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“So, what’s it like?” Before trying ayahuasca or booking an ayahuasca retreat, you probably want to hear other people’s ayahuasca stories and experiences.

What did it feel like? What did you see? Did you come back a changed person?

These are a few of the other common questions I’ve gotten, especially by those that have heard about ayahuasca’s healing power, but may have never tried psychedelics.

Everybody has a different life experience. Similarly, every ayahuasca experience is unique. That said, and I can state this after a decade of experience drinking this beautiful medicine, there are identifiable elements between many people’s ayahuasca stories, especially when you start comparing between people’s first experiences and then their experiences 5+ years down the road.

My ayahuasca story

What better ayahuasca story to share than my own + a few ayahuasca tips? I’ll share a couple other ayahuasca stories that I really appreciate later in this post.

My initial ayahuasca experiences took place on Ecuador’s coast, at a beach and surfer town called Mompiche. I drank with a Colombian taita that lives in Ecuador. Only about 4 years later did I drink ayahuasca in the rainforest and then the cloudforest and, boy, was that different!

Ayahuasca tip #1: I now recommend people to drink in the forest; there is something really special about drinking ayahuasca in that environment. The beach is great too, but IMHO, the cloudforest or rainforest wins by far.

The first two times I drank, I honestly didn’t feel much of the effect. This is normal. Sometimes your body has to integrate the medicine. Often it has to first purge (numerous times) before you feel anything. Unfortunately, after a few hours or purging, many people decide not to drink the second or third cup, which is when they might actually notice the effect.

Ayahuasca Tip: Especially during your first ceremonies, drink as much as you can. Push yourself to drink another cup and get a stronger dose. This is also why people do ayahuasca diets before ayahuasca retreats.

I experienced a life-changing moment during my 3rd ayahuasca trip. During this ceremony, I only had to drink 1 cup, though in previous ceremonies I drank 1-2 cups and didn’t feel much.

The first thing I noticed was how all the sounds around me started changing. It’s as if I could hear every segment of sound as it happened, rather than the whole sound. Ayahuasca amplifies your senses so, depending on what your strongest sense is (smell, taste, sight), you will often notice the plant’s effect on that sense.

In Spanish, this effect is often described as apretando or “squeezing”. It’s when the medicine starts to “take over” and you start feeling the effect. The sound itself, at least in my head, actually felt like something was being squeezed. To this day, this is usually how I know that I’m feeling the effects of the ayahuasca.

Ayahuasca Tip: When you start feeling this effect, or a similar one, it’s time to focus on your breath. Start doing some box breathing (4 seconds in, 4 seconds hold, 4 seconds out, 4 seconds hold and repeat).

Ayahuasca induces a deep state of meditation, but during that first experience, I was FAR from feeling meditative. It was a total shit show, to be honest.

After hearing the noise, I would close my eyes and see a vortex of geometry. It was scary. I tried to keep my eyes open, but it was like my eyes were willing themselves closed.

This is still a fascinating phenomena to me during ayahuasca and is related to this induced deep state of meditation. The DMT in your body is putting you into a trance. You’re still lucid, but with enough DMT, you can’t escape the trance, or trip.

At some point, it didn’t matter whether my eyes were open or closed, I was in it.

I was in a hammock at first, but then I just wanted to scream for help. I wanted to scream the shaman’s name or just scream anything, but then I thought about the 6 people around me and I didn’t want to scare them. They were having their own intense experiences.

“Okay, breathe. Keep calm. Maybe if you go to the ocean you’ll feel better.”

Ayahuasca Tip: During your first trips, your mind will do everything it can to distract you from submitting and entering into a deep state of meditation. You’ll open your eyes frequently. Turn your head to look somewhere. Yawn (lots of yawning happens). Shake your legs. Sway. Hum, sing. It’s ok. It’s like regular meditation: when this happens, try to recenter, clear your mind, open your heart, trust and submit. It gets easier with practice.

I somehow made it to the sea, which was about 20 meters away (65 feet). I crouched down and could not believe how hard I was tripping. I was still in the geometric vortex. Looking into the sea, all I could actually see was some kind of geometric abyss. And I wasn’t just looking at it, I was traveling into it, through it, falling …I still have no idea. But it was scary and it felt fast. It felt out of control and that scared me.

I turned away from the sea, still crouching. And now, hands in the wet sand, I was suddenly in a clammy cave. It was completely quiet, too quiet. I could hear the drips of water falling from the roof of the cave.

Standing in front of me was a centaur of sorts. I never looked directly at him. He was part human, part lizard – definitely reptilian. I couldn’t look directly at him and he was also looing off to the side. But his/its presence was strong. Everything felt extremely uncomfortable and I wanted OUT. I remember thinking, “Why the FUCK did I do this?”

I purged. But purging didn’t make the madness stop. In fact, it got stronger in a way.

I started getting desperate. In my head I yelled the shaman’s name, “ALEJANDRO!!!”.

