scientist felt she received advice from the Spirit of Tobacco, which is another important plant teacher in the Amazonian cosmology. Both she and the American biologist reported that their contact with the independent spirits or plant teachers shifted their way of understanding reality.
The French scientist summarized his experience by saying that “all the things he saw and learned in his visions were somehow already in his mind, but that ayahuasca had helped him. . .put them together.”19
When I read this story, I was struck by how Grandmother Ayahuasca’s tone with the French scientist was qualitatively different from my experience of her. The voice the French scientist reported was quite professorial with a touch of no-nonsense academic attitude. Perhaps, I might speculate, similar to his own voice. In contrast, with me, Grandmother Ayahuasca sounded like a patient mother, kindly ignoring my impertinence and calmly stating her request.
After many interviews with people recounting conversations with Grandmother Ayahuasca, I’ve noticed this same discrepancy. She doesn’t have a consistent voice, although she does seem to be an independent entity. Her voice takes on an appropriate tone for each conversation. For instance, a twenty-five-year-old man reported that Grandmother Ayahuasca told him, Go home and clean your room. Then she added, almost as an afterthought, And get a haircut. The voice was authoritative but not critical. She meant business but was not harsh.
For Westerners, stories of plant teachers giving scientists research advice, spirit doctors providing healing, and indigenous tales of spirit marriages between shamans and pink dolphins — all this pushes the boundaries of belief. It can be very difficult to discern what’s real and what’s imagined. In truth, this doubt comes with the territory.
For instance, what about those magical pink dolphins? Having grown up and lived along the eastern seaboard, I thought I knew dolphins. I’ve seen them from Maine to the Caribbean, swum with them, communed with them in the wild, and I can differentiate Atlantic white-sided dolphins from harbor porpoises at a distance. When I heard of the Amazon’s pink river dolphins, I was incredulous, never mind the issue of interspecies marriage. I figured this was a bit of mythology, just another charming piece of ayahuasca cosmology. Turns out there really are pink dolphins living in the rivers of the Amazon basin. Now, whether the shamans actually marry them or not . . .
In the next chapter, I share some of the first-person reports I gathered in my research. Some might seem too good to be true. Like pink dolphins, like the voice of Grandmother Ayahuasca, the stories may be beyond our imagination. We don’t always know what we don’t know.
“I eat less and feel better. I’m less negative, more sensitive to my spouse, less harsh, more loving. I feel better about myself, more alive. I learned how to live, how to love, how to help others.” This was Nathan’s description of how he changed as a result of participating in one hundred ayahuasca ceremonies over a ten-year period. A sixty-three-year-old teacher with a master’s degree, Nathan’s most recent experience with the medicine was two months before participating in the study. (Note that, in this chapter and throughout the book, pseudonyms are used for all study participants.)
Do one hundred ayahuasca ceremonies in ten years sound like an addiction problem? That would be an incorrect assumption for a few reasons. First of all, ayahuasca is not addictive (for more on this, see “Addictions,” chapter 8, page 228). Second, what if Nathan described attending a meditation retreat every month for ten years? Would that sound like an addiction or like Nathan was a serious meditation student? I think it’s more accurate to say that the ayahuasca ceremonies were an integral part of Nathan’s psychospiritual life.
Could psychotherapy have accomplished the same results for Nathan? I certainly hope so, but he’d already had years of therapy, from cognitive behavioral therapy to couples therapy. Evidently, it hadn’t helped, or perhaps it hadn’t helped enough. Nathan’s simple, yet clear description of his improved health habits — “I eat less and feel better” — is an important wake-up call to therapists. Therapists have told people to eat healthier for decades, and we all know how well that’s worked. Nathan’s overall characterization indicates he experienced a global shift, perhaps a spiritual opening, which is something that doesn’t necessarily happen even with successful therapy.
A thirty-three-year-old graduate student, Anna described her changes since drinking ayahuasca. After fifteen years of struggling with addictions, she said, “I never drank or smoked pot or touched any other substance like that again. I never had casual sex again or even a casual make-out session. And I cut back on sugar.” Anna’s central issue was her sense of self. “I finally feel like myself. Yes, I love myself!” She had never been in psychotherapy and had attended about fifty ayahuasca ceremonies. Her last ceremony was six years before the study, which gives us a clue about the long-lasting impact of the medicine for some people.
Philip, age twenty-nine and a graduate student in psychology, said, “I’ve always struggled with anxiety and depression, but I’m more accepting of them now.” Philip had undergone an array of therapeutic approaches and had seven experiences of drinking ayahuasca, the last one a few months before the study. He carefully distinguished between changes in anxiety and depression and his attitude toward these feelings. Although his ayahuasca experiences did not provide a miracle cure in the sense of removing anxiety and depression, they helped him to change how he related to these challenging feelings. Philip described an important inner shift that implies having greater compassion, possibly at a spiritual level beyond psychological acceptance.
George, age twenty-seven and in graduate school, made a similar observation regarding how he deals with mood swings since drinking ayahuasca. “No changes in emotional moods, but my ability to handle them is 100 percent better!” George hadn’t had any psychotherapy, but he had participated in twenty-two ayahuasca ceremonies over several years prior to the study. He wrote, “I no longer drink since puking out bad alcohol dependency three years ago with ayahuasca. I lost forty pounds and am now relatively athletic. I became a vegan after my tenth ceremony. My relationships are no longer codependent. I no longer feel self-esteem problems. I feel incredibly happy and centered and more able to deal with adverse situations.”
George asked his parents to answer the question, “Did anyone close to you notice any changes in you?” I included this question to obtain a more objective perspective regarding how people changed since drinking ayahuasca. Born-again Christians, George’s parents wrote that they “couldn’t fathom how a plant had helped George find so much health and love.” We have to give George a lot of credit for sharing his journey with his parents, and their response reflects how mystified they are about his experience and how relieved they are that he’s feeling much better.
William, a forty-five-year-old medical doctor, wrote that, since drinking ayahuasca, “Marijuana use is down 75 percent. My relationship with my wife is deepening. I’m more compassionate and affectionate. I have more confidence and feel a renewal of hope that I can create a meaningful life. I feel an opening of my heart to the scope of mystery.” Again, we hear the intimations of a spiritual path unfolding. William had been in almost one hundred ceremonies, the last one over six months prior to the study.
I personally interviewed William, who specializes in palliative care and is often present as his patients are dying. He told me, “Ayahuasca keeps me light on my feet and capable of responding to my patients’ suffering.” He feels guided by Grandmother Ayahuasca as he creates a new system for providing care for people
