DOSE:

1 cup

oral

Ayahuasca

BODY WEIGHT:

70 kg

Full Experience With Ayahuasca

I took Ayahuasca a while ago and went to a trained Shaman with a woman (who I assume was his wife? I never actually asked) and another man (a close friend who went down the same path) who were trained for the drug and knew how to create the mood and really put someone through the whole experience. I wasn't alone, I came with my mother and there was a large group of people there who were joining us, I'd say about a group of 20 people were there. Now, I have to say that the relationship that I have with my mother isn't so great but if I wanted to have this experience, I *had* to go alongside her, so I gave in and followed her, but made her promise that she wouldn't try to ruin my trip and would leave me alone. She promised.

First, I had to undergo an interview with the Shaman and his wife, to answer certain health questions and about what I wanted to experience and why. I'll say that I had been struggling with depression for years by then (still am) but was instructed by my mother not to tell them otherwise they wouldn't let me do the trip , so I lied about having no mental illnesses and told them I was mentally capable of the ceremony. I DO NOT ADVOCATE THIS BEHAVIOR. I take full responsibility of that decision I made back there, since I was already at the age of 18 and fully capable of making decisions for myself, but there is a reason why people aren't allowed to do such extreme drugs while struggling with mental illnesses. There were times in my trip that I got seriously existential and afraid to a point of almost panic, which I'll explain in detail later. Please think about these kinds of decisions and make sure your are in a safe environment while doing these things. Anyways, back to the story.

I told them I didn't really have an experience or destination in mind, but did have one question: simply if the drug really made people go trip as all hell or if it was more of an exaggeration. Then they said that this was one of the few times where someone brought a relative and made sure to tell us both that disturbing others in the trip was forbidden, including each other. I was content with that, my mother seemingly too and after our interview was over I reminded her to not disturb me and she waved her hand and promised once again that she wouldn't.

We couldn't eat or drink anything HOURS before the ceremony started, we could only drink water, but only if we were seriously thirsty, to keep one's stomach as empty as possible. Strangely enough, I didn't feel hungry in the slightest, as if my body knew what was about to happen and removed hunger from my consciousness. We were told to be dressed in white and had to turn off our phones and leave them in the upstairs bedroom before finally we all settled down in beds across the huge living room floor (this house was VERY big). I'll mention that by now that it was around 11 in the late afternoon and it was dark outside. We started the ceremony at around 7.

After some talking, music and preparation, we were scheduled to drink the Ayahuasca tea. It looked more like a glass filled with a thick brown/greenish goo in it. Imagine drinking honey, but it looks and tastes gross, and as the people in the video said; the taste was absolutely indescribable. The tea was legitimately hard to swallow, especially because you weren't allowed to eat or drink anything to swallow it down with. I washed my mouth with some water and spit it back out into my personal puke bucket (everybody had one) and then laid back down and let it happen.

First, the Shaman and his wife started playing music with instruments such as pan flutes, steel pans, a Shaman drum, African drums and many more. But then they started singing and I remember the amount of cringe I had at the sudden change of music choice, but let myself get used to it and eventually came to enjoy the music and their singing. I couldn't understand their words, they were not in English nor Dutch (my mother language) but I didn't mind.

After a while, people around me started becoming nauseous, especially my mom and she started puking every ten minutes into her bucket, making me cringe again since, somehow, I was the last one sober before the nausea started kicking in for me too. It was bearable for a while, and I made myself believe it would be only temporary, to try to calm some nerves. After a while, the music and singing got kicked up a notch and I slowly sank into the experience while people were barfing left and right in the room. I closed my eyes and let my imagination wander.

It started with me on a journey, to where I don't remember nor do I think I ever knew. I traveled through forests, temples, even through water and saw incredible things such as fairies, dragons, mermaids and such. Not knowing where I was going, I opened my eyes after a while and looked around. The walls around me were moving, and changing shape and form. The music once again became much more vivid and louder and this time I felt the nausea REALLY kicking in. I sat up with my legs crossed and reached for my bucket, I put it in between my thighs and leaned my elbows over the top, hanging my head over it in case I had to vomit.

I dry heaved a couple of times and my mom, to my extreme irritation, broke her promise of not disturbing me during the trip and reached out to me and tried taking my puking bucket away from me. To my surprise now, back then I became scared of her and told her to leave me alone, pulling on my puke bucket and clinging to it for dear life as if it was my most precious possession. The friend of the Shaman and the Shaman's wife calmly steered my mom away from me and reminded her not to disturb anyone's trip. She said sorry and sat back down, mumbling to herself. I started crying, so much my nose started running even saliva escaped my mouth at some point, and I hadn't cried in months before that. I let all the tears and snot and saliva drip into my bucket, not caring about what my face probably looked like, it was dim enough in the room anyway so I doubted anyone noticed.

