The Night I Drank Ayahuasca Only To Get Stuck In A Six-Hour Death Loop

Plot twist, it was not a “bad trip”

“My intention is to see what I don’t want to see, release what’s holding me back, and connect with my inner child”, I announced to a group of mostly strangers sitting around a circle in a private LA home. The energy in the room was dense, not only because temperatures in the Valley were blazing, but also because the air was filled with anxiety and excitement. Around 30 of us had gathered this weekend for a very special occasion: a spree of plant medicine ceremonies. Four in a row in less than three days.

Each one of us got the chance to share a few words about what had brought us here. Why we signed up to spend an entire weekend on a narrow mattress sandwiched between complete strangers only to drink the ancient psychedelic brew Ayahuasca. A brew that would alter our consciousness, trigger purging, and induce hallucinations. A brew that also held the promise to heal us.

Moments later I approached our guide (who doesn’t like being called a shaman) to receive my first cup. This would be the seventh time I “sat with the medicine” — insider speak for drinking Ayahuasca — and I felt prepared. For weeks I’d been working with a psychedelic integration coach. This wasn’t my first retreat, but I wanted to make sure I’d get as much out of it as possible. I felt a sense of spiritual urgency. And after witnessing the power of these plants, I also wanted to properly honor them.

You may need to be a little crazy to drink Ayahuasca, or, like me, you can just be desperate enough. Over the last decade in my struggle with an eating disorder and later depression, I found that nothing came even close to the impact psychedelics had on my mental health. And I tried a lot. I worked with three therapists, two psychiatrists, and multiple specialized Eating Disorder coaches. I’d get better for a while, live symptom-free for months at a time, but would always relapse.

I was over it.

“Whatever Ayahuasca will do to me, it can’t be worse than what I’m doing to myself”, I thought prior to my first retreat. I was losing my patience, and after all the healing work I’d done, I felt like I deserved a happy ending.

Ayahuasca Is Known To Produce Challenging Experiences, But The Rewards Are Unparalleled

Out of all the psychedelic medicines, Ayahuasca is known to be one of the most challenging ones. When you take MDMA you have a pretty good shot at having an entirely positive experience. Mushrooms or LSD usually involve a little bit of discomfort but mostly beauty, insight, and wonder.

But when you drink Ayahuasca, you’re signing up for violence. It’s common to purge, which most people do in the form of throwing up, or through crying, laughing, screaming, or a nice thorough digestive cleanse.

Even though it’s tough to generalize because no two experiences are alike, there’s a fairly common narrative for Ayahuasca journeys: you face a fear or some shadow aspect of yourself that you’ve denied yourself, it can get scary and dark, you may revisit traumatic memories, but you realize you’re loved and supported, and you spend the remainder of the journey dwelling in this feeling of love and support. One big, warm hug from the universe, reminding you that you’re flawless and unconditionally loved and accepted exactly as you are.

But then there are also fringe experiences, where either your entire night is awful or absolutely beautiful.

Why do people sign up for this bingo, risking the sanity of their psyche?

Because it’s one of the most healing things you can do for yourself.

Ayahuasca scans your soul and brings up whatever most urgently needs healing, whether it’s the processing of trauma, your relationship with a parent or partner, or a mindset that doesn’t serve you. You come with an intention, but in the end, Ayahuasca heals by priority. The journey is always about letting go of something, and when you do, you leave feeling lighter.

The foundation of your relationship with Ayahuasca is trust. It’s only when you completely surrender and let go of control, which especially those with mental ailments tend to have difficulties with, that you’ll find comfort in the dialogue with the plant. This is a lesson many seekers receive in their early encounters, but it’s also a lesson that will come up again much later — if necessary with force — if you happen to forget it (more on that shortly).

People drink Ayahuasca and heal sexual or physical abuse, experience self-love (often for the first time in their life), connect with their inner child, and process repressed emotions. As a result, they become sober from all kinds of substances, end toxic relationships, quit soul-draining jobs, and reconnect with their will to live. Some even heal physical illnesses.

