Hello all, it's been some tougher times for me this past year or so. I was diagnosed with some digestive issues a while back. No need to go into detail about them but they include daily pain of many kinds. I'm by no means new to psychedelics, I've been using them for years, more so before my issues began due to now I can't endure the full length of a trip without being in moderate to severe pain during the experience. I have gone to a few doctors and tried many medications without much helping other than a probiotic, eating vegan, yoga and so on. I have been wondering if I should look to ayahuasca for my healing. I have had examinations done and do not necessarily have any serious issues, IBS is largely a mystery and quite possibly something more related to anxiety than it actually is to an issue with the digestive system.

I have smoked DMT many times and have two ayahuasca experiences under my belt, technically formosahuasca using syrian rue and Acacia confusa. Both were very positive experiences and took place before my digestive issues ever began. I was planning on getting Caapi to see if it would help and I would really be grateful for some pointing in the right direction of which kind to get and what dosage I should start off with due to my sensitivities. I have read lots of good things about red's healing properties. I'm not sure if anybody else on the forum has had similar digestive issues and found healing in ayahuasca but I would love to know and get some input from anybody. Thanks so much!

First off welcome to the Nexus!

I also have digestive issues. IBS and CIBS. When it's just my IBS I'm just running for the bathroom and when it's cibs I'm curled up in pain.

I've done aya 3 times in 3 days. And the only problem I had all 3 days was me thinking I soiled myself... Lol. I didnt but it felt as though I had. And towards the end running for the bathroom in a not so sober state.

It didnt heal my IBS. But it did heal other ailments.

I do not know my dosages as another had prepared a huge batch and we were told to consume what we felt we needed. So can not help you on that part.

Best of luck and I hope the tiny info I do have helps.

Thanks for the welcome! And yes the info certainly does help. I'm mostly CIBS nowadays, which is quite frustrating. I think I may just prepare myself a decent amount and slowly drink it to what feels right as many say to do.

For me I know I'm going to have a CIBS attack by me not having a bowl movement so I take 3-400 my of magnesium and I do not have an issue. My IBS on the other hand I have not dialed in anything to combat the effect of running for the bathroom 5 or 6 times a day.

Same for me, the last three days have been rough and backed up. I anticipated eating some mushrooms today but decided to put it off. I will definitely try magnesium and see if that helps, thanks so much. I had the same issue with having to run to the bathroom when this first started, it's very unpleasant and causes me tons of anxiety but then it just stopped and has been CIBS for about 10 months.

I have heard reports going both ways. Some claim ayahuasca healed their IBS. Some had their IBS worsen. We don't know a whole lot about IBS, but we do know that it's related to serotonin so ayahuasca could very well have an effect. From what I've read on the subject, there seems to be multiple kinds of IBS that because we don't fully understand, we can't differentiate.
Definitely start low and work your way up as you don't want to deal with physical distress while on a full blown ayahuasca trip. I have some experience with this and it can be a very stressful experience.

I believe it can be a problem of an overgrowth of bad bacteria in the gut and damage to the lining of the gut, the combination of the two can lead to a lot of pain and discomfort and strong reactions to offending foods. So what I recommend is cutting out grains (as they irritate the lining of the gut and prevent it from healing) and cutting out refined sugars and alcohol and cutting down on starchy foods (especially if cooked / overly processed).

For me, doing this eventually lead to some reaction like symptoms which can be as a result of die off of said bad bacteria and this lead to headaches and really bad smelling gas (sorry for details haha..) so I made sure to eat a lot of complex nutrients (fresh fruit and veg) and drinking 3 liters of water a day. I also believe that Syrian rue is a very powerful medicine in many ways and had experienced improvements from drinking a tea made from it regularly in the past so I would do this on and off as often as I could.

After a while I felt very little awareness towards my guy which was quite an unbelievable feeling as I noticed I had always had a lot of attention towards my gut due to general discomfort.

At this point it is worth taking pro biotics to replenish any lost good bacteria so that bad bacteria wont just come back again.

I can't give a any sources to why I did this but I had done a lot of reading into why my gut and others (my mother and my partner also experience gut issues) and doing the this helpedme and them a lot too.

I have been following lots of those sorts of dietary things for a while and yes they definitely do help! Slowly but surely. Over the holiday I fell back to eating poorly and am now suffering from it and need to get back on track. I've been taking a probiotic for a few months and it's a miracle worker for me, it makes a world of difference. I ordered 8 oz of cielo and 4 oz of white ayahuasca to get started and will see how my stomach reacts and if it helps me at all. I don't expect it to be a miracle worker but maybe help me some. I also have some syrian rue on hand that maybe I will try and make a tea out of and see how it effects me.

Hey mate
First of all...Welcome!

