Listening to Ayahuasca: New Hope for Depression, Addiction, PTSD, and Anxiety

Praise for Listening to Ayahuasca

"With heart and clarity, Listening to Ayahuasca invites us to listen deeply and carefully to what Grandmother Ayahuasca has to tell us. Sharing the results of her in-depth and carefully designed research on the ayahuasca underground in North America, psychotherapist Rachel Harris, in her inevitably insightful, warm, and nuanced way, introduces her readers to what people do, what they experience, and how they are transformed when they choose to respectfully drink this mysterious mind-altering and spiritually potent entheogenic brew. Courageously self-revealing, Harris also openly shares her own struggles to make sense of the psychological, and even metaphysical, implications of her powerful ongoing interactions with ayahuasca. In Harris we have a guide we can trust: someone who for years has actively immersed herself in a wide variety of ritual ayahuasca contexts; who has thought long and hard about the shadow side of taking ayahuasca; and who does not let the all-too-human aspects of the ayahuasca experience undermine her willingness to underscore the potentially life-changing therapeutic potential of this powerful substance. With humor, care, and (it must be said) wisdom, Harris invites us to join her as she walks, eyes wide open, into the enchanted and wondrously thought-provoking world of Grandmother Ayahuasca."

— G. William Barnard, professor of religious studies at

Southern Methodist University and author of

Exploring Unseen Worlds:

William James and the Philosophy of Mysticism

"If you are interested in any aspect of psychedelics, I emphatically recommend Listening to Ayahuasca. Writing with a long history both as a participant in healing ceremonies and as a very skilled therapist, Harris shows a deep awareness of this long-revered plant medicine’s potential in helping patients not only heal difficult psychological problems but also, with proper guidance, integrate the experience into fuller emotional and spiritual dimensions. Her book offers a fresh perspective on how people who partake of the plant brew can find a deeper, lasting benefit with the addition of follow-up sessions with a skilled therapist who understands the full potential of the medicine. In a masterful and pleasurable-to-read presentation, Harris shows how ayahuasca reaches deeper areas, such as the dying process, communication with entities and ancestors, a fuller appreciation of people and the planet, and the emotional balm for individuation; she shows how it can help heal the core issue that most of us share, the underlying ‘yearning to be loved and accepted.’ "

— George Douvris, author of Crossing Karma Zones

Finally, finally, finally — an ayahuasca book I can recommend without reservation. Rachel Harris focuses not on the journey (giant snakes, dismemberment, insights, purging, etc.) but on what eventually matters far more: the ongoing and robust aftereffects in people’s lives. Harris is a skilled psychotherapist and a serious ayahuasca user, and her credibility in both worlds makes her own story, interwoven with those of the many people she interviewed, informative and discerning. While remaining deeply committed to accurate reporting about the amazing healings and benefits that can come about with careful, properly run, and (usually) repeated ceremonies, she is critical of some practices and practitioners, and even facets of her own psyche, all with good reason. I especially appreciated her descriptions of the vast differences between ayahuasca use in the rapidly expanding churches and its use by shamans, highlighting the major effects of situation and anticipation in using this physically overwhelming substance. A necessary book for any novice and a compelling book for anyone in an ongoing relationship with Mother Ayahuasca.

— James Fadiman, PhD, microdose researcher and author of

The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide:

Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys

This book provides an excellent resource for anyone looking to expand their horizons regarding ayahuasca. Part memoir and part research report, it covers many interrelated and far-reaching facets of the ayahuasca phenomenon, including valuable material on subjective effects and psychological integration, and serves as a useful primer on contemporary ayahuasca use. Rachel Harris delivers a refreshingly honest, balanced account of the complex literature concerning ayahuasca, discussing potential risks alongside purported benefits and allowing room for the sometimes extraordinary and mysterious experiences reported by initiates. At once accessible and well informed, this work represents a much-needed guidepost for health professionals who may encounter ayahuasca users in their practice, as well as for spiritual seekers with an interest in entheogens.

