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Sorry to hear you had a bad experience. What were you doing that was disturbing the ceremony? It sucks the guy was aggressive and threw you out... If you were really out of control and freaking out the other people I can see them gently taking you into another room, but not aggressively throwing you on the shower floor. There is some less than ideal 'facilitators' out there, so you have to be careful.

And no, of course its not mandatory to have a shaman. Spend some more time reading around here and you'll quickly find that most of this community probably drinks alone the majority of the time...It'd be nice to learn from a legit and caring wise elder in the amazon who has the collective knowledge of generations of work with this stuff sometime if i had the chance, but i have no problem going it alone in my bed.

If your worried then just start low. Perhaps get acquainted with the effects of the vine on its own first, if you want (this can be a great way to dip your feet in the waters after a rough experience with a full brew, and has been very healing, warm, and gentle to me). If your really worried then you may want to have a good friend come over and stay in the other room in case you need them. But if you can handle a higher dose of mushrooms or lsd on your own, then you'll probably be fine. Just don't over do it again right off the bat

peace

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Wow, sounds insane. Personally I would feel a lot safer doing it by myself or with a good friend. You never know how these "shamans" really are as a person. They could just be robbing you blind while you're out in hyperspace. They could also be genuine. It's just all of the sketchy stories I've heard would highly deter me from journeying with one of them unless I knew them personally.

I think maybe you didn't feel safe with this "shaman" and you had a bad experience. I would recommend what universecannon said. Try some caapi by itself by yourself. Then slowly test the waters. Try a full brew by yourself once you feel comfortable.

Just be safe.

clearly not mandatory, as i have never had/needed one in my travels.

though if you feel it would be beneficial to have a shaman, that's fine too

IMO drinking at home and drinking in ceremony with healers is apples and oranges. They are both very good just in different ways. It depends on your desired goals and intentions.

I would advise people seeking deep healing to work with a healer or shaman while if your intention is exploration, at home is a very comfortable setting. Not that these are all not possible vice versus, they surely are.

If you are a person like myself that believes that real shamans do much more than just put on a show then use them to your best advantage to achieve max healing.

I think this had ALOT to do with it...

What about san pedro/other cacti? Is it the same as olympus man said that shamans can help the healing... Is that universal with all plant medicine or solely ayahuasca?

Nope.

Most 'shaman', due to geographical constraints, are inaccessible to the vast majority of plant medicine users.
I gather that most experienced seekers, explorers and self healers tend to fly solo.

Inexperienced and overly extroverted folk are likely to benefit from having an experienced and sober sitter.

As a side note, I have met several people over the last 25 years that I would qualify as 'shaman', many of them operating as DJs, musos, artists and gardeners.

It sounds to me like you drank too much and freaked out, and it would have happened in any situation.

Don't beat yourself up. In that situation with your experience level it made the most sense to trust the person. Now you know to also listen to your intuition and you will next time. You will have the difficult task of trying to decipher your gut feelings from fear and apprehension next time so try to start taking notice to this in every day affairs. That will help you.

From all of our Pm's and your post's I feel very confident to say this guy was as about as much of a shaman as mickey mouse was an actor. He had no clue what to do when your journey became too much and not only that it shows his experience level to almost insist you drink a full cup. Freak outs are very hard and taxing work for shamans and they try to avoid that as much as possible. It disrupts the group, is very scary for the user and takes away from the shamans helping and working with the group. Nothing about this guy showed any signs that he was anything more than a person ego driven seeking money and kicks. Pond scum has more integrity than what you have shared about him.

Its needed to have some type of data base for people to share their good and bad experinces with healing centers in S.A. and I hope to one day be able to set something like this up. The "aya scene" in Peru is very sad and you kind of have to live there or spend extended period there to see how back stabbing and greed motivated it is.

Women being sexually assaulted during and after ceremony seems to be happening more and more by trusted reputable shamans. This makes things even trickier when the "good guys" act like dirt bags. Where does a person go and feel safe?

I only refer people to a small handful or aya workers and that list gets shorter and shorter.
Very sad state of affairs the popularity of ayahuasca and the poor economy of these countries has created.

Possibly but that's not a definite. A good facilitator can certainly help guide the experience to an acceptable level as well as take it away if it can not be tamed. I have seen this more than once with my own eyes. Id be willing to bet in the right hands this freak out could have been avoided with the same dose.

DMTsavedme's above words were not deleted. I accidentally hit the edit button instead of quote so my reply showed as his.

I've seen a friend go through a very ugly trip... the shaman smoke and blow some mapacho on him and remove his mareacion in an instant.

It is one of the most incredible things I have seen happen in real life. They did this for my wife in her 3rd ceremony and even she said it was hard to believe.

Do you mean is it possible? Absolutely very much so. Its not a definite though.

In this latest reply you say freaked out more than before. So is this not an un common happening for you? You have freaked out before? How many times?

If so and if multiple times maybe you need to re think this path. You have discussed doing aya at home and maybe trying cactus but if these medicines cause you this kind of terror this may not be the right thing for you. If this is the case it kind of changes a lot of things in how and what I would reply.

You may be sensitive to caapi so 1 cup of ayahuasca can be a lot stronger or weaker from person to person but the severity of your freak out cant just be from a strong brew. Not if others drank it and were absolutely fine and then you drink the same and this happens. Do you see what I am saying? The gap between the 2 are far to distant. I'm really beginning to think this stuff just may not agree with you. Also if these reactions you're having seem to be disproportionate to the dose I would have doubts a shamans could take that from you as we were discussing and I have seen happen.

How many times have you freaked out?. What happened the other freak outs?

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