I wrote a short essay prior to going to the retreat about what I expected to get out of the retreat, I am not sharing that essay here, but I do not feel that my beliefs changed greatly from the experience. I had some of the same issues that run as a throughline through most of the people who go to these retreats – unsatisfied childhood trauma, needing closure for something that happened in the past, etc. My thoughts of why I wanted to go to the retreat were mainly curiosity and skepticism. The curiosity has been satisfied and the skepticism remains.
Probably no one has gone into an ayahuasca retreat with a less clear idea of what they wanted from it than me. It is not just taking psychedelics – it is signing up for a retreat, paying a bunch of money (I will save you the trouble of googling, it was $3,000 for a 8-day retreat that included 4 ayahuasca and 1 San Pedro ceremonies). So why? For a retreat in July 2024, I registered in October 2023. I made the decision pretty quickly and without a lot of information. A lot of the recent talk/research around psychedelics indicate that they can help solve past traumas, understand the past, etc. I really did not think about it much. Sure, there were childhood issues, but who does not have those?
From the time I signed up, Tanya would ask me my thoughts periodically. I always told her; I did not expect much. The best I could come up with is that by nature I am skeptical and curious. These two traits sometimes lead me in interesting directions. The skeptical side does not expect much and the curious side hopes there is more to it.
As the time approaches, maybe as a result of her questioning, maybe just the march of time, I did begin to think about my expectations. I decided that I should just go with it. I had done a few corporate retreats before and assumed there would be an aspect of that to the ayahuasca retreat – there were 8 days and nights to fill and it could not be filled entirely with hallucinations. I always hated the team building bullshit, but if it was part of this – I would succumb. If I needed to meet with a councilor, either individually or as a group, I would. The diet that I was restricted to before and during, I would restrict (the after diet I would reserve judgement on). I would watch, participate, try not to be amused at the performative and ceremonial nature of the retreat.
But why? What was I working toward? I think this mattered more to Tanya that me, she asked probing questions out of nowhere?
Before the retreat, Tanya and I had a running joke that so many hipsters were trying ayahuasca, that there actually was not enough to go around and purveyors of retreats were being forced to improvise ayahuasca with a cocktail of ipecac and Ambien. Hold that thought for a few paragraphs, it will come back.
So where will I be? In the Peruvian Amazon and the nearest city is Iquitos, Peru. I am told Iquitos is the largest city in the world that is not accessible by road and that is not on an island. I fly there from Lima and then take a boat to the location (actually a van to a boat, a 45-minute boat ride to a village, a walk through the village to a smaller boat and another 45-minute boat ride).
…And the retreat is over…
One thing was clear when the retreat ended: I will never do ayahuasca or San Pedro again. I should make clear that this is personal. Many people have used these substances for hundreds of years or more. Psychedelics are not dangerous and seem to help many. I do not believe they should be illegal and would not discourage anyone from using them. They do not seem to work for me. The spiritual side was lost on me. These substances are just chemicals – they do not unlock any pathway to another plane, they do not bring you closer to God. It was explained that Ayahuasca was a vine and a vehicle of Mother Aya, who is the mother though less of a mother than Pachamama. San Pedro, on the other hand is from a cactus and a masculine substance – the grandfather. San Pedro is his Christian name, or Saint Peter.
I left the retreat and met Tanya in Lima to start a vacation and a lot of our talk on that vacation centered around my experience and the drugs in general. Tanya’s belief is that the drugs work akin to hypnosis in that the drugs do not tell you anything that is not already inside you. For me this was the case. I went in with the intention of recovering or solving some childhood trauma that I have long ago buried and I came out the other side realizing that I really did not need those memories – that part of life has already been successfully dealt with them.
Other people in the retreat possibly got more out of it. One woman decided she needed to leave her husband. To bolster Tanya’s theory, before she left for the retreat, she had already packed her belonging so her husband could ship them if she was not returning (a week or so after the retreat she posted in our group chat that she and her husband were going to try and work on the issues). One woman decided she needed to make jewelry. Another was in contact with her past lives, her 6-year-old self, and who knows what else.