— Albert Garcia-Romeu, PhD,

Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit,

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Spirituality comes in a wondrous variety of forms. Here in the West, the range of practices has always been broader than people realized, and it has been expanding rapidly since the 1960s. One category of practice, persistent over the eons, has been the ingestion of mind-altering substances to induce spiritual experience. Ayahuasca is the latest to achieve currency among spiritual explorers, and with that popularity come not only promise but risks of various kinds. In that context, this book by a responsible psychologist is most welcome. Rachel Harris brings to it the perspective of an astute observer, the rigor of a scientist, the compassion of a therapist, and the insight that only a participant can offer. Anyone contemplating an ayahuasca experience, or who counsels such a person, would be well advised to first consult this profound and important book.

— Philip Goldberg, author of American Veda:

From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation —

How Indian Spirituality Changed the West

"In Listening to Ayahuasca, Dr. Rachel Harris presents a well-rounded, reader-friendly account of a sacramental tea from the Amazon rain forest that has gained considerable attention because of its mind-altering (and sometimes life-altering) effects. Combining her own experiences with those of people she has interviewed, Harris comes to the cautionary conclusion that this jungle brew might be effectively used in the treatment of addiction, anxiety, depression, and a host of other maladies. She makes it clear that ayahuasca is not a panacea, that it does not work for everyone, and that there are risks involved for users in both a South American shamanic setting and in one of the North American churches where the beverage can be consumed legally. Harris has kept tabs on those she has interviewed, and most of their follow-up stories are both positive and impressive. Anyone considering visiting Grandmother Ayahuasca for the first time needs to read this book before making a decision. Harris is not an advocate, and her book is not a polemic; however, it seems clear that this plant medicine has the power to transform some people’s lives in ways that seem to be filled with the magic and mystery so sadly missing from our overly civilized world."

— Stanley Krippner, PhD,

Alan Watts Professor of Psychology at Saybrook University,

coauthor of Personal Mythology,

and coeditor of Varieties of Anomalous Experience

An excellent book on the therapeutic potential of ayahuasca; clearly written and well researched, it is an important addition to the literature on the subject.

— Jeremy Narby, PhD, author of

The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge

Rachel Harris has produced a uniquely brave study of ayahuasca use and users, through the experiences of others and, most significantly, her own explorations. She never dodges the big questions (Who or what is the guiding intelligence experienced?) or comes up with static answers. Instead, she moves through the mysterious process of self-encounter, sharing a string of hard-won insights into how ayahuasca can work its magic to relieve human suffering.

— Diana Slattery, PhD, founding board member of

Women’s Visionary Congress and author of Xenolinguistics:

Psychedelics, Language, and the Evolution of Consciousness

Copyright © 2017 by Rachel Harris, PhD

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, or other — without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

The material in this book is intended for education. It is not meant to take the place of diagnosis and treatment by a qualified medical practitioner or therapist and does not represent advocacy for illegal activities. Any application of the material set forth in the following pages is at the reader’s sole discretion and risk, and the author and publisher assume no responsibility for any actions taken either now or in the future. No expressed or implied guarantee of the effects of the use of the recommendations can be given or liability taken.

Text design by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Harris, Rachel, [date]– author.

Title: Listening to Ayahuasca : new hope for depression, addiction, PTSD, and anxiety / Rachel Harris.

