I got aliens, dark entities, deities, and high-dimensional states. The work I was doing didn’t immediately seem to pertain to my immediate problems in this life, rather, it seemed to be working at a much deeper and broader level of who ‘I’ am. It was hard to understand if it was ‘real’ or if it was ‘all in my mind’ or if there’s even any difference. I still think about that.

It made it hard to integrate any of it into daily life. And, as a lot of the aspects were quite flattering, it started to make me think I must be somehow special. Meanwhile, the intensifying kundalini energy in my system started expressing as some pretty wild symptoms – I was bursting into spontaneous mudras and raising my arms up automatically to the heavens regularly throughout the day and I could feel the shakti energy of the Goddess moving my body in dance-like motions as I’d try and take a simple walk to the shops. I was being subtly bolstered by my shaman as well in a way that looked like ‘keeping me in check’ but was actually the opposite. I tried to catch the inflation and track it, but the ego loves that stuff and the sense that I was somehow ‘better than’ was nevertheless real. I started wearing long, flowing goddess dresses and probably acting like a jerk. Ayahuasca amplifies whatever’s going on to help you purge it. Ego-inflation is a common phase amongst people who work with the medicine. A lot get stuck there.

Phase 2 - Breaking

Then phase two hit. The medicine still didn’t give me much childhood stuff. It gave me blessings. It bestowed me with magic. And it gave me power. Maybe more power than my system was ready to handle at that point. It kept expanding my consciousness at such a speed that I could feel my body and brain trying to respond physically in realtime to the shifts. Giving teachings that would take years to integrate. I was overwhelmed and didn’t realise it.

This coincided with the crash as my shaman and the community decided to start taking me down a peg or five. One later admitted I was so ‘shiny’ then. That quickly changed as I spiralled into self-doubt and anxiety. I was being actively ostracised, and my concerns and questions were systematically invalidated and gaslit. I had no words and no framework for what was going on. It would take me another year to understand all that.

Instead, I started gaslighting myself. I went heavily into ‘shadow work’, applying the full force of my 12th house virgo sun conjunct mercury retrograde brain into working out what was ‘wrong with me’. My nervous system started acting up. I’d jump and scream at the slightest unpredicted noise – the slamming of a door, someone unexpected popping up in front of me. I stopped speaking to anyone and locked myself in my room, meditating. I thought it was the kundalini. I thought I was purging all my ‘darkness’. I thought I was doing it right and I just had to ‘go through it’. With hindsight, in some ways I needed this phase too. And in a lot of ways I really didn’t.

Phase 3 - Healing

At some point I just couldn’t continue any more and moved away. I took a break and then started working with a new shaman. The energy of the ceremonies changed and finally I was actually confronting the wounds from my infancy, my childhood, and understanding what their impact on my life actually was. Along with my newly-developed trauma. Ayahuasca made me feel it all. The suffering of my life. She held my hand through it. And slowly, it stopped being a broken state. My relationship to the medicine began to settle into something more grounded and collaborative. I started to learn about narcissistic dynamics and I started standing up for myself. Then my life took me out of Peru and I continued with the healing work without it, moving through one emotion at a time, allowing the work to reshape me as I travelled through Asia.

Phase 4 - Incorporation

These experiences have made me into someone new. I don’t know if it’s ‘who I was meant to be’ or if I’m more the outcome of circumstances – some fortunate, some unfortunate – but what I do know is it’s given me more of an understanding of what works and what doesn’t in terms of holding someone through a strong process like that. And how there are so many traps.

Calmer, and able to reflect, I can see that the medicine has given me many tools for working as a reader and healer. I learned to anchor myself in the high-states rollercoaster ride in a way that means I can be with high intensity without being blown around by it. I learned to stay steady so that vast amounts of collective toxicity could be purged through my consciousness, training me that I can be the vessel for energy that isn't mine and it doesn’t need to affect me. And I learned a lot about ayahuasca’s approach to healing which is very different to what we would think.

I’ve heard friends in the plant medicine space say to me ‘ayahuasca doesn’t heal’. I disagree, but I know what they’re saying because it depends on how you work with it and what you mean by it. From what I experienced, ayahuasca’s working from a perspective so far beyond this single lifetime, that the ‘healing’ may not be visible for a long time. It takes time to trickle down. It’ll ‘heal’ things like removing curses, negative entities, dissolve blockages that result in illness and negative thought patterns, it can do all kinds of things. Especially in conjunction with a good shaman. And especially working in partnership with a plant or tree on a ‘dieta’. And the mirror it holds often is healing in and of itself. Awareness starts to change things. Feeling the thing releases it.

But what that healing looks like in real life is not ‘just solving all your problems’. It’s a door quietly opening somewhere inviting you to walk through. It’s a habit you return to not quite as strongly and that’s easier to break. It’s feeling more energised and positive in a way you can’t explain. Frankly, it’s also quite possibly, turning into more of an asshole for a while, losing your sanity and ending up in psyche ward, or finding yourself in a destructive relationship that does real, irreparable damage to your mental health. If it’s there, she might well excavate it, and whether you sink or swim is not a guaranteed thing. Perhaps the 'healing' is to go through certain traumas in this life so the next life you break the pattern for good. Hopefully that’s not necessary, but who's to say?

Ayahuasca is a powerful and beautiful teacher and I’m deeply grateful for what she’s given me. Yes, she teaches you about peace and love and harmony. But she also teaches you how to fight. She’s a jungle vine after all. Despite all I went through, I wouldn’t want to change it. But I know I was specifically called to it. I was receiving the visions, and for whatever reason, it was something I needed. Not everyone needs that. There are gentler ways of achieving the results many people are looking for.

Of course, not everyone will have the experiences I did. Not everyone sees crazy ‘worlds’ or aliens or notices much effect. That’s not a loss – you get what you need. Not everyone will have the highs and lows. But the thing is, you don’t know what’s in your subconscious, that’s the whole point of it. So if you’re going to lift the lid, be prepared that anything might be in the box. And make sure you have the right people round you.