It’s medicine for the soul, and those who have the courage to taste it get rewarded with a felt experience of an insight that has the potential to fundamentally change one’s life: That you are loved and perfect as you are (and always have been), and that the universe is divinely arranged in a unique, interconnected, and perfect manner (and always will be).

Personally, I spent years trying to teach my body dysmorphic and self-critical mind self-love, but it was only when I drank Ayahuasca that I finally felt it.

It Was My Continued Struggle With An Eating Disorder That Led Me To Psychedelics

Ayahuasca wasn’t the first psychedelic I tried in an effort to find healing for my eating disorder, but it’s certainly been the most powerful one.

That’s because it allowed me to do something that was necessary but completely inaccessible in my regular waking consciousness: a deep descent into the fabric of my subconscious. A place that — for the majority of my 28 years on earth — hadn’t been safe to explore. The walls were high, and behind them were a set of experiences and beliefs locked away in a little box. On top of that box my inner girl was sitting, and she’d swallowed the keys in fear that someone would take them and gain access. The box held the core beliefs that shaped who I’d become. Beliefs about myself stemming from painful memories I wasn’t even aware I had. Memories of abuse, pain, and shame.

During my first Ayahuasca retreat, I relieved a traumatic childhood memory that planted the belief that I wasn’t good enough. A belief that would go on to be the foundation of the personality I carefully crafted. A belief that turned me into a perfectionist overachiever who was almost exclusively driven by external validation. A belief that got me into top business schools in Europe and the US and landed me a gig with a prestigious strategy consulting firm at the ripe age of 23. A belief that also drove me into bulimia, overexercising, black and white thinking, an unhealthy relationship to substances, depression, and recurrent suicidal ideation.

Once I realized the belief that I wasn’t enough wasn’t true, but simply a misinterpretation of something that happened to me in childhood (and an understandable one too), everything shifted. As I began reconnecting with who I was deep down, I became more and more distant from the life I had designed around the persona that had called the shots for the past decade. I was living her dream life in Manhattan, with an MBA from Columbia, a high-paying job, beautiful, lovely (and rich) friends, and a closet full of designer clothes. Problem was that that was her, not me.

As I was unlearning the mental structures that stemmed from my deep-rooted insecurity, I also quit most stimulants, including alcohol, drugs, caffeine, and cigarettes. I stopped gossiping and became less judgmental. I moved to LA in search of a slower lifestyle and more nature. I became more dedicated to my meditation and yoga practice and explored a variety of alternative methods to “reconnect”, such as breathwork, sound healing, and intuitive dance. I continued exploring my mind with psychedelics and began writing.

My depression, which grew out of frustration over my failed eating disorder recovery and was physically reinforced by hormonal imbalances, pretty much vanished. A few months after my first ceremonies I was on a flight to Europe and we encountered turbulences. I realized that for the first time in forever, I was actually uneasy about it. Because I now cared if the plane crashed. I wanted to live. This was a foreign feeling.

But the bulimia still stood in the way. So, over a year after my first Ayahuasca ceremonies, I decided it was time to return. After trying many different healing modalities I came to the conclusion that nothing had helped as much as plant medicine had. I vowed to myself that I’d drink the medicine however often and long I needed to in order to finally overcome this beast.

The first time I drank again, I healed sexual abuse that occurred just five years earlier (on my fancy job). It was yet another previously repressed memory that first arose during a silent meditation retreat (no substances involved). I began to understand why I’d been struggling with my hormonal health (and more specifically, PMDD, which — despite the lack of evidence — I concluded to be a result of the unprocessed sexual trauma). I finally had an explanation for my intimacy issues that ruled my romantic relationships (or lack thereof) throughout my 20s.

I made a leap that weekend, but it was one of those doors that once you open them, there’s a shit ton of work that flies right at you. I was committed, but eventually, I returned to binging and purging. Processing all of this without healthy emotional coping skills felt like an impossible feat.

