The Sunday Times January 08, 2006
Health
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 18,00.html
Jungle fever
Hallucinogens and healing? Indigenous tribes have used
shamanic rituals and plants for centuries. Victoria
Gill heads to Brazil and discovers the trip of a
lifetime
I didn’t know quite what to expect from the ayahuasca
holiday. I don’t suppose any of my 25 co-retreaters
did either. At a luxurious boutique eco-lodge on the
coast of the Bahian rainforest, the no salt, sugar or
alcohol diet that had been so difficult to sustain in
London became a delight via gourmet organic meals. But
the retreat’s raison d’être was three nights spent
under the influence of one of the strongest natural
hallucinogens known to man.
Blame it on a difficult childhood, on overindulgence,
or call it the outcome of a disastrous love affair six
months previously — I’d lost myself of late. The
lights were on, but my fire had been extinguished. At
27, I was uneasy with the person I had become.
Ayahuasca Healing isn’t about recreational drug use.
It’s a holistic process and a daunting undertaking
that promises to change you. Without exception,
everyone in my group wanted to improve. Ayahuasca
Healing was established by Silvia Polivoy, a clinical
psychologist and registered shamanic healer, in 1997.
At the time, just eight companies offered courses of
this nature. Over the past two years, that number has
soared, with an estimated 30 to 40 running throughout
the Amazon.
According to Dr Rick Strassman, professor of
psychiatry at the New Mexico School of Medicine, there
are no known cases of psychological or physical
fallout, although anyone on SSRI antidepressants is
advised not to take ayahuasca, and those with high
blood pressure should consult their GP first.
Strassman also says that numerous tests have shown
ayahuasca’s toxicology levels to humans to be zero.
Most commonly prepared by boiling (or soaking), then
straining and blessing the stems of the Banisteriopsis
caapi plant with the leaves of the DMT-rich Psychotria
viridis, ayahuasca has been used for centuries by the
indigenous tribes of the rainforest for healing under
the guidance of shamans.
With considerable interest in ayahuasca among those in
the psychological and neurological fields, it is legal
in Brazil when used for spiritual healing, and the
course I was about to start comes fully sanctioned by
the government.
The journey to the idyllic tropical garden took 23
hours from London. My bedroom was a spacious, polished
wooden bungalow on stilts, complete with hammock and
veranda. The first two days were spent sussing out the
lipstick hippies from the boardroom bohemians between
sunbathing sessions, deep tissue massage, swimming in
the warm sea, canopy-walking in the jungle and
transcendental workshops. The daily Buddhist
meditation sessions were focused and balancing, the
past-life regression seminars bonding and
enlightening. As Dr Mike Isaac, a psychiatrist at
Maudsley Hospital confirms, “you need to be supervised
by people who know what they are doing”, and we
definitely were. By day four, my chakras were wide
open and my mind was fully primed.
Ayahuasca is both the most beautiful drug I have
experienced and the most putrid-tasting potion I’ve
ever imbibed. Blue and gloopy in texture, it’s a
flirtatious entity in many ways, inducing profound
feelings of love for your contemporaries. For this
reason, sex is banned, and I welcomed an environment
that allowed me to be intimate with strangers without
fear of exploitation.
It’s not kind to everyone: those with a controlling
character or a particularly ordered, logical mind may
run into difficulties. Vengeful monsters, venomous
snakes and constricting boxes weren’t uncommon
visitors for my fellow participants. However, the
outcome for them (discovering the pleasures of a more
carefree existence) was worth it. I am young, playful,
creative, open-minded and quite sexual. Experienced
users confirm that these are perhaps ideal
prerequisites for compatibility with the plant.
Experts have equated a single trip — lasting between
four and eight hours — with five years of
psychotherapy or 20 years of meditation. The sessions
took place on evenings three, five and seven of the
seminar, opening with a ritual in which intentions
were stated and cups of ayahuasca downed before we
took to makeshift beds that lined the beach house.
Twenty minutes later, my vision distorted and I became
oblivious to all save the living dream inside my mind.
With each trip, I entered a different universe: the
first one bright and primary-coloured; the second a
dark and carnal underground, flecked with jewels; the
third a 30th-century heaven, gleaming white with neon
features. Some users report the drug appearing to them
as a female spirit. This was how ayahuasca introduced
itself to me — as an invisible femme fatale who showed
me which habits to discard and how I could improve.
Divine clarity via epiphanic beauty: my creative life
was thrown into context, my place in the world
revealed and my history explained.
My internal baggage manifested as leeches on my skin
that I flicked away with ease. I discovered a black,
insect-infested chancre that had been growing in my
chest for the 20 years since my father left, and spent
three hours cleaning it until it was replaced, fertile
and green. When I danced, my body became possessed
with a raw synchronicity that I have only ever dreamt
of attaining, a part of which has stayed with me to
this day. I told the drug that I wanted to suffer,
that this all seemed too easy, and it said that I had
suffered enough, then turned me into an angel and
suffused me with sparkling white light. It put blocks
in my spine for power, wisdom and stability, and I
felt so grateful that I had to keep feeling my lips to
check that I was smiling.
On the morning after each trip, each member of the
group recounts the experiences of the night before.
The mood is one of complete acceptance: by day seven,
the men are crying, the make-up is off and we embrace
upon greeting.
Due to its global presence, ayahuasca’s case has been
argued in courts the world over, but whether it is
legal in other countries remains a grey area. In the
United States, the battle has been taken to the
Supreme Court, after prosecutors found it hard to
assert that it is detrimental, with no proven benefits
to human health (the requirements for scheduling a
class A) drug. Here in the UK, it remains
unclassified.
Ayahuasca has none of the after-effects of the
recreational drugs used on the party circuit. There is
no mental or physical discomfort; instead, the
elation, energy and purification continue. My friends
noticed the difference in me. Everyone did.
I no longer feel damaged. I’m comfortable in my own
skin. I take such pleasure in life and partying that
people who don’t know me imagine I’m high, but I’m
near teetotal now. And at last I’m happily single.
I’ve relinquished outdated friendships and had
conversations I’d been putting off for years. I’m in
emotional remission. You can’t put a price on a
balanced mind, but you can pay to balance it.
SHAMANISM
This is an ancient healing practice based on the
belief that every malady has a spiritual dimension.
Rituals such as deep meditation and the ingestion of
hallucinogenic plants aim to aid contact with the
spirits of ancestors in order to undo past ills.
Shamanism is prevalent among the world’s indigenous
tribes, and there has been huge Western interest in
recent years. There were elements of shamanism in the
rave scene; and, these days, you can go on shamanic
courses anywhere from Wales to Hawaii, and have
shamanic therapy at luxury spas such as Post Ranch
Inn, in Big Sur, California. Modern healers often
combine clinical and shamanic psychology. Essentially,
though, it’s all about reconnecting with nature.
THANX!
