The fact that I went for a second go with ayahuasca is a miracle. Most normal, sound-minded people would not have dreamed about returning to plant medicine after the horrific experience that I went through three years ago. But I knew the fate of my future depended on it. If I don’t face my fears, what benefit am I to this world? If I don’t heal myself, does the world have any chance of healing (as within, so without)?
For those of you who have followed my journey over the years, you know what a huge deal it was for me to return to plant medicine. If you’re just joining me, let me recap.
I was called to plant medicine in mid-2018. Somehow the healing modality of ayahuasca came across my radar and I tuned in to its frequency. Despite the seemingly extreme expense of going off to a luxury retreat in Costa Rica, we managed to swing it and headed off to a “life-changing” experience in January 2019 where we were guaranteed to receive a miracle, heal our trauma, reconnect with our soul, and completely transform our lives.
The day we arrived the buzz was high. The previous week’s retreat was just finishing and everyone was basking in the energetic fruits of their difficult week’s labor. It wasn’t hard to feel elated about the coming week.
The following day, the previous week’s crew departed and the new crew arrived. The energy shifted. A cast of broken spirits, lost souls, and hopeless people on their last-ditch effort before suicide flooded in. One man came only to use the medicine to try and communicate with his dead daughter and spoke about her the whole week as if she was still very much alive. A gothic-looking woman, always dressed in black and refusing to speak (communicating to everyone she was on a “silent retreat”), stalked my husband throughout the week. Another woman, who escaped a religious cult, had attempted suicide three times previously. The instability was palatable as the energy whirled and spiraled out of control. My hackles arose and my defenses came up.
Our days were filled with inspiring workshops, but I drifted away from the other participants as they bared their souls, even my husband accused me of not trying hard enough to fix myself. Our nights were filled with plant medicine. The screams, tears, retching sounds of people vomiting, and even the laughter sounded like a mad house, a creepy carnival from a horror movie.
On the third night of four nights of ceremony the pressure cracked me. This is an excerpt from my first blog post describing the wave of fear that suddenly washes over me within the first hour of the ceremony.
I have a vision that I’m in a matrix. I’m trapped, like a seedling in a pod. I suddenly have no idea how much time has elapsed. My mind snaps into high-gear and starts to analyze these feelings and emotions that are stirred up.
They’re using my body for something, I can’t quite be sure of what just yet. We all checked in with the intent of a transformative week, but we have been drugged and are trapped here, and we have no idea. We are in a time loop and they’re feeding false information into our brains. Weeks and months may have passed. They may even be after our kidneys, I can’t quite be sure yet.
I know that I have a powerful force field up, and I’m protected. I can fight this. I have a special power and I know their secret. The shaman might be able to telepathically read my mind, so I need to build the wall thicker. I don’t want them to know that I know the truth.
I need to get out of here. I have to plan my escape. It’s no good to try and leave in the night. We are fenced in and there’s barbed wire rimming the property. We’ll have to wait until the morning and then we’ll make a break for it. We’ll have to find the local airstrip for private planes and charter bush pilot to fly us to Panama City…
My heart is pounding. I’m trembling in fear. Panic washes over me like a giant wave, and I feel like I’m suffocating in it. I pull the blanket over my head in attempts to escape it.
My entire night, the next day, and even the next night when I skipped out on the final ceremony, I was immersed in a state of fear like I had never experienced before. My “fight or flight” mechanism would not switch off. Even to this day I have flashbacks of the suffocating wave of fear that consumed me during that time.
There have been times throughout the tumultuous past three years where I’d stop and ask my husband… “am I actually still at Rythmia and I’m just tripping right now?” He’d just laugh and reassure me that we were not still there. But I still could never be sure. My entire reality was shaken. I couldn’t be sure if I was living in a dream, a prison, a matrix, or a virtual reality game. They don’t recommend that people diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder work with plant medicine. I could see why. If you have a difficult time with reality already, this will really knock you off your rocker.
