The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

I participated in a Yagé ceremony -- locally, though led by a Columbian shaman and apprentice -- about a month ago on recommendation of my individual therapist. This was my first experience with psychedelics (or anything stronger than marajuana), and I went in with a set of expectations: powerful wakeful hallucinations, ego death, and a total emotional asskicking. (This latter expectation in particular is almost a manifestation of my own personal issues; ymmv.)

The description of the plant as having her own agenda and laughing at your plans is quite accurate; much as I tried to find a way to use the experience to reveal all of my own deep emotional flaws, I felt a presence just laughing and saying-without-saying to choose to love myself as an action, not just a concept and a feeling -- and to take the active step of choosing not to beat myself up so damn much, and all would be okay.

Also as written, this experience was deeply personal; for me to go into much greater description of my own interactions and experience would require you, dear reader, to both know and care about all of the issues that I carry. Suffice to say that if you were to try this, you would likely find your experience also to be both profound and incredibly difficult to communicate satisfactorily.

To follow on the description as personal: it was also incredibly isolating while _in situ_. You may be sitting with a dozen or with fifty people, but (aside from the sounds of retching and of guidance from the shaman, apprentice, and/or assistants) you are very much alone with whatever is going on inside of you.

* * *

For contrast, my wife had a less typical and more powerful experience with ayahuasca about ten years back while traveling in Peru. She and a friend participated in a ceremony in a much more intimate environment (just the two of them, a shaman, and a female bystander for safety) without as much of the physical preparation; they did it practically on a whim, so while my wife was fairly prepared emotionally and spiritually from her own work, she hadn't, say, avoided pork or alcohol for the week before. She downed two or three cups of the vile stuff over the course of their ceremony, to little obvious effect that evening. It was on the travel back out of the jungle that everything hit: the most intense projectile vomiting of her life to date, followed by extremely intense daytime hallucinations, and a strong sense of spiritual connectedness and openness that she carries to this day.

Having asked around, this significantly delayed and highly intense experience is very uncommon.

* * *

Finally, as a quick followup on the original article discussing the anthropomorphization of the leaf as grandmother/_abuela_ -- it's worth noting, for context, that frequent medicinal users, devotes, psychonauts, etc. refer also to peyote as grandfather/_abuelo_. I have no personal experience, but have been given to understand that peyote gives a very different but complimentary experience: communal and reassuring rather than individual and truth-revealing.

I wonder about the evolutionary reasons for its emergence. Does the plant influence the Human so that the Human protects and nurtures the plant? When did Humans begin altering South America? 15,000 years ago? More than enough time for the plant to adapt.

It's a strange feeling to ingest a hallucination producing organism. I remember being 19 years old, in the 90s, being given mushrooms. I spent the next several hours sitting at a tree stump feeling myself sink into it, feeling merged with plants around me. I remember thinking a lot about the juxtaposition of the natural with the concrete and brick and asphalt just a few hundred meters away - and wanting to tear it all down. Now, decades later, reading the woman's experience, I wonder if the fungi had somehow manipulated me.

I can share a pretty concrete benefit that I received in one of my very rare experiences: for the first time, I was able to clearly see some of the not so good edges of my ego. This awareness allowed me to make some substantive modifications in my life that have brought some big, long-term improvements.

Each of my once per year experiences have proved to be beneficial, though often in very subtle and indirect ways. As you said, it's easy to get that mixed up with confirmation bias.