“Malo esperiots y diablos” the Shaman told me after my first rather uneventful ayahuasca ceremony at the center. That was all I understood of the Spanish and what I understood concerned me, though the shaman seemed unfazed and planned to remove these bad spirits and devils from me in the coming ceremonies.  A few days later another traveler arrived with better Spanish speaking skills than me, and I was able to get the full story of these bad spirits and devils that had attached themselves to me.

He said that these spirits we working to pull me to the dark side (kill me), which as I write it seems crazy but it did make some sense with the health problems I had suffered from in the past 6 months.  Since a hernia repair surgery in March, I had suffered from a constant low-grade infection that had slowly been running me into the ground. Before I left for Peru, the doctor had told me re-doing the surgery was my last option to try to get rid of the infection after running me through numerous courses of antibiotics. Even that was not guaranteed to fix the problem, as the scans and tests they had done on me at two different hospitals showed nothing wrong.  As a healthy and active 27 year old, firstly I should not have even had a hernia, and secondly I should have been able to bounce back from the surgery. There was a bit of comfort that came from the shaman telling me he could see something wrong and that he would fix it, more comfort than I had when the doctor told me the scans showed nothing wrong and they would try another surgery to fix me.

Removing bad spirits and devils is easier said than done, well maybe easy for the Shaman but it was most definitely not easy for me. The first preparation began the next day, the shaman prepared a special plant bath for me containing the leaves of three strong trees know as Palos Fuertes, that would help loosen these negative entities. Due to the nature of the energetic strength of the plants in this bath, the female shaman had to bathe me with this mixture and during the process I started to feel queasy. Whether from the smell which was reminiscent of the type of ayahuasca brew I drank in Ecuador my very first time working with shamans, or that it was from loosening the bad spirits from me I can’t say. I was given a tea to drink called Limon Dulce (Sweet Lemon), though it was neither sweet, nor lemony and should actually be called Bitter as ****.  This tea was often prescribed to older people and would help strengthen my physical body that had been significantly weakened overtime by these spirits.

Then it was time for what I like to refer to as “the exorcism.” Which the events took place over two or three ceremonies (I’ve tried to repressed the events in my mind), but I’ll describe them as one. Now the average person’s ayahuasca ceremony is no walk in the park, and will usually involve some vomiting and/or diarrhea (I’ll leave the story of one of my first experiences with ayahuasca where these two things happened simultaneously for another time). This physical purge is usually all but forgotten when the hallucinogenic effects of the dimethyltryptamine (DMT) in the ayahuasca take effect. DMT is considered to be one of, if not the strongest known psychedelic compound known to mankind and visions can range from intense and colorful geometric patterns to transversing dimensions and conversing with aliens. I am not the average person though, and for me my ceremonies usually consist of me feeling really ill, puking or dry heaving, shitting, praying for the effects to wear off, and then seeing the beneficial impacts slowly over the next couple days. Who needs to see shapes and talk with aliens if the healing is the same in the end right?

The exorcism began like every other one of my ceremonies. As the shaman started calling people up one by one to drink, I closed my eyes and tried to build up my courage to drink. The taste of ayahuasca is something hard to describe, it is not enjoyable by any means and after you’ve thrown it up a few times the smell will send shivers down your spine. Having drunk my fair share of ayahuasca, I can barely watch people drink it without feeling nauseous.  All too quickly it was my turn to drink. I closed my eyes as the shaman poured the ayahuasca, held my breath as I took the cup and downed it in two gulps. I continued to hold my breath as I returned to my mat quickly rinsing my mouth out with water to try to remove the taste to no avail. Fighting back the initial urge to vomit, I settled in for what would be a long night. Once you’ve swallowed that cup, it is the same at the point during a leg wax where they’ve put the wax on, now there is only one way out and it’s going to be painful.

The effects of ayahuasca usually take a half hour or so to come into effect. The point at which the shaman will start singing “icaros” which are songs used to help clear out negative energies. As soon as the shaman starting to sing the icaros I began to feel uncomfortable, physically and mentally. I felt nauseous, though all I could manage to do was dry heave into my bucket. The shaman called me up to his mat for a limpieza, an energetic cleansing through the use of icaros, chapuka (a type of fan made from leaves that is shaken over the head), agua de florida (a scented alcoholic liquid that the shaman will pour into their mouth and spray onto the top of someones head), and/or a soplar (smoking tobacco and blowing the smoke on the person). This process did little to make me feel better, and I stumbled back to my mat now with my head feeling scrambled like a static TV channel with the volume turned on loud.

