The Ayahuasca Boom in The U.S.

The Ayahuasca Boom in the U.S. about:reader?url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/1...
newyorker.com
The Ayahuasca Boom in

the U.S.
By Ariel Levy
30-38 minutos
How ayahuasca, an ancient

Amazonian hallucinogenic brew,
became the latest trend in
Brooklyn and Silicon Valley.
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Ayahuasca, used for centuries in South American

jungles, is booming in the U.S.
Illustration by Bjrn Lie
The day after Apollo 14 landed on the moon,

Dennis and Terence McKenna began a trek
through the Amazon with four friends who
considered themselves, as Terence wrote in
his book True Hallucinations, refugees
from a society that we thought was poisoned
by its own self-hatred and inner
contradictions. They had come to South
America, the land of yag, also known as
ayahuasca: an intensely hallucinogenic
potion made from boiling woody
Banisteriopsis caapi vines with the glossy
leaves of the chacruna bush. The brothers,
then in their early twenties, were grieving the
recent death of their mother, and they were
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hungry for answers about the mysteries of

the cosmos: We had sorted through the
ideological options, and we had decided to
put all of our chips on the psychedelic
experience.
They started hiking near the border of Peru.
As Dennis wrote, in his memoir The
Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, they
arrived four days later in La Chorrera,
Colombia, in our long hair, beards, bells,
and beads, accompanied by a menagerie
of sickly dogs, cats, monkeys, and birds
accumulated along the way. (The local
Witoto people were cautiously amused.)
There, on the banks of the Igara Paran
River, the travellers found themselves in a
psychedelic paradise. There were cattle
pastures dotted with Psilocybe cubensis
magic mushroomssprouting on dung
piles; there were hammocks to lounge in
while you tripped; there were Banisteriopsis
caapi vines growing in the jungle. Taken
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together, the drugs produced hallucinations

that the brothers called vegetable
television. When they watched it, they felt
they were receiving important information
directly from the plants of the Amazon.
The McKennas were sure they were on to
something revelatory, something that would
change the course of human history. I and
my companions have been selected to
understand and trigger the gestalt wave of
understanding that will be the hyperspacial
zeitgeist, Dennis wrote in his journal. Their
work was not always easy. During one
session, the brothers experienced a flash of
mutual telepathy, but then Dennis hurled his
glasses and all his clothes into the jungle
and, for several days, lost touch with
consensus reality. It was a small price to
pay. The plant teachers seemed to have
given them access to a vast database,
Dennis wrote, the mystical library of all
human and cosmic knowledge.
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If these sound like the joys and hazards of a

bygone era, then you dont know any
ayahuasca usersyet. In the decades since
the McKennas odyssey, the drugor
medicine, as many devotees insist that it
be calledhas become increasingly popular
in the United States, to the point where its a
trendy thing right now, as Marc Maron said
recently to Susan Sarandon, on his WTF
podcast, before they discussed what shed
learned from her latest ayahuasca
experience. (I kind of got, You should just
keep your heart open all the time, she said.
Because the whole point is to be open to
the divine in every person in the world.)
The self-help guru Tim Ferriss told me that
the drug is everywhere in San Francisco,
where he lives. Ayahuasca is like having a
cup of coffee here, he said. I have to avoid
people at parties because I dont want to
listen to their latest three-hour saga of
kaleidoscopic colors.
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Leanna Standish, a researcher at the

University of Washington School of
Medicine, estimated that on any given night
in Manhattan, there are a hundred
ayahuasca circles going on. The main
psychoactive substance in ayahuasca has
been illegal since it was listed in the 1970
Controlled Substances Act, but Standish,
who is the medical director of the Bastyr
Integrative Oncology Research Center,
recently applied for permission from the
F.D.A. to do a Phase I clinical trial of the
drugwhich she believes could be used in
treatments for cancer and Parkinsons
disease. I am very interested in bringing
this ancient medicine from the Amazon
Basin into the light of science, Standish
said. She is convinced that its going to
change the face of Western medicine. For
now, though, she describes ayahuasca use
as a vast, unregulated global experiment.
Most people who take ayahuasca in the
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United States do so in small ceremonies,

