I've glanced over a few topics about considering a trip to South America for a more authentic ayahuasca experience and people have answered but I wanted give a more in-depth answer. I plan to do that with a rigorous (long, sorry) trip report of my experiences in the jungle with ayahuasca. I've seen people talk about their visions, their feelings but I also wanted to add the interpretations of the shamans I received and some of what happened to others in my group.

Trip 1
I was at the center with a group of.. um.. I think it was thirteen or fourteen people. We all had varying experiences with psychedelics. Some had tried ayahuasca in their native cities in the US or Canada. None of us had been to the jungle for it, so we were all virgin in that respect.

The facilitators gathered us in the maloca (a gigantic hut on stilts with a three-story roof, very pretty) for a sit-down about what to expect. The facilitators were two or three people who lived and worked at the center although they were from all over the world (US, Russia, UK, et cetera) and their job was to help the pasajeros (that's us, the visitors) have as meaningful and safe an experience as could be had.

They laid out ground rules: Try not to make too much noise. It's hard not to get caught up in what's happening inside of you with the ayahuasca but try to have some respect for the other pasajeros so you don't distract them from their processes. No talking, for the same reasons as the first rule. No touching. Energy transfer is kept to a minimum. No attempting to sing along with the shamans' icaros. Everyone is here for the Shibipo shamans, not for you. Plus, you might not know what you're doing and could foul something-something-energy-magic up. (I'm paraphrasing... it's been more than six months.) Try to keep your clothes on. Apparently, this is a real issue. The facilitator said it was always men who kept trying to get naked for some reason and wander around. Speaking of wandering around, none of that. Unless you need to use the restroom, stay in the maloca where the energy is protected and the facilitators can keep an eye on you. It's nighttime in the jungle. Be safe. If you need help, flick your flashlight on and point it up so it doesn't get in anyone's eyes and a facilitator will come help you.

I'm probably missing some of the rules but eh, that's the gist. Be respectful, be safe. They had other suggestions for the ceremony as well, like try to stay sitting upright so that you don't fall asleep. And so that it aligns your chakras. Something to that effect. Push your bad thoughts and feelings into the light. Let them go. Light a mapacho and wreathe yourself in its smoke. Things like that.

During the day of our first ceremony, we each met with the shamans and our translator to set our intentions for our stay, things we wanted to work on or have worked on or whatever. Basically, why are you here in the jungles of Peru drinking ayahuasca? From what I talked about with others, intentions ranged from "I just wanna see what happens" (<--me) to struggles with opiate addiction to combat PTSD to spiritual growth to a search for a new direction in life.

The night of the first ceremony, they held a "quiet time" for everyone to settle and meditate or whatever until it was time. They burned Palo Santo bark and lit up mapacho cigarettes and taught us how to cleanse ourselves with the smoke. I did not partake in this much beyond a couple of puffs because of my asthma but I might as well have because it filled the air anyway. Everyone had ashtrays and lighters by their mat along with a purge bucket for every single person. The mats were arranged in a circle with our heads outwards to the walls of the maloca with the shamans and facilitators on one side and the rest of us filling the ring.

They recommended that we start out with a single, normal dose, even for those who had ayahuasca previously. They called us up one by one to receive our dose. I'm not gonna lie: It tasted REALLY BAD. I almost gagged. Someone said that if you just try hard enough, you can make yourself think it tastes like hot chocolate but I'm not sure if I agree that anyone has an imagination that good.

Once all the pasajeros have had their doses, the facilitators take a bit of ayahuasca as well. They say it's so they can connect better with everyone else. I have no idea. The shamans (two this time, N who is the senior shaman with over 40 years of experience and L with 8 years of experience, an apprentice shaman). Then we all returned to our mats and sat and waited in the darkness.

You can't see much in the maloca once all the candles out, just suggestions of shapes. There's silence for a good fifteen-twenty minutes as the ayahuasca starts kicking in. I wasn't the first to vomit (or "purge"... they don't ever call it vomiting, for some reason, only purging, despite the fact that "purging" also means diarrhea, sweating and the like) but I was maybe third or fourth. You can hear it all through the maloca. Some people seemed to vomit once and that was it or not at all or all freakin' night.

I puked once and it hurt. It was like spikes in my throat for a good half hour afterward. Just... ow. Really, ow. It came out my nose. They give you a few sheets of toilet paper to wipe your mouth but that was entirely inadequate for me. I had to call a facilitator over, snot and ayahuasca dripping down my face, and get him to give me a whole toilet paper roll 'cause a few sheets was not going to cut it.

