My First Ayahuasca Experience
Infinitely incredible.
I’m vomiting into a bucket, over and over. Everything is being purged out of me. I notice a drop of blood hit the pool of puke.
My first ayahuasca experience was the most special journey of my life. But this bout of vomit wasn’t part of the ayahuasca medicine; I had taken a different type of medicine, called kambo.
In short, kambo is frog poison. In reality, it is much more than that. Yes, it is frog poison, scraped off the backs of a special species of Amazonian frogs, but when administered to humans in the correct way, it is an extremely powerful full body cleanse, which often results in a purge.
It is administered by an indigenous practitioner burning small holes into the skin of your upper arm, where then the kambo is carefully placed into the holes. Different practitioners have different procedures, but in our ceremony, we were told to chug two huge jugs of water before the medicine was to be activated.
That alone made me want to puke.
The kambo was placed into my burn holes. Soon after, the indigenous man leading the ceremony began chanting in the background, “Ohhh, kambo-kambo, ohhh, kambo-kambo, ohhhhh kambo-kambo.”
The practitioner’s assistant came around and sprayed water onto the medicine, immediately triggering its release into my body.
I felt my torso start trembling. Something was happening. 15 seconds later, I was throwing up into a bucket held between my legs on my chair. Vomit again, then more vomit, then more vomit.
Boom, the drop of blood hits the puke. I dabbed my nose with my finger and came to the quick conclusion that I was experiencing a nosebleed. I had many experiences with nosebleeds as a child, often completely random occurrences, so I didn’t think too much of it. I grabbed my toilet paper roll beside me and tamed the bloody nose best I could.
The indigenous man comes over and tells me the nosebleed is from a sudden burst of pressure in the body. I give him a thumbs up.
More vomit. The assistant comes over with a jug of water, “Drink.”
I drink. More vomit. This is not comfortable but this is what I signed up for. More vomit.
The seemingly endless stream of ejecta slows down. I am then told to stick two fingers down my throat to gag myself into throwing up even more. I do so, nothing. Again, fingers down the throat, I gag. No vomit. Again, then, this time, I purge the remaining bits of my stomach.
A minute passes and the ceremony winds down. The bucket in front of me is filled with a concerning amount of throw up. I feel nauseated.
Thankfully, a cozy floor bed awaits me a few steps to my right. I dizzily make my way over and then lay flat on my back. I strike the pose of a dead body for the next 20 minutes. Rightfully so, because I felt dead.
Just over 24 hours later, we get in our cars and voyage down to the valley of Costa Rica, to a place simply known as, “Temple,” which is where the ayahuasca ceremonies will be taking place.
We arrive after a slow, winding expedition up, around, and down the mountains.
We get out of our cars, walk about 50 yards and there it is. Temple.
Unassuming, but I can tell it has been built with care.
A few hours pass, with all eight of us in the men’s retreat group (there were about 20 total ceremony participants), finding ways to soak up the environment, pass the time, and prepare for what the evening would bring us.
Sometime after sunset, we gather at the front of Temple, where we are briefed on best practices and procedures to be mindful of during ceremony. It was a taste of how protected, safe, and secure the shamans made the experience. We even had our own “guardian angels,” one for the women and one for the men.
The orientation finishes and we head inside to our mats, positioned around the circle in close proximity to one another. As I make my way through the front opening, I turn and look at the fire that has been prepared for us in the center of Temple. The fire told me it was perfect and I agreed.
Kevin, the head shaman, introduces himself and reiterates the procedures and best practices. Immediately I am struck by the essence radiating from his being.
Kevin crosses a few more t’s and dots some i’s and then announces, “This spiritual work… is now open.”
We are blessed with the smoke from the fire, done so by Kevin gathering chunks of wood from the flames, placing them in a cup, and waving a giant leaf in front of us, directing the smoke towards both sides of our bodies and underneath our feet. Silence is in the air, as we have been told conversations are not to be had inside of Temple during ceremony.
Kevin makes his way around and then retreats to the altar near the back of Temple. He goes through his motions, completely within his own rhythm and tempo, and announces the offering of medicine (ayahuasca), with ladies going first.
We line up in semi-circles on each side of the fire. Silence. One by one, everybody makes their way up to the altar and takes the medicine.
All of a sudden, it’s my turn. I walk up, kneel down, take the small cup of brewed ayahuasca into my hands, and drink. “Not bad,” I think to myself. I return the glass to Kevin, receive a spritz of some sort of fragranced oils on my hand, and head back to my mat. Here we go.