by Becky Wicks
Not even a mule could help me out of that one.
28/11
Mother Ayahuasca and the three-day itch …
From the sky, the Amazon rainforest is an incomprehensible mass of green. You can’t imagine the sheer size or scale of it until you see it from the window of a plane. I flew into Iquitos after two quite low-key and short days in Lima, and shadows of clouds cast patterns over patches of the formidable forest like darker, deeper sections of a mysterious sea. It was impossible not to wonder at all the life down there, what’s been discovered and what’s still waiting to be found … and what it had in store for me.
My former brush with the jungle in Ecuador gave me hairy, ceiling-dwelling tarantulas, pink dolphins and a surprise snog in a canoe, but this time I’m getting up close and very personal with the mind and spirit-altering plant medicine, ayahuasca. I’m not going to lie to you, I was pretty nervous on the way here. As soon as I took my first breath of jungle humidity, however, filling my lungs to capacity for the first time in what felt like forever, I had the strangest feeling that only good things would come from this adventure. And it is an adventure, isn’t it, heading into the Amazon rainforest to drink the sap of trees with people you’ve never met before in your life? I’ve still not told my mum.
The Kapitari Centre, my spiritual station for the week, is located a few kilometres outside of Iquitos on the opposite side of the Nanay River. It was founded in 1980 by the shaman Don Lucho. Now in his sixties (although he doesn’t look a day over forty-five), this sweet, smiley man spends his days training local communities and farmers in land management techniques, thus preventing further deforestation in the area and creating new opportunities for permaculture around Iquitos. By night he is a full-on demon-banishing, icaro-chanting, healing shaman, of course, who I’ve since discovered has learned every ounce of valuable information on permaculture he knows by drinking ayahuasca and taking the advice of various plant spirits summoned via his shamanic ways.
No shit. This is serious business.
I met Andy, my email guru, in the popular Iquitos traveller’s haunt, Karma Cafe. I’ve got to say, while my falafel sandwich was exceptional, it wasn’t very karmic when I was in there, really. The guy behind the bar was shit-faced, pouring himself large glasses of wine and serving all the hippies their alcohol-free smoothies with the kind of violent swagger that could dent even the most perfectly aligned aura.
Anyway, with rucksacks containing insect repellant, sunscreen, swimwear and not much else, Andy and I headed to Iquitos’s little port (in a market, by the river) on bouncy, loud motocarros. Here we hopped on a boat and headed out into the thick and sweaty green with a gaggle of soul-searchers, all of us hoping for the kind of head-spinning spiritual enlightenment that would turn our lives around.
I’m currently typing from a netted-in dining room at the Kapitari Centre, doing my best to prevent even more vicious sand flies from feasting on my flesh. I’m wearing a feathered earring, which I bought from a teenage vendor in Iquitos because it felt quite appropriate. I drew the line at fisherman pants and put some deodorant on, but even so, in spite of all this, three days in I’m finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on anything other than the outrageous itchiness of my skin. Every time I step outside to become one with nature, nature attacks me and tries to eat me.
Luckily there are no tarantulas. We’re not as deep into the jungle as I was before and the only wildlife I’ve seen so far are the numerous cats and kittens who live at Kapitari, and four squawking, Spanish-talking green parrots. These parrots are free to fly around the entire jungle, but choose to spend their days perched in the rafters, shitting on the kitchen cooker or diving at people’s heads. They have an eerie habit of mimicking the laughter of the resident children when you walk past, or screeching ‘Ola!’ at full volume in your ear when they land next to you, eyeing up your pineapple chunks.
Kapitari is located five minutes by boat up the river and then a forty-five minute hot and sweaty stagger through lashings of mud (wellies are a must for this). My group and I arrived at roughly midday three days ago in dire need of a shower, only to learn we wouldn’t get one for six days. The only water available for washing in at Kapitari is a lake the colour of miso soup … oh, and the nightly ‘flower bath’ behind a wooden screen, which is an essential part of each ayahuasca ceremony, intended to cleanse your body and soul beforehand. You can’t use soap in this bath, though, because soap would make the water impure.
