I had prepared for this ceremony for months: two weeks on the traditional dieta (no pork, no spice, no alcohol, no sexual activity, no tyramine-rich foods), six weeks tapering off my SSRI under my doctor's supervision (the combination of SSRIs with ayahuasca can cause dangerous serotonin syndrome), and extensive research into the retreat center's safety protocols and the facilitator's lineage.
The ceremony began at nightfall. The curandero, don Miguel, blessed the brew and sang icaros (sacred songs). We each drank a small cup of the thick, dark brown liquid. The taste was intensely bitter and earthy, challenging but manageable. We sat on mats in the dark maloca, a simple open-sided wooden structure, listening to the sounds of the jungle.
About 45 minutes after drinking, the nausea arrived. It built gradually until the purge came, a violent and sustained vomiting that felt like it was emptying not just my stomach but something deeper, as if old grief and anger were being physically expelled. Several others were purging simultaneously. The facilitators moved calmly among us with buckets and water.
After the purge, the visions began. With eyes closed, I saw flowing serpents and jaguar motifs in luminous colors, archetypal Amazonian imagery that I had read about but was unprepared for in its visceral reality. Then the visions became personal: I was shown scenes from my childhood, my relationship with my mother, patterns of people-pleasing that had defined my adult life. The ayahuasca seemed to operate like a compassionate but unflinching therapist, showing me things I needed to see with a quality of gentle insistence.
The emotional intensity was extraordinary. I cried, I laughed, I shook with what felt like old tensions releasing from my body. At one point I felt a feminine presence, warm and vast and ancient, that I understood as la Madre, the spirit of the vine. She communicated not in words but in a direct knowing, an understanding that settled into my bones: that I was loved, that my suffering had meaning, and that I needed to stop carrying other people's pain as my own.
Don Miguel offered a second serving around midnight. The second wave was deeper and more abstract, less personal narrative and more cosmic perspective. I felt connected to the web of life in the jungle around me, to the people in the ceremony, to something vast and interconnected that I could not name.
Dawn came gradually. I felt exhausted, raw, and profoundly grateful. The integration work in the following days and weeks was as important as the ceremony itself. I processed the experience through journaling, conversations with other participants, and sessions with a therapist experienced in psychedelic integration. The changes were not immediate or dramatic but they were real: a gradual loosening of lifelong patterns of anxiety and people-pleasing, a deeper trust in my own worth, and a connection to something larger than myself that I had never experienced through meditation or therapy alone.