I think IBS is something which is really hard to handle.
Using psychedelics is a great tool for the treatment of diseases and disorders. Especially mother ayahuasca has got the power to change something for your health big time. But...I think maybe for IBS there is something that could be better for long term treatment . Ever heard about Rick Simpson ?
It's a guy who treats people with Cannabis Oil. But not only CBD. His oil also includes thc and everything. It's made out of the whole plant. Many people use it in combination with coconut oil to treat cancer for example.
For digestive problems there is the oportunity to make some of the oil and put it in suppositories. In that way the oil gets directly where it should go. I would also try the oral method. Still the most common use. And it works.

Ofcourse that needs some work at first. I mean...You can't buy that stuff...and making it yourself could be risky. But maybe you should Inform yourself about it. The chances are good that mother nature put the answer for you pain in one of her most beautiful gifts...Cannabis.
The benefits of it in the treatment of Morbus crohn are huge. Maybe it will work.

What ever you do...I hope you will be okay. Stay well mate.
Cheers

Welcome, I feel your pain...

Personally, I wouldn't be in a rush to embrace la purga at this stage.

I found psyllium husk very beneficial for regulating my GI transit. If you're fast, it slows you down, and vice versa.

I also looked in depth at ayurveda, the traditional medicine of India which has ~5000 years of knowledge linking herbs, diet, illness and the gut, among many other things. It can be hard to find a qualified ayurveda practitioner outside of major urban centres, but there are plenty of good books available. Dr Vasant Lad is a current, noted authority with many titles to his name. I fully realise what I am about to say looks perilously close to the 'humorous medicine' now largely derided in the West, but it still forms the cornerstone of Ayurveda and TCM, and in my case, and that of many others, both have succeeded where conventional approaches have failed.

Basically, there are 3 metabolic types (doshas) and everybody has a combination of all three, but usually with one predominating.

Pitta = warm, active
Kapha = cold, sluggish
Vata = cool, dry

There are many versions of this questionnaire online to help you work out your type, without a personal examination.

Certain kinds of illness are held to be specific to each dosha. Pitta types are easily inflamed, for example, while kapha types are prone to weak digestion and various kinds of blockages.

All foods and plants are assigned their own doshic qualities too, so chilli for example, being hot, is pitta and can aggravate somebody who is a pitta-predominant type, especially if they are already out-of-balance or ill. Conversely, it can help somebody who is kapha, and needs a bit more 'fire'.

Again, food lists for each dosha are widely available online and in print, but none are absolute (in contrast to our usual notion of such lists) and all speak in terms of favouring or avoiding particular items. As the seasons also have doshic qualities, it can be perfectly acceptable for say, a pitta person in winter, with a heavy cold, to eat chilli, garlic and ginger too. But at the height of summer, when that same person might have heat rash, those foods would be strongly contraindicated. This is a level of sophistication, I think, that one will search for in vain in our "Top 10 Foods To Do X" lists...

From the ayurvedic perspective, when talking about the gut, the first thing to ensure is that the right stuff is going in, if you want the right kind of stuff coming out... It also recommends incorporating any dietary changes slowly over time, rather than switching radically from one diet to another, and monitoring any changes as they arise.

Three herbs in particular are recommended for balancing wayward guts, per dosha:

Pitta - Amalaki (emblica officinalis)
Kapha - Bibhitaki (terminalia berelica)
Vata - Haritaki (terminalia chebula)

And these three are also combined to form 'triphala powder'. Amalaki has helped me a lot and I wasn't very surprised to subsequently discover that it is also an MAO-A inhibitor.

Probiotics definitely have a role too, and I make my own kombucha and kraut, but it's noteworthy that most OTC formulas do not include Bacillus Subtilis a soil organism, formerly common on our (unwashed, unbleached) veggies. It is believed to regulate other bacterial populations in the gut, and also form films which may help repair any damaged lining. It was also used to treat certain infections before the discovery of antibiotics. It is in some (expensive) capsules, but if you like Asian food, then natto is packed with it, and I definitely don't regret getting a taste for that, as it made a big positive difference...it's not nearly as frightening as some people make out. Mixed with rice, it makes a kind of mildly cheesy risotto, and is almost addictive. Just make sure the rice is lukewarm, before you mix the natto in, to avoid killing all the wee beasties...

I probably don't need to remind you, but there's a lot of piping down there, which ideally contains an immense variety of microhabitats and their inhabitants. Any changes are likely to be slow and gradual, if they are to last. As such, we should be particularly wary about sudden/random interventions, whether food or drug-based, no matter how desperate the situation might appear at a given time.

Good luck!

It sounds like you have an auto immune disease. I am not a Dr. ...however I do know a lot about auto immune diseases and IBS..having both. IBS, IBD, colitis etc are inflammatory diseases. You likely already, or will in the future experience other inflammatory issues like arthritis as well.