led by an individual who may call himself a
shaman, an ayahuasquero, a curandero, a
vegetalista, or just a healer. This person
may have come from generations of Shipibo
or Quechua shamans in Peru, or he may
just be someone with access to ayahuasca.
(Under-qualified shamans are referred to as
yogahuascas.) Ayahuasca was used for
centuries by indigenous Amazonians, who
believed that it enabled their holy men to
treat physical and mental ailments and to
receive messages from ancestors and gods.
Jesse Jarnow, the author of Heads: A
Biography of Psychedelic America, told me,
Its a bit less of a to-do in many of its
traditional usesmore about healing
specific maladies and illnesses than about
addressing spiritual crises. Now, though,
ayahuasca is used as a sacrament in
syncretic churches like the Santo Daime and
the Unio do Vegetal (union of the plant),
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both of which have developed a presence in

the United States. The entire flock partakes,
and the group trip is a kind of congregational
service.
The first American to study ayahuasca was
the Harvard biologist Richard Evans
Schultes, who pioneered the field of
ethnobotany (and co-authored Plants of the
Gods, with Albert Hofmann, the Swiss
scientist who discovered LSD). In 1976, a
graduate student of Schultess brought a
collection of the plants back from his field
research to a greenhouse at the University
of Hawaiiwhere Dennis McKenna
happened to be pursuing a masters degree.
Thanks to McKenna, some B. caapi cuttings
escaped captivity, he told me. I took them
over to the Big Island, where my brother and
his wife had purchased some land. They
planted it in the forest, and it happened to
like the foresta lot. So now its all over the
place.
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Terence McKenna died in 2000, after

becoming a psychedelic folk hero for
popularizing magic mushrooms in books,
lectures, and instructional cassette tapes.
Dennis McKenna went on to get a doctorate
in botany and is now a professor at the
University of Minnesota. When we spoke, he
was on a book tour in Hawaii. He had been
hearing about ayahuasca use in a town on
the Big Island called Puna, where people
call themselves punatics. Everybody is
making ayahuasca, taking ayahuasca, he
said. Its like the Wild West.
If cocaine expressed and amplified the
speedy, greedy ethos of the nineteen-
eighties, ayahuasca reflects our present
momentwhat we might call the Age of
Kale. It is a time characterized by wellness
cravings, when many Americans are eager
for things like mindfulness, detoxification,
and organic produce, and we are willing to
suffer for our soulfulness.
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Ayahuasca, like kale, is no joy ride. The

majority of users vomitor, as they prefer to
say, purge. And thats the easy part.
Ayahuasca takes you to the swampland of
your soul, my friend Tony, a photographer in
his late fifties, told me. Then he said that he
wanted to do it again.
I came home reeking of vomit and sage and
looking like Id come from hell, Vaughn
Bergen, a twenty-seven-year-old who works
at an art gallery in Chelsea, said of one
ayahuasca trip. Everyone was trying to talk
me out of doing it again. My girlfriend at the
time was, like, Is this some kind of sick
game? I was, like, No. Im growing. His
next experience was blissful: I got
transported to a higher dimension, where I
lived the whole ceremony as my higher self.
Anything I thought came to be. Bergen
allows that, of the nine ceremonies hes
attended, eight have been unpleasant
experiences. But he intends to continue
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using ayahuasca for the rest of his life. He

believes that it will heal not only him but
civilization at large.
The process of making ayahuasca is beyond
artisanal: it is nearly Druidical. We pick the
chacruna leaf at sunrise in this very specific
way: you say a prayer and just pick the
lower ones from each tree, a lithe
ayahuasquera in her early fortiesBritish
accent, long blond hair, a background in
Reikitold me about her harvests, in
Hawaii. You clean the vine with wooden
spoons, meticulously, all the mulch away
from the rootsthey look so beautiful, like a
human heartand you pound these
beautiful pieces of vine with wooden mallets
until its fibre, she said. Then its this
amazing, sophisticated process of one pot
here and one pot there, and youre stirring
and youre singing songs.
She and her boyfriend serve the ayahuasca
divine consciousness in liquid format
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ceremonies in New York, Cape Town, Las

