SOME TRAPS AND PITFALLS OF AYAHUASCA IN NON-CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER.
I am forever in debt to Ayahuasca, she healed my depression and anxiety and showed me that spiritual realms were a discernible reality, not just something to read about in a book. She basically saved my life. There is no doubt about it, she is an amazing spirit who has helped myself and many others navigate the treacherous territory of the matrix and towards a greater freedom, teaching us a more harmonious way of being. However, the path of healing through Ayahuasca has not been a straightforward trajectory either, but more a winding, sinuous path through many ups and downs and all arounds. I’m not as experienced as some, but I have drunk around 100 times over the last four years in many settings, before being shown while on an Iboga flood dose over New Years that I had really lost the fucking plot with my Ayahuasca use and that it was time to stop or risk going insane. So I thought I would play the devil’s advocate, a role that has enticed me ever since I was thrown out of heaven for having ambition and an issue with fascist centralised power structures, and share with the community some of what I have learned along the way from my experiences.
9. The Gurufication of the Ayahuasca facilitator
You have a powerful experience that shows you a whole new reality, it heals wounds that had been inside of you for so long, you thought they were you… I know, let’s transfer this experience onto the nearest anthropomorphic vector in sight… How about that guy/girl wearing the ethnic clothing and the feathers in his/her hair? The one that speaks in that exotic accent that is so hard to understand you just assume that he/she is saying some profound shit right there?
This is an easy mistake to make, but just remember without the Ayahuasca, I severely doubt you would be paying $250-$500 a pop to sit in a room in the dark all night and listen to this guy/gal’s new age playlist and atonal chanting in a funny sounding language you don’t understand. Really it’s the Plants, Gaia and Source you should be worshipping, they are after all perfected beings while humans are not.
Some of these facilitators are no doubt amazingly spiritually accomplished people, living avatars of light, but don’t forget that at some point in the day they do have to sit on the toilet and take a shit just like the rest of us so don’t suspend your critical mind and hang onto every one of their words like it’s gospel, it’s really just some interesting insights from some weirdo who has spent more time talking to plants than human beings. A lot of them eventually even lose their heads after hearing people like yourself tell them how great they are all the time and turn into total assholes, eventually starting a cult and before you know it you are sacrificing baby goats in the name of the Dark Lord and the lotto numbers for next week’s draw.
Also if they are male shaman and you are a sexy young feminine thing idolising them, at some point a few of these holy men will probably try and grab your boobs.
10. The Demonisation of the Ayahuasca Facilitator.
Oh my God! The fairy dust coated flight of fantasy that you expected has turned into a hellish confrontation of all your worst fears and unprocessed emotions! The walls are bleeding and there are childhood traumas in the shape of wrathful demons harassing you with tiny pitchforks with burnt marshmallows on the end… The processed kind made with corn syrup, artificial colours and flavouring. This is your worst nightmare! You turn to the nearest anthropomorphic vector to blame this whole unpleasant experience on. Why it’s that guy/girl wearing the funny hat, bashing a drum and talking to things that aren’t there, who gave you that cup of foul-tasting liquid! It’s all his/her fault! They are a charlatan! A fake! They are the devil! Or at least they are probably subcontracting for him! This must be a set up… Yeah… A massive conspiracy created to make you feel bad! You want to leave this place. You want revenge! Or at least a refund!
Sorry to say this guys, but you are probably just projecting all of this right now because you can’t handle the contents of your own unconscious. Yep. This has nothing to do with this noble healer, this renegade risking jail time to bring healing and awareness to a species in crisis, so stop pinning your own crap on this valiant light worker… Ground control to Major Tom - OWN YO OWN SHIT!
98U314. Ayahuasca is rarely a quick fix.
Sometimes people get lucky and experience deep healing within a few short sessions. More commonly, people it’s just the start of the never ending path of healing, albeit one with discernible breakthroughs along the way, so just beware of expectations as they can often interfere with the experience.
38a. You can’t just give people Ayahuasca and expect them to wake up.