Description: Novato, California : New World Library, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016045069 (print) | LCCN 2016048721 (ebook) | ISBN 9781608684021 (paperback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781608684038 (Ebook)

Subjects: | MESH: Hallucinogens—therapeutic use | Depressive Disorder—drug therapy | Hallucinogens—adverse effects

Classification: LCC RM324.8 (print) | LCC RM324.8 (ebook) | NLM QV 77.7 | DDC 615.7/883—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016045069

First printing, March 2017

ISBN 978-1-60868-402-1

Ebook ISBN 978-1-60868-403-8

Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

10987654321

Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE: The Mission

CHAPTER TWO: New Hope for Healing

CHAPTER THREE: Transformational Medicine

CHAPTER FOUR: Magic and Mystery

CHAPTER FIVE: Church Sacrament

CHAPTER SIX: The Shadow Side

CHAPTER SEVEN: To Believe or Not to Believe

CHAPTER EIGHT: Your Brain on Ayahuasca

CHAPTER NINE: The Perennial Quest

CHAPTER TEN: This Enchanted World

Appendix A: Research Questionnaire

Appendix B: After the Spiritual Experience Questionnaire

Acknowledgments

Endnotes

Index

About the Author

Introduction

Join me on a journey into the ayahuasca underground of North America, where people are drinking a medicine that has been used for thousands of years by the indigenous tribes of the Amazon. The medicine is a tea composed of two plants — the ayahuasca vine, Banisteriopsis caapi, for which the brew is named, and the leaves from the Psychotria viridis bush. Part of my journey includes research I conducted from 2008 to 2012 on the use of ayahuasca, and it also includes my own stories of mystical experiences, slow healing, and ontological crises. As a cautious researcher and an enthusiastic psychotherapist, I’ve talked with hundreds of people about their ayahuasca ceremonies, sometimes taking research notes, at other times encouraging therapeutic insight, and always asking: What happened next? How did you change? How is your life different?

During my journey, I received frequent emails from strangers searching for information about the medicine. Some wanted to participate in the research study, others wanted to share their experiences, but most were seeking a source for the medicine. Those emails struck a consistent note. In one way or another, they said, I’m suffering.

Like any good therapist, rather than suggest taking an illegal substance, I recommended they go to a psychotherapist, try antidepressants, and trust their doctor to find the right combination and dosage from the panoply of psychiatric drugs. Inevitably, those people wrote back, I’ve done all that for years. Nothing’s helped.

These people were suffering with what psychiatrists call treatment-resistant depression — they were the unlucky 30 to 50 percent of depression sufferers who don’t respond to antidepressant medications.¹ Rightfully, they felt demoralized, but with what little hope they had left, they were seeking help from Grandmother Ayahuasca. They were willing to try anything, including a medicine from the Amazon jungle whose active ingredient, DMT (dimethyltryptamine), was and is illegal. Today, the US Drug Enforcement Agency lists it as a Schedule I drug — meaning they consider it as having a high risk of abuse as well as being dangerous with no therapeutic benefits.² After thirty-five years of private practice in psychotherapy, I’ve seen a few people with treatment-resistant depression. One client stands out, however, as possibly the most depressed man I’ve ever seen in my office. He was in his midthirties, married with a young child. Although very bright, he could barely work as a house painter, struggling to get out of bed in the mornings. In my office, as I tried unsuccessfully to engage him with questions, he remained a rumpled lump sitting on the sofa. Not easily discouraged, I noticed he was barely breathing and asked if we could do some bodywork to improve his respiration. He was too depressed to resist, and I cajoled him to lie on the carpeted floor and focus on the movement of his ribs, feeling them expand with every inhale. He was able to take in bigger breaths and to relax with every long, slow exhale. I was encouraged. Perhaps a body-oriented approach could reach him.

Then I’m not sure what happened. I might have said, Find a position that feels the most comfortable to you. With renewed energy, he made his way into a pile of pillows I had stacked against a wall. He burrowed in deep, creating a cave for himself, and leaving me alone on the floor in the center of the room. I had lost my client.

Undaunted, I moved closer to the stack of pillows and encouraged him to come out. I tried metaphors — a bear hibernating and awakening to the spring thaw, an infant waiting to be born. I whispered for him to rest and rejuvenate in his cave, to gather his strength in the quiet darkness before he emerged into the light. No movement ensued.

Finally, I asked, What would entice you to come out? Silence. Not even your four-year-old daughter? Blond curls, full of life. No response.

