The following is the poor attempt to describe my Ayahuasca journey. It's been a long time since then, but for a while I haven't been able to talk or write about it without being overwhelmed by anxiety. Luckily I feel better now, and writing this report helped me further in the healing process.
PRE-CONDITIONS
(mind)Set: openness about the experience, reverence towards the plants, nervousness about not being ready for the experience
(physical condition) Set: good physical condition
Setting (location): home
time of day: 11 am
recent drug use: LSD and mescaline within the last month; cannabis within the last week
last meal: fruit and water
PARTICIPANT
Gender: male
body weight: 55kg
known sensitivities:
history of use: experienced with psychedelics (LSD, 2C-B, psilocin, mescaline, changa, DMT freebase), cannabis, alcohol, benzodiazepines (former medical use of diazepam and bromazepam); a little experienced (few times) with ketamine, MDMA, opium; first timer with ayahuasca
BIOASSAY
Substance(s): Banisteriopsis caapi (Trueno variety) and Mimosa tenuiflora
Dose(s): 50g of B. caapi, 5g of M. tenuiflora (root bark)
Method of administration: oral (brew)
EFFECTS
Administration time: T=0:00
Duration: 6-7 hours
First effects: T=0:45
Peak: T=1.30-5.30
Come down: T=5:30
Baseline: T= 7:00
Intensity (overall): 4
Evaluation / notes:
OPTIONAL
Pleasantness: 4
Implesantness: 3
Visual Intensity: 4
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AFTER-EFFECTS
Hangover: 1 (deeply shaken by the intensity of the experience)
Afterglow: 2 (increased appreciation for life, deep humbling feeling, self-forgiveness, increased desire of intimacy)
REPORT
I sit in my garden and see bees flying near flowers, while the sunrays warm me and make their colors appear brighter. My senses are heightening; textures gain new depth and I’m able to perceive even the finest details of my surroundings. The buzz of bees is enriched by new frequencies and merges with the faint sound of plants’ leaves touched by the wind and with the chirping of blackbirds. I close my eyes and listen.
Minutes pass by and sounds get increasingly complex until I’m not familiar with them anymore. They overlap and intertwine, creating a hum so loud it makes my own body vibrate. I suddenly feel overwhelmed, and scared because I know this is just the beginning, so I decide to go back in my home, thinking that maybe indoors the sound will abate.
On the contrary, it keeps growing in intensity, making everything vibrate along with it, until objects fade into each other and I start to feel very dizzy. While my vision is impaired, I feel a sharp pain in my back and realize that I just fell on the floor. I try to get up but I can’t, because the nausea is too strong and even the slightest movement makes my head spin. Then I crawl towards the bathroom and prepare for the purge.
My whole body is shaking and feels really tense, and I’m almost completely blind. For brief moments, the darkness gives birth to disturbing hybrid creatures telling me to relax.
I feel like a fool, because this wasn’t the right moment nor the right way to drink Ayahuasca, and the ones I perceived to be right intentions are turning out to be an arrogant pursuit of novel sensations.
Many of my previous life events now appear to be related to each other in ways that led me to this exact moment in time and space. Apparently I have never had any control on how those events folded, as if they were all necessary steps, and since I was born I had been doomed, or blessed, to experience all of this.
Overcome by this feeling of predetermination, I see the countless self-images I have assigned myself throughout my life dissolve one by one, leaving only their naked kernel, what I feel to be my true identity. Speaking to my present self, it says “Don’t resist what you are going through, because it is an expression of love. I still have much to teach you.”
As I slowly gain back my vision, I find myself within a forest, sitting on the bank of a river. I am surrounded by trees and bushes whose branches bend in ways that make them look like human faces watching me from above. Despite their disturbing appearance I feel calm and safe and I start walking in the direction in which the river flows, until I enter a glade.
Here I am welcomed by a young woman, who smiles at me as if she has known me for a long time, while thick tobacco smoke rises from a lit cigarette in her right hand. As it touches the branches of nearby trees, colorful animals and mysterious beings reveal themselves from behind their leaves.
I feel drawn to a group of blue and green hummingbirds visiting flowers to feed on their nectar and can’t help but keep staring at them, amazed by their beauty. Lost in the details of their iridescent feathers, my perception seeps through their interweaving fibers and gets absorbed by the living fabric beneath them, reaching its cellular, molecular and subatomic structures.
Crossing deeper and deeper layers of reality, I progressively lose the boundaries of my sense of self, until I melt into an ocean of White Light stretching into endlessness. Bending over the infinite facets of its fractal geometry, the Light is diffracted into infinite frequencies, only to collect again, flowing from and into itself in timeless eternity. Within this flux, my being connects at its core to every other being in the universe, flooding my awareness with all-encompassing bliss, an emotion so intense and complex that can’t be expressed through words.
Snapping out of that state, I see my body as a translucent lattice crossed by bright energy lines. On my abdomen, right behind my navel, they create a vortex that expands wrapping me in its spinning movement. Seen from the inside, it appears as a hyperspherical cathedral with infinite aisles that dovetail in helicoidal structures. In front of me stands a majestic Goddess with amber eyes and long golden hair merging with the walls of the temple.
Bending over me, she puts her lips near my right ear, as if she wanted to reveal a secret, and I look forward to hear her voice, struck by her otherworldly beauty. She opens her mouth and whispers words in a language I can’t comprehend, then she bursts into laughter, knowing that I’m not able to understand her. At the same time, she looks at me with the loving eyes of a mother or a sister, and I feel like she knows me better than I know myself.
I don’t want to leave this place because here with her I am home, but suddenly the walls start to spin and its aisles part from each other like petals of a blooming flower.
Above my head the sky is crystal clear and in the distance I see the domes of other cathedrals immersed in the clouds. In place of the Goddess now there’s a magnificent Jaguar, but I don’t feel frightened, on the contrary I sense that we are deeply bonded and I find peace in this knowledge.
The visions are getting faint, stripped of their vibrant texture, and soon they seem as real as an ordinary dream. Halfway between two dimensions, I feel like an eternity has passed since this morning. I fall asleep.
When I wake up, my cat is resting on my belly. The stripes and the rosettes on his fur remind me of the jaguar I’ve encountered while tripping. I feel uneasy, because my mind wasn’t ready for the experience and I know it will take a while for me to feel grounded in reality again.