We each have our own tiny, netted cabins to sleep in, complete with toilets that have no seats, which is great, but aside from that it’s basic at best. There are tons of these retreats around Iquitos but, as I’ve mentioned before, you have to be extremely careful where you choose to undertake these experiments with ayahuasca in South America, as sometimes, the more expensive, more luxurious options are operated by Westerners with no idea how to hold a proper ceremony.
Or worse. Just a few days before our visit, an eighteen-year-old traveller was found dead and buried in the jungle by a dodgy ‘shaman’ after an ayahuasca session that went wrong. Ayahuasca itself is not dangerous. There are no known long-term negative effects whatsoever. You don’t even get a comedown or a hangover the next day … in fact, you feel reborn. But if you’re allowed to wander off into the anaconda-infested Amazon rainforest tripping on DMT (dimethyltryptamine, a natural component in the brew) you’re probably not at the right retreat.
Go with a reputable shaman, like Don Lucho, who not only knows what he’s doing with ayahuasca but practises animism — nature-worship and the belief that every living thing has a spirit and soul. I learned a bit about this last year in Bali, where they worship the good spirits as well as the bad to keep everything in harmony, but I’m learning even more in South America. There was a time when much of the world practised animism, but the introduction of structured religions, the concept and personification of a God and the belief that He blessed humans as superiors in the natural world, changed things in Western civilisations, where the natural environment has become secondary to manmade creation. This is probably why so many people are miserable and lost, when you think about it. Our roots are no longer planted in Mother Earth. We look for satisfaction in all the wrong places.
Don Lucho undertook his first plant diet at age twelve. He knows the forest and its fruits like the back of his weathered hand and spends all of the money earned from tourists on his permaculture projects (I paid roughly $500 for this experience). If someone charges next to nothing for an ayahuasca retreat, or similarly way too much, take their promises with a pinch of salt and look elsewhere.
Speaking of salt, we’re all on a strict jungle diet while we’re here, which is also known as the ‘ayahuasca diet’. Lots of cafes in Iquitos offer the same thing and it’s basically the most boring diet you can imagine. No salt, sugar, oil, spicy food or sex is allowed. Abstaining from sex is an important part of any ayahuasca retreat because, during the medicinal process of ayahuasca’s healing, you’re becoming at one with yourself. This is essential, of course, if you’re to truly ever let anyone else inside.
I’ve also been drinking a special concoction in the mornings, consisting of boiled plant juices, which was recommended to me by Jeannie, an Australian and our resident healer. This juice is meant to help open me up to the plant spirits, because in my very first ayahuasca session, I got absolutely nothing from it. Nothing. That’s right. After all my weeks of reading and psyching myself up for one of the most intense experiences of my life, I had no experience at all.
‘It doesn’t always affect you at first. It depends on whether she thinks you’re ready,’ Andy told me when I expressed my disappointment at the next day’s essential group meeting. They always call ayahuasca ‘she’. The ‘spirit of the vine’ is most definitely female, according to those who’ve seen and heard her.
I was even more disappointed when Gary, an ex-army lad from Britain who’s here with his Ukrainian girlfriend, spoke at length on his new unders
tanding of the meaning of life, thanks to the visitation of some remarkably forthcoming aliens. Aliens appear to lots of people during ayahuasca ceremonies, in various forms. Gary seemed totally blown away by what he’d seen.
‘I was shown that we’re all just energy in human cases, living out these lives, learning our lessons until it’s time to go home. But this isn’t it. This isn’t all there is,’ he said assuredly. ‘Where we come from and where we’ll all go when our human time is up is an infinite space. It exists and it doesn’t. But here, where time matters, all we have to do is love each other. She told me. She showed me!’
I listened to him go on with my mouth open. At one point, he was almost in tears. I felt so cheated in comparison. I’d been trying so hard. I was even wearing a feathered earring. Yet, while Gary had drifted away from earth with light-beings, I’d just lain there for four hours on my bed-bug-riddled mattress, listening to Don Lucho’s chanting, thinking it was the most boring sleepover I’d ever attended. I did vomit in my bucket, though, which made me feel as though I’d participated, at least.