This is how I learned about treatment-resistant depression. It doesn’t budge. Nothing helps. The suffering is terrible. We usually think of depression as similar to our bad days when our self-critic goes into overdrive or perhaps when we encounter multiple discouraging disappointments. Not even close. My client’s depression was of a totally different order, practically unimaginable, like comparing a torn cuticle to a spinal cord injury. I knew that one hour a week of psychotherapy would not help him. He, like others with this kind of depression, would have to suffer silently or seek alternative treatments.

In 2006, National Geographic Adventure published a story called Peru: Hell and Back by Kira Salak, who journeyed to Peru to participate in an ayahuasca ceremony with a shaman.³ Afterward, this story received more inquiries than any other article in the history of the magazine. Why? The article said ayahuasca could cure depression. Salak wrote, The severe depression that had ruled my life since childhood had miraculously vanished. That one sentence not only described intractable depression but also created hope for fellow sufferers.

The mother of one of those sufferers emailed me during the course of my ayahuasca research. A psychiatric nurse practitioner, she could write prescriptions for antidepressants, which is more than I can do as a psychologist, and yet she was unable to find help for her young adult daughter, who had been suffering with intractable depression for most of her life.

I responded to her email as a colleague, but I also identified with her as a mother. The irony of being able to help others but not one’s own is sometimes too much to bear. I called her, and she told me a now-familiar story. Her daughter had seen many therapists, tried an array of psychotropic meds. Nothing helped. She wanted to try ayahuasca.

I explained that, as a researcher, I was open to sharing my own experiences with Grandmother Ayahuasca, but I had made the decision not to help people find a source for the medicine. This remains true. For one thing, my sources are confidential, but mostly I don’t want to be in the position of referring people I have never met to an illegal drug.

However, I could give the woman advice about ayahuasca itself. First of all, drinking it is a challenging experience, replete with explosive diarrhea and vomiting. Second, there’s no way to find a shaman or practitioner you can trust except by reputation, and even that’s not always trustworthy. Third, there’s no way to know what dosage or potency you’re getting, since every batch of ayahuasca tea is different.

Furthermore, using ayahuasca within the United States almost invariably means you’re breaking the law, since it is classified as a Schedule I drug. The only exceptions to this are two ayahuasca churches in New Mexico and Oregon, which have attained the legal right to use ayahuasca under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.⁴ If you are a member of these churches, you can legally take ayahuasca as part of a church ceremony, but these groups are relatively small, and they constitute a unique situation.

Finally, if you travel to the Amazon to drink ayahuasca, you’ll have to navigate a wildly different culture, you’ll be more vulnerable to environmental dangers, and you’ll have fewer options in case of emergency.

You would think this rather discouraging advice would stop people in their tracks, but then you’d underestimate the extent of people’s desperation.

My strongest advice for this woman was Don’t go to the Amazon. Then, as now, I’ve heard too many stories of shamans raping young women, and I’ve seen too many slick promotional videos by narcissistic Westerners, who were supposedly trained by indigenous shamans, opening retreat centers. In addition, untrained local entrepreneurs will pass themselves off as shamans with signs at the airport for authentic ayahuasca healings, but their dark, mysterious brews don’t amount to much. Too many known unknowns in Peru, I told her. Most importantly in her case, what if her daughter needed more than a few ceremonies? Stories of immediate cures are the most dramatic and the most often repeated, but not everyone experiences this. Her daughter couldn’t commute to Peru for ongoing treatment.

I said, Find a connection here in the States so your daughter can do a series of ceremonies at least once or twice a month for a few months. And then reevaluate.

A year later, I followed up and learned that the young woman had found a connection to a shamanic group and was making progress, but that her progress was quite slow and this frustrated her. Her mother said, She keeps looking back at all the time she’s lost in her life due to depression.

I was glad to hear the daughter had found some relief, even though she hadn’t experienced one of those spontaneous, miraculous cures. The fact that ayahuasca helped, when years of Western medicine hadn’t, is important and significant. This remains the kind of personal story that inspires further research into the medicine.