I still can’t be sure if it was the medicine showing me that the reality I am living in is actually a matrix, or if my defenses were just too powerful and the fear kicked in because I wasn’t feeling safe throughout the week. In any event, I came to realize recently that a new adult trauma was created with that experience.
Most of us are able to pinpoint obvious traumas such as the sudden loss of a loved one, debilitating accidents, and physical and sexual abuse. But many traumas that we carry around with us stem from childhood. Trauma, from the Greek root meaning “wound,” doesn’t have to be something catastrophic. Trauma can be your mom losing track of you at a department store when you were 5 years old and suddenly feeling alone, afraid, and abandoned, and from that point forward you deal with abandonment issues that affect relationships and how you show up in the world. Many of our subconscious programming and behaviors stem from childhood. Not only did I not even address any childhood traumas which would reconnect me to my soul and give me my miracle during this retreat, but worse yet, I created a new trauma for myself. From that moment forward the thought of taking plant medicine or any psychoactive compound again would elevate my heart rate, spike my sympathetic nervous system, and put me into a state of fear.
Although my experience is rare, it happens, and with more people interested in plant medicine, there are more people are passing themselves off as shamans to fill the demand, perhaps not knowing how to properly hold space in a ceremony. People are often entering the medicine without adequate preparation or doing a thorough background check on their shamans or facilitators. So the likelihood of this type of situation is bound to happen more often as the demand and awareness for plant medicines increases.
What have I done between then and now to create a safe space to return to plant medicine again?
My husband has continued to work with plant medicines since that time. I imagine it would have been easier for me had he not been interested in working with them again. I would have just dropped it, carrying a bitter taste in my mouth. But he continues to do the work, as do many other fellow healers on my path. I’m surrounded by it. And although everyone respects my non-plant medicine yogic and shamanic path, I still felt like I needed to make amends.
In December 2021, my husband went to Peru for a 3-week dieta (a “plant diet”), which consists of ayahuasca ceremonies every few days along with working with other healing and teacher plants. We had stayed in touch with the shamans from Rythmia and soon after our experience they left and went out on their own. As the stars would have it, he went on dieta with the same shamans who led the ceremony on that fateful night that shattered my world. When they found out what happened, one of them reached out to me and offered to have a phone call to see if we could find some kind of resolution. When I began telling my story, I immediately started shaking and my heart raced. I talked faster and faster until she stopped me and made me take a few deep breaths. It was clear that I was reliving the trauma.
After the session, I told my husband that if I were ever to do plant medicine again, it would be with these two shamans. They were doing a retreat in Mexico in June, in the very town that I had visited the previous October when I visited my cousin. Something about the whole circumstance felt aligned to me – the shamans who knew my story, a familiar town, and a retreat center that I’ve been wanting to go to for years. So we signed up, along with extra pre-integration sessions for me.
My pre-integration sessions involved a bit of talk therapy, but not the annoying kind that I’m usually resistant to… “Tell me Mariah, how does that make you feel?” We barely brought up any of my potential childhood traumas. What we focused on was creating a safe and trusting environment for me to revisit the medicine, and calming my nervous system through breathwork and meditation practices.
As divine alignment would have it, I also signed up for a 300-hour yoga teacher training in a traditional Tantric Hatha lineage (nothing to do with sex) which coincided with my preparations for plant medicine. Little did I know how transformative, grounding, healing, and preparatory this yoga training would also be.
Creating a safe space and other considerations
If you are reading this on your quest for more information about plant medicine, that’s fantastic. I salute you for doing your homework. There are so many things I wish I would have known before I went to plant medicine the first time. When I think back on it, I was completely ill-prepared. So I’m going to pause here and share a few tips that I learned and/or that I wish I would have known before I ventured into the medicine.