I had a somewhat idealistic notion that if you just gave everyone Ayahuasca they would wake up and the world would become one big happy drum circle neverending music festival, but sadly what I realised fairly quickly was that this isn’t the case. It can definitely be a red pill if someone is ready to pop, but if someone is still heavily mired in the matrix, it ain’t gunna do jackshit. If anything it will just make them even more annoying to be around as they take selfies of themselves purging their guts out into a bucket while yelling, ‘Enlightenment is cray cray yolo rofl lol!’ as they instagram the whole experience in real time.
38b. It can make you think you are awakened, when really you aren’t that awakened.
If you have to state that you are awakened or ‘woke’ or ‘awokened’ because you have drunk Ayahuasca, chances are you are probably not that awokened. Thinking you are awokened just because you drink Ayahuasca is one of the biggest blindspots you can have. If anything Ayahausca can just lead you into thinking that you are awokened when really you are just spending every weekend at a medicine circle talking with other ‘awokened’ people about how awokened you are while the Forces of Darkness continue to rape the Earth for a quick buck.
2. You become one of those irritating people on plant medicine internet forums who always has be right.
By far one of the worst side effects of drinking medicine is becoming one of those self-righteous and self important judgemental trolls on plant medicine forums who always has to chime in like an expert, sneering down on anyone with an honest question, quibbling over little details and arguing over stupid crap, when in reality despite the amount of medicine they have drunk, they are still sad and depressed, possibly from spending so much time in front of a screen, scanning plant medicine forums waiting for a moment to criticise someone to compensate for the poverty of their waking existence and if anyone wants to complain about this article in the comments section, I AM ALWAYS RIGHT AND YOU ARE ALWAYS WRONG YOU IDIOT I’VE DONE MORE PSYCHEDELIC PLANTS THAN YOU AND I’M STILL AN ASSHOLE.
My advice to you if you are one of these types is to bitch about people in a blog like a real man.
1224. Falling in love with someone at at a medicine circle.
You stare at her from across the circle as she violently throws up some childhood trauma into a bucket. An arrow pierces your heart as you stare at your future wife. Fantasies of spending the rest of your life with this person whether they like it or not, flower inside your mind. Based on what? One conversation and four cups of strong medicine? Yep she’s the one alright. She has to be. I mean she drinks Ayahuasca, ummm she’s female and uhhh fuckit that’s enough to base a long term relationship on right? Wrongo bongo psychedelic Romeo. I’m not saying these things don’t happen, but when you got a brain swollen full of seratonin like a hot air balloon brain, your judgement can be waaaaay off. While it’s not unheard of for soulmates to discover each other as they shit themselves together in the jungle, check your expectations as they might explode in your face much like your bowels on the second night. Yep I had to learn this lesson several times (at this point I would put in that cartoon sound effect that goes ‘wah wah wah waaaaah’).
19. Spiritual bypassing.
Hey you, pissfarting about in the purple dimension with Tinkerbell rearranging timecodes and closing off ancestral portals! What does it all matter? Are you really healing yourself or are you just escaping from your problems by drinking Ayahuasca every week and pooting about in the astral trying to open dimension to all sorts of new age gobbledygook and then boring everyone around with tales about how you met Pegasus and how he tried to hump your aura with his spirit horn? There are infinite false paradises out there to seduce you. It’s easy to get lost in the fireworks and the light show sometimes, they can be jaw-droppingly amazing, putting most sci-fi fantasy films to shame. But you may wish to ask yourself what use your activities in the 23rd dimension are in relation to this physical realm. Are the effects in this realm noticeable? Or are they possibly just a flight of fantasy, hyper realised by a powerful entheogenic medicine while you run away from having to deal with your shit, under the pretence that you are dealing with it?
20. Addressing yourself in second person through a blog about the traps and pitfalls of drinking Ayahuasca in an effort to distance yourself from the same mistakes you yourself have made countless times, again and again.
90. Fake healing.
Are you really healing or are you just saying that you are healing? The first 25 -30 experiences I had were deeply, deeply healing, but the next 75 or so experiences… I don’t know. There were some definite good healings and teachings in those ones too, but there was also a lot of noise. At one point my healing became this weird narrative plotline that started to become more and more complicated, sounding like a television series that was running out of ideas. I was receiving messages that I needed a soul retrieval to heal this ancestral wound and the I would have to go and find my power animal to then go find my aenima who was trapped in a cage somewhere deep within my inner child who was lost in a sea located somewhere on the liver meridian line yadda yadda yadda… The phrase, ‘Wild Goose Chase.’ springs to mind.
