Peru and Ayahuasca Diaries
August 15th, Tuesday — The First Ceremony
Time: 05:00
Yesterday, I attended my first ceremony, but felt nothing at all!
I still feel the jetlag. Beginning from I arrived here, I kept writing down what time it was, when I went to sleep, and when I woke up because I couldn’t sleep at all.
The ceremony ended around 23:00 last night. Despite going to bed relatively late, I woke up again around 3:30 in the morning. It’s quite frustrating right now because both the ayahuasca had no effect, and this sleeplessness is bothering me.
Let me start from the beginning. The ceremony took place in the maloca at 20:30. The maloca is a large, round, wooden hut, a kind of tent-like structure. You enter by taking off your shoes at the door. Each participant has a place prepared with a mattress, pillow, blanket, bucket for vomiting, and toilet paper. Since we are only three people, there is quite some distance between each mattress, so everyone feels alone in the dark.
When I arrived, Tom and Margreth were already there, and I settled on a mattress between them. I was quite tense because both had talked about very challenging ceremony experiences over the past two days. Margreth has been having a hard time since she arrived and, as I understand it, she keeps going back and forth between taking the medicine or not. She has repeatedly told the shamans to use a milder medicine, but it seems that the medicine used last week was very strong. Probably, since the other people who participated in the ceremony with Tom and Maggie were extremely dark characters trying to push their limits about drugs, and they insisted on more and more medicine, the shamans decided to use a very strong formula. At least this is how we interpret it. It seems that this time the medicine is not as strong as before. Since Tom and Margreth told me about their endless and painful visions, vomiting, and crying, I took half a dose in my first session. My intention was to ask for more if I didn’t feel any effect, but I had no chance during the flow.
The ceremony begins with the shamans coming into the room and preparing the medicine. Baba Sina is leading the Monday and Tuesday sessions, and his son Limber joins him.
The shamans came and first lit a candle in the middle of the maloca. Then they silently prepared the medicine and extinguished the candle. For quite some time, all of us sat in silence in the dark. After that, Sina called each one of us one by one and asked how much medicine we wanted. Everyone drank their medicine, and the shamans had theirs and we sat in silence for a while. I think this was the waiting time for the medicine to start circulating in our bodies.
Then they started singing icaros. Icaros are healing songs sung by shamans, somewhat like hymns. The three main components of an ayahuasca ceremony are the ayahuasca medicine, the shaman, and the icaros, and many people say that real healing comes from the icaros. After sitting in their place for a while, they came to each one of us and sang. Before the ceremony, Tom had told me to stay upright as much as possible and to face the shamans when they came to me, this would enable them to feel my energy field. I did just that. The whole ceremony lasted for 3 hours. It was very tiring for me because I didn’t sleep at night or during the day. No visions, no feelings, no vomiting, nothing.
After the ceremony, I and Margreth went to our rooms, and by the time we left, Tom had already gone. Sleeping in the maloca after the ceremony is possible, but I felt nothing, so there was no point in staying there.
This morning, or rather at night, I woke up with great disappointment. Somehow, I need to communicate with the shamans. We can’t talk to each other at all due to the language barrier. They didn’t ask me why I came here, what I was expecting, how much I should use, what my threshold level was for this kind of stuff, or what I needed. Today, I will try to walk around and communicate with someone. The frustration of nothing happening and the hunger led me to eat a few biscuits left from the airport, which were sweet and high-carb ones. It’s 06:00. The evening ceremony is more than 14 hours away, so I thought it wouldn’t be a problem. It still wasn’t very pleasant.
It’s getting brighter. I’ll take a walk before breakfast, and then see what the others have to say.
This time, I took a long walk along the road outside the Center. I encountered many people. I greeted each one of them and had a little conversation with my limited Spanish vocabulary about 5 words in total. Later, when I came to breakfast, I learned that we were not supposed to leave the Center, talk to people outside, and even make eye contact with them. Apparently, the socializing during my morning walk and the biscuits I ate will contaminate my energy.
In the meantime, as far as they say, many people don’t feel anything during their first ayahuasca experience, and my situation is normal. Tom suggested that I should take 1 or 1.5 doses today. During my walk, I also encountered Sina. I told him that I didn’t feel anything during the ceremony. He said that I would take more today and patted my shoulder despite the prohibition on touching. Although touching and making eye contact are forbidden, this touch on my shoulder felt good.
Tom gave me two Mapacho* tobacco cigarettes, and a pencil instead of my exhausted pen. I swept my cabin and tidied up my things. Then I took a shower, did some yoga, read a bit, and waited for the evening.
(*) Mapacho: A type of tobacco believed to have purifying effects, used by shamans and participants in ceremonies.
I’m sick of everything being so dirty and of the heat.
While waiting for the evening, my mind keeps replaying the countless unrelated people and events I’ve randomly encountered at some point in my life.
I’m frustrated by not being able to sleep at all. I think it’s not jetlag anymore, but rather due to quitting antidepressants. I’m sleeping for 6 hours at most, usually around 4–5 hours. In fact, when I don’t take my sleeping pill, my sleep is such when I’m at home. I’ve been unable to nap during the day, for many years. I have been here for almost 48 hours, but it feels like I’ve been here for days because my awake hours are so long.
I know that I said the ayahuasca ceremony had no effect on me. But in the meantime, I realize that it doesn’t have to be full of vomiting crazily and having HD-quality visions, during it. Maybe all these random thoughts in my head, are a result of spending long hours in a semi-meditative state and the influence of ayahuasca.