Vegas, Bali. They showed me pictures of
themselves harvesting plants in a verdant
Hawaiian jungle, looking radiantly happy. I
asked if they made a living this way. We
manifest abundance wherever we go, she
told me. Her boyfriend added,
Consciousness is its own economy.
Like juicinganother Kale Age method of
expedient renewalayahuasca is
appreciated for its efficiency. Enthusiasts
often say that each trip is like ten years of
therapy or meditation. Ferriss, the author of
such life-hacking manuals as The 4-Hour
Workweek and The 4-Hour Body, told me,
Its mind-boggling how much it can do in
one or two nights. He uses ayahuasca
regularly, despite a harrowing early trip that
he described as the most painful
experience Ive ever had by a factor of a
thousand. I felt like I was being torn apart
and killed a thousand times a second for two
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hours. This was followed by hours of grand-

mal seizures; Ferriss had rug burns on his
face the next day. I thought I had
completely fried my motherboard, he
continued. I remember saying, I will never
do this again. But in the next few months
he realized that something astounding had
happened to him. Ninety per cent of the
anger I had held on to for decades, since I
was a kid, was just gone. Absent.
Ayahuasca enthusiasts frequently use the
language of technology, which may have
entered the plant-medicine lexicon because
so many people in Silicon Valley are
devotees. Indigenous prophesies point to
an imminent polar reversal that will wipe our
hard drives clean, Daniel Pinchbeck wrote
in his exploration of ayahuasca, technology,
and Mayan millennialism, 2012: The Return
of Quetzalcoatl. In an industry devoted to
synthetic products, people are drawn to this
natural drug, with its ancient lineage and
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ritualized use: traditionally, shamans purify

the setting by smoking tobacco, playing
ceremonial instruments, and chanting icaros
songs that they say come to them from
the plants, the way Pentecostals are moved
by the Holy Spirit to speak in tongues. In
Silicon Valley, where everyone suffers from
neo-mania, Ferriss continued, having
interactions with songs and rituals that have
remained, in some cases, unchanged for
hundreds or thousands of years is very
appealing.
Ayahuasca isnt the only time-honored
method of ritual self-mortification, of course;
pilgrims seeking an encounter with the
divine have a long history of fasting, hair
shirts, and flagellation. But in the United
States most ayahuasca users are seeking a
post-religious kind of spiritualismor,
perhaps, pre-religious, a pagan worship of
nature. The Scottish writer and ayahuasca
devotee Graham Hancock told me that
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people from all over the world report similar

encounters with the spirit of the plant: She
sometimes appears as a jungle cat,
sometimes as a huge serpent. Many speak
about ayahuasca as though it were an
actual female being: Grandmother.
Grandmother may not always give you what
you want, but shell give you what you
need, an ayahuasquera who calls herself
Little Owl said, a few months ago, at an
informational meeting in a loft in Chinatown.
Two dozen people of diverse ages and
ethnicities sat on yoga mats eating a potluck
vegetarian meal and watching a blurry
documentary about ayahuasca. On the
screen, a young man recounted a miserable
stomach ailment that no Western doctor
could heal. After years of torment, he took
ayahuasca during a trip to Peru and
visualized himself journeying into his own
body and removing a terrifying squid from
his intestines. The next day, his pain was
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gone, and it never came back.

After the movie, Little Owl, a fifty-two-year-
old of Taiwanese descent with black bangs
nearly to her eyebrows, answered
questions. Do your conscious and
subconscious work on different
frequencies? a young woman in a tank top
wanted to know. And, if so, which one will
Grandmother tap in to? Little Owl said that
Grandmother would address your entire
being. A friend of hers, a young African-
American man in a knit orange cap who said
that he taught mindfulness for a living, was
standing by, and Little Owl asked if he had
anything to add. The medicine is like
shining a light on whatever conflict needs to
be resolved, he said.
A Caucasian guy in his late twenties asked if
there was anyone who shouldnt take the
medicine; he was deciding which friends he
should bring to the next ceremony. Little
Owl, who has a background in acupuncture,
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replied that every participant would fill out a

detailed health form, and that people who
have such conditions as high blood pressure
or who are on antidepressants should not
take ayahuasca.
An older man with silver hair and a booming
voice spoke next: Do you have doctors or
anyone on hand who understands whats
happening on a pharmacological level if
something goes wrong?
There was a tense silence, and then Little
Owl replied, We are healing on a vibrational
level.
A plant is constantly interacting with its
ecosystem: attracting insects it needs for
pollination, discouraging hungry herbivores,
warning other plants that it competes with
for nutrients in the soil. It communicates
using messenger molecules, which allow
for semiosis (signalling) and symbiosis
(interspecies coperation), helping the
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species to improve its circumstances as the