Some healings were exaggerated while in a heightened state. Some healings stuck while others others faded. It was rarely a clear trajectory, more two steps forward, one step back.
56a. The Chosen One Syndrome.
On my fifth journey, I was informed that I was the chosen one. Yep I was an important historical figure who would change humanity as we know it. What dawned on me after a few months of swanning about in an all white pantsuit, cape and sandwich boards proclaiming ‘IT’S MY WAY OF THE HIGHWAY BABY!’, was that everyone is potentially the chosen one, but it takes a hell of a lot of personal work, luck, fate/destiny and also the risk of being crucified on a cross for doing this job. I suddenly started thinking that perhaps this chosen one fantasy was a projection of the ego, perhaps to do with a corewound that I had around a deep-seated lack of self worth, a common psychic virus that seems to be going around at the moment. Some kind of wish fulfilment fantasy amplified by massive doses of psychedelic medicine.
I’m not saying that I’m not the chosen one, so if you wish to donate money to me, I will accept it reluctantly and graciously. I’m not saying that you’re not the chosen on either, just beware of fantasies or messages that stroke the ego like a well rehearsed handjob. Much like a happy ending, it may end with you suddenly realising that you are in a seedy massage parlour covered in shame. Good messages either have the ring of truth and/or end up coming true in this reality.
56b. Being led astray.
You get told to quit your job and become a Kundalini Yoga teacher even though you have no prior experience and only one leg. You meet a spirit from the purple dimension who tells you that indeed it was inspector Honeybot who stole your wifes pantaloons. Which messages do you trust?
This one time Ayahuasca showed me that this girl I had met in America was my soulmate and we were supposed to be together and that we were going to have a baby boy together called Ganesh and start an intentional community somewhere in Northern NSW so I thought I would tell her this the next day. Yeah she defriended me… Who wouldn’t? That’s some psycho shit right there. Another time while on Dieta I was informed that I was to start a drone noise rock band at the age of 36 and I was to do mass sound healings on the populace and lots of women would want to sleep with me. Hey maybe that might still happen, but chances are that it won’t. There were many, many ideas and visions received. So many in fact that I was paralysed by choice, not sure which ones to pursue. I find Ayahuasca tells you a lot of interesting stories that might not necessarily be the truth. There may be lessons to be learned in pursuing these storylines, but they might not necessarily be your ‘fate’ or ‘destiny’. I feel that it is a vine with many branches and while one or two of the branches may lead you to heaven, the majority can end up leading you on a merry goose chase through thick jungle. People often think that Ayahuasca is all love and light — and it can be when facilitated by someone who is working for the Good, but it is also used for black magic sorcery and doing all sorts of evil shit to people as well, so it is what you choose to make of it.
12. How much is too much?
If you find your self drinking Ayahuasca every week and your regular life’s still a mess, maybe it’s time to look into integration. Yeah that’s right, I’m talking to You, Me. Ayahuasca requires a host tree to grow on and if the tree isn’t strong enough to support it, the vine will often kill its host. Make sure you are a strong tree, if you are going to be drinking very frequently.
13. Dependency
I wouldn’t say you can get addicted to Ayahuasca, but you can definitely become dependent on it. Whether you can over rely on the plants to do all the work for you all the time or whether you are addicted to the cycle of: falling off the path => redemption => reset/rebirth => false dawn => Repeat… Is another thing.
During one journey one time, as I entered the realm, I actually heard the plant spirits say, ‘Oh fuck it’s this guy again.’
14. Not living the healing.
I got some mad insights, some amazing visions and then went back to my friends and crowed on about them until they told me to shut the fuck up and that hearing me tell them blow-by blow accounts of what went on in my sessions was akin to hearing some schizophrenic homeless man tell them about a dream he once had on the bus. Little did I realise that a lot of these insights and visions were not manifested in reality afterwards and therefore they faded quickly. Ayahuasca gave me a window for change whilst in the vacuum of the retreat space, but unfortunately the world is not a retreat space. It’s up to you to jump through these windows and anchor them with real changes in your life. Otherwise you may slide back into the realms of unawareness that you were in prior to your experience.