So, what was it like for me? The retreat lasted 8 days and included 4 ayahuasca ceremonies and 1 San Pedro ceremony. As part of the bigger umbrella, the diet was restricted, there were a lot of free cigarettes available all the time (they actually are hand rolled, made of a native tobacco species, and have a different name), group activities including visits to nearby villages, a morning cleanse, and an afternoon breakdown session. I will just note here that the cigarettes are not considered addictive, and the tobacco is considered to be cleansing.
The diet, which some variation of is available on many websites is basically salt-free, sugar-free, spice-free, fruit-free, and on ceremony days consists of breakfast (usually eggs), a lunch of soup, and no dinner. This is for the best because you will throw up a lot on ayahuasca. The meals are the blandest, most tasteless food I have ever experienced and after throwing up ayahuasca all night I still was not hungry enough to finish the meal. They really undersell the weight loss part of the retreat.
Each ayahuasca ceremony runs 5-6 hours, starting after sunset. It is led by 2 shaman who chant, smoke, and do some other things, the participants sit in a circle in what I considered to be comfortable rocking chairs. The room is candle-lit at the start and is eventually completely dark. After the opening, the shamans administer the ayahuasca, working clockwise starting with the women who sit to the shamans left. After about 20 minutes or so, the vomiting begins. Everyone has their own bucket and specific instructions are given about bathroom usage, and movement around the room, respect for others, etc. Overall, it was well-run. At some point after the vomiting commences, the shamans come around and perform some ritual chants, rubs, and blowing of smoke on each person (I was never coherent enough to understand everything that was going on at this time).
The day after a ceremony, a cleansing ceremony is conducted. A mattress is placed in the middle of the room, one-by-one each participant lays on the mattress on their back and raises their shirt to expose their stomach. The shaman rubs something in the shape of a cross on your stomach, pushes on your stomach with coordinated breathing, they blow some smoke on you and chant. After that, you leave the other shaman pours water over your head that has various plant material in it. I always went last and it is my opinion that I got the dregs – I came out covered in detritus material and was instructed not to shower until 6pm and when you are covered weeds, the first thing you want to do is shower.
The afternoon consisted of what amounts to group therapy where everyone talked about their experience of the previous night. Advise was given, some cried, some (me) were given extra work. Because I was not having visions and lived in Michigan, I was deemed to have a cold center. To raise my center, before each ceremony, I had to sit in a chair over a pan of boiled water, covered with blankets for 30 minutes in the Amazon jungle.
So, what was my ayahuasca experience like? First, nothing tastes as bad as ayahuasca. It is a bitter, brown syrupy substance. My grandmother would say it has a deep brown taste. I imagine force-feeding Donald Trump kimchi and then having him shit it back in your mouth. It is really unpleasant. It was explained that at the first ceremony, we would be administered a first dose and then two hours later offered the second dose. If we were not having visions, we should take the second dose. I was not having visions, so I took the second dose.
After two doses, I still was not having visions and needed to use the bathroom. Two helpers came to assist. As I stood, my legs could not support my weight and I had no balance. I never made it to the bathroom. The helpers laid me on the floor where I remained for the next two hours. My body shook uncontrollably. I would describe it as a two-hour long seizure. I was physically exhausted at the end of the evening and had to be helped back to my room. I was physically exhausted for most of the next day. I guess shaking uncontrollably for two hours burns a lot of calories. Oddly, I was awake and aware for most of it. I was taken back to the period before the retreat when Tanya and I would joke that I would end up being fed an ipecac/Ambien cocktail, and thought, “God dammit, were we right? Is this Mama Aya’s sick joke? Her way of saying, ‘fuck you, white boy, make fun of me and my delicious elixir and I will show you what bad is?’” I think is really neither of these and that it just tastes really fucking bad.
The second session, I had around 10-15 minutes of visions, all very faint. I refused the second dose because I just could not go through it again. This was when it was decided my cool center needed to be warmed.
The third session, it was decided that I needed a larger first dose. Approximately 30 minutes in, I had the most excruciating stomach pain of my life. I mainly laid in my chair and moaned “fuck” over and over again. I refused the second dose although the facilitator later told me I actually said yes, but passed out with my head tilted back and was unable to drink. What I remember from this was that following the stomach pain, I was catatonic – not completely unconscious, but trying to heal myself. The next day brought extreme physical exhaustion.