Soon the icaros began. They can be very jarring if you're like me and you consciously avoided listening to any online beforehand. They are definitely not pop music and the voices tend towards the nasal. Hitting and maintaining notes doesn't seem to be a big concern for them. They sing in a mix of Shibipo and Spanish and you can sometimes make out words if you're familiar. You hear a lot of "medicina" which is them singing about the medicine, ayahuasca.

I was having a lot of trouble blocking out the sounds of everyone else's experiences. The person sitting next to me seemed to be having a really hard time, purging constantly and swearing loudly and moaning. I felt bad for him and it distracted me for a while. Eventually, though, I started getting some visuals. No fractals, no green or purple or what-have-you. No pulsating walls. Nothing abstract at all. They had some wooden projections they hung hammocks off of over the mats and the one right above me flickered into the shape of a gigantic harpy eagle's head. It didn't do much more than watch but I got a protective feeling from it.

After that, I laid down. I knew I wasn't supposed to but as you'll find from further reading, I'm a rulebreaker! Plus, leaning against the wall was uncomfortable. So I laid down and pulled my blanket over me and closed my eyes, just listening to the icaros. Soon, the icaros seemed to take on a physical form, flowing out towards me and forming an eggshell around me. Literally, an eggshell. I was inside of a huge egg, curled up on my mat. After I was in the egg, I had no problem blocking out the sounds of other people.

My next (and last that I remember) vision projected on the inside of the egg, my own personal screening. It showed scenes of a desert in bloom, just after a rain. Cactus flowers, lizards and snakes running around. A sign, like from a postcard, saying, "Welcome to beautiful ....(couldn't make it out or forgot)!"

Then it came time for each of us to go up to the shamans and receive our personal icaros. The facilitators gathered us up and brought us two at a time to the shamans, one for each, so they could sing a personalized song meant to help us with the intentions we'd talked about earlier that day.

The facilitator who came to my mat to get me seemed surprised to see me pop up like a daisy. I was stone-cold sober by that point but a lot of the other pasajeros had to be woken up or helped because they were still too gone to walk reliably.

After we all got our icaros, the facilitators lit some candles and put out a tray of fresh apples and oranges and bananas if we wanted them and the ceremony was closed. Many people elected to sleep in the maloca but I would not have been able to do that because there was some talking going on and I wanted to sleep, so I went back to my room.

Every morning after a ceremony, everyone gathers together in the maloca again for group share, where we speak of our experiences from the previous night and the shamans interpret our visions. Some people got just.. feelings, no visuals. Others saw animals. Depending on the color of the animal (I think, anyway.. just noticing the patterns from lots of group shares) then the animal might represent something bad or something you have to work on and the shaman will sing to cleanse it from you during the next ceremony. One person said they changed into a mushroom and felt ants climbing all over them.

I spoke of my vision and the head shaman, N, said that the desert in bloom means that good things will happen for me and soon. Things I had been patient for and working towards would happen. Seemed a little fortunetellerish to me but at least it was positive. A lot of other people weren't so lucky so I decided to take it at face value. Really, other than the painful vomiting, I'd had a good night. The pictures were pretty and I felt safe and warm.



I think I'm going to make a new post in this thread for each of my trips on ayahuasca in the jungle because I've probably only got the energy to describe one or two at a time although it'll be shorter and easier since the rules and background bits are over with. If anyone has any questions about any of it, feel free to ask.

Trip 2
Second night of ayahuasca! Having one experience under our belts, we were allowed to pick our dosages for the evening. The woman next to me had a half dose while the man next to her took two. I also took two.

This time, I spit out as much of the flavor as I could as soon as I got back to my mat. It really is unpleasant, at least to me. I also brought my own roll of toilet paper, stolen from one of the bathrooms. Worst of all.. I brought a throat lozenge. You're not allowed to eat for a few hours before the ceremony and definitely not during, and any kind of sugar outside of what's found in the fruit they provide? Forget it. So I tucked it into a pocket to save for after my purge.