I knew I had to return to the plants for more guidance and support.

I Spent An Entire Night Feeling Excruitiating Pain In Every Fiber Of My Body — And Wanting To Die

The way I framed my intentions this time around felt greedy. I wanted all my remaining problems to be fixed in one night. I knew there was something keeping my eating disorder alive, and I wanted to know what it was. I wanted to let it go. I also wanted to connect with my inner child, who — as someone who doesn’t have any childhood memories prior to the age of 12 — seemed like a complete stranger. I also wanted to experience bliss. I wanted all of it.

The night started with me feeling restless. My body kept craving weird movements (which I honored), but I didn’t feel like I “was dropping in”. We drank at 8pm, and by 1am, most people started winding down.

Not me though.

That’s when the terror began.

Out of nothing, I began to experience extreme physical discomfort. At first, this wasn’t anything new, all of my defining ceremonies had been somatic. During one of my first ones, I felt physical pain exactly where I was beaten in the stomach as a child, which got so bad it made me cry for hours and prompted the release I needed that night.

But this was different.

I’ve found it hard to put the terror I experienced that night into language that appropriately conveys its magnitude. I’ll still try: In some way, I felt disconnected from my body, but at the same time, I felt like every fiber of my being was in excruciating pain. I cycled through different ways one can die — from drowning to suffocating and melting. It felt so real that at points I wished I’d just die rather than continue experiencing whatever this was. And the worst part was, there was no break. It felt like, for six straight hours, the entire universe was throwing up, and I was at the center of that throw-up.

Throughout my exorcism, I was extremely noisy, something that I was increasingly self-aware of. I felt terrible because I knew how much I must have been impacting other people’s journeys. I’m usually a fairly quiet person.

“I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die”, I was whining, “This is it guys, I’m not gonna make it. Goodbye.”

In some twisted way, I was trying to dismiss the absurdity and terror of the moment by joking about it. Meanwhile, multiple helpers had me pinned down, hugging me tightly, whispering sweet words and songs into my ears, holding space for my experience. They were with me all night and I felt terribly guilty about it. They deserved to get some sleep.

I spent most of my mental energy desperately trying to understand why this was happening to me. Grasping for that one epiphany that would shift my journey. That one insight that made all the pain worth it. The one lesson Ayahuasca was trying to teach me that would catapult me from pain into bliss.

It’s common to have difficult journeys on Ayahuasca, but it’s equally common to experience some kind of resolve. Otherwise, nobody would be doing it. You may die, but only to be reborn.

Only I wasn’t reborn. I kept dying, and dying, and dying. It just didn’t stop.

What was it in me that needed to die? What did I need to let go of? My eating disorder? The feeling of wanting to crawl out of my own skin that was all too familiar for so many years?

It all felt too unrelated, purposeless, non-sensical.

Throughout the night, “why?” was the one thought that penetrated my consciousness. I generally welcome challenging experiences if I know I’ll come out better at the other end. In fact, I’ve found the more challenging an experience, the more rewarding.

But I was resisting hard. The more pain I felt, the more I hardened and questioned the narrative of my experience. The more I started convincing myself that there was no purpose to me feeling this pain, the worse it became. This went on until the early morning. I didn’t sleep one minute, and by the time the medicine had worn off, it was time to rise for the day.

I was exhausted, barely alive.

And I was pissed. I felt like Ayahuasca had betrayed me. Me, one of its most loyal advocates.

I Got My Resolve The Following Night: A Lesson In Surrender And Trust

At this point, I’d completely lost trust in the medicine. Why would it do that to me? I deserved healing. I’d been through so much. It didn’t make any sense.

Our shaman tried comforting me: “I’ve had one of these journeys. I know how terrible they can feel”. I was confident he was the only one in the room who could relate. After all, he’d drank the medicine hundreds, probably thousands of times.

Another helper came up to me: “I think tonight you really need to go in with only one intention, and that is to trust.”

