The Medicine of Experience

Plant medicine should never be done for the experience. Not unless you want your arse handed to you on a self-reflective plate of ego destroying pain. 

I had been traveling for 7 months. My first plant dieta was coming to an end, and the jungle had masticated me for long enough. They say the only thing you have to fear in the jungle is your mind. And mine was a mess. 

I spent over a week existing in a permanent cloud of mosquitoes, getting stung and bitten and laughed at and mocked by every little creature within range. I was completely wrung out and I could not wait, to get the fuck out of there. Yet I was still naive enough… and dumb enough, to keep seeking more. 

I finished my simple dieta food at 10am Friday, ready for kambo at 8pm, followed by the ceremony at 10pm. Another night, filled with nothing more than the sounds of the icaros, the insects and frogs… and my incessant purging. 

Rinsed. Hungry, and desperate to go home, it was 11am when the Yopo shaman came.

He cleared the space of objects, and people, and told me to take off anything I didn’t want ruined. I was confused. I asked if I could eat something and he laughed. 

“No. You’ll be purging in about 6-7 minutes.”

“More purging? I have nothing left! For fuck sake man, what have I signed up for?”

I signed up for the experience because, well, I wanted the experience. The reality was, I was so new to this world, I was on a mission for ‘the next thing’. Tick it off and move on. No integration. No presence. No intention. I had done no research into it. I liked the idea of trying DMT, jungle style. Some seeds that had been ground down to a fine powder, get blown up my nose. (I had just begun to enjoy rapeh, so how bad could it be?) 10-20 minutes of nice visuals (finally)… seemed like a beautiful way to end the dieta. But they also believe it is during a yopo experience they discovered how to brew ayahuasca. In hindsight, a fairly obvious hint that this might not have been the walk in the park I was expecting.

Oh how silly I was…

He piled one gram of the brown powder into the palm of his hand. (Compared to a rapeh serving, this was a fucking mountain.) He loaded up his 60cm pipe, instructed me to tilt my head back, and on the count of three… to bark from my throat.

1…2…BOOM, first nostril. It rocked me. I coughed and choked and gasped for air as he yelled at me to sit up. My eyes watered. My sinuses were on fire. 1…2…BOOM, one more gram up the other nostril. I started purging almost instantly, before rolling on the ground, in deep pain. Not just physical pain, but pain on all fronts. Everything hurt. My body, my heart, my mind, my soul, my head. Fuck, my head was throbbing, and as I rolled around on the floor of the maloca. I stared out into the jungle, screaming. 

After some time, the shaman looked down on me. 

“Why are you fighting? What are you resisting?” 

As the question permeated my cerebral shield, a wave of euphoria washed up and kissed my forehead, before receding back. I screamed again. 

“Stop fighting man!” 

Again, the wave returned, kissing me before receding once more.” 

I screamed again. 

“Just fucking let go man!” 

This time, the wave of euphoria picked me up and washed me away into an ocean of utter jungle bliss. 

3,5 hours later, the shaman was snapping his fingers in my face to wake me up. What normally takes around an hour, had taken much longer, and still, I was higher than Joe Cocker. But the last boat back to the city was leaving, and we had to go at double speed now to make it. 

An hour later as the wind caressed my face, and the spray of the mighty Amazon river gently sprayed my hands, I sat on the boat, dazed and severely confused. My face hurt. Badly. I was a complete mess, and could not help question myself, and the lack of purpose behind what I had just done. Something I swore, I would never do again.

My time swimming in the ocean of euphoria was a complete mystery. I had zero recollection. All I remember was the absolute control I fought for in the beginning, and the pain that I had endured to maintain it. 

I also forgot that we had planned on visiting an animal sanctuary on the way home. Thus the photo with my friendly little sloth buddy... including the marks on my face from the ceremony.

My face stung, because for a good chunk of time during the ceremony, I was scraping my face against the raw, splintered timber of the maloca floor, screaming like a stuck pig. Apparently it wasn’t worth the effort to stop me from doing so. 

In hindsight, I got off lightly. It was a swift, and relatively harmless punishment, for rushing forth into an experience of which I had no business. I had no proper intention. I had no proper reason to do it. 

Yet I know of people that weren’t so lucky. People rushing into these things for the experience, and having their life changed, in the wrong ways. Partaking in an experience just to tick it off their ‘medicine bucket list’, and paying a far heftier price. 

Plant medicine is a beautiful teacher. A healer. A master. Yet as profoundly as it can help you, if not respected and revered, it can cut you down. Never sit with anyone you do not trust, or that does not come with a strong recommendation. And never rush. When the time is right, when you are ready… it will find you.