Listening to Ayahuasca. Rachel Harris, PhD
therapy, from cognitive behavioral therapy to couples therapy. Evidently, it hadn’t helped, or perhaps it hadn’t helped enough. Nathan’s simple, yet clear description of his improved health habits — “I eat less and feel better” — is an important wake-up call to therapists. Therapists have told people to eat healthier for decades, and we all know how well that’s worked. Nathan’s overall characterization indicates he experienced a global shift, perhaps a spiritual opening, which is something that doesn’t necessarily happen even with successful therapy.
A thirty-three-year-old graduate student, Anna described her changes since drinking ayahuasca. After fifteen years of struggling with addictions, she said, “I never drank or smoked pot or touched any other substance like that again. I never had casual sex again or even a casual make-out session. And I cut back on sugar.” Anna’s central issue was her sense of self. “I finally feel like myself. Yes, I love myself!” She had never been in psychotherapy and had attended about fifty ayahuasca ceremonies. Her last ceremony was six years before the study, which gives us a clue about the long-lasting impact of the medicine for some people.
Philip, age twenty-nine and a graduate student in psychology, said, “I’ve always struggled with anxiety and depression, but I’m more accepting of them now.” Philip had undergone an array of therapeutic approaches and had seven experiences of drinking ayahuasca, the last one a few months before the study. He carefully distinguished between changes in anxiety and depression and his attitude toward these feelings. Although his ayahuasca experiences did not provide a miracle cure in the sense of removing anxiety and depression, they helped him to change how he related to these challenging feelings. Philip described an important inner shift that implies having greater compassion, possibly at a spiritual level beyond psychological acceptance.
George, age twenty-seven and in graduate school, made a similar observation regarding how he deals with mood swings since drinking ayahuasca. “No changes in emotional moods, but my ability to handle them is 100 percent better!” George hadn’t had any psychotherapy, but he had participated in twenty-two ayahuasca ceremonies over several years prior to the study. He wrote, “I no longer drink since puking out bad alcohol dependency three years ago with ayahuasca. I lost forty pounds and am now relatively athletic. I became a vegan after my tenth ceremony. My relationships are no longer codependent. I no longer feel self-esteem problems. I feel incredibly happy and centered and more able to deal with adverse situations.”
George asked his parents to answer the question, “Did anyone close to you notice any changes in you?” I included this question to obtain a more objective perspective regarding how people changed since drinking ayahuasca. Born-again Christians, George’s parents wrote that they “couldn’t fathom how a plant had helped George find so much health and love.” We have to give George a lot of credit for sharing his journey with his parents, and their response reflects how mystified they are about his experience and how relieved they are that he’s feeling much better.
William, a forty-five-year-old medical doctor, wrote that, since drinking ayahuasca, “Marijuana use is down 75 percent. My relationship with my wife is deepening. I’m more compassionate and affectionate. I have more confidence and feel a renewal of hope that I can create a meaningful life. I feel an opening of my heart to the scope of mystery.” Again, we hear the intimations of a spiritual path unfolding. William had been in almost one hundred ceremonies, the last one over six months prior to the study.
I personally interviewed William, who specializes in palliative care and is often present as his patients are dying. He told me, “Ayahuasca keeps me light on my feet and capable of responding to my patients’ suffering.” He feels guided by Grandmother Ayahuasca as he creates a new system for providing care for people during the final stage of life. He said, “Ayahuasca has moved to North America. She’s got something going on, and I’m a small piece of it.” I have to admit that I and many others feel the same way — those of us who feel we’ve received some sort of mission from Grandmother Ayahuasca and that she’s guiding and helping us rise to the challenge she’s assigned.
Perhaps that’s too strong a claim — that a plant has intentionally selected certain people to carry out a small aspect of her plan, to contribute to her larger cause. Perhaps I should say that, because of ayahuasca, some of us are rising up to accept the challenges we’ve imagined for ourselves. The truth is that I don’t know how to differentiate between an inner inspiration and a message from a plant teacher that I’m not sure I believe in, even though I’ve heard her voice loud and clear. This is the recurring symptom of my ontological crisis, which is the most powerful way I’ve changed since drinking ayahuasca. More about that later.
Nancy, a forty-two-year-old college graduate and farmer, had attended seventy-five ceremonies during the six years before the study. She’d tried a number of different therapies on and off for ten years, from talk therapy to somatic therapy. She wrote that as a result of her ayahuasca experiences: “I’m more stable and grounded, less likely to get swept up in my own dramas. I’m more willing to allow my feelings, but differentiate them from ‘moods,’ which can be caused by an imbalanced brain/body chemistry. I’m a better listener and more patient. I have more awareness of what I’m doing and as a result am not so self-destructive. I no longer drink alcohol. Weight loss. Asthma gone. Junk food doesn’t seem so appealing. I now love myself. I have compassion for myself. I relate to my inner selves as parts of myself, not as enemies.” After all that, Nancy still felt compelled to add an additional note: “It’s not an overstatement to say ayahuasca saved my life — more than once.”
Lewis was a fifty-three-year-old college grad working as a telecom technician who’d never had therapy. At the time of the study, Lewis had been a member of the Santo Daime Church for three years and had about eighty experiences with ayahuasca — or the “Daime,” as the medicine is known in the church, where it’s revered as a sacrament. Lewis wrote, “I’m more socially outgoing, more attentive to others, and less self-absorbed; more open, spontaneous, and expressive. I’m less self-critical, more accepting with a better understanding of who I am as opposed to who I thought I was. I feel much less sadness, less anxiety and gloomy thoughts. I have flashes of joy and hope, the possibility of being alive. I’m aware of the possibility of transcendence. I want to live before I die.”
Lewis is certainly quite expressive now. If we listen between the lines, we can hear how depressed he must have been before embarking on his journey with the Daime. Previous to my own experiences with ayahuasca, I would’ve thought, Here’s a guy in desperate need of therapy. Now, however, I appreciate the therapeutic potential in this ancient medicine to relieve major, lifelong depression. This is just one of the ways I’ve changed my thinking since embarking on my own ayahuasca journey.
Lewis also had someone close to him describe the changes they’ve noticed, which provides an outside perspective on the drastic changes Lewis has experienced. The person wrote: “I have noticed a great change. Where before he didn’t share his personal feelings, he has become increasingly open, confident, and communicative concerning personal feelings and his self-discoveries. He is much happier. He smiles far more often and expresses joy in his day-today life. I have noticed a great opening up and acceptance accompanied by a releasing of pent-up worries, fears, and other unpleasant preoccupying emotions. He has also become more social, including himself in numerous group activities and making new, good friends. Very positive overall.”
This description confirms Lewis’s self-report. However, it’s fair to wonder, were Lewis’s changes a result of the ayahuasca he ingested or from his new identity since joining the Santo Daime Church? Only three people in this study were members of an ayahuasca church, which is too few to separate into their own group, one distinct from those drinking ayahuasca in a shamanic context. Thus, I have no way to tease out the effects of the medicine from the social experience of joining a church and all the interpersonal benefits of belonging to a group. Many of us have either experienced or witnessed others who joined a new social group and benefited from that involvement, but the dramatic and extensive changes that Lewis described seem due to more than just church membership.
For instance, Lewis wrote about his diet: “Less crap, less sugar, less pigging out, more veggies. I’m slimmer, feel younger, and appear younger, or so say others.”
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