The internet is filled with sordid tales about what happens when you drink the omnipotent psychoactive plant brew we lovingly call Mother Ayahuasca. Many are light-filled, healing retellings full of dramatic visions and beautiful body-highs, but many are actually painful accounts of terror and torture. And they’re all true. These things and so much more are possible with a substance this powerful. And because this is precisely how consciousness works, than any conceivable reality is possible in this altered state.

The question I get asked most often by those who are deciding whether or not to take the plunge and try Madre Medicina is this: Will I be better or worse off after I drink Ayahuasca?

The honest answer is it could go either way. But I’ll tell you how to make the most of it no matter what, and why she sometimes needs to make things worse before they get better.

Differentiating Between Human and Plant Intervention

It’s important to note that for the sake of this article, I am focusing on those who feel worse after an Ayahuasca journey due to their own required healing process, not because they sat in an unsafe container.

I talk at length about the dangers of sitting with unqualified facilitators in other articles; that aftermath is a whole different pile of poo. There are obvious consequences of handing over our vulnerabilities to someone ill-equipped to guide and protect us, and while they are often devastatingly difficult to understand and integrate, it’s all sacred information, no matter what.

But let’s exam why the wisdom of the medicine often involves pushing us deeper into our breakdown, before the aha-s start coming….

Even if You Sit with a Bona Fide Maestro/a, Please Don’t Look to Ayahuasca as a Cure

There’s a common thread that people who end up feeling frustrated or traumatized in the aftermath of an Aya journey—many were hoping it would be a quick fix. It’s an understandable and very human desire; we all want to feel better, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. And we often bring this very naïve hope that a wild night with the medicine will cure what ails us.

But she doesn’t work that way. Nothing does. We have to do the work.

Almost all of us say we are willing to do the work – to feel and heal and allow the energies trapped inside to rise up and become conscious. The thing is, we couldn’t possibly really know what we are asking for. Remember that this request is the very thing we all work so, so hard to resist and avoid for the vast majority of our lives.

There’s a reason for that. Nothing could be more difficult, more terrifying, more mind-blowingly challenging than facing our own demons and shadows; the subconscious traumas and programs that create our limiting beliefs are the core of our suffering.

So when the medicine comes raging in the with the truth of what we are carrying, all bets are off. Most of us will resist like champions – and many will do so with such ferocity, we prohibit the process from actually working. This is not intention. It is not our fault. It just shows us the power of denial and resistance. And it shows the power of the pain that we carry. But this is precisely the energy we use, through transmutation, to learn the incredible art of surrender.

This process takes time. For some of us, it takes a lot of time. But it’s still worth it. Healing and awakening are really the only games in town. And if you understand the process - most importantly that YOU are responsible for the entire magical experience - you are well equipped fo fast track your healing and start reaching states of healing bliss.

So Ayahuasca, although miraculous, is not a cure. She does not prevent us from having to face what we have avoided until we sit with her. She can only open the door. We still have to walk through it.

Related Post: Can Ayahuasca Make You Go Crazy?

The Lies We are Told By So Many Retreats and “Shamans”

Many big-name retreats and earnest facilitators sell the false hope of “miracles”, as the lure of a cure causes many to fork over heaps of cash.

This is not to say the medicine isn’t miraculous. She is. She saves and transforms lives every single day. But not by taking away our suffering - by teaching us why we were suffering to begin with. And then she empowers us to do the work to prevent the dis-ease in the future.