I knew it was coming. Once again, I was among the first to purge. Still not the first but definitely close. This time was soooo much more gentle. Night and day difference. I didn't even really feel nauseated. It was just a little internal pressure building up. I knew when it was time to let it out so I grabbed my bucket and puked. This time, it was like breathing out. No residual pain, no discomfort. Still, I rinsed my mouth out (seriously, I cannot express how much I hate the flavor of ayahuasca) and popped in my honey and lemon Ricola lozenge. I tucked it against the roof of my mouth and just let it sit there, chasing away the bad flavors. Worked like a charm. I didn't bite into it because I didn't want to alert the others that I had contraband.

I laid down again as soon as the icaros started. Rebel! This time, my spirit or my self or my consciousness hovered in the air invisibly over a quaint-looking farm. I looked at it, studied it for a moment and then zoom! I was pulled in close to look at one particular plant after another. Corn, potatoes, watermelon, oranges, apples, et cetera. All food crops.

Each plant played a different instrument and melody as the wind blew through them. I think the corn played a march on the drums while the oranges were playing flamenco guitar. Apples were clarinets. I toured the whole farm and heard what each planted was singing then, just as abruptly as before, I was pulled back into the sky. Now I could hear all of the plants playing their instruments. It should have sounded discordant, a cacophony, because they were all playing such different melodies individually. Instead, it was an incredible orchestra of sound. Very beautiful. Exhilarating, really. It made my heart race in delight to listen to it. I could even smell the plants in the air, particularly the oranges.

That was my only vision for the evening and once again, I was completely sober by the time of the personal icaros, long before anyone else was. After ceremony, I went back to my room to sleep again.

In the morning, the group share seemed particularly troubled. There were a lot of unpleasant experiences being had. This led to my first stirrings of survivor's guilt. I felt bad having such a great time with my visions when everyone else was struggling.

When I told the shamans of my vision, I added that I had a freakin' wicked craving for orange juice since the previous night. I would kill for a glass! Mostly they were feeding us papaya or passionfruit or whatever else kind of juice, no orange. The shamans laughed and said that L, the apprentice shaman, was doing a dieta with oranges and that was why I smelled them. Shamans do dietas of very bland and particular food augmented by certain plants to learn the secrets of those plants. This is, I'm told, how they get their icaros, that eventually the plant they are doing the dieta with will reveal a melody to them and teach them how to use it.

Then N said that Mother Ayahuasca was showing me herself and letting me listen to the songs of the earth with my tour of the farm plants. I'm not sure what this was supposed to accomplish since that's the end of their interpretation but I enjoyed it.

I'm making this post in the effort to give you a bit more of an interpretation.

You're not sure about what the point is in mother nature showing you this beautiful journey? Don't worry about that.

It seems to have made a very lengthy, strong and profound impression on your consciousness.

Maybe that's the whole point? To allow you to experience, arguably, one of the most profound impressions.

I have read about traditional beliefs, that our whole experience is based around these impressions that are being made unto our consciousness. And since during the psychedelic or mystical experience the impressions made are a lot more profound, they could say these kind of experiences are a lot closer to "reality" then day to day life.

To sum up this lengthy qoute;

Illuminate the heart

I'm not positive that it had that a really profound impact on me in that way, in the way I'd initially hoped for. I'd hoped to become more conventionally spiritual. I'd hoped for an epiphany, a revelation. A sense of connection to something greater than myself. Possibly this was an attempt at it by the universe and I was/am just too dumb to get it. The feelings of admiration and delight it inspired were the same as if I'd just seen a very beautiful piece of artwork. Or a large, rare animal in the wild. So beautiful, but its beauty doesn't necessarily connect me to anything or inspire more than an acknowledgement and appreciation of that beauty. It's probably just my own rock-headedness.


Trip 3

The night of the third ceremony came directly after someone told me something. I'd done San Pedro in the mountains of Cusco a week before and the son of the shaman there told this third person that I had a special gift, that I might not know it yet or want to believe but it's there. The third person passed this message on to me.

When I went to get my dose of ayahuasca (I went back down to just the single dose this time) I asked Mother Ayahuasca to show me what this "special gift" was. I felt pretty stupid and silly about it and I still do, but everyone else was asking profound questions and all that and there I was, just taking ayahuasca to see what happens because I like the pretty pictures. So I asked.

Let's just leave it that I'm among the first to vomit pretty much every time. I rinsed my mouth out, popped in my throat lozenge and laid down to wait for the visions. I had three.

My perspective was inside of a well in the middle of the desert with an open, clear blue sky above. The water was almost right up to the rim of the well and I was just under the water, looking up. An old, slender woman of Native American descent (looked to be from the American southwest) leaned over the well and drew water out of it with a dipper.

