would never do that,” she said with wide-eyed emphasis. Of course, there are stories from the jungle about apprentices drinking the medicine in individual tambos or huts, but they are in their shaman’s energy field and protected. Shamans spend considerable time and energy purifying and protecting sacred space for the medicine. I don’t know what they are protecting participants from, but I have to assume they know more than the young guys who stand up at conferences.
Eighty percent of study respondents said that a shaman or leader was present, but this means that one-fifth of respondents attended only leaderless ceremonies. This makes a tremendous difference. I know of two unrelated leaderless groups who told the same story: Nothing happened. They drank ayahuasca and just sat there. One throwback to the sixties said, “Nothing was going on. One person went to the bathroom. Someone put on a CD of icaros [songs sung by a shaman], and all of a sudden we blasted off. The person who had been in the bathroom returned to a very different room. He was still not feeling anything, as he hadn’t heard the songs yet. Once he sat down and listened to the icaros, he opened up.”
Among those who attended ceremonies, they said the events were held in private homes with access to nature, and they were conducted in a sacred manner. Almost everyone said they felt safe and secure. Finding a safe, natural setting where people can feel secure taking an illegal substance requires careful planning. I attended a three-day ceremony at a site that was used as a children’s music camp in the summer and rarely used out of season. The ceremony went on for most of the night. When there was a break about 2 AM, the leader suggested that we refrain from pouring outside en masse — since it would be difficult to explain to awakened neighbors what scores of people decked out in bright, white garb were doing loitering around the camp in the middle of the night.
In preparation for the ceremonies, most everyone said they received warnings about prescription drugs, specifically not to mix antidepressants (specifically SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and MAOIs), with ayahuasca. Since ayahuasca alters the concentrations of serotonin in the brain, there is a chance of serotonin syndrome, a possibly lethal reaction to excessive levels of the mood-regulating neurotransmitter.15 James Callaway and Charles Grob report that a person has to be off SSRIs for at least five weeks in order to be sure they are safe from such high-risk complications.16
Ninety percent of the respondents were given dietary recommendations ranging from simple to more comprehensive instructions. In general, it’s recommended that participants refrain from meat, pork, fermented foods, salt, sugar, and alcohol for a few days to a few weeks both before and after drinking ayahuasca. Most study participants fasted for at least a few hours before the start of the ceremony. The threat of the almost-inevitable purge keeps most participants on the straight and narrow path of fasting for the sake of self-preservation alone. Although reactions to the medicine can vary extremely, vomiting is so common that plastic buckets are typically handed out to each participant to keep handy. In shamanic circles, sounds of purging are often heard in the darkness while the shaman sings special songs to encourage and strengthen the participants.
As with many aspects of ayahuasca, there are exceptions to every rule, including even intestinal reactions. While on retreat, I watched someone walk by the outdoor ceremonial space on his way back from drinks and dinner. He casually made a last-minute decision to drink ayahuasca on top of all that beer and food. He had a great time. Meanwhile, I, who had fasted, was intestinally miserable. Another exception was reported by an American woman studying with a Colombian shaman, where it was the custom for everyone to eat a hearty diet of pork and other meats before ceremonies. There are many mysteries surrounding the medicine, some ethereal and others far more corporeal.
Participants reported that most ceremonies included live singing of icaros, or healing songs usually in the Quechuan language of the Amazon basin. This language dates back to the Inca Empire before the Spanish invasion in the sixteenth century, which gives a glimpse of the cultural leap made by the medicine as it travels from the jungle into the Western world. Rattles, drums, guitars, or flutes might accompany the live singing. Some respondents said that a few groups sang hymns in Portuguese or English adapted from the ayahuasca churches.
The importance of music was made exceedingly clear to me at a ceremony I attended in a private home. During a break, the untrained leader put on taped music, specifically Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” The music was so loud I thought I must be sitting on top of the speakers, but when I tried to move away from the blast, I quickly discovered there was no escape. Ayahuasca, like other psychedelics, enhances auditory acuity, which leads to an exquisite appreciation for most music, but not, unfortunately, Cyndi Lauper.
Integration
Participants reported that in most ceremonies, the groups gathered informally over breakfast and shared their stories. Some groups participated in talking stick circles, in which a piece of ayahuasca vine was passed around, denoting each person’s time to talk. During these, there is very little cross-talk. The shaman or leader might answer questions, but no one makes psychological interpretations. Two-thirds of the ayahuasca users said they participated in these sharing circles. However, only 10 percent of people said that the leaders or shamans were available for consultation or follow-up guidance after the ceremony.
When asked how they integrated their ayahuasca experiences into their daily lives, people said they wrote in their journals, meditated, prayed, stayed on the restrictive ayahuasca diet, spent more time in nature, and got massages. A twenty-nine-year-old male graduate student admitted, even after a few years had passed, that “I still haven’t integrated this last experience, which was a doozy! I still feel like I’m trying to make sense of it. The work feels unfinished. I haven’t integrated the spiritual insights into behavioral change.”
I also asked participants whether they sought therapy after their experiences. Naturally, as a psychologist, I think everyone should seek therapy after such an intense experience. The problem is finding a therapist with personal ayahuasca experience who knows about ayahuasca and can be trusted with self-incriminating information. This is not so easy, although a number of people expressed a serious desire for such a therapist, and one man found a Native American clinical psychologist for weekly therapy sessions.
In the study, the male professors and doctors expressed the strongest rejection of psychotherapy. One forty-eight-year-old college professor said he stopped his own private practice as a therapist, perhaps the most damning rejection of therapy. A sixty-one-year-old college professor wrote, “The very idea of seeing a therapist sounds peculiar at best, ridiculous at worst. No one can address the issues or problems that come up who has not drunk ayahuasca.”
A fifty-four-year-old college professor said, “Therapy? Most professionals wouldn’t have a clue even if it was needed. Most of them would benefit from drinking some ayahuasca.” A forty-six-year-old medical doctor wrote, “No to psychotherapy. The shaman is the only professional I know qualified to assist in this way” — meaning qualified to help integrate an ayahuasca experience. I don’t entirely agree with his perspective. I think an ayahuasca-experienced
therapist could help a person work on the psychological issues that are illuminated during a ceremony. However, I do agree that only a shaman could work on the energetic levels and otherworld dimensions revealed during an ayahuasca ceremony.
Despite my enthusiasm for therapy, most people held the opinion, as one young woman put it, that “mainstream help cannot provide me assistance at this time.” Or as another woman said, “Ayahuasca is my therapist.” One man simply said, “NEVER.” Another wrote, “I go to an energy healer that is much more helpful in overcoming personal blocks than a psychiatrist.”
When I first started the research study in 2008, I would receive inquiries asking for help to connect with a source of the medicine. Around 2012, therapists began to contact me for clinical information because they had a client who had taken ayahuasca, and they had no idea