process of evolution unfolds. Some of the
most important messenger molecules in the
plant kingdom are called amines, and are
typically derived from amino acids.
The human brain, too, is a kind of complex
ecosystem, cordinated by messenger
molecules of its own: neurotransmitters,
which govern everything from the simple
mechanism of pupils dilating in dim light to
the unfathomable complexity of
consciousness. The neurotransmitters that
mediate emotion, awareness, and the
creation of meaning are aminessuch as
serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine
which evolved from the same molecular
antecedents as many plant-messenger
molecules.
The main psychoactive substance in
ayahuascaN, N-dimethyltryptamine, or
DMTis an amine found in chacruna
leaves. Ingested on its own, it has no effect
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on humans, because it is rapidly degraded

by an enzyme in the gut, monoamine
oxidase. B. caapi vines, however, happen to
contain potent monoamine-oxidase
inhibitors (MAOI). Some ayahuasca
enthusiasts maintain that the synergy was
discovered thousands of years ago, when
the spirit of the plants led indigenous people
to brew the two together; others think that
one day someone happened to drop a
chacruna leaf into his B. caapi tea, a
psychedelic version of Theres chocolate in
my peanut butter. However the combination
came about, it allows DMT access to the
human brain: when a person drinks
ayahuasca, a plant-messenger molecule
targets the neurons that mediate
consciousness, facilitating what devotees
describe as a kind of interspecies
communication.
If the plant really is talking to the person,
many people hear the same thing: we are all
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one. Some believe that the plants delivering

this message are serving their own interests,
because if humans think we are one with
everything we might be less prone to trash
the natural world. In this interpretation, B.
caapi and chacruna are the spokesplants for
the entire vegetable kingdom.
But this sensation of harmony and
interconnection with the universewhat
Freud described as the oceanic feelingis
also a desirable high, as well as a goal of
many spiritual practices. Since 2014, Draulio
de Araujo, a researcher at the Brain
Institute, in Natal, Brazil, has been
investigating the effects of ayahuasca on a
group of eighty people, half of whom suffer
from severe depression. If one word comes
up, it is tranquillity, he said. A lot of our
individuals, whether they are depressed or
not, have a sense of peace after the
experience.
Having studied fMRIs and EEGs of subjects
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on ayahuasca, Araujo thinks that the brains

default-mode networkthe system that
burbles with thought, mulling the past and
the future, while your mind isnt focussed on
a taskis temporarily relieved of its duties.
Meanwhile, the thalamus, which is involved
in awareness, is activated. The change in
the brain, he notes, is similar to the one that
results from years of meditation.
Dennis McKenna told me, In shamanism,
the classic theme is death and rebirthyou
are reborn in a new configuration. The
neuroscientific interpretation is exactly the
same: the default-mode network is
disrupted, and maybe things that were
mucking up the works are left behind when
everything comes back together.
In the early nineties, McKenna, Charles
Grob, a professor of psychiatry and
pediatrics at Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical
Center, and James Callaway, a
pharmaceutical chemist, conducted a study
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in Manaus, Brazil, that investigated the

effects of ayahuasca on long-term users.
Fifteen men who had taken part in bimonthly
ceremonies for at least a decade were
compared with a control group of people
with similar backgrounds. The researchers
drew blood from the subjects and assessed
the white blood cells, which are powerful
indicators of the condition of the central
nervous system. (McKenna told me, In
psychopharmacology, we say, If its going
on in the platelets, its probably going on in
the brain.) They found that the serotonin
reuptake transportersthe targets that
many contemporary antidepressants work
onwere elevated among habitual
ayahuasca drinkers. We thought, What
does this mean? McKenna said. They
couldnt find any research on people with
abnormally high levels of the transporters,
but there was an extensive body of literature
on low levels: the condition is common
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among those with intractable depression,

and in people who suffer from Type 2
alcoholism, which is associated with bouts of
violent behavior. We thought, Holy shit! Is it
possible that the ayahuasca actually
reverses these deficits over the long term?
McKenna pointed out that no other known
drug has this effect. Theres only one other
instance of a factor that affects this
upregulationand thats aging. He
wondered if ayahuasca is imparting
something to its drinkers that we associate
with maturity: wisdom.
Charles Grob told me, Some of these guys
were leading disreputable lives and they
became radically transformedresponsible
pillars of their community. But, he noted, the
men were taking ayahuasca as part of a
religious ceremony: their church, Unio do
Vegetal, is centered on integrating the
ayahuasca experience into everyday life.
Grob cautioned, You have to take it with a
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facilitator who has some knowledge,