Consider the group size. Some people are fine with a large group of 50-100 people. With that size group, it’s as if you just disappear in the crowd and no one cares who’s throwing up or making noise. If you are prone to working well independently, or perhaps have prior experience with plant medicine, a large group might be great for you. I personally should have gone into a smaller group size, 10 people or less, for my first retreat. I had never even taken psychedelics before, so I had no idea what to expect, and with my “Just Say No,” “D.A.R.E.” and “Drugs are Bad” programming from my youth I was certainly facing hurdles. I definitely needed one-on-one support from the shamans which I wasn’t receiving in our group of 40.
Know your shamans. Do they have credibility? Can someone recommend them? Don’t just pick a retreat because the venue looks nice or your specifically want to go to Peru to experience plant medicine in an authentic Amazon jungle setting. I don’t recommend showing up in Peru and asking around for ayahuasca. There are a lot of hustlers out there who don’t know a thing about holding ceremony space. They know tourists are paying a premium for a plant medicine experience so they are getting in on the gringo $$$ action. There are also accounts of people (women especially) being taken advantage of in vulnerable situations, which is horrifying. There are facilitators who may not ask about current medications or abide by proper safety measures. I heard of an incidence of someone “dying from ayahuasca” because they fell off the back of the motorcycle and cracked their head open on the way to the hospital. Keep in mind that people don’t die from physical harm from psychedelics, they die from unsafe circumstances around psychedelics, or potential contraindications from medications. Your shaman or facilitator better ask you what meds you are taking and share with you the proper preparation protocols. You should also not be allowed to wander off from the ceremony space. They may say it’s to keep the group energy contained, which is true, but a large part of it is for your safety.
Prepare yourself physically and mentally. Yoga is my choice, which includes breathwork and meditation. I have trained under a traditional lineage that focuses on building and maintaining prana (energy) and increasing mental stamina. I’ve found it extremely supportive for plant medicine. I maintain a daily practice that keeps me grounded and balanced in general. On the day of my first ceremony, instead of opting for Kambo, a frog poison that brings on vomiting and purging of various sorts, I built myself a custom yoga practice with help from a fellow yoga teacher in my traditional lineage. The practice was designed to ground me, calm me, and energetically cleanse me before I approached the medicine.
Ask for help. Don’t be afraid to ask for help before, during a ceremony, between ceremonies, or afterward, if you are feeling stuck. The medicine starts working as soon as you sign up for your retreat (something they don’t usually tell you) and will keep working for days, weeks, months, and in my case even years afterward. My circumstance was difficult because during my retreat week I thought that the retreat center was trying to kidnap me, so I didn’t feel safe talking to anyone once I got into a pickle. I didn’t have anyone I trusted beforehand that I felt I could go to when I needed help.
Pre and post-integration. In lieu of asking for help, I highly recommend scheduling a few pre-integration sessions with your shaman or one of the facilitators before you even arrive at your retreat or ceremony. Also, make sure you have help on the backside. It can be rocky reemerging yourself back into the real world after you’ve just blown your mind open. You’ll feel vulnerable, emotions will be coming up, and you may feel very alone. Join post-integration groups or schedule sessions with your facilitator or someone who specializes in psychedelic integration therapy.
How did it all turn out this time around?
I know you’re waiting to hear how I fared, so here’s a brief recap of my experience and the key takeaways.
I arrive at one of the most beautiful retreat centers that I’ve ever been to, just outside of the small town of Sayulita on the west coast of Mexico. The land is supportive and grounding. Thatched bungalows are nestled within lush jungle on a steep hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The people are warm and inviting. There is no barbed wire fencing surrounding the property, and I can come and go and walk into town as I please. Even the trees, plants, and animals feel familiar, as many of the same species also grow in the Bahamas. Tears filled my eyes when I walked down to the beach and saw the most exquisite combination of the Pacific Ocean, my roots being the Pacific Northwest, and the vibrant green scaevola, or sea lettuce, which grows rampant along the shorelines in the Bahamas. It was a snapshot of my two worlds colliding.
