Since you guys have been so kind and there have been questions, I wanted to add a couple more trips/notes.
My last trip into the jungle happened over the new year. I went without Syberdelic this time because why put him through that again? But he's also understanding enough to be cool with me going because I enjoyed myself and felt the urge to go again. Plus, I wanted to introduce a friend to the experience and took him (we'll call him V) with me.
I won't go through all of my trips because no doubt that'd be tedious and they had generally the same tone for me: Fun, interesting (to me) but not necessarily profound or anything. But I do want to touch on my last two rounds with ayahuasca in the jungle.
I think this was.. trip #5? We'll call it that.
By this point, I was taking single doses, I think. Or "small" or whatever the base amount was. Throwing more ayahuasca into my system hadn't changed my experiences in any way over the course of the last couple of nights; I seemed to get the same quality of visions and also the same amount of vomiting no matter how much or how little I ingested so I took pity on my taste buds and just kept to the small dose. Seriously, it did NOT get better with time for me. Still totally vile.
This was in my second journey to Peru and I actually did have a set purpose with ayahuasca at this point. I've written a lot over the years, lots of short stories and even a couple of novels. I haven't let anyone read them. Not a single person. When I'd mentioned this previously to someone at the center, they told me it was very selfish of me to keep those things to myself, even if that wasn't my purpose in hiding them. I thought to myself, fine, this time I'll go to the center with the express purpose of finding inspiration for a story that I would share with the world. With that in mind, this was my next-to-last aya experience:
Trip #5
I took my aya shot like a big girl and went back to my mat to wait for onset as always. Again, purged pretty quickly. I think I was actually second to purge that time. Really, I just cannot keep this stuff down. But I didn't stress about it because my experiences were pretty great anyway so I didn't see that vomiting quickly hurt me or my visions. Maybe it does for some, because the facilitators do try to stress keeping it down as long as possible. Either way, I puked and laid down with my ginger lozenge against the roof of my mouth as soon as the icaros started.
I found myself in a forest but it wasn't just any forest, it was The World Forest. All plant life was represented, even water plants swaying in the air just as they would beneath the waves. I walked through the Forest for what felt like days but there was no way to tell because I couldn't see the sun under the canopy and the light quality stayed about the same the whole time. I found plants that I knew were extinct, ancient ferns and membranous bushy things, so I sat by them to study them for as long as I could. Who knew when I'd get that kind of chance again?
There was no driving force for me to move on. It felt like I had all the time in the world. But I did eventually keep moving until I came to a clearing. The clearing was a large expanse of overturned, loose earth, like something huge had been uprooted from the spot very recently. I saw the apprentice female shaman, L, standing in the middle of all of this. She looked around at the dirt, up at the clear sky, just sort of studying the scene. Then she threw her head back and her arms out and sort of.. I dunno.. burst into a tree. Massive, just growing up and up and out and out until the L Tree filled the clearing.
A little capuchin monkey darted out of the surrounding Forest and threw itself up into the L Tree, who laughed (her laugh sounded like some kind of small child + rustling leaves noise) and let the monkey swing from her branches. A man ran up to the L Tree and around and around her, yelling at the monkey to get back down to the ground and give back something it had stolen from him. Every time the monkey seemed to get within reach of the man, the L Tree would giggle and toss the monkey up again into her higher branches. Eventually though, she shook one of her branches and the monkey fell from the L Tree right into the man's waiting arms.
The man laughed and hugged the monkey who hugged him back and it was clear that it was all a game they were just playing together. Nothing had been stolen, it was all in fun, like a game of chase.
It's been about four months since then so I don't remember very well what the shaman (a different shaman this time, although N and L were both there to back him up) said about the vision except that the monkey was apparently bad and he needed to cleanse it from me, although no reason was given for why it was bad. This bewildered me because I thought the tone of the monkey was pretty okay but I'm not a shaman or even a dream interpreter so I let it go.
Trip #6
This was my last aya experience and possibly the last one I will ever have. I know I could find other groups in my area to share ayahuasca with but I don't know that I really want to. I loved the jungle. It just felt "right" to me in a way that I'm not sure I could find in someone's rec room at home, you know? I had great experiences with ayahuasca but I feel no driving need to use it again ever. If the right circumstance came along, would I refuse it? Certainly not. But I have no drive to go seek it out again. I'm good.
This last entry is for those who are not like me, who did not have fun or might not, if they're thinking about going out to try it. First, I'll describe what happened to others around me.
Someone, possibly one of the facilitators or the center's owner, asked the shamans to up the potency of the ayahuasca for this last round. And they did. Oh, they did.
The maloca was filled with the sounds of vomiting, but that was usual, especially during the first hour. What was less usual was that many people were moving around. At least two pasajeros wandered outside (one of these had previously had a hard time the first night, had even voided his bowels.. it does happen, folks, although it's not common as far as I can tell) and were very belligerent about coming back inside so one of the facilitators had to be out there to keep an eye on them. Then two others left the maloca to sit on the bridge between the maloca and the bathrooms, mostly because they felt like insects were crawling all over them and biting them. My friend V's hand cramped up painfully all by itself very suddenly and I think he said he was having a hard time breathing so another facilitator had to come help him through that. Another pasajero felt like he was being buried. The weight on his chest was unbearable, he said, and only extreme self-discipline kept him from panicking.
With all of that going on, there was only one facilitator available to bounce around between the mats, attending to whomever needed her help. At one point, I opened my eyes and saw her footprints glowing on the wooden floor, crisscrossing the room as she mothered everyone who needed it. Mapacho smoke was thick in the air because one of the facilitators' chief tools in soothing those going through a hard time is smoke blown over the sufferer. My asthma is grateful that I was not one of the ones having a hard time.
It was a definite freak out. The two with the insects left early that morning, before dawn, to catch a plane somewhere else so I didn't get to hear about their experience in the group share later but I claimed a hammock over where their mats were in the maloca and I saw a few spots of dried blood on the wood. Perhaps a nosebleed, perhaps some scratching at the bugs they thought were on them? I don't know and I probably never will but it definitely illustrated the more... intense side of ayahuasca, let's say.
As for me? Other than the glowing footprints, my only vision was of myself cradled in a gigantic leaf in the jungle with a light, misty rain sprinkling down. The leaf rocked me gently, constantly. A jaguar draped itself on a branch next to my leaf-cradle and pretty much immediately fell asleep, its tail twitching every once in a while. The whole thing was very soothing and safe. And that was it.
From what I've gathered, experiences like mine are few and far between. Almost everyone seems to have some element of darkness in their experience, all part of the balance. Some have only darkness, even. The internet at large and even the Nexus is filled with stories of struggle, anxiety and fear. Not all, of course, thankfully. I'm not promising anyone that they can or will trip like I do but maybe, just maybe, if they know it's a possibility.. it might become more of a probability? I don't know. Just do your research and be appropriately cautious but don't be scared. Be open to the possibility that it will be fun, that it will be light, that it will be good, even as you prepare for the opposite.