As the ceremony progressed I began to feel more and more uncomfortable, dry heaving, sweating, and having scrambled visions of bulbous and grotesque graphics similar to those you would see in a supermario video game. When the shaman finished the limpiezas of the other participants in the ceremony he came to my mat and really began to work on the removal of the malo esperitos and diablos. His singing intensified the experience and brought on more dry heaving, with occasionally a small amount of bile coming up. I fought off an overwhelming urge to attack him, to make him stop singing, and instead ended up making growling and hissing noises between the retching. Chaos was building in my mind; my thoughts seemed to just be screams adding to the static TV channel feeling.

The shaman continued to work on me, for how long I don’t know, singing, soplaring, using agua de florida, and at some point giving me a volcanic rock to hold onto (I never asked why he gave me this rock, but I would bring it to every ceremony thereafter and ended up gifting it to a good friend). Finally the physical and mental effects of the ayahuasca seemed to ebb, the shaman handed me a glass of malba (a plant to sooth the stomach) which I managed to get down and the retching subsided. A plant bath was prepared with lemon, jungle basil, and a few other plants, and I doused my head in that until the mental pressure was relieved. Too weak to walk back to my room, I fell asleep in the ceremony hut. The exorcism was complete.

The morning after my final exorcism ceremony, which ended with me violently projectile vomiting up more contents than I can remember putting in my stomach, the shaman told me the spirits were gone but I still had work to do to complete the healing I had come for.  As my body and mind was weak from the bad spirits and their subsequent removal, I was told not to drink ayahuasca for a month and instead would diet with a tree called Manchinga, a “Palo Fuerte” literally meaning strong stick in reference to the healing power of this tree.  The shaman was adamant that I must have invoked these spirits somehow, as it was rare that someone had so many and such strong ones attached to them. He didn’t seem to believe me when I said I had never so much as even read a book or made a Google search about evoking spirits (though I had some grade school friends that might have).  In my 2.5 months at the center, only one other person who came through had similar spirits attached to them, and they were suffering from a extreme case of depersonalization/disassociation disorder for the past 3 years with measurable imbalances in their brain activity. Immediately after their exorcism they said that they were 40% better, and by the end of one month they were completely back to normal.

I could only come up with two possibilities of where these spirits had come from. The first theory and the theory that the shaman thought the most probable source of the bad spirits, was from two years ago. I had traveled to Ecuador to work with a shaman and upon arrival I felt really uncomfortable at the center. The shaman was ill from “brujero” attacks, when other shamans send bad energies and spirits to make someone ill, sometimes even resulting in death (see Peter Gorman Ayahuasca in my Blood).  I ended up leaving after two days, and taking two other travelers with me.  Had this shaman sent me bad spirits in revenge? I didn’t want to believe that as I had worked with him on prior occasions and had good results, but I would learn later some uncomfortable truths about him after a recent and suspicious death at his center (I will talk about this more in my blog post “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”).  My second theory was that I had created these bad spirits and devils from negative thought processes, resulting from avoidance of grief after my father passed away by moving halfway around the world and keeping myself too busy to face it by taking an intensive MSc course. Whatever the reason, all that mattered was that they were no longer there.

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When I’ve come home from my trips to the Amazon in the past, a lot of my friends have noticed significant changes in myself and a few express interest in traveling down themselves. I have a terrible habit that once I’m back home I forget how hard and uncomfortable I was in the process, and paint a rather pretty picture of the experience when I talk to someone. The good results that I bring home with me, tend to cloud over the memories of being in the Amazon, and that it was the hardest and most challenging thing I have ever done in my life. Though I’ve never had children, I equate this phenomenon to what happens after childbirth; at the time very painful but the end result (and some hormones) make you forget the bad parts. So here while its fresh in my mind, I’ll share some of the day to day challenges of jungle life. I’ll save talking about the challenges of taking ayahuasca, as that warrants a blog post of its own.

After my arrival at the center, I got settled into my room. Being a veteran traveler to the Amazon, I came well prepared with plastic ziplock bags and deet insect repellent to arm my room and personal belongings from the termite invasions, rats, cockroaches, and inevitable mold growing on everything in the heat and humidity. In my prior trips I had come back to my room to find termites swarming my shoes, pages of my books eaten by rats, and cockroaches nesting in my backpack. The creatures of the amazon rainforest are relentless and savvy. I put everything that would fit into plastic bags, spraying down the rest that wouldn’t fit as well as any cracks in the floorboards, the bed posts, mosquito netting, and desk with deet. I had the upper hand this time around… Or so I thought. The next morning I awoke absolutely covered with bug bites, and my skin resembled that of a dalmatian except instead of white and black, I was tan and purple. Combined with a case of mild heat stroke from the hike in, I was off to a great start.