On the first evening, we meet and greet with the other retreat participants over a candlelit gourmet dinner, as there is no electricity on the property. During our introduction group circle, we talk about our intentions. I say I want to remove blockages that were holding me back from my path, and one of my secret intentions is to request that the Spanish language operating system be installed in me. I’ve been struggling for years to try and re-learn the language as an adult after being fairly adequate as a child. But I know my true intention is just to make it through the week without another trauma. I don’t want to scare the other retreat participants with my story.
Photo credit: W. Heyer
On the first night of ceremony, a spectacular thunderstorm rolled overhead just as we were settling in after our first cup of medicine. I love rain and thunderstorms, especially on a thatched roof, so I snuggled in under my blanket. Suddenly lightning cracked what seemed like mere meters away from me, immediately followed by a boom of thunder. My hair stood up on its ends. My mind started racing. I was in a thatched building on top of a hill. How safe were we? Several moments later another blast of lightning hit nearby. My heart was pounding and I had to consciously calm myself down so I didn’t get myself worked up into a tizzy. I was partway into the medicine, and things could go horribly wrong at this point. Then the rain came pouring down and seemed to tell me that everything was going to be alright, there was no need to fear the lightning.
The first night I’m uncomfortable. My thoughts are racing. I don’t like the setting, it feels dark and unwelcoming. I shouldn’t be here. My mind is filled with icky jumbles like when I’m hungover and feeling like I just want to escape my body. My stomach was going through waves of nausea. It was like I was holding something in my navel center. I started thinking, should I throw up? Maybe this is a test. Maybe I needed to throw up in order to cross a threshold into the proper medicine space. But I didn’t want to throw up in front of everyone. The room was so incredibly quiet. I felt it would disturb the peace and I was very self-conscious. Ugh, why was I doing this again??
At some point I wobble my way to the bathroom just to get a breath of fresh air. I have my soft Turkish blanket wrapped around me that I brought from home for comfort. I hang the blanket on the bathroom door while I enjoy a few moments of quiet, and then wrap myself up again and return to my mattress on the floor. Something is wiggling around inside my blanket so I try to brush it off. A bug followed me in. Suddenly the bug crawls onto my neck and in a split second, it’s in my ear. It burrows inside. I hear a crackling, like when you have water in your ear. It seemed to be moving deeper into my ear canal. Now all I can think about is that I have a bug in my ear and it’s probably setting up a nest and laying eggs in my brain. I feel completely sober now and lie there for the rest of the night thinking about the bug in my ear.
The next day I am freaking out about this bug in my ear. It’s probably laid eggs already I’m going to have bugs exploding out of my ear. I don’t like doctors so I resolve to go into town at some point and get one of those beeswax candles that I used to use back in my hippy college days and hopefully smoke it out. Sayulita has those kinds of things. All I can think of is… “Get out of my head, bug! Get out of my head!” When I realize what I’m saying, it’s all perfectly clear. “Get out of my head.” I’ve been in my head, I need to get into my body.
For my second and third night of ceremonies I resolve to get out of my head and into my body. I drift far, far away from my mind. It’s a beautiful feeling, to move out of your head, away from that constant noise, that incessant voice that never seems to stop. I feel waves of emotion washing over me. I can feel my body, my breath, my chest feels alive. I cry tears of gratitude for feeling into my body. I’ve been living in my head for so long. I feel reconnected to my body for the first time in a long time.
I see my grandma and cry tears for her. I see my mom and cry tears for her. I roll over onto my side and feel encapsulated in a womb, a safe, protected space. I tune into the icaros (shamanic songs for healing) being directed at me and a pulse of energy awakens something inside me. My body starts sinking into the ground and decomposing. My body is dying, but it feels nice. I don’t need my body anymore, and I’m fine with that. Then energy starts pulsating through my body. I breathe in and out of my mouth, taking a few huge gulping yawns. It’s as if I’m taking in the energy of the icaros. At one point I open my eyes wide and it feels like that final scene in Avatar, a rebirth.
