I had just finished a week of traveling for work and while I was in the lyft on my way home from Logan airport, I came across a tweet about an ayahuasca retreat in the Sacred Valley of Peru. My thumb stopped with the mindless scrolling motion and I reread the tweet and then dove in for more information. Ever since I’ve known what ayahuasca was, I’ve wanted to try it, but every time I’d actually think about looking into trying it, I’d come up with seemingly infinite excuses almost instantaneously – and so I never got beyond thinking about trying it.

This time wasn’t much different, while I was looking into the retreat, I immediately had numerous excuses as to why I can’t go – it’s too expensive, I have a work meeting I can’t miss the week of the retreat, I’m going to have to spend half my vacation time, these people might steal my organs, etcetera, etcetera.

Not only that, but the website for the retreat was advertising it as a retreat to help with addiction and depression. Since I was neither of these, or at least did not perceive myself as depressed or addicted to anything (except maybe sports betting), I thought this probably isn’t for me.

So I started mindlessly scrolling through twitter again but my mind remained on this retreat and now I was wrestling with my internal thoughts – go on this retreat vs. all the excuses.

I was planning to play in a poker tournament the next day and so I made an agreement with myself before I got out of the lyft – “if you win the poker tournament tomorrow, you have to go on the retreat. No excuses.” I said to myself. I figured this was a good agreement because it would give me a lot of room to wiggle back into my excuses and back out and forget about this trip – after all, the odds are totally stacked against me winning the poker tournament.

The next day, as I made my way to the casino, I was listening to a Jay-Z Pandora station to get me pumped up. The anticipatory feeling reminded me of how I used to feel before my wrestling matches and football games – and a lot of the songs that were coming on were songs I used to listen to before those competitions. I felt ready to compete but this was a very different competition – one of mental strength, patience, and emotional endurance.

By the time registration closed for the tournament (i.e. no more entries were allowed), there were 156 entrants. As time ticked by, the tally of players remaining in the tournament slowly dwindled – 118, 84, 53, 27. At this point, there were only three tables left and I had been playing well so I had more chips in front of me than the majority of the 27 players remaining. I had a real shot to actually win this tournament.

I was so locked in now. After one hand, this one guy said my face looked like I was going through a prostate exam. That broke my fierce concentration and got me cracking up - but only for a minute and then it was back to impersonating Bill Belichick’s press conferences. Eventually, the tally of remaining players was 9 and we moved to 1 table. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe I could win the tournament before we started playing – but now I truly believed. I didn’t have the most chips, in fact one guys had about 6 times as many chips as I did, but that didn’t matter, “just keep playing well” I said to myself.

After 12+ hours of playing poker I won the tournament. I was the last person with chips in front of me after 156 entrants. I was ecstatic of course, but now I had to live up to the agreement I made with myself. As I drove home that night, my mind was filled with joy and excitement and even though there were about to be a lot of tasks I needed to complete to go on this journey (get a passport, plan my trip, take time off from work, etc), I let go of all the anxiety that might have otherwise accompanied the seemingly endless tasks I now needed to prepare for this trip and just said to myself, that this was part of the agreement. Little did I know, this was only the beginning…

The poker tournament was Saturday, February 16. We had Monday off for President’s day, so on Tuesday, I talked to my manager about taking two weeks off from work in April. I explained that there was a yoga retreat that I really wanted to attend and it meant that I was going to miss a mandatory quarterly meeting (this was true by the way, it was a yoga AND ayahuasca retreat). I explained that this was the only week the retreat is taking place and it was something I felt like I had to do. I reminded him that I’ve never missed a prior meeting and have even made such efforts to come home early from past vacations to attend other mandatory meetings. Luckily, my manager is a considerate person and understands that there is more to life than work. He stated it as simply as – “if this is something you feel like you have to do, and this is the only time you can do it, I’m not going to tell you no.” This was probably my biggest hurdle and I was now over it. My deposit was made to attend the retreat that night.

It was real now. I started planning all the logistics of the trip that week. There was a lot to plan but I was excited to do it. The hard part was some of the changes I was going to have to make to my life.

On March 2, I had a Facetime call with the two facilitators of the trip. I had never met them, so it was nice to get to meet them this way. During the call, they asked how I heard about the retreat and so I told them the story above. They had a laugh and said that was the most unique story they had heard as far as how someone ended up on one of these retreats. Another part of the conversation was them explaining to me that I should try and be as healthy as possible going into the retreat. They essentially recommended eating only unprocessed whole foods, no drinking, no smoking, no recreational drug use, no sex or masturbation and as little screen time as possible for at least two weeks before the retreat – but the longer you can abstain, the better. They recommended relieving as much stress from life as possible.

So I started the diet that day. One of my best friends was visiting from New York that weekend and he had spent the night at my place and we were planning to spend the day together. After this call, we ended up meeting up with a few of my hometown friends and went bowling and after that, my buddy and I met up with some mutual friends at a couple of breweries. Throughout these engagements with our friends, everyone was drinking – except for me. This is going to be the hard part I thought.

I used to be able to find infinite reasons to have a drink. “Hanging out with friends, it’s Friday, the game is on, scotch helps my bowl movements” – literally infinite reasons. But now, for the first time in a long time, I had a reason to say no. I wouldn’t have considered myself an alcoholic, but it became apparent to me how prevalent alcohol consumption was in my life and how unconscious I was to it.

I had also been betting on sports quite a bit prior to this trip. “Quite a bit” is an understatement - I will write another blog on sports betting that will go into the extent of it. But signing up for this trip helped me stop betting on sports and it helped to bring to my consciousness how destructive it was to my life. In general, I was becoming more aware of how I spent my time and the removal of drinking and sports betting really gave me so much more time to focus on what I actually want to do with my time.

Eventually, it was time to go on the trip. It seemed like I had already traveled a long way, but I hadn’t left the confines of my day to day world yet. But I was living with a more open heart and clear mind and so my world was different. My excitement was through the roof by the time I arrived at Logan to begin the journey to Cusco, Peru.

Upon my arrival in Cusco, everyone recommended that I take it easy, after all, the altitude is almost double what it is in Denver. But I was so excited I couldn’t take it easy. I slept for about an hour when I got to my hotel in Cusco (after traveling for about 18 hours) and then I was off to explore. I went to the Coricancha, the most important temple built in the center of the Incan empire. While I was going into Coricancha, I was approached by a woman name Yerusa who offered to be my personal tour guide. I thought this was perfect and we were off.