I cannot recommend ayahuasca to you. It might help you, it might not. I certainly drank it a lot trying to heal my IBS, to no luck and what began as just IBS evolved into much more alarming symptoms of ankylosing spondylitis. It did help me understand the psychological aspect of the disease more however and likely had some other physical benefits. If I can tell you anything, it is this...do whatever you can now to get this under control, and do not buy into diet fads(like veganism) unless they are actually working for you. There are things out that that work, find them with an open mind and find a good Dr who will monitor your symptoms even if they do not agree with the approach you take. My gp was great at diagnosing me, monitoring my symptoms and referred a good rheumatologist etc..she is open to yoga and insists I stretch and lessen any stress in life, but she wont really get into diet. For that, I have another physician who specializes in inflammatory and auto immune diseases and is a strong believer in combining diet and medication. Get a team of Dr's on your side and communicate. It helps to have one Dr you are seeing who has personal experience with this family of diseases..both so you have someone who really understands what life can be like when you suffer like this, and because I personally trust someone more who has been through it and come out the other side. You just can never fully understand a disease inside out from reading in books and lectures.

I also tried veganism and I do recommend against it if you have inflammation like this. The best diet for treating this disease, and this comes from a Dr who specializes in auto immune diseases including IBS, is a highly specific auto immune diet tailor made for the individual. You need proper blood work to find out what food triggers you have, you want to monitor inflammatory markers in the blood, antibodies etc..for some people eating a few specks of a nightshade like pepper can send them into a full on flare up..nuts, seeds, legumes, grains, dairy, eggs, nighshades, coffee are all common triggers but you might only have 3 of them or all of them..if you don't have the proper blood work(and its not cheap) you are in the dark..and then you need to rebuild the gut, which vegan diets seem to not be very good at doing once the damage is to the degree of chronic inflammation in the gut/bowels.

If you get one thing wrong, it's like trying to open a combination lock with one number missing. You can't do it. You don't want 25% improvement..or 50%..you want to put your disease into remission. It can be done, I have spoken personally with physicians who have helped thousands of people go into remission.

There is also a human leukocyte antigen connection to some of these inflammatory diseases. You can ask for specific blood tests to confirm. If for instance you test HLA-B27 positive than you have even more to go on..having that confirmed was huge for me. IBS is not so much of a mystery as many Dr's will lead you believe. Yes, there is much that science does not yet understand, but there is still more out there than many Dr's will have you believe. It took me a decade to start getting real answers and piece together with the help of a good Dr what is actually going on with my own genetics and what auto immune diseases really are.

I wish I had found the Dr's I have now 10 years ago. All I got for a long time was diagnosis of anxiety, or then it was stress causing indigestion..then it was IBS..and then it was ulcerative colitis..it progressed and progressed until finally someone told me I now have ankylosing spondylitis, and confirmed it with blood work and x rays. My story is not unique..I have met many with the same story. All I can say to you is don't stop until your getting the results you want.

Thanks everybody so much for all the information, I will look into this. I am actually working on getting blood work done testing me for intolerances and sensitives as well as any deficiencies or malabsorption. Everything has been looking pretty fine so far, I was only deficient in fatty acids and vitamin B3 which I am now treating. I had a colonoscopy and a endoscopy done a little while back and everything checked out fine other than my stomach being inflamed, which after properly medicating for a few months and changing my diet got a lot better. Veganism has helped me quite a bit, but I'm not full vegan necessarily. I will still eat meat occasionally because I have much more energy if I do a few times a week. But thank all of you so much, it's great to here everybody's side of this kind of thing and their approaches using western and eastern styled medicine. I am certainly better off than I was about 6 months ago and went through a period of a month of actually being nearly painless for a while. It didn't become an issue again until about two weeks ago which I think comes from a lot of recent stress and bad eating over the holiday. I think I am on to managing it and will try out things that y'all have recommended.

I think I will still give ayahuasca a try but I will not look towards it as my only hope of healing, I will have to see how my body reacts to it. Smoking cannabis never seemed to help too much, plus it tends to make me quite paranoid but I will look into it and give it a try. My disease really took off after a very stressful part of my life after being arrested for possession of marijuana and ritalin (I'm not big into speed or anything, a friend had given it to me a day or two before and I just happened to have it), I can quite clearly remember the onset of my disease and being terribly sick the night in jail. Definitely too much information to go into it. Somehow the stress of being arrested or something led me to internal bleeding and that's where it all really began. I think I may have had some IBS-like symptoms before but never anything beyond loose bowel movements when being nervous.

Again, thank all of you so much for the helpful information, it helps a lot to talk to other people with the same type of problems, I have yet to communicate with too many other people with similar issues. Glad to be a part of the nexus, you guys are great!