The young woman’s expressed regret over the time she’d lost due to depression was an unmistakable call for therapy. She needed to mourn the life she had missed before she could look forward to her future. Ideally, a person like this could find a psychotherapist who has had his or her own experiences with the medicine and is conversant with Grandmother Ayahuasca. Such a therapist could maximize the person’s shamanic experiences within a therapeutic process and would know how to work with and integrate psychological material from the ceremonies into daily life. The therapist would know how to work on multiple levels of reality: sometimes in practical ways akin to cognitive therapy; sometimes with images from visions in a more Jungian framework; and sometimes shamanically, as in, Let’s ask Grandmother Ayahuasca for help on this issue.

Psychiatric research has consistently found that it’s the combination of psychotherapy and psychotropic meds that’s the most effective approach to depression, and this dual approach is likely to hold true for ayahuasca as well.⁵ Current research studies into the therapeutic benefits of psilocybin, LSD, and MDMA (or ecstasy)⁶ build on this finding by conducting sessions within a therapeutic setting. They structure preparatory interviews and follow-up sessions directly into the protocols in order to maximize the dual approach of using drugs plus counseling.

At this time, there is no existing treatment setting for using ayahuasca in combination with psychotherapy in North America. Maybe one day, but not yet. Right now there are very few ayahuasca-experienced therapists for people in the ayahuasca underground to consult. Most people process and integrate their experiences on their own without the added benefit of psychotherapy. This means that they miss the time of greatest therapeutic opportunity — the first few weeks after a ceremony when the psyche is most flexible and open. Unfortunately, most people return to their work-a-day lives after a ceremony, and they have to be appropriately discreet about even mentioning their illegal activities.

In sharp contrast, compare this situation to how the Navajo treat those who return from a vision quest. One study noted, For four days after the conclusion of the ceremony, the patient is considered by family and friends as if he or she is a Holy Person and given an opportunity to focus, evaluate, interpret, and experience a new self.⁷ The story above of the seriously depressed young woman who discovered improvement but no miraculous recovery through ayahuasca is realistic. Some people enjoy an immediate healing after a ceremony, and those cases garner most of the publicity. Meanwhile, at the other extreme, some people experience no response whatsoever to this powerful medicine. While everyone around them is vomiting profusely, they sit slightly bored, wondering why nothing is happening. We understand so little about this medicine. I once asked the presiding shaman at a ceremony about one person’s seeming immunity to the powerful effects of the tea. The shaman needed no translator. He simply shrugged and said, Grandmother did not call him.

Kira Salak, author of the National Geographic Adventure article, is one of the lucky ones who enjoyed a miraculous healing through ayahuasca. Immediately after the ceremony, she wrote, There were no more morbid, incessant desires to die. Gone was the ‘suicidal ideation’ that had made joy seem impossible for me, and made my life feel like some kind of punishment.⁸ Afterward, so many people contacted her about her ayahuasca experiences that she created a special section of her website to summarize her current mental health status.

Nine years later, she wrote on her website: The depression has never returned. . . . The slate was ‘wiped clean,’ and life has been unbelievably wonderful since that old cloud was taken away. Miraculous? As someone who suffered from depression her whole life, I would say, yes. Absolutely miraculous.⁹

However, this doesn’t mean that even if you do exactly what Salak did you will experience a miracle. A psychotherapy client of mine once gave me a promotional DVD from the same retreat center in Peru where Kira Salak experienced her healing, and it showed a ceremony with the same American shaman. I was horrified at this shaman’s behavior. He was yelling like an army drill sergeant — Drop your ego! — while the participants were under the full sway of the medicine, which is a time for sensitive and subtle energy. I was so upset by the video that I immediately called my client even though it was ten o’clock Saturday night. I told him not to go to this retreat center. He canceled his plans.

