Previously: Part 5, in which I take forever to finally describe drinking ayahuasca.
I rinsed my mouth out with a little of the water from my cup and spit it into the pan that I assumed I would become intimately familiar with soon. Once the last person received their dose, the sole kerosene lamp lighting the room was doused, revealing it was now night outside. The room was silent as Don Alberto began to softly shake the chacapa, a sort of traditional rattle of dried leaves, and sing in both Spanish and Quechua. Not that I knew the difference or was able to understand either, but it didn’t matter. Soon both Hamilton and Malcolm joined in the singing as well, though it still remained quiet enough to hear how much noise continued outside in the jungle. The room was nearly pitch black, though I knew that would change as the drug kicked in and my eyes became extra sensitive to light. I lay back on the mat and waited.
When I made the decision that I was going to go to Peru, I had tried to avoid reading too much about the experiences of others. I knew a little already about DMT (the active ingredient of the ayahuasca mixture, it’s been a while since I said that), that it was a lot like LSD in many respects, but more potent and less time consuming. One of my main complaints about LSD was that it was amazing for a few hours and then it was another four hours or so of sitting around and thinking, “Okay, enough already.” But something even more intriguing about DMT to me was that so many people described very similar visions. The cynical part of me, of course, just assumed that was an effect of people reading about other experiences and their subconscious seizing on that. So I decided I’d try to go into it with as uncolored a view of it as I could.
Still, I did have the knowledge of what I’d read initially that had encouraged me to try ayahuasca myself, so I thought I had at least a vague idea of what it would be like. The National Geographic article in particular had described the experience as both wonderful and terrifying, and in particular had described the purging aspect of it as not just physical but spiritual, as ribbons of dark, evil energy were being pulled from her being. I may not have been sure of the reality of her experience but I trusted in the import of it, at a minimum. This was work, with dark, emotional stuff. Worse, I knew I was going in with a depression that revolved around an extremely strong self-hatred, one I definitely felt I had earned. So I felt like I had valid reasons for thinking this could be, at least initially, a horrible ordeal.
I tried to think about some of the things we’d been told in preparation for the ceremony. The main one was to go into it with an intent; something you wanted to achieve, a question, a concern or a concept; and focus on it as you entered the mareación, as this would help to direct your journey somewhat. If things got rough it helped to listen for the icaros as it was also there to help direct the ceremony, as well as offer protection. We had actually been cautioned against trying to help others who seemed to be struggling, that a shaman or apprentice would come and assist. It was important that we gave everyone in the room the space to have their own experience, including ourselves. In general for me this meant trying not to interact with Sarah, and vice versa, which we did a fairly good job of, overall. Still, it was her voice that was my first inkling that things were about to happen.
“Paul, do you see all those people walking around outside with green flashlights?”
I lifted my head and watched through the screen for a minute. Finally, I lay back, “There’s no one outside.”
“Oh.”
I was so amused that it didn’t register that I was able to see clearly in the darkness now.
I don’t know exactly when I realized the aya was in control. Sarah says at some point I told her I was beginning to see things in the ceiling; movement and colors; but I don’t remember that. I think I felt the nausea before anything else. The voices of the shamans were louder now, their icaros calling in the plant spirits from the jungle. Around me, some people were already beginning to purge and the sound had a strange lilt to it, as if it were slowly building in time with the music. I turned my head and looked back out the screened window where a face was staring back at me. Except it wasn’t exactly a face so much as it was as if a collection of wide neon strips, glowing bright white, had decided to get together and approximate a face. I tried to make sense of it, even as the face continued to float there, tried to find the trick that was being played, some guy in a mask, maybe, this is all just part of a show they put on. But the music was growing louder and the same thought kept coming back to me, over and over: They’re here. They’re ready to come inside now.
My memory of the rest of the ceremony itself is a jumble. At some point my body told me it was time to purge. I sat up and experienced two of the most perfunctory bouts of vomiting I’ve ever had. One. Two. I paused and waited but my body told me that was it, lay back down. I hadn’t really tried to focus on any kind of “intent,” just a mind as open as I could make it and a request that whatever this was would show me whatever it was it had to show me. With closed eyes I saw swirls of color and geometric shapes, alternating with visions of vaguely Hindu design. Out in the dark jungle, a nocturnal bird called over and over. Its voice sounded exactly like a warm, affectionate but mocking laugh. The singing of the shamans would swell, the timbre of their voices rising while the sound of purging around the room matched it in volume, and then ebb until Don Alberto’s soft whistling would seem to blow in to cover the room in a blanket, like a breeze filled with the scent of something familiar. We would seem to hover there, thirty or so people, seemingly connected, catching their breath at once, before we plunged back in and it all started again.
The thing is… we were all connected. At least, it seemed that way to me. Lying there, my guts and my brain carrying on what seemed like an endless debate about just how imperative it was that I get up and go to the bathroom, I felt linked to everyone else’s distress. It was as if the purging was something coherent that was moving throughout the room, and if I focused on it I could take it into myself. I would feel my own nausea rise and the room’s emotional cloud would seem lessened. At other times the feeling would be too much and I would be on the verge of finally trying to stand and somehow stumble towards a toilet, when suddenly I would hear the sound of someone else expelling god knows what and the feeling would pass.
Look, I’m not trying to work my way through the thesaurus listing for “purge,” and it’s not like the ceremony was exclusively about vomiting and shitting. But there were more than thirty people in the room and we all had some kind of physical exorcism (made that one up myself, Merriam-Webster, so screw you) at least twice, so the sound was pretty common and there’s no sense pretending otherwise. But it also didn’t quite register as what it was. It was just a sound, representing something, in a room full of sounds. Occasionally, things would go quiet, the songs would pause, and Hamilton would offer encouragement. “You guys are doing great, you guys are my rockstars.” “Just a little ayahuasca. Be glad it’s not a little more.” I lay on my mat, deep in the ebb and flow of the room, feeling as psychedelic as is humanly possible. My body felt as if it were no longer hampered by petty concerns like musculature or physics. I would start to yawn and the sensation would work its way from my chest to my head, twisting my anatomy like a whip in slow motion, until appearing from my mouth, a sigh inside a word balloon, both of us adorned with colorful curls and spirals as if we’d been drawn by Brendan McCarthy.
And then, it was over. The lamp was re-lit, Don Alberto left the building to a scattering of “Gracias, Maestro,” and people began to slowly move about. Those who’d done this before talked quietly and compared thoughts; the first-timers looked about, blinking, trying to process. In the flickering glow of kerosene, reality seemed to creep its way warily back inside.
Except.
Except I was still laying there. I was still in the mareación.
Next: Seriously this time, I have a literal dark night of the soul in the bathroom.