Then I was floating above a set of steps on the outside of an adobe house with two more - younger - native women weaving and talking and laughing together. I didn't understand what they were saying but it was a happy, content feeling.

The third and final vision was with the older woman again. She was sitting in a rocking chair in the middle of the desolate desert again, under the huge blue sky. There was just no end to it. I was floating ten or fifteen feet above her. She was smoking a long-stemmed pipe and there was no wind so the smoke streamed directly upwards into my face (even though I had no body and was invisible as far as I could tell.) It smelled fantastic. Sweet and comforting and wonderful. Somehow the best scent of my life.

And that was all.

In group share, N got all excited about it and said the spirit of San Pedro loves me and is offering to teach me. He said that if I wanted to learn from San Pedro, or Huachuma as they call it, I should do a dieta with it and it would gladly teach me. This was lovely because I really liked my first (and only) experience with San Pedro in the mountains of Cusco but I'm not sure if it answered my question. Still, this was one of my favorite ayahuasca trips.

I feel obligated to report on my ayahuasca trips here as well since I was in the same place, drinking the same brew and had a completely different experience. It should be noted that I had virtually no sleep the night before and I was thoroughly exhausted. I tried to rest that day but had zero success with the heat and humidity. There was not even a fan. I had some success cooling with a wet rag, but this did not allow for sleep.

On the first night, I also had one full glass. It was definitely a vile concoction, but I had no trouble taking it down in a few gulps. It left the most awful taste in my mouth and I tried swishing some water around in my mouth to wash it down but that didn't help much.

T+15 I could feel it kicking in. Some kaleidascopic multi-color visuals popped into my field of vision and I could feel waves of energy flowing through my body.

T+20 It was building quickly and a good amount of anxiety crept in as reality began to ebb away into the distance becoming like a fond memory. I would look up into the ceiling of the maloka and the top point seemed to be an infinite distance away. The visuals were becoming strong and I was slowly lifting up off the ground as the body load made it's presence known. I felt like my skin was an abstract concept much like an electron cloud around the nucleus of an atom. I could hear people beginning to puke/purge and this made me take note of my own nausea setting in. I didn't try to fight it, but I have a pretty solid stomach so it wasn't much of an issue. I focused on my own visions.

T+25 I was somewhere in space or the "void". I had acheived a sort of nirvana state, floating in nothingness and feeling a vast fountain of energy flowing in every direction through my body. It was a very colorful and blissful state.

T+30 The icaros started and it pulled me back to reality a bit. I was back in the maloka and it was a cacophony of puking, purging, heaving, moaning, and just a general discusting state of affairs. Although most (LabRat included) found the icaros pleasant and comforting, I found it to be more like the sounds of a dying animal crying in agonizing pain. There were moments where it sounded more blissful and ecstatic, but for the most part I just wanted the icaros to stop. The nausea was still building and all the sounds were digging into my gut. I could feel death creeping in. I felt through and through poisoned

T+35 The experience was becoming vastly overwhelming. I could feel heat pouring out of the back of my neck. I felt like I had just ate a whole bottle of flushin niacin. The nausea had become the elephant in the room and I remembered being told that once you purge, the nausea dissipates. So, I let it out. It was a nominal amount of puke, maybe a little more than the ayahuasca that I had drank. But the nausea did not dissipate. I continued dry heaving for a few minutes with only a little dribble coming out. The nausea was becoming worse and nothing was coming out, so I put my bucket down and tried to focus on other things. Then I had to urinate. It was an uneventful matter of fact thing and I was surprised at my ability to get up and walk to the toilet.

T+45 My body felt like it was 120F and I had a splitting headache. I had taken all the proper precautions and was eating only their horribly bland food but I felt like I had both tyramine poisoning and serotonin syndrome. I hadn't even been taking any vitamins for over a week. It took a great deal of effort, but I removed my shirt and noticed that it was fairly wet with sweat although I had only been sitting on my mat. This made me feel slightly better as far as heat, but the nausea was still getting greater. My gut was wrenching in pain and I thought that I had finally taken the psychedelic bullet. I took on the pose of a muslim bowing toward Mecca with my shirt off and puddles of sweat accumulating on my back.