Years later I met a woman who had spent months working with this same American shaman and who was seriously damaged by his ranting and manipulations. It took her years to free herself of the trauma and his energy, yet this was the man who orchestrated the miraculous healing that Salak described.

I hope these examples provide a glimpse into the complexity of ayahuasca and how little we know about this mysterious medicine from the Amazon rain forest. This is not a simple story about healing. The risks are significant, but the opportunity is beyond what Western medicine and psychotherapy can offer.

This book is intended for people considering ayahuasca and for people drinking the medicine. I hope it will help them integrate their insights and visions into their daily lives. There is much work people can do on their own to maximize the healing that ayahuasca offers. I also hope this book will inform psychotherapists about the process of integration after ayahuasca ceremonies, so they can provide a supportive and respectful container for the unfolding of healing.

CHAPTER ONE

The Mission

It was 1970, and I was sitting in the office of Dr. Kurland, the medical director at the Maryland Psychiatric Hospital, the epicenter of leading-edge psychedelic research. I was twenty-four years old, armed with only a bachelor’s degree in psychology and my own psychedelic experiences. My years at the Esalen Institute ( www.esalen.org ) as a residential fellow and staff member had given me the connection to Stanislav Grof, who arranged the job interview. Dr. Kurland was very kind to see me. Although he had no intention of hiring me, he did give me some fatherly advice: Go to graduate school.

I eventually followed his advice, but by then the federal government had passed the Controlled Substances Act, which essentially outlawed research into the therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs, including marijuana. These substances were deemed to be both dangerous and without medical benefit despite hundreds of research articles that explored how psychedelics could facilitate the therapeutic progress of psychiatric patients, alcoholics, and terminal cancer patients. The US government under President Nixon, in a reaction to the cultural revolution of the sixties, declared a war on drugs that was not consistent with the available research findings. This decision stopped all further scientific exploration.

I gave up my dream of doing psychedelic research. I completed my PhD and pursued a more conventional research career, receiving a prestigious New Investigator Award from the National Institutes of Health. But in 1982 when the NIH called to ask for my next grant application, I had to tell them, I’m pregnant, and I’m going to stay home with the baby. The conversation ended immediately. I left my research career a few weeks before my daughter was born and changed the course of my professional life from research to private practice.

I saw clients for thirty-five years, specializing in well-educated, high-functioning people who wanted to clear up unresolved issues from childhood or to work on personal relationships. These people were essentially the same kind of people who went to Esalen workshops. They had some sense of a spiritual path or interest in their psychospiritual development. I also led workshops at both Esalen and the Omega Institute, and as a result, I had the opportunity to see how people integrated psychological insights from intensive workshop experiences into weekly psychotherapy and then how they translated their learnings into daily life.

Although I loved doing psychotherapy and leading workshops, I continued to mourn the loss of my research career. That is, until I heard the voice of Grandmother Ayahuasca: Do the research, she told me.

But I get ahead of myself. How I found ayahuasca, or how the spirit of ayahuasca found me, I will never fully understand. I hadn’t been searching for the medicine; I’d never even heard of it. It was February 2005, and I was living in New Jersey, innocently searching for a tropical beach vacation, which is certainly a very sane endeavor. A friend told me of a retreat center nestled between the rain forest and the Pacific Ocean on the remote coast of Costa Rica. I registered immediately for a retreat with only a glance at the lectures and program offered for that week.

Needless to say, I was surprised when the woman organizing the travel arrangements called to ask me about my intentions. I didn’t know what she was talking about. She explained that the retreat included two ayahuasca ceremonies. I told her I’d get back to her with my intentions, and I immediately turned to a book about ayahuasca that I’d bought years ago but never read: Ayahuasca: Human Consciousness and the Spirits of Nature, edited by Ralph Metzner. I’d had spiritual experiences with psychedelics when I was in my twenties, and now that my daughter was grown, I felt free to renew my interest, especially with an opportunity like this falling directly into my lap.