Bugs and heat aside, working with the shamans and plants brings its own set of unique discomforts. Any reputable center and shaman requires participants follow a very strict diet, with limitations not only on what you eat but also what products you use on your body. A typical diet means no red meat, no dairy, no sugar, no oils, no spices, no salt… It’s probably easier to put what I could eat at the center; cucumber, lettuce, green beans, rice, oatmeal, potatoes, and a certain type of vegetarian river fish. This is the very strict diet the shaman recommended me to follow, usually other people are allowed a bit more variety on the vegetables and can have some fruit, eggs, and occasionally chicken. This diet usually has to be followed 2 weeks before arrival and for a month after you leave as well.

The diet extends past just food, and it is also recommended not to use any type of chemical product on your body including soaps, toothpastes, deodorant, and bug sprays. Luckily beforehand I had gotten into the habit of making my own toothpaste out of natural ingredients, but the no shampoo and soap I struggled (and cheated) with! By the end of a couple weeks though everything just starts to smell like the jungle, and you start to not notice if you smell or not. Oh, and did I mention no sex? Like no sex, not even by yourself. Zip, zero, nada. Sometimes its funny how the moment you are told you can’t do something, you get a strong desire to do it.

If that hasn’t sold you on coming down to the Amazon, the “vomitivo” might! The vomitivo entails exactly what it sounds like. Vomiting, and a lot of it. This is often recommended by the shaman before or just after your first ceremony, to help cleanse the body of  any remaining trace of non-diet food in the digestive system and it also helps loosen energetic blockages. The exact composition of the vomitivo drink varies center to center, with the main plant used usually being tobacco. After drinking, the person will have to drink as much water as possible inducing vomiting, then drink and vomit subsequent times until the shaman decides you have done enough. After vomiting, people may find another purge happening just the opposite direction, and from start to completion the vomitivo effects may last up to 4 hrs. Luckily (or unluckily as next post will describe) for me, the vomitivo was not recommended as I was physically and energetically too weak for the process to be beneficial.

A bit insane right?? And I haven’t even scratched the surface of the insane part. As I said in the beginning, its like childbirth. Indescribably painful during the process, but the results make you forget that it all happened and maybe even willing to do it all over again.

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Arriving into Lima the capital city of Peru is no shock to the system for a foreigner. All the first world necessities of Starbucks, Mcdonalds, and Apple stores are within walking distance in the modern district of Miraflores. Guidebooks will tell you that some of the best dining in the world can be found in Lima, which I fully agree with after having had the best sushi of my life there, and for a measly price compared to North America. When you’re in Lima enjoying the fine dining or maybe catching a movie or strolling through a park (some parks even having free wi-fi to keep you connected), it can hard to fathom that this city is only an hours flight away from what can only be described as the wildest place on earth: the Amazon Rainforest.

Getting to the Amazon is easy enough with three or four different airlines having daily flights into the major cities, but the moment I stepped off the airplane and was met with a gust of air that felt like a steam room I knew I was leaving the first world and its comforts far behind. A bit exhausted from arriving into Lima at 3AM the night before and sleeping on a couch in the hostel common room as my booked room had been flooded I was ready to get to Santuario, the healing center I would be spending the next 2.5 months of my life and sleep. Though I still had a 2hr drive, 20 minutes boat ride, and 45 minute hike before I would be there! I departed the plane, quickly collected my bag in the basic 2 room airport (with no air conditioning), and stepped out into the chaos of the Amazonian city of Pucallpa.

Amazonian cities have an unique atmosphere, with the main land access into these cities being by boat the main form of transportation is modified motorbikes with three wheels and bench seating for 2-3 passengers. With hundreds of these “motortaxis” on the roads, the noise is a bit deafening and the drivers weave in and out of traffic like NASCAR drivers. The heat and constant state of humidity combined with the garbage lined streets and slick red clay roads evokes the feeling of poverty, yet most people you meet will seem more content than the average westerner. Pucallpa is not a huge tourist stop with the main draw being ayahuasca tourism though another city, Iquitos at the headwaters of the true Amazon River a more popular ayahuasca destination. No Starbucks can be found here, and it warrants only brief mention in the guidebook with a small paragraph mentioning the Shipibo art museum and nearby wildlife refuge. Pucallpa is mostly an industrial center with logging, oil and metal mining industries in the surrounding areas, and is devoid of all the bells and whistles in most tourist driven cities.

