My least favorite thing in the world to do is… puke. I’m literally afraid of it. And the few times, I’ve had to – like during the requisite Mexican stomach bug – I moan, cry, and scream for help. And it feels like hell on earth.
So, in contemplating a plant medicine journey, my usual first Q is: Does this one make you puke?
Let me correct myself before the psychonauts object. In the psychedelic community, it is called “purging” – not puking.
Much is made in the media of traditional ayahuasca experiences that can come not only with euphoria and hallucinations, but also with vomiting and diarrhea. Yuck.
Newbie Note: Ayahuasca is a plant-based psychedelic, brewed from the leaves of the Psychotria viridis shrub and stalks of the Banisteriopsis caapi, into a tea that you drink. It has been used for centuries in places like Peru, Brazil, and Ecuador for religious and therapeutic purposes.
When I had my first ayahuasca experience, I took a refined form in a cube of chocolate, with the emetic – thankfully! – removed. No puking for me.
Which brings me to my San Pedro experience on Saturday…
Newbie Note: San Pedro, also called huachuma, is a cactus that has been used as traditional medicine in the Andes Mountain region for thousands of years. Its name in English, Saint Peter, references that just as the Saint holds the keys to heaven, so this cactus derivative will allow you to reach heaven while still on earth.
Excited for a taste of heaven, I told the shaman I was ready to go deep with a full journey dose. Note: the actual huachuma drink tastes nothing like nectar, a drink of the gods. Quite the opposite!
As I dropped into the plant, I was hit with giant waves of nausea. And along with that, the fear of… letting go. (There definitely IS a connection there, begging for exploration. The deep learning would have to wait for later.) I put my head on my guide’s chest and moaned, Help me, keeping my eye on the nearby barf bucket. In the background, I heard my fellow participants singing and dancing, clearly on a very different journey than mine, despite our identical plant medicine cocktails.
Sparing you the most unpleasant details, it was a journey of discomfort that lasted for hours. My shaman assured me that I’d come up free-er on the other side, having cleared out some gunk. On Sunday, I was better but still weak and shaky, I wondered what the point was of all that sick puking – or rather, purging – was.
It wasn’t until Monday when I got the promised teeny-tiny glimpse of heaven. My breathing was easier. The oracle card I had received at the journey’s start suddenly made total logical sense: Pause, breathe, and commit your heart to sacred endeavor. I understood that I am becoming a still-powerful but softer version of me. The work – or play, as I prefer to say – is in process. It’s a journey.
Would I do it again? Hell, yeah!
P.S. And I did, but more about that than in a future post!
