What actually happens at an ayahuasca ceremony, and after

What am I allowed to eat beforehand?

As this was my last hope, I decided to stop everything, all while doing their strict Dieta to maximize the plant medicine. The only way I knew how was to go all in!

What is the Dieta?

Where did this happen?

By Sunday night, the luxury resort feeling faded and the healing center feeling took over. The real work was about to start.

Rythmia, in the glossary

Who is “Mother Aya”?

The way I understand it: You have company coming over, and you need to cook a solid meal, but your house is a fucking mess, and you can’t even get to your kitchen. Mother Aya is the housekeeper. She won’t stop until everything has been cleared.

Mother Aya, in the glossary

What do I even wear?

Trying to decide what I am okay wearing if I shit myself, or vomit all over my own chest. No clue. I pick up my loose cotton pants: tactical cremation wear, comfortable enough to die in on this beautiful Monday evening funeral.

What is the room like?

I’m at the door. I take off my shoes. I am instructed to pick a mattress and stay on it. Don’t resist. Shut the left brain off and just feel.

What is a Maloca?

What if nothing happens to me?

From the glossary · NADAA ceremony night in which the participant receives no visions, no purging, and no dramatic experience. Not considered a failure; practitioners describe it as a quiet integration or a background update running silently while the body rests.

I’m ready for the physical dehoarding: the vomit, the shakes, the shits, the sweats… If I’m lucky, I’ll get a NADA, a silent update, background patch for ancestral data, while I am passed out sleeping like a baby until the morning. Who am I kidding? I am not that lucky.

What is a NADA?

What does it taste like?

I inhaled my first cup. The thick molasses-like sludge slams my tongue hard. Disgusting.

What is actually in it?

Will I humiliate myself?

I’m feeling this burning shame building fast, hotter than the Costa Rican jungle. My ego, playing it all cool, tries to stay professional while my body is about to have a nuclear meltdown.

I don’t give a fuck how I look; it is happening whether I want this or not.

Is it supposed to be this bad?

From the glossary · Purge/Purging (ceremonial)Considered by practitioners to be the body pushing out stored trauma, toxins, and emotional weight. Not seen as illness; seen as medicine working.

Did I get a bad batch? Is everyone experiencing this?

We officially entered the same war zone, but everyone is alone with their shit.

What do the shamans actually do all night?

From the glossary · ShamansIndigenous spiritual practitioners who act as a bridge between the human and spiritual worlds. In ayahuasca ceremony contexts, they lead the healing work, sing icaros (sacred songs), and guide participants through visionary states.

Without warning, I’m hit with a triple-burst pressure spray. It’s not a single hit; she’s rapid-firing, spitting: each burst of liquid is a forced system coolant flush hitting my overheating core.

Standing there, he grabs his leaf bundles, chanting loud as hell, circling me with the persistence of a giant wasp.

Chaudreh/Mapacho · Icaros

How bad is the bathroom part?

After the second cup, the violent purging is nonstop; forcing system refresh till the computer freezes. From bucket to toilet, toilet with bucket, and toilet to toilet, and repeat.

I laugh aloud, picturing a spatula hanging on the wall to help unglue my ass from the seat; I’ll add that to the comment cards later.

Why they call it medicine, not sickness

What is that coming out of me?

As a nurse, I’ve seen every kind of biological discharge, but this is different. It’s hyper-pigmented, oily, tar-like sludge that looks like it belongs in a waste drum with a skeleton painted on it, not a human body. I stare at the black pasty residue, the remains of every fake smile I’ve ever worn.

I ask her: “What the fuck is that?”

She answers with a smirk: “It is the physical remains of forty-one years of mirrored lies.”

What does the jungle actually sound like?

The howler monkeys mix with the screaming and the final purging. In the early morning light, the blue skies, the birds, and the insects wake up, hearing all of nature around me as if they are also celebrating.

Howler Monkeys, in the glossary

What is coming home actually like?

I look around, and I don’t have that usual overwhelming feeling. Something is different. The same walls, the same rooms, the same life, but I am looking at it through a different set of eyes. I can make my reality the way I want it. It starts with my thoughts.

Why do I still feel it weeks after I get home?

From the glossary · IntegrationThe work that comes after a plant medicine ceremony. Taking what you saw and learned and turning it into real change in daily life. Most people say this part is the real work.

Mother Aya used my sleep on day ninety to show me what I needed to see.

What is integration?

Does ayahuasca actually cure addiction?

I have come to realize that you simply cannot erase thirty-two years of neurological pathways in four nights of plant medicine and ninety days of integration. Regardless of how you want to do the math, it is not pretty. Started chemicals at nine, and the rot started seeping in before that, at birth, if we’re being honest. My brain is starving for the signal it used to get for free. I must be patient with my body and give it time to reopen the dopamine factory: the pipes are rusty, and no one has been working since 1993.

What is integration?

Why do I feel relief before the drug has even hit me?

The worst part about this whole drug-seeking Dragon is that relief is immediately felt when I DECIDE to do it. Have you ever noticed that after you take a pill, you immediately feel the rush? It didn’t magically get in your bloodstream that quickly. You feel the relief because your brain can relax; you gave it a solution. The Dragon is a loan shark; the feeling is always borrowed.

What is the hardest part of staying clean?

Being clean means sitting with myself exactly as I am. Right now, that means my lower back is talking to me, my jaw is tight, and I keep catching myself holding my breath. The hardest part is the nothingness.