When I come out of it my body feels so incredibly relaxed, like I had just been passionately made love to by the universe and now I’m just basking in the afterglow. My body feels like butter, heavy and difficult to move. I lay there like that for what felt like hours, I didn’t want the ceremony to end, I wanted to marinate in this feeling for eternity, but eventually it did.
When it was finally finished I breathed a sigh of relief that it was all over. The medicine gave me what I needed - a beautiful energy healing. I didn’t feel showered in love or overly coddled, but I certainly felt supported. Once again, I didn’t dive into any childhood traumas, but perhaps that would have kept me in my head, y mi español es aún menos que adecuado. Something shifted though. I’ve come back to my real world feeling more energetically open, connected, and alive. And at this moment, I couldn’t ask for anything more.
THE TAKEAWAYS
Establishing trust with the medicine
I’m not sure at this point if I feel called to revisit the medicine. If anything and in all honesty, I’d probably be more likely to consider a one-on-one guided psilocybin ceremony. I am not that keen on the physical purging process of ayahuasca, which generally doesn’t happen with mushrooms. BUT that being said, one of the biggest reasons that I hear that people won’t go to ayahuasca is because they don’t want to throw up, or they are afraid of shitting their pants. I know that all sounds terrible, but please don’t let that deter you. The likelihood of you shitting your pants is fairly low (yes, it does happen), and throwing up sometimes ends up being one of the most liberating feelings when you release long-held emotions stored within you. You will probably laugh at yourself at the end if you came in and your biggest concern was shitting your pants, as the medicine will ALWAYS throw you a curve ball.
In any case, I am so glad that I was able to establish trust with the medicine. I am truly a proponent of the use of plant medicines as healing modalities so it was important for me to make a connection. Psychedelic plant medicines aren’t for everyone, but with the right facilitator, you can be guided safely through a profound healing process. They say it’s like 20 years of talk therapy all in a few ceremonies. So if you can handle the energetic gravity of it, it could be so completely life-changing for yourself, your relationships, and your dharma (soul’s purpose) that you wouldn’t choose NOT to do it.
Facing my fears
“75% of what Jesus talks about is Satan and the dark side. As yogis we have this bad habit of just wanting to be in the light and the beauty and the bliss, and that’s it. But that is not a recipe for dharmic success. For dharmic success, we have to be willing to go into the dark, go into the haunted houses and bring light to these previously scary places” – Octavio Salvado
As much as we want to always lean toward the light, as the plants do, inevitably the sun sets and we have to face the darkness. That’s the dualistic nature of this reality. In order to walk our dharmic path (our soul’s highest desire and purpose), we must face challenges, we must face our fears. It would have been easy for me to walk away and never look back. But I’m on my own personal healing path, and I know I am a guide for others. Who would I be if I just gave up on the plants from my one bad experience? I knew that even despite my experience, I stand for the plants. There is an intelligence within them that doesn’t judge. They teach us, they heal us, and they want to connect with us so we can be better stewards of this garden called Earth that we live upon.
A huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. I didn’t realize how much that trauma was following me and holding me back over the past three years. I faced one of my biggest fears by returning to the plant medicine, and I can’t tell you how liberating it feels. This isn’t about living dangerously or recklessly, it’s about living fearlessly. When you live fearlessly, you can dream bigger, outside the box, and you can create a reality where your wildest wishes really do come true.
If you feel called to the medicine, I invite you to go. The world needs warriors now more than ever. It’s better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war, and too many of us have been gardeners in a war. Now is the time for us to walk the path of the warrior, and pray that the return to the garden is near.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mariah Laine Moyle is a writer, yoga teacher, and shamanic energy medicine practitioner based in The Bahamas.