A few days ago I met Nexor, a ~30 years old Mexican guy. He has studied in the USA, currently works in Peru, and is on holidays in Cartagena. Three years ago he tried ayahuasca, so I asked him about his experience. I relate it here with his approval.
He went to Iquitos, Peru, to try it. He ended up in this place with three shamans, and prepared only for 3 days, instead of the recommended longer period. It was just for the experience, so he didn’t put that much importance on the preparation.
He drinks the mixture. After some time, the effect sets in. He mentally sees all his life running before his eyes, as if projected on some sort of bubble. On this spherical screen, scenes of his past crossfade quickly, as if this was the external representation of the ayahuasca thinking. The ayahuasca is scanning his past, point by point, scene by scene, searching for the important elements. A scene quickly blurs and is replaced by another one, there is no way to control this succession of excerpts. It continues until it finds something. Something big. Something that was forgotten.
Nexor is 4 years old and sees his father leaving the house forever. Not only that moment, but also the associated anger from his childhood wake up in him. The old resentment towards his father, these old feelings he was not even conscious he still had, wake up and hurl him, he is submitted to the hidden feelings he had been unknowingly carrying for years, for decades, for almost all of his life.
Other memories come back, particularly of how much his mother gave to him and for him, as a kid. He finally sees what she did for him, as if the ayahuasca was making a collection of memories for him to contemplate and draw his own conclusions about a past he had not contemplated before. No particularly bright colours he could remember, no powerful synesthesia. Just a succession of memories that come up to the surface of his consciousness, directed of a psychedelic maestro.
Other memories went past his inner eyes on the screening ayahuasca bubble, but none more important than that of his parents. Maybe it’s clear to you: this was not a good or enjoyable experience. This was not a cure. This was not healing. Ayahuasca only revealed painful and forgotten memories without giving him the tools to heal from them. Following this, he started his healing process in a more conventional way and decided to see a psychotherapist.
Nexor did not give any judgement about this experience, despite how traumatising it seems to have been. It did not seem to be a good nor a bad experience. Maybe it’s pointless to think about it in terms of values, since values are human constructions made to control our lives, and there is no control over what simply is. It simply was a very bad trip that left him in pieces. Neither what he expected nor what he wanted, but maybe what he needed to get part of his future life together, to stitch the forgotten pieces together. Nexor now has the hindsight to see what it was, and his conclusion is simple and uncompromising: ‘I was not ready’.