Though I had been to the Peruvian Amazon on three different occasions before, I still found myself unprepared for the heat and humidity of the jungle. With daily air temperatures exceeding 30 oC, feeling upwards of 45 oC with the 100% humidity, it’s a shock to the system for anyone especially a Canadian. When I was booking the center I would be staying at, the 45 minute hike in seemed like no big deal as I sat on a couch enjoying the mild temperatures of the final days of summer in the UK. Within 5 minutes of getting off the boat and hiking more rugged terrain than I had expected, I was covered in sweat and questioning not only the nessecisity of every item I had packed, but also my resolve. I could just turn around, and do like the majority of people in the world do on their vacations, finding a nice room with air conditioning near a beach drinking fruity alcoholic drinks instead of tromping through the jungle on a goose chase to work in a shaman in hopes of healing myself and figuring out my life. I pushed these thoughts from my mind, remembering how miserable I had felt before embarking on this trip and that sitting on a beach was not going to solve my problems. This was not the first, and I expected it would not be the last time I contemplated going home during this journey. Nothing worthwhile comes easily, or so I will keep telling myself.

40 minutes, a few pit stops, and loosing 5 pounds of sweat later I arrived at the center, thanking God that I had my guide Juan to get me where who had carried the bulk of my baggage on the hike. No reprieve from the intense Amazon heat was to be found, with the center located in a U-bend of a steaming hot river containing water around 80 oC (see Boiling River Project). The one place in South America with unlimited hot water to shower with, though a hot shower is the last thing anyone would want!

The Amazon rain forest is probably one of the last remaining terrestrial places on the earth where areas remain unexplored and new discoveries are constantly being made.  It is estimated that approximately 20% of our modern medicines have been derived from chemical compounds discovered in plants and animals in the Amazon. Before westerners identified and isolated these compounds from plants for medicinal purposes, the Amazonian tribes had long been using them. In a tribe there would be a doctor also called a shaman, who had extensive knowledge of the plants and animals in the area and for thousands of years used them to cure any illnesses in the tribes. The curative properties of the plants used by the shamans were so effective, that when ethnobotanists began traveling into the Amazon to seek potential medicinal plants they would often consult these shamans first (see One River).

The Amazon boasts over 40,000 plant species with more being identified each year, and ethnobotanists marveled at the shaman’s innate knowledge of these plants, with some parts of the same plant being lethal if ingested and other parts of the plant curing infections and diseases like malaria. With the vast number of plant species the question arises, how do these shamans know which plants treat which illness? As a simple trial and error method would be timely and result in death more often than not.

When ethnobotantists asked the shamans how they knew about the curative properties of plants, they responded by saying that they could communicate with the spirits of the plants using an brew concocted from two plants, a vine called Banisteriopsis caapi and usually the leaves of a shrub called Psychotria viridis. These plants taken on their own have little impact, but when brewed together for months creates an intense purgative and hallucinogenic effect. The effects can last anywhere from 3-12 hours (even longer if other plants are added), during which the shaman can enter a state of consciousness where he can communicate not only with plant spirits but also see why a person is suffering from an illness and cure that person through their energetic body.

As more and more chronic mental and physical illnesses are showing up in western culture, with doctors seemingly only able to provide long term treatment plans to alleviate the symptoms but not cure the disease there is a growing interest in these shamans. Books and documentaries are coming out with westerners claiming these shamans to have cured anything from their chronic depression to cancer that western medicine could not (see The Sacred Science, Black Smoke, and Joe Tafur).  Rather than treating just the symptoms of a disease, shamans see that disease as a symptom of an energetic blockage in the person which they work to remove while treating the symptoms with a remedy of plants.

Modern scientists and doctors are quick to discount these testimonials as proper scientific experimental data is lacking, mainly as most first world countries have labeled ayahuasca as a class 1 drug making it extremely hard to get approval to conduct scientifically reputable experiments. World renowned scientists and psychologists like Dr. Gabor Mate (see The Jungle Prescription), find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to getting approval to conduct research involving ayahuasca, though they have seen and experienced firsthand the transformational healing that can occur.”Ayahuasca is not a drug in the western sense, something you take to get rid of something. Properly used, it opens up parts of yourself that you usually have no access to. The parts of the brain that hold emotional memories come together with those parts that modulate insight and awareness, so you can [process] past experiences in a new way” – Dr. Gabor Mate.

Since January 2012, working in the Amazon with these shamans has completely transformed my life. I have found not only physical and emotional healing, but also my demeanor has changed in such a dramatic way that I received comments not only from friends and family but from supervisors at my work who noticed a change in me. Working with these shamans is not for the faint hearted, it has been the most mentally and physically challenging experience of my life. But the long term benefits far out reap the short term pain, and I find myself returning time after time to continue my healing and personal growth.

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