Just as an introduction, I've attended two ayahuasca ceremonies in the past. The first one consisted of two nights of ayahuasca followed by a day of mushrooms. That was a life changing experience for me, even without the visions that I had read about before trying.

I attended another ayahuasca ceremony for 3 days several months later. This one was disappointing in that nothing significant appeared to happen, aside from nausea and vomiting. It also involved snorting water tobacco into my nose, which at one point induced a feeling of extreme slow motion throughout my body and senses.

I then acquired mushrooms and tried these on my own. These experiences did not feel as "spiritual" as my first ayahuasca experience. However, they were "odd" to say the least. The feeling that I was invaded by a negative spirit at one point; the feeling that I had to exorcise it from my body by vomiting, then singing to cleanse my body and my room/apartment of the expelled spirit; along with some visual hallucinations that involved my friend's body vibrating and hearing a buzzing noise that freaked me out because it sounded so loud.

Can someone tell me if San Pedro and Peyote might provide a "master plant teacher" type experience without the nausea and violent puking that ayahuasca has involved for me? I'm hoping to try both alone, without a shaman, so any tips on how to keep my space "safe" would be appreciated.

Finally, as a general question, how much of this is real or manufactured by my imagination? Was I really attacked by a negative spirit? Did I really expel it through dry heaving (as I learned in my ayahuasca ceremony)? Is the "purpose of my life" that I felt was revealed to me during mushrooms "real" or just something I "made up"? It's all a little confusing, mixing skepticism with belief, and leading me to read up a lot on this topic.

Maybe I'm a little out of my comfort zone here, but the issues of "is this real" has been on my mind the last few months too...

But I guess if one can assume that everything we see/hear/smell etc is just electrical signals (as I said, maybe I'm totally wrong here) that our brains processes into our normal perception of the world around us, then the question comes to mind: Is the world around us the same, but our brains ability to decipher it becomes altered when we take psychedelic compounds?

When we have hallucinations do we see real things we cannot see without being on some mind altering substance? I really hope not :/ And without any evidences of that, I do not think it is real. But I do think that we can maybe be able to perceive things in the psychedelic state that could not otherwise be perceived.

But I think the brain gives you what you need to get (in some sense), if you had a "life-changing" experience while on mushrooms/aya, it was a life-changing experience even if it wasn't real...

I wouldn't mind myself finding out the meaning of all the things I experience while on the mushroom. I find it to be a good substance to work out my own problems. I get the ability to think about things I haven't thought about in years, then see those things in a perception I before was unable to see..

A little messy this stuff It's and interesting question with sooo many answers (probably), but maybe only one truth?