Ayahuasca won't fix your problems
But it can show you what will
It’s night three. I’m still not feeling anything.
Two ceremonies, three cups of medicine each night, and—nothing.
I flew to Costa Rica and spent thousands to lie on a mattress and listen to strangers around me throw up all night. Great.
During our daily integration workshops, miracle stories are being rubbed into my face. The elderly woman with the crutches who can suddenly walk. The middle-aged bald man who got alien surgery on his brain and is no longer depressed. The father-son duo that made up after seven years of not speaking. Everyone’s gotten their miracle—except me and a handful of others.
As I’m lying on my back hours into that third night, once again three cups in, bored as hell and sober as stone, tears begin knocking on the glassy doors of my empty eyes. Here I have my proof: I’m a lost cause. Not even ayahuasca can salvage me.
And now, the cherry on top—cramps rumbling through my belly. There she is, my period, on her way to make sure I don’t enjoy this week the least bit. This whole trip was a mistake. Maybe I should have thought harder about this. It’s just been four weeks since I watched the documentary that made me book the trip the next day. What a colossal failure.
Heat is rising to my chest. The woman in front of me is moving through some weird exorcism. Her glitter-painted face and flowing gown can’t save her from whatever terror she’s experiencing. I’m in sweatpants but at least I’m contained. Across the room, a man is yelling and cursing so violently he gets escorted out of the room.
Why not me? That’s all I can think as I look around the room, with everyone screaming and crying and purging their guts out. Why can’t I be healed? That’s all I want—what everybody else is having. I’m not asking for anything extra.
Why not me? Why not me? Why not me?
I wallow in the unfairness. Single tears turn into silent weeps. Soon, they become desperate wails. Why not me? turns into Why me? and suddenly I’m no longer twenty-seven. I’m six years old and just got punched in the stomach.
A helper rushes over to sit down next to me. Intricate braids hang down her white maxi dress as she begins stroking my side body. Let me take you outside, she whispers as she reaches for my hand, we will bring your mattress. Now I’m getting kicked out, too. The ceremony is winding down and I’m ugly crying, keeping everybody up.
Within minutes, I carry my wails under the stars. The cramps in my stomach turn into stabs. The braided girl rushes in to get the shaman. She returns with the elderly lady who opened the ceremony. Her long, grey hair shines under the moonlight as she kneels beside me.
What is happening for you? she asks.
My stomach is hurting, I say, and I know why.
She fishes a little canister out of her pouch and asks if she can lift my shirt to apply it. I nod. Her warm palms rub the balm in slow circles across my abdomen. I tell her what happened. What did you make that mean?, she asks.
Kids always ask why. They don’t let go until they have an answer. So the best I could come up with, I realize as I tell her, was that something was wrong with me and that I probably deserved it.
Intermittent weeps cut between my words as I speak the truth my conscious mind has spent a lifetime trying to conceal. Accolades, perfection, achievement—all of it built to help me forget this one thing. But here it is. My truth, staring down at me.
The shaman leans forward and whispers, Keep crying. Let it all out. You will know when you’re done. Then, forgive. Don’t forget, you can always ask the medicine for help.
She gets up, along with the rest of the helpers.
I continue sobbing for another hour or so, until I run out of tears. My insides are dried up but I’m still starving for reconciliation. I can’t see how this could possibly resolve.
Still curled up in fetal position, I begin whispering to the medicine. Please. My hands are gripping the grass. Please help me. I don’t know who or what I’m speaking to. Nothing has shown its face. There’ve been no visions, no alteration in my consciousness, no grand entrance of the mother spirit, no dialogue or instructions. For all I know, I’m just having a little meltdown. Except I haven’t cried in years.
A breeze blows me over and turns me around on my back.
There they are, the stars.
I’ve never seen a more mesmerizing image. I can see every star. I feel them. I feel their light shining down on me.
Like I just came up from the water to escape my own drowning, I take a long, deep inhale. With that one breath in, I inhale all the love from the stars which is now streaming down straight into my heart, filling the void I’ve lived from all my life.
Later I write in my journal, love is the fabric of the universe.
The next day, I wake up and all is forgiven.
Within two weeks of returning home, COVID hits.
Within six weeks, I relapse in my eating disorder.
It won’t be the last relapse, either. It will take three more years, dozens of ceremonies with different plants, and various other forms of support to recover.
Ayahuasca gave me a miracle—but not the one I asked for.
It didn’t heal me. It showed me the moment I first learned to believe that something was wrong with me. A belief so deeply unconscious I might never have uncovered it otherwise. But it didn’t erase the belief. It returned, over and over. Only now I could see it. And because I could see it, I could work with it.
This is the gift of medicine work. It takes you to the root. Plant medicines are not the end all be all. There are gentler methods. But there are few tools that so reliably and clearly show you the map—the long path back to yourself is still yours to walk.
With gratitude to nature,
More from my universe
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Deeply relatable and beautifully told. Especially love how you place this moment in a greater context. So often writers tell Pollyanna stories with 'this fixed everything' conclusions, but the truth is crazy complex, rich and winding. Your ending zooms out like the stars ✨
I resonate so much with this. aya showed me how deep my eating disorders and body dysmorphia was - did not heal it - but allowed me to see how much I needed to help myself.