My nausea came back tenfold and I was dry heaving while crying and I just couldn't inhale enough oxygen into my lungs so I was basically panting like a dog too, I generally felt like a sick mess. Finally after my emotions calmed down somewhat, wiped my face with some nearby napkins and went back to hanging my head above the bucket, still feeling sick, and still panting. I dry heaved some more and finally closed my eyes and holy fucking shit. What I saw next was unimaginable. Ever seen one of those biblically accurately angels? Yeah, that's kinda what I saw. A huge wall of colors and patterns that all crossed each other and never seemed to end. Dimensions, worlds, snakes, Buddhas, chakras, stars up close and people that looked like Gods and Goddesses. At this point I was panting so much I felt like a hollow pipe with oxygen just going in and out without any sort of organ actually using it.

I begged whatever I could for the nausea to calm down a bit as I continued dry heaving. I didn't want to vomit, I hadn't puked ever since I was 7 and was scared of what it would feel like, I didn't want it. I drank some water to try and will the nausea away and laid back down, bucket in reach. I jumped up a couple times for possibly puking but it was always a false alarm. At this point it didn't matter if I had my eyes open or closed, images that I can not describe now that I am sober were filling my vision while the drug was fucking with my sense of time and space.

Suddenly the thought came to me that this is what would happen if we died, this is what we would see and where we would go, and it was displayed to me as good. But I became afraid instead. I went through a sudden existential crisis that I usually managed to keep at bay while I was sober. All sorts of questions rushed through my head. Would we be in this extreme image for all eternity after we died? If so, I wouldn't be able to handle it. I was only experiencing it now for just a couple hours but already started panicking, how would I deal with that for all eternity? If not, where the hell else would we go? Would we disappear forever until no one had any interest in remembering us? Would we go to a place even more hectic as I was experiencing at that moment?

I became so scared, I begged and prayed in my mind to whatever could hear me (I'm not even religious) for these images to quit clouding my mind and calm the nausea. I drank some more water and after a little while, the music slowed and so did my experience. My nausea became bearable again and I quit seeing the wild moving images and intergalactic dimensions. This is when the second round started, and people gathered to drink their second cup of Ayahuasca tea. I had no idea we'd be doing more than one round and was perfectly fine keeping it at one cup, so I skipped round two.

I fell into a comfortable half awake state where I had conversations in my head with someone I didn't recognize, I couldn't really make up my mind and I called it myself, my soulmate, my other half and the drug itself. I talked to it about all sorts of things, most I can't remember. I remember asking what it was and never really getting a straight answer other than what my expectations were, hard to explain sorry. From that point on we talked and talked for hours on end, which only felt like minutes, until the third and final round started and people got up again to get the third cup of Ayahuasca, I refused the cup again.

Unsurprisingly, I was the first one relatively sober, since I drank only one cup and most other people had more. I soon became annoyed with how long it took for the sun to rise and was tempted to go upstairs to the bedroom to find my phone and look at the time, but found that I didn't have any energy to do so, I kind of wanted to walk around and maybe go outside but I simply had no energy to get up out of bed. So I rode out the rest of the night in mild irritation with all other people puking around me. There were certain times where the nausea came back very harshly again, so I can say this drug comes in waves. It comes very harshly then slowly goes away for a while to a point where I thought I might be sober but I was still very far gone, and then it comes back just as bad. I thought I was sober but was proven wrong and I once again clung to my puke bucket until it went away again.

I never puked, nor fell asleep during that whole night but when the sun finally came I had enough energy to stand up and went upstairs. I sat in a random room that was above a huge inside swimming pool. I thought about jumping over the railing and landing in the pool but luckily decided against it, because that could've ended horribly. I texted my friend to try to remember some of my experiences and noticed it was around 6 in the morning. I kept sitting there for hours until finally it was time to have breakfast and sharing experiences with each other.

I'm still not religious and am still as indecisive about if a greater identity exists somewhere and knows everything as I was before. I'll believe in science more than anything but who knows what might be around us beyond our understanding. Maybe I'll try Ayahuasca again, but for now I want to relax and focus on my mental instability and other priorities, so I'll hold onto that thought for somewhere in the future.

Exp Year: 2020	ExpID: 115776
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 18
Published: Oct 4, 2021	Views: 2,474
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