Ayahuasca Tip: Especially during your first trips, as you enter this trance-like state, you tend to get frightened. You have to give up control and sometimes you have to do it consciously. You do this by trusting. Trust in the medicine, the shaman, the place, your body, your decision. TRUST. Easier said than done, I know, LOL.

The shaman had told us before the ceremony that if we needed help, to call on him in our minds and that he would respond.

Shockingly, I saw his figure in the horizon. He was wearing all white and the moonlight made it possible to see.

He came to me and said, “como estás?” (how are you?) and I said, “mal.” (bad). That’s all I managed to get out; it can be hard to talk on ayahuasca.

He asked me if I wanted help and I said yes, so he took me to a large piece of driftwood, a huge log, really, and told me to sit down.

He began performing a limpia ritual. He made me inhale essential oils from the cupped palms of my hands. He told me to breathe deeply. Then he sprayed/blew aguardiente onto his huaira, or chacapa leaves, to cleanse it. Then he blew/sprayed the same on me, first from behind me, then in front of me.

He asked me to lift my shirt just enough to expose my naval and lower back. He sprayed from the front and back again, then, with a Mapacho (tobacco from the Amazon), blew the smoke over and around me and at my back and naval again.

I remember thinking (more like internally screaming to myself), “THIS ISN’T HELPING. THIS IS ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT.” But I couldn’t bring myself to stop him. I saw that he was also in a trance-like state and I felt like it would be rude to interrupt him. So I just tried to keep my shit together.

Ayahuasca Tip: You are always lucid on ayahuasca. Many people don’t think so, but even during the hardest trip, you are able to ask for help, say things, get up and move (this is easier for some), or decide to NOT scream. With experience, you realize you are never completely “out of control”.

Back to the shaman. After blowing the smoke, he started playing a harmonica softly and he started shaking the chacapa leaves onto the back of my head, gently at first, then stronger. The effect was strong. I felt nauseous and could’ve almost purged, but didn’t. (I had already purged on the beach – otherwise it would’ve definitely come out in this moment. Limpias tend to have this effect.)

Ayahuasca Tip: Not all shamans will perform limpias to guests. I find them essential, especially when closing an ayahuasca ceremony, but this will always depend on the shaman. You can sometimes request a limpia during or after the ceremony.

After what felt like either 10 minutes or 2 billion years (time didn’t exist), the limpia ended. The shaman sat next to me on the log and put his hand on my knee. Not in a weird way, just accompanying me and feeling my energy. Kind of like when an Ayurvedic doctor feels your pulse.

We sat there for a while and then asked me, “Why are you so angry?”

I was caught off guard. Angry? I wasn’t – but I was. I hadn’t even noticed it, but I was shaking with rage. I was 100% angry, I thought the limpia was stupid, I hated ayahuasca, I hated all of it. I was definitely angry. But the anger was more than just what was happening in that moment. There was so much frustration under the surface. I realized that, in normal life, I had gotten good at hiding it.

Why am I so angry? The realization was powerful. In fact, this was my first real lesson with ayahuasca.

Ayahuasca Tip: When you’re on ayahuasca, you will understand and feel the most basic things/thoughts/realizations in multi-dimensional ways; in ways you never thought possible.

After the limpia, I returned to the fire and sat there. I no longer felt the medicine so strong, though I could definitely still feel it. More than anything, I was filled with gratitude for life, for my family, for the sand between my toes (and basically all over my body – at some point I must have rolled in the sand…), and also puzzled at myself. I eventually fell asleep to the music that the shaman played until dawn when the ceremony closed, we all got a limpia to close the ceremony, and returned to our rooms to rest.

Ayahuasca Tip: Try to write down your ayahuasca experiences before you forget them. Or save audio messages you send to friends. It helps to have a record. You start to connect the dots days, months and even years later.

Final Ayahuasca Tip: Since that first experience, I learned 3 things that are good to remember when experiencing a bad ayahuasca trip (although I personally think the “bad” ones are actually the best ones…). Remember the following:

1) you drank ayahuasca and that’s why you feel the way you do

2) everything changes, nothing remains the same. This feeling will pass just as the medicine passes through your body and

3) if you need help, ask for it. Ask the shaman or assistant. Ask Jesus. Anything works, and if you can get a limpia, that tends to eventually lighten your energy.

Ayahuasca stories: A Journey Into the Soul – Sharing My Personal Ayahuasca Experience by Mike Pond

Click on the images below to read another incredible ayahuasca story, this one written by Mike Pond.

Ayahuasca Stories: The brutal mirror – What the psychedelic drug ayahuasca showed me about my life by Sean Illing on vox.com

“When I finally puked on the fourth night, I felt an odd sense of pride.

Inside the loud, stuffy ceremony room, people were laughing, crying, chanting, gyrating, and, yes, vomiting, around me. When my time finally comes, I think: Just aim for the bucket and keep your ass above your head like the shaman told you.”
Read the full ayahuasca story here.