48939. The heightened states mostly don’t last.
The thing with awareness is that it is the very thing that measures itself, so aside from a vague feeling like world is starting to suck more than before, it’s impossible to notice that you have lost awareness. It’s a bit like trying to remember a dream. You then may find yourself getting attached to these higher states of awareness and chasing after them much like a junkie and his fix, mistaking the path for the destination. The effects often fade after a few weeks. The honeymoon period. The effects do persist if you can anchor them with solid integration habits and keeping to dieta, especially after a strong master plant dieta, but often you get make a lot of progress and then upon reentry back into the muggles world, you can slide sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. There is a feeling of deep self change while in the cocoon of the retreat environment, but often returning to the ‘real’ world, a lot of the old triggers and anchors may bring some of those pesky old operating systems back into play and then it’s all that hard work crap.
2. Ego inflation.
It’s a no brainer that if you drink enough Ayahuasca, it may warp your sense of self. You can end up really blowing a whole bunch of hot air up your own ass if you’re not careful. There is a tendency towards grandiosity with the medicine, of self-exaggeration. I guess you destroy your ego so many times, and then it keeps growing back like a thistle, even more resilient than before. By then it is no regular ego, it becomes the ‘I-have-survived-ego-death ultra ego’ which is even more of a tiresome bore than your regular run of the mill ego parasite. I have met countless Ayahuasca divas and Medicine Masters who swan about in culturally appropriated costumes, feathers in their hair, staring down their noses at me, grandiosely claiming to be powerful shamans and Kundalini Yogic dakinis and Magickal seers of all realms. I have met Shamans with pretty huge Egos too, I mean think about it, you have a captive audience of very suggestible people every week telling you how great you are all the time while you drink medicine with them and lecture them on what you believe life is about. The whole time I would look at these aforementioned people and be thinking, ‘Wow this person has got some serious ego inflation, they have totally lost the plot. Not me though, I’m so much more in control than them. Yep… So much more in control. So much more humble. So, so much more humble. And better than them too. So much, much, much more humble and better.’ — a classic case of the ‘I-don’t-have-an-ego ultra-ultra-mega ego.’ Whichever Ego that might be operating you, they are still both massive douchebags so quit it.
24. Mid-range doses.
Mid range doses are a bit sneaky, because you don’t go through ego dissolution and you don’t notice that it subtly amplifies your ego either, as the very watcher in the mind is what is being affected. Oh no, this smug customer thinks that he’s in control, when really it’s the perfect dose to fuel delusions instead of destroying them. Actions driven by Ego will most likely eventually turn dark and may leave you open to turning all Darth Vader consciously or unconsciously. In ‘Rainforest Medicine’ by Jonathan Miller Weisburger, he speaks about how the Secoya actually state one of the causes of someone becoming a Sorcerer is from not drinking a high enough dose of the medicine to enter the state of ego dissolution.
23. Getting cocky.
Three, four ceremonies pass by and all you get is cosmic bliss while everyone else around you are throwing up childhood demons into buckets… Damn you must be a highly evolved person right? Maybe you should drink a double cup then? Yeah why don’t you do that? Come on do it!
3. You can start wearing some pretty dumb-looking fashion choices and fuel the terrible shaman bling industry.
You drink a certain amount of medicine and all of a sudden you think its a good idea to wear a lama wool poncho in the middle of summer and a pair of moccasins made out of bells and panpipes. Fuck it, let’s glue condor feathers to your scalp while you’re at it, string 10 beaded necklaces around your neck like a choking hazard and a vest made out of rare Caiman skin that’s been sewn together by the tiny fingers of a poverty stricken indigenous child and then dance about telling everyone that you have magical powers so you can con some gullible women into sleeping with you.
Actually that’s not a bad idea, I might try that.
87. Picking up other peoples shit.
You are at a circle. Some guy starts having an exorcism next to you… Suddenly a 9 foot tall full shadowy figure of Baphomet climbs out of his mouth and leaps into your soul… Who are you going to call? Probably not the people running the circle.