‘If you purged, it means the ayahuasca was working on you, even if you didn’t get any visions,’ Andy told me, sitting crosslegged on the floor of the maloca — the circular room on stilts in which all ceremonies are conducted at Kapitari. He was wearing an ayahuasca fan shirt featuring crisscrossing vines, which read, ‘Drink a tree. Hug a bucket.’
I already knew from my books that ayahuasca works in mysterious ways and every person at every session, which always takes place in total darkness, gets given a bucket in which to expel their demons when the need arises. The cynic in me still says that in reality I’m downing poisonous tree sap so naturally my body will kick it out, but purging is considered by many shamans to represent the dramatic release of pent-up emotions and negative energy, which tends to build up over your lifetime if left unaddressed.
I felt the sacred medicine swirling around my stomach pretty much straight after I drank it. Ayahuasca, I should tell you, is one of the most hideous things you will ever put in your mouth. It’s a rich, thick, brownish-orange substance that tastes like … God, I can’t even describe it. Even thinking about it makes me want to puke again. I guess it’s a bit smoky and at first I thought I detected a hint of cinnamon and maybe chocolate, but once it’s down it’s so potent, bitter and vulgar as it burns the back of your throat that your body wants it out, instantly. Some people shit themselves, another form of purging and nothing to be ashamed of.
When you take ayahuasca, you have to kneel before the shaman, who blows some sacred tobacco, known as mapacho, over a little bowl of the brew before handing it to you. You down the mixture like a shot, and then try not to hurl on yourself as you walk back to your mattress. You can’t chase it with water because it’s important not to have anything else in your stomach as the spirit gets to work.
While I said I experienced nothing that first night, I did get a dizzy feeling akin to being strapped onto one of those fairground gravity wheels … which eventually caused me to throw the ayahuasca up, roughly half an hour in. Before my eyes shot open I heard my inner-voice chanting, faster, faster, faster, which appeared to be a response to both the spinning sensation and the fluttering sound of Don Lucho’s chapada, a bunch of leaves, basically, which to me, sounded like a flock of birds taking flight.
After that I lay there waiting for aliens to land, until the potion wore off without consequence.
Well, actually, I did find myself crying at one point. It was over something stupid, like being horrible to an ex-boyfriend over four years ago.
‘You were crying?’ Jeannie said. ‘Well, you were releasing your emotions then. And you heard your inner voice, your Higher Self! The ayahuasca was definitely working! You purged, too. How can you say you didn’t experience anything?’
‘I didn’t see heaven or hell! Or aliens,’ I replied.
‘Then that’s not what you need to see. She’ll only show you what you need to know.’
‘I need to see aliens!’ I wailed at the whole room. Well. I’ve failed at this alien business in both Capilla del Monte and Nazca now, and quite frankly I’m starting to doubt they exist, which is sad.
‘She’s got other things in store for you,’ Jeannie said then, smiling knowingly. And I had to believe her because, since we arrived, this fascinating lady from Sydney, who’s been seeing spirits since the age of five, has been startlingly accurate in all sorts of psychic matters. I’ll have to tell you more of her extraordinary story later.
I also saw my own aura by torchlight when I staggered back to my cabin after that first session. Waves of energy surrounded me as I did normal things, like brush my teeth and crouch over my toilet with no seat. I seized the opportunity to act out a scene from The Matrix in the middle of the floor. Well, you would, wouldn’t you? I amused myself for at least an hour, crouching and kicking in slow motion, making whooshing sounds like Trinity dodging killer laser beams.
I put it down to the lingering effects of the DMT but, strangely, no one else saw anything like that, that night. That’s the weirdest thing about all of this, I think. Normally, with any other drug, people tend to experience more or less the same things, but not with ayahuasca. So yes … while I said I had no experience that first time, I did have an experience, I suppose. It just wasn’t like anyone else’s.