After this, time gets very distorted. The maloka purge party is still ongoing and I become convinced that I am at ground zero and possibly patient zero for a plague that will wipe out humanity. The girl next to me was having some issues and had to leave the maloka for a while. When I looked over at her space, I saw a pile of ashes in human form but as a very menacing figure sitting on her mat. This was very foretelling as this person was the source of some drama that arose between LabRat and myself that next day. As the facilitators are walking around the maloka trying to help people cope with things, I did not see them taking foot steps. They were floating around like specters. This convinced me for a time that I had entered the spirit world.

I had died and I was stuck in the Peruvian jungle in a mentally handicapped state. At some point, I had stopped feeling the gut pain, head pain, and nausea, but I feel like it had translated itself in my mind to a sort of trapped animal mental anguish probably precipitated by my perception of the icaros. At what I'm guessing was around T+60, I had completely left reality. I have been to hyperspace a few times on freebase DMT, and this was most definitely not the same hyperspace. The colorful aspects of the beginning of my trip were mostly gone. This was a hot, dark, and ominous place like Dante's Inferno only without the flames and with a sense of loneliness and abandonment. It was possibly the most miserable I have ever been in my life. I think that at some point in the "void", I had a full blackout for 10-20 minutes.

The icaros had stopped momentarily and this break startled me, but it was such a wonderful relief. They were bringing people up for their personal icaros but I was too far gone to realize this at the moment. It started back up again but these icaros had a different feel. It was more focused and meaningful. It was still not exactly pleasant sounds to me but was much more tolerable. A few rounds of these personal icaros went by and I started to sober a bit. With the sobering, the nausea began to subside as well. Eventually, it was my turn and most of my weight had to be balanced by one of the facilitators so that I could walk 10 meters to sit in front of the shaman. This was strange because I felt more sober than when I had to urinate, but I couldn't even stand up straight on my own.

The pulses of energy flowing through my body became more powerful as the shaman vocalized. This was the only time anything he said had any tangible meaning. I could hear my name periodically with the Spanish inflection that I had become accustomed to hearing from growing up in Texas. The pulses of energy took on the form of eagles pushing me into the mountains. I could feel them swooping down behind me and flying upwards through my body and then I could see them leaving my body and flying upwards over the shaman's head. By the time my icaros was over, the nausea was becoming background noise and I could feel myself
quickly sobering up.

At some point during my trip near the peak when I was having a really hard time. One of the facilitators must have recognized this and came to my rescue by blowing mapacho smoke on me. I appreciate the sentiment, but this did not help. There was already plenty of smoke in the maloka making the place acrid and the shaman's assistant was smoking so much that it sounded like she was coughing up phlem. The smoke being blown in my face was making me more nauseous. I'm not sure how long the smoke was being blown on me, but when I recognized it for what it was I said, "No mas." I think she took offense to my request, as it seemed to take her a minute to process it and then she shrugged and walked away.

T+240 (12am) The ceremony had ended. Fruit was brought in. I had a nice strong after glow, but also felt like I was on the down side of a bad flu. My gut was not in good shape and kept me up for a couple hours. I might have spent another night without sleep, but the cool of the night and the sounds of the jungle lulled me to sleep.

After waking up in the morning, I had decided to hang up my psychonaut badge. My trip was just too much and I was relating to the lyric, "too much trippin' and my soul's worn thin." A conversation with the shaman and one of the facilitators convinced me to dive in again.

This is the same evening that LabRat drank two glasses. I drank 1/4 glass. I only wanted to put my toes in and be part of the ceremony.

T+20 The drugs are working and I start to get visuals as well as some strangeness to reality. I wish that I had been more insistent and sat out the ceremony. I'm not in the right mind set to trip, much less take ayahuasca.

T+30 Nausea... Damn, why did I do this. Here comes the purge party. I wish that I would have recorded the audio from this. It borders between disgusting and hilarious... just a really sad state of affairs. I felt plenty of nausea. It wasn't like the night before and I didn't get the need to purge.

T+40 I am very uncomfortable, feeling the same things as the night before but less. I am unable to get any enjoyment out of the trip. I am biding my time until the trip and the nausea wears off. Once again, I take my shirt off to cool down but this time I am coherent enough to use a rag and some water to wet my bare skin for cooling. I am in quiet rage towards the shaman and facilitator that convinced me to dive in again. If he had any sort of psychic ability, he was getting a torrent of nasty thoughts. <- I don't really believe this.

T+60 The purge party is starting to subside, but a couple individuals are still dry heaving. My purge this night consisted of about 200mL of spit. The after taste from the ayahuasca is absolutely vile. At one point, I smell the rag that I am wetting my skin with and wiping away the salty sweat. It smells of the ayahuasca. I am just disgusted at the whole affair.