The fourth session, I got a smaller dose and no second dose. There was less vomiting and enough consciousness and little pain. I had 5 or so hours to relax and reflect. This is probably when I had my clear thoughts about my purpose. Questions were answered to a degree that I do not consider the experience a waste of time, though I think for me there are probably other ways to reach the understanding that I reached.
And then came San Pedro…. Still no visions, a very strong buzz. A 12-hour ceremony that seemed so much longer. It started at 1 in the afternoon. No vomiting though San Pedro tastes slightly less bad than ayahuasca. The ceremony was a lot less formal and mainly involved sitting around tripping together, though I do not consider my experience to be much of a trip.
Aside from the ceremonies, the diet is an interesting part of the whole experience and it is actually three diets: the before, during, and the after. All three include a prohibition on sexual activity (also menstruation is frowned upon though I am not sure if it is banned. The question was asked, but none of the women copped to it.)
The before diet is pretty easy, it is mostly no pork, no antidepressants, and no weed. The during is much more restrictive and is discussed above. Basically, if you really do not want to enjoy your food this is the diet for you. It had a few other details that were quirky, like after the fourth ayahuasca and before the San Pedro, there was a feast day. That day, we ate a pretty normal diet, barbeque chicken, bananas (the only fruit in a week), and a pinch of salt. The explanation given was that the feast was to stop the ayahuasca, so the San Pedro could take over. After that one-day reprieve, back to the during diet for San Pedro day. Following San Pedro, we all got a pinch of salt to stop the San Pedro and allow the ayahuasca to restart and otherwise it was back to the ayahuasca diet.
This brings us to the post diet, which lasts for seven days (the sex ban runs eight days). The post diet is very similar to the during diet. To summarize, no salt, no sugar, no spice, no fruit, no caffeine. It was stressed that the post diet was very important because the ayahuasca stays in your system for six months and avoiding these foods for a week after taking the ayahuasca allows the changes you made to take hold and become permanent. I was skeptical, but also respectful and kept my skepticism to myself. I did do a little research (google) and found no evidence of any studies on (a) ayahuasca in general (thanks Nancy Reagan), or (b) the need to diet in such an extreme way. Further, I found a Redditor who claimed to have done ayahuasca many times both with and without dieting and found no difference. He also stated that before westerners started doing ayahuasca, there was no diet. This made a lot of sense to me. I was meeting my wife in Lima at the end of this ordeal and we had reservations at Osaka where the only thing on the menu that met the requirements was water. There was a very good chance that I would be taking my chances with not following the diet.
Now is where I must have an aside: during the San Pedro ceremony, which was run by the facilitator and not the shamans, the facilitator talked a lot about Christ (he claimed to not be a religious person). He said he had met Jesus and Buddha both while on ayahuasca. He explained how Buddha was beneath Christ in the celestial pecking order and a whole lot more. Before he got to that, he had mentioned Christ a lot and spoke of Christianity in what I took to be allegorical ways. During the San Pedro ceremony, I asked whether his invoking Christ and other Christian icons so frequently was because of his Judeo-Christian upbringing and it was just the easiest way for him to explain these concepts. The answer was an unsatisfactory no and a lot of other stuff. Later a Buddhist in the group asked the same question in a different way and that is when we got to the part about Jesus being above Buddha and all that. Let us just say there was a lot of Christianity going on here that set off my bullshit-o-meter.
Back to the diet, in explaining the reasoning behind the post diet, the facilitator explained how ayahuasca stayed in your system and that salt among other things inhibited its ability to continue to work (where chemical science and spirituality cross paths). The diet allowed it to continue to work. Why seven days? It took God seven days to create the world. OK, no need for the post diet, no need for the sex ban (no sex for 8 days after or you could become impotent). On the return trip to Iquitos, we passed a pizza place. I noted it and decided that I would pizza that night and I did. Maybe it is just that I did not see the need for changes after leaving ayahuasca behind, but I see no adverse effects. As for sex, I did not stick to that and am happy to report that I am not impotent.
In closing, I do not think that ayahuasca or San Pedro are particularly dangerous or useless. In my case, they did not perform as expected and I see no benefit to continuing with them.