After a long day in the jungle with not much to do except read, swim in the lake and get eaten by more sand flies, I entered the maloca for my second ceremony, expecting much of the same last night. But perhaps something in the plant juice Jeannie had me drink really did open me up because, shortly after I downed the brew, I had a flurry of thoughts and flashbacks to my childhood, stuff I haven’t thought about in years.
I experienced strong emotions along with these visions that had me laughing and falling internally to my knees. I heard a voice … whether that was Mother Ayahuasca or my Higher Self, I don’t know … telling me to relax. Then, ‘Listen,’ something told me. ‘Listen.’
So I did. And once I’d vomited again into my bucket, I flew. A powerful energy seemed to be coursing through me. I felt calm and blissfully happy and, while I was always very aware of my own body, I was able to flow with wherever the ayahuasca sent me. It occurred to me at one point that maybe if I let my ego go, stopped trying to understand that which is simply not in our realm of understanding, I might reach an even higher level … but even though I heard a resounding ‘Yes!’ from somewhere, I still couldn’t see what that might be. And as the world got stranger I felt myself holding back.
Visions were colliding behind my eyes. I saw green and felt red and heard yellow as my senses warped and tricked me. The enormity of space between each life-affirming thought was so wide and deep I was almost a bit scared of falling into the abyss and never coming back.
I stopped trying to think so much and almost instantly understood, somehow, that people who experience God are simply experiencing their own true selves, minus the ego and social conditioning that’s always done nothing but mislead them. I tried to keep a hold of this thought but felt it slipping away with other revelations. Thought after thought after thought crashed in from the stratosphere and split, like someone driving a truck through the fragile strands of a spider’s web. I was pure energy. I was the girl travelling the world, and the world, travelling through the girl. I was in a magical, metaphysical paradise, knowing I was God, that everything was God, but I was also in hell knowing I’ve lived so much of my life without really knowing anything at all. (Is this what it was like to live in the acid-riddled 60s?!)
For a moment, it all felt like a colossal waste of time — this constant struggle to know everything. And then I saw what Gary had meant when he said, ‘Here, where time matters, all we have to do is love each other’, because nothing else does matter. I saw it then. I felt it, too. Nothing else matters. Not even time. When we die, we live on. We simply float off into the cosmos and become part of it all again, this beautiful, infinite, timeless swirl of e
nergy, and nothing we can do in our human forms will ever compare to the bliss we will feel when we finally let go.
‘Listen,’ the voice said again. And the world as I knew it exploded into stars.
The hum of the cicadas and crickets outside blended into a monotonous, high-pitched frequency as I buzzed; it was like a dentist’s drill driving to my skull, setting every nerve ending alight. This was really intense for the first hour or so. I wonder now, as memories from the trip weave back together in my mind, whether this sound could be the reason for so many people seeing and feeling aliens and alien technology working on their brains during ayahuasca sessions in the jungle. Or are these aliens simply our own selves appearing in a form that has long gone unacknowledged?
After a while, things got weirder. I swear I saw three tribesmen towering over me when I opened my eyes, all with long hair, all carrying spears and wearing those over the shoulder warrior vest-things, like shields strapped on, if that makes sense? I know that sounds bizarre, but that’s what I saw. They didn’t worry me; I felt a calming energy around them as they studied me. But there were a few other creepy shadows in the maloca that didn’t feel very nice.
At one point, I saw Don Lucho heading for the door, along with someone else. In spite of my trippy state (although I was coming down a bit by then), I did think it was odd that they were leaving so quickly mid-ceremony, but at the meeting this morning Jeannie explained that Don Lucho had ordered a demon outside, a pretty nasty one apparently, that was threatening to attach itself to his wife. Our shaman had actually left alone, but I wasn’t the only one who saw two figures moving through the maloca and out the door. I also wasn’t the only one who saw and felt some pretty dark energies around us as we all slowly returned from another realm.
Also, last night, the people who came here with the most issues (drug abuse and physical abuse from their childhoods) were the ones who purged the loudest and the most into their buckets. They’re also the ones displaying decidedly brighter energies around the retreat today.