I knew immediately what my intentions would be. Six years before, when my father was dying, I brought him to my home with hospice care. The sound of his death rattle filled the house, shaking me to my bones. The slow rhythm of his breathing echoed inside me, hollowing me out as I wondered which breath would be his last.

During one of those moments, as I was waiting for his next inhalation, the universe exploded inside me. I felt the space within me expand outward in all directions at once. I saw sparks of multicolored lights in the shape of a tunnel through space, dark space all the way out to the ends of the universe.

All of a sudden, I was rushing through this tunnel, pulled from my body, and launched into space. I quickly realized that I was out of my body, traveling fast. I was scared. With a jolt, I brought myself back down into my heart-pounding body and looked around the room through new eyes, as if seeing for the first time. I could almost feel myself in my brain, behind my eyes, where the seeing actually occurs.

I calmed down with slow breaths, but I had no idea what had just happened. My brain kicked in and scanned for similar experiences. Years ago, during an earthquake in San Francisco, the walls of the hotel ballroom had buckled and waved like ribbons in the wind, but this wasn’t an earthquake. Nor was it a psychedelic experience. I wasn’t on anything. Shaky and pale, I found my way to a chair, as if sitting down would increase my connection to the earth.

After my dad’s death, I tried to figure out what this experience was all about, wondering what had happened to me. I described the experience again and again to my wide network of spiritual friends — Buddhists, psychologists, teachers of Transcendental Meditation, shamanic practitioners, spiritual directors, Jungians. No one had a clue.

Finally, I talked to Carol Hegedus, a friend who had worked for the Fetzer Institute and brought Bill Moyers’s Healing and the Mind program to television. She’d been studying Rudolf Steiner and intuitively knew what had happened to me. You went with your dad as he was leaving this world, Carol explained in a simple, matter-of-fact way. You went partway with him. Something inside me became quiet and still. No wonder I had been so frightened — I was afraid that if I didn’t come back to my body, I would die along with my father. This explanation made sense to me, reaching deep into my bones with a knowing certainty.

My dad had been in a coma, in the final stage of dying. Without consciously choosing or even being aware, I joined him as he was leaving. Almost like a gift, I caught a glimpse of the classic near-death experience — the tunnel, the whoosh sensation of traveling fast out of my body, the emotional intensity filled with personal and spiritual meaning.

I felt unfinished with this experience. I wondered for years what would’ve happened had I not become frightened and returned to my body. Would I actually have died? Would I have been sent back? Would I have seen where my father was going? I always wondered, and now my intention for the ayahuasca ceremony was to continue this journey.

Some would say I was called to that first meeting with Grandmother Ayahuasca. Certainly, the serendipity factor was ridiculously high. But I was the one who had to say yes to the retreat center, yes to the ceremonies, and ultimately, yes to the research. In saying yes, I opened myself to one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

Flash forward to Costa Rica: Like a snake working its way through my intestines, the ayahuasca tea moved deep inside my body. I realized this tea was far more powerful than any psychedelic I’d done before, and here I sat between the Pacific Ocean and the rain forest, no telephone or even internet contact available, no cars, literally no exit. The person in charge was an indigenous shaman, decorated with ritual ochre and feathers, who didn’t speak English. He did, however, clear the ceremonial space to protect us from unwanted spirits, although this was not a great reassurance. It was from his hands that I received the foul-tasting, murky brown liquid — he looked me in the eye through the candlelit shadows and whistled into the tea, a shamanic prescription for my energy. I downed the cup.

After thirty minutes or so of trying to remain calm and confident, I lifted off. Without warning, I zoomed through space, traveling way beyond the speed of light through a tunnel whose walls were lined with multicolored points of light that became streams of color as I flew past. In a cosmic whoosh, I broke through into the blackness of space filled with stars and eternity. I was gone in so many ways — out of my mind, out of my body, and out of this world. No longer an I. Only nothingness with unending silence, no fear or perhaps no I to be afraid.

In my visionary journey,