T+90 I am getting some heavy visuals at this point but they are visions of the toxins flowing through my body. It was like looking at an oil slick in the sunlight through a stained glass window and it would become more intense with the waves of nausea pulsing through my body. One of the guys a couple mats from me had drank three cups that night and had been having an awful time. Somewhere around this point, he soiled his shorts. Every once in a while, I could smell it over the mapocho smoke. This did not help me or I'm sure anyone around me. The facilitators cleaned him up while he was blacked out, but didn't clean his mat until the next day so every once in a while a waft of it would hit my nose and make my stomach churn a bit.

T+120 The icaros stop and I am one of the first (since I'm more sober) to be asked up to get my personal icaros. I did not want to participate. I told the facilitator that the ayahuasca is poison to me and that I want no part of it. At this point, I had my wet rag wrapped around my face to minimize the mapocho and shit smell.

T+140 I sat through a couple of the personal icaros and just couldn't stand to be in the maloka/ceremony any longer. I had thought about leaving earlier, but was trying to be respectful of the ceremony and of their wishes that we not wander off during ceremony.
The End! I had had enough. This moment reminded me so much of when I got up and walked out of church as a teenager. I just couldn't take it any longer no matter what the consequenses.

Mhh, that thing about religious cermonies again. It sounds very annoying to you. It is a shame you have to endure that, or have endured that. I apologise on behalf of whoever was responsible, I'm sorry.

It was me. I took him to the jungle for this. He's so much more experienced as a psychonaut than I am but I knew he'd never done this. I wanted to give him a wonderous experience he'd never had, the same way he has done for me in introducing me to psychedelics. It was his birthday present. It back-fired badly and taught me a lot of lessons.

It taught me a lot of lessons as well. I no longer drink alcohol and finally gave up cigarettes for the last time. It was a very valuable experience that ultimately I'm glad to have had and have behind me. It was just not a very pleasant experience. It also may be responsible for showing me that I may have kidney stones or at least something that is responsible for my prolonged nausea and pain. I now have active insurance, so we will see very soon. And it also exposed my hatred for religion. I thought that I had it under control, but obviously not.

Why do you hate religion syberdelic?

RapidLabMouse, from an external point of view it looks like you are taking on you unnecessarily the fact that Syberdelic had and is still going through an uncomfortable experience. I think he is strong enough to take it on him, and that the purpose of your journey has been reached: raise and underlying problem that was already there before that journey in the jungle.

I was apologising for the people that he might take responsible for the feeling he still got today that makes him so uncomfortable, the people that he might have met 15 years ago at church, not you.

syberdelic, I might step out of my business here, please tell me politely if that is the case, reading you makes me feel very uncomfortable for you and I was hoping that this could give you the opportunity to describe neutrally what you are feeling inside and why..

This could actually go in a new post if you wish to speak about it, so that we leave this post for the jungle reports ^^

Have a good day

Well, I don't want to get too in to depth with my religion issues as it is a bit personal and I don't want to clog up this thread with my self psychoanalysis, so I'll keep it brief.

My father was very religious and spent much of his life searching for a spiritual path. (I speak of him in the past tense, because I haven't talked to him in 17 years.) This included much of my childhood. He was always dragging myself and my younger brother to all sorts of churches (Let me tell you, there is a wide variety of Christians in the U.S.), prayer groups, camp meetings, etc. For bedtime stories, he would read to us out of the books of Daniel and Revelation. If you know anything about these books, you will understand that he was very preoccupied with apocalypse but also how inappropriate it is to read and discuss the apocalypse with young children. We were indoctrinated deep into christianity very young, but he inadvertently exposed us to much conflicting dogma and religious information in his search. Otherwise I would not be here discussing drugs that cause demonic possession and the like.

When I think back on all the religious leaders I've interacted with, I would say that the vast majority of them are/were either charlatans or adults with the mental capacity of a 10 year old.

The rest of it is details about how all this was processed and how I gravitated toward science as it promotes questioning things rather than taking them on faith. Religion, dogma, faith, ritual, and the like all make me feel like the victim of a con job or that others are being victimized out of their spiritual weakness. I wouldn't be surprised if some portion of my nausea was caused by this.

LabRat is actually much less spiritual than I am, but doesn't have such a deep seated issue with religion.

Could be difficult for someone to hear..

