First Ceremony:

I'm in the maloca, sitting and waiting nervously for my turn to drink the Ayahuascan brew. When it is my turn I walk over and kneel in front of Don Lucho, waiting for my cup. He looks at me, almost like he was ‘feeling’ me out to know how much he should give me. Mamasita, Don Lucho’s wife, pours the brew about half way into a small cup. I sit with the cup in my hands for about 15 seconds, putting my good intentions into it. I press the cup to my lips and drink the thick vile liquid. It is almost too revolting to even describe.

I walk back to my mattress, sitting and waiting nauseously with my puke bucket. The taste was lingering in my mouth so I started meditating, focusing on my breathing. About 30 minutes in I started to see simple patterns form. At first the patterns were in the form of neon green dots and lines. It didn’t even matter whether my eyes were opened or closed as the room was pitch black.

I hear a loud thunderous purge to my left.

I knew it wouldn't be long until it was my turn, especially because at this point I was feeling extreme nausea.

The patterns were gradually escalating to more complex patterns like swirls and tunnels accompanied by basic shapes like squares, triangles, and circles in the form of all different colours and sizes.

I feel the vile brew rising up from the pit of my stomach.

“Uh oh”

I quickly sit up to reach for my bucket and emptied out my stomach in it. I roared while I was violently purging this repulsive liquid into my poor bucket.

After about 5-10 minutes of consistently purging my guts out, I laid back down. I started shivering from the intense coldness I started to experience. I reached for my shirt and pants, and got under the blanket while freezing my arse off. Don Lucho was singing his icaros while my visions get more and more intense. The patterns and shapes got more complex and intricate than the next. It was almost like looking through a kaleidoscope, but much more complex and indescribable. I was starting to go to a very similar space to what I felt on my last DMT trip.

I started to involuntarily navigate myself to a dark place, putting myself down and getting strong feelings of regret, remorse, despair, sadness and loneliness. These feelings manifested themselves into dark entities which I could see and sense all around me. I even felt these dark entities take over my body. At this point my eyes started to water with tears which escalated into me sobbing uncontrollably. My feelings and visions were getting more horrible and more intense. I started seeing evil demon-like clowns surrounded by very abstract dark art. The visions I saw, felt like a mirror reflection to how I was feeling. And it didn’t matter whether or not my eyes were open or closed; I could still see these entities right up in my face which I could not escape.

I started thinking about my life and how unhappy I was. I feared that I broke a portal and all these dark energies entered my body. I felt that I broke my head and there’s no hope for me, that no one can heal me. Maybe religion was right, and psychedelics shouldn’t be fucked with, as they make us very vulnerable to bad spirits. Or maybe I really am crazy and was prone to psychosis. I convinced myself that I had schizophrenia and I’ve just fucked myself up forever.

Time does not exist in the DMT world. I felt a huge amount of déjà vu and was getting a lot of flashbacks when I was a kid, feelings of great sadness that I used to have. I would also be living in the future when I was old, after death, and also in the past; as a child, and before birth, all happening simultaneously. Yea I know trippy right?

I focused on my breathing which momentarily made the visuals go less intense. I really tried to focus consistently on my breathing but couldn’t last more than 10 seconds so I immediately returned to my personal hell.

I started having stronger feelings of regret and hopelessness, like I’ve died and gone to hell. I’ve always known that hell is just a state of mind, not a fiery inferno you go to after you die. But at that moment I really did consider that maybe there was an actual hell where your soul gets tortured into the darkest depths of evil. Never in my life had I been so afraid to die. I kept telling myself that maybe this is just a harsh lesson Mother Ayahuasca is teaching me, and that I will wake up feeling much better, but I wasn’t learning anything, in fact I felt more negativity enter my body instead of cleaning it out.

I was wishing that I had listened to my family. Why did I go to Peru? I shouldn’t have gone to this place and drank this crazy drug, I’m going to come out worse than what I came in, I thought. I was absolutely dreading the shame I was going to feel facing everyone.

I kept weeping, rubbing my tear covered face, tossing from side to side in my foetal position, feeling immense physical and emotional pain. Never in my life have I felt so alone in the universe. I just wanted someone to hold me and tell me that it’s going to be okay. I wanted to call for help but I thought to myself ‘What’s the point? No one can help me so why bother?’

I was thinking extremely negative thoughts; how evil the government is, how fucked and corrupt our society is and how it runs off fear, and that there is no hope for mankind. I felt and saw the presence of the supernatural force that is behind all the damned evil in this world, which some would call the devil, but whatever you want to call it, it was fucking terrifying. I saw how it fed off negative energy and how it was this unstoppable force that has taken over our world.

I wanted this hell to stop. I tried thinking good thoughts, shooing the bad spirits away, I even tried praying, but nothing would work. When Don Lucho came over to sing to me I hoped that this would help but unfortunately it didn’t at all. I was getting deeper and deeper into my personal hell. Extremely fucked up, unthinkable thoughts were invading my mind that would make me suffer even more than I already was. I was dealing with some very heavy issues, all my skeletons and demons burst out of the closet. And the more resistance I showed the worse it would get.

There was no way in hell that I was going to continue the retreat. If this is just the first ceremony, imagine the next 3? Fuck….that.