9134. Running power through an unclean system…
There is a yogic saying that goes something like this, ‘If you want to create a monster, run a lot of power through an unclean system.’ In a way doing a lot of psychedelics is running a lot of power through your system and I have found from personal experience that while they do amplify your positive qualities, they can also amplify your negative traits or even your problems. One time an energetic parasite of addiction attached to my solar plexus chakra was feeding off all the medicine I was drinking and I began to experience uncontrollable eating compulsions and increase in addictive behaviours after every ceremony.
The medicine can also bring your corewounds to the surface without necessarily clearing them. And if you don’t take care of your corewounds and keep drinking, you maybe building crystal castles on shaky foundations.
2398934893. Admixture plants.
I am all for admixture plants, but things can get confusing in their if you are using a lot of them all the time without learning from an experienced teacher. Guilty as charged. Having said that, it is amazing what obscure Amazonian herbs you can get off Ebay these days. Many plants will have different teachings and some of these teachings will conflict with each other and things can get muddy.
343434343. Drinking and not integrating
You have a powerful experience that rocks you world. Hell you want your world to be rocked all the time. Hell, you want to do it straight away, even though you have yet to fully weave the magic of the last experience into your being. Well hell boy, keep blowing yourself apart without putting yourself back together again first, and sooner or later someone will be scraping your remains off the footpath and sticking it in a doggy bag and mailing it to the nearest nuthouse.
857487. You heal something and it comes back.
This one time I had an energetic parasite that got cleared by the medicine and then it came back, this time with even more sophisticated technology that was now resistant to being cleared the way it was cleared in the first incident. Unless you fully cut off it’s entry points, it’s food source and instil a sense of discipline and willpower that prevents the thing from coming back, you may be in trouble.
Other times you could heal yourself of something that is actually an environmental illness… Say you heal your depression through the medicine, then you go back to your life and shitty job that you hate and your depression comes back. Damn you know what that means — Your life situation was the cause of the illness! (It’s not really that funny, but I thought I would put an exclamation mark on the end to jazz up what may be a pretty depressing reality to some folks)
3. It can make you lose your sense of humour.
Ayahuasca can make you a very earnest person. Hell after certain number of drinks I caught myself saying things like ‘Love is all there is.’, ‘We are all one.’ and ‘I wish I was a bird in the sky.’ without any irony, to other people who just nodded back at me and said stuff like, ‘You speak the truth brother.’, ‘Those words truly move my heart.’ and ‘Let’s start a cult and poison the water supply.’.
4. It can suspend your critical judgement.
Some of the conversations you hear at Ayahuasca circles sound like the ramblings of autistic children on an endless merry go round. Magical thinking is an enjoyable pastime, but I’m starting to think a little realism once in a while is good, otherwise you may end up being conned into buying very expensive new age merchandise that you have been told will open your crown chakra, reprogram your cellular DNA and make all the baddies go away forever.
22. It can make you ungrounded.
Opening yourself with the medicine without having strong foundations or even blockages in your lower chakras mean that you will end up having a lot of energy centred around your upper chakras with nothing to support it. The net effect of this is that you may be receiving an extraordinary amount of information from outside sources, but without any grounding to discern what is worth listening to and what is complete bollocks. When you are ungrounded, you are also leaving yourself open to possession and may end up being that person blathering on about the reptilians on the public bus.
1. You start listening to music that you used to think was shit before you started drinking the medicine.
This one time after going to a medicine circle, I heard a song on the radio and thought it was the most beautiful music in the world. ‘Is this the voice of a seraphim? The divine music of the spheres?’ I asked myself entranced. Turned out it was Enya. And you know what? I still think she’s awesome.
Yep, that’s some permanent brain damage right there folks.
Nahko Bear will always suck balls though.
More writings on the medicine path and other topics here: https://medium.com/me/stories/public
Follow me on facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/nick.sun.50
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/therealnicksun/
And Patreon. Please support me via patreon and i shall produce more high quality content for you to enjoy, including my secret blog about life as an Ayahuasca facilitator:
https://www.patreon.com/nicksun