Anyway, it sounds to me like even if it was not visible your father could have been a very scared man. People don't do things like that without a good reason, just like psychedelics. And if you had some connection with how he felt deeply it must have been difficult indeed to watch him being abused and kept in that system. But that also is not to blame, for the same reason. The only thing there might be is that feeling of being powerless in front of what you saw. Anger is a efficient way to ease this. I think one day you will want to give up in front of the anger and face again what is behind..

These are my last words on the subject, I could not not try to help, sorry if it is out of the scope.

I can understand your fathers confusion must have been taxing as a child, but he was looking for answers the only places he knew of right? Did you manage to take away anything positive from your Christian upbringing? Surely some sects of Christianity can get pretty twisted and weird but to have a blanket hatred of religion?
I can find gold nuggets scattered through Christianity,Buddhism even Catholicism. The golden rule for instance, treating people the way you want to be treated. Surely this is a healthy way to approaching relationships with people.

Thanks for the reports.

To be honest, your experiences depend on numerous factors, including the kind of brew you were served. I wonder where you went because of the San Pedro thing which isn't traditional in the Jungle at all, in fact the wrong place to serve it IMO.

What was the name of the centre?

Nah, I'm okay with it. I railed against my own lack of faith and spirituality when I was a kid and I tried on many religions and philosophies to try and find one I could get behind wholeheartedly but I failed. It depressed me a lot back then, that failure, so I made a conscious decision to let it go, as the struggle was doing me no good. These days my approach is more "if it comes, it comes, if not, I'm still a good, worthwhile person." My relationship with the more spiritual Syberdelic works because he accepts that and doesn't ask that I fake it.

It was actually a two week tour that we went on. The San Pedro was consumed in the mountains near Cuzco and the ayahuasca ceremonies were right off the amazon about 1.5 hours by van and 1.5 hours by boat from Iquitos. I don't feel comfortable disclosing their name both because I don't want to tarnish their name or promote them. Leave it to say that plenty of research was done and I seriously doubt that a better center/tour could have been found for our non-hippie personalities. The reason why I have railed so much against ayahuasca tourism is that I want to make sure people understand that like myself, it may not be for you either. If you are like me, you would be much better off taking ayahuasca/pharmahuasca in a more familiar cultural setting and in a place where you have better control over set and setting.

And yes, I do recognize that religion provides some positive benefits but it is muddled with other valuable things to artificially increase it's value. In my head, I like to divorce spirituality and humanism from religion. For instance, the golden rule may have been spawned by religion, but can easily stand on it's own and does not need things like faith and/or dogma to support the truth of it's logic. And also, I find myself to be a fairly spiritual person but have little faith. Faith is not necessary to consider possibilities. I have spent many (~30) years struggling with this to get to the point I am at now. My hatred toward religion as a teenager was a frothing rage. Until our trip to Peru, I thought that I had a rationally sound perspective on religion and spirituality, but it is now obvious that there is a good deal of emotional clouding.

If someone wants to start a new thread on the merits and pitfalls of religion, I would be happy to chime in there but for this thread, let's leave it at that. LabRat has more trip reports to post, and I'm sure there are others as well.

One last thing that I will add here for those that haven't read her introduction essay is that she has some very real tolerance issues. Don't expect to drink ayahuasca and have a "pleasant" experience. Expect annihilation. More data is needed on my LabRat, but I suspect that she has around a 2-3x tolerance for harmine and a 5-10x tolerance for DMT.

RabidLabMouse, you might want to look into syncretism. This is the idea of combining philosophies and practices of different religions into a system that works best for you. This is what I do currently, and it really works for me. I, like you struggled with religion for many years until I started looking into different religions and philosophies and started practicing syncretism, basically.

Instead of rigidly trying to make one belief system fit you, you can try out different ones and pick and choose different aspects of said belief system and synthesise it into a coherent model.

Here's a great video on syncretism:


Anyway, that's just a suggestion for you. Hope it helps you out.

BTW, I really enjoyed reading your trip reports.

*Bump*

Great reports! I enjoyed reading through this thread! I voted you up for sure! Please post some more!

I really enjoyed these contrasting reports too, thanks for posting. Sorry to hear about your awful experience syberdelic, and you've convinced me to have my first aya experience closer to home base. I got a couple chuckles from your report, I think because I can easily relate to your thought processes. Apologies if that offends, I tend to laugh at the wrong things at times, sorry.