And so I did.

My second night began similarly, and as soon as everyone was winding down, the painful sensations started coming back. I got very scared very quickly at the possibility of replicating my experience from the previous night. So within a few minutes, I asked the guide who’d told me to trust for help. He came and sat down next to me. He held my head and simply breathed with me. I anchored my attention on his calm and grounding presence and repeatedly reminded myself to simply trust as the sensations intensified.

This time I wasn’t resisting. I felt into the pain and every time I’d meet my edge, I’d tell myself to soften.

It was only when I let myself truly be held that the one epiphany I’d been waiting for struck me like a lightning bolt: All I needed was to be held.

An epiphany that tied together all loose ends in the most elegant, simple, and profound way (Ayahuasca tends to do this). I had spent all this time thinking about the cause of my pain, and in the process, completely missed what it had resulted in. Which was me being held intimately by various people over the course of the weekend.

Once I realized that all I had to do was to allow myself to be held, and ease into it, the pain started to weaken.

And then, after a while, something magical happened: for the first time ever, I got to meet my inner little girl.

She only came out because she finally felt safe to do so (as the result of being held). She was scared, terrified, and incredibly vulnerable. The abuse she’d experienced had taught her it was not safe to feel, so for the longest time she felt responsible to do everything in her power to avoid it.

The one thing that had held me back from fully recovering from my addiction was still my inability to navigate my emotional world. That wasn’t news, but despite years of therapy, meditation, journaling, and mindfulness, most of the time I was still unable to acknowledge and label my feelings, to sit with them and watch them arise and then pass away. It was the primary reason I continued to reach for food —especially after I’d cut out all the other ways to numb myself, like alcohol, drugs, meaningless sex, and so on.

That second night, thanks to the incredible support of the helper who spent his entire night with me, I encountered what I can only describe as the most tender and deepest part within myself. And since that moment, I’ve received one of the most significant gifts in all of my healing journey: the ability to feel.

The Ceremony Initiated Me Back To The Living: Finally, I Can Access My Emotional World Again

Psychedelics get a bad rep for the risks around causing “bad trips”. Personally, I don’t believe bad trips exist, just challenging ones. If you know how to navigate them (or more importantly, you have the right support to do so), they will produce the most profound shifts.

If I didn’t have sufficient support, it would’ve been an awful experience. It just goes to show how incredibly important setting and guidance are in psychedelic journeys, especially with Ayahuasca.

In a weird way, looking back at the ceremony, it almost felt like an initiation. I didn’t know one could feel that bad, and I find it hard to imagine that it could have gotten any worse. I’ve certainly learned my lesson: trying to control the outcome or narrative of your experience will just delay your healing.

It’s been a month since the retreat, and the ability to be present with my feelings has absolutely changed my life. It’s not been an easy month, there were lots of ups and downs, but repeatedly I’ve found myself coping with situations in a way an emotionally healthy person would. And I’m in awe of the difference it makes. It’s an entirely new way to live.

I feel lonely (an emotion I hadn’t felt in ten years), and I put on some slow music and let myself cry a little. I get angry or upset at something, and I move my body, punch a pillow, or release vocally. I feel apathetic, tired, or bored and I let myself lie down and do nothing for a while until it passes.

Would I’ve been able to cultivate this ability without psychedelic medicine? Honestly, I’m not sure. I tried over many, many years. I tried through talk therapy, coaching, self-help, writing, meditation & mindfulness, art therapy. I’m not sure how many other tools there are to learn emotional coping skills.

I now get to feel all the feelings because my inner girl finally realized that it is safe to feel. I’m not sure how I would have gotten to her with the tools that were available to me.

And the joy!

My days have been flooded with joy and a lightness of being. Similar to self-love, knowing that feelings arise and pass away is not the same as experiencing that they do.

Is this how others get to live? Is this what it feels like to actually be alive?

How miraculous.

Finally, I’ve been initiated to the living.

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