experience, and ethics. In unregulated
ceremonies, several women have been
molested, and at times people have turned
violent. Last year, during a ceremony at an
ayahuasca center in Iquitos, Peru, a young
British man started brandishing a kitchen
knife and yelling; a Canadian man who was
also on ayahuasca wrestled it from him and
stabbed him to death.
Grob speculated that the shaman in that
case had spiked the ayahuasca. Often,
when things go wrong, it is after a plant
called datura is added to the
pharmacological mix. Maybe facilitators
think, Oh, Americans will get more bang for
their buck, Grob said. He also wondered if
the knife-wielding British man had been
suffering a psychotic break: like many
hallucinogens, ayahuasca is thought to have
the potential to trigger initial episodes in
people who are predisposed to them.
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Problems can also arise if someone takes

ayahuascawith its potent MAOIon top of
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, a
common class of antidepressants. The
simultaneous blocking of serotonin uptake
and serotonin degradation encourages
enormous amounts of the neurotransmitter
to flood the synapses. The outcome can be
disastrous: a condition called serotonin
syndrome, which starts with shivering,
diarrhea, hyperthermia, and palpitations and
can progress to muscular rigidity,
convulsions, and even death. I get calls
from family members or friends of people
who seem to be in a persistent state of
confusion, Grob said. He had just received
a desperate e-mail from the mother of a
young woman who had become disoriented
in the midst of a ceremony. She ran off from
where she was, and when she was found
she was having breathing difficulties and is
now having what appears to be a P.T.S.D.
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reaction.
These cases are rare, but profoundly
upsetting trips are common. People on
ayahuasca regularly report experiencing
their own death; one man told Araujo that he
had a terrifying visualization of being
trapped in a coffin. There are some people
who are getting damaged from it because
theyre not using it the right way, Dennis
McKenna warned. Its a psychotherapeutic
process: if they dont integrate the stuff that
comes up, it can be very traumatic. Thats
the whole thing with ayahuascaor any
psychedelic, really. Set and setting is all-
important: theyve been telling us this since
Leary! Its not to be treated lightly.
Williamsburg was throbbing with sound on
the warm June evening when I went to an
ayahuasca ceremony led by Little Owl. It
was held in a windowless yoga studio next
to a thumping dance club, and in the
antechambera makeshift gym where we
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were told to leave our bags, amid worn

wrestling mats and free weightsyou could
hear the sounds of drunk people in nearby
McCarren Park, mixing with techno beats
from next door. The studios bathroom
shared a locked door with the club, and
patrons kept hurling themselves against it,
trying to get in.
But inside the studio it was surprisingly
quiet. There were trees and vines painted on
the walls, and about twenty women had set
themselves up on yoga mats in a tight circle,
some of them with significant piles of pillows
and sleeping bags. Everyone was wearing
white, which is what youre supposed to do
at an ayahuasca ceremony, except for a
young woman who had on wild jungle-
printed pants. My grooviest friend, Siobhan,
a British painter, had agreed to comeIs it
crazy Im spending money on white pants
right now? she had texted me, earlier that
dayand we grinned at each other from
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across the room. We had carefully followed

the dieta that Little Owl, like most
ayahuasqueros, recommends for the week
before a ceremony: no meat, no salt or
sugar, no coffee, no booze. Siobhan and I
were both pleased that at the very least this
experience would be slimming.
The woman to my right, a twenty-five-year-
old African-American Ill call Molly, had put a
little grouping of crystals on the edge of her
mat. It was her first ceremony, she said, and
she had chosen this one because it was
exclusively female. The young woman next
to Molly told us that she had done
ayahuasca in Peru. With men around, the
energy gets really erratic, she said. This
will be much more peaceful, vibrationally.
Little Owl had set up a perch for herself at
the back wall, surrounded by bird feathers,
crystals, flutes, drums, and wooden rattles,
bottles of potions, and a pack of baby wipes.
She explained that her helper, a young
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Asian-American woman she referred to as

our helper angel, would collect our cell
phones and distribute buckets for the purge:
smiling orange plastic jack-o-lanterns, like
the ones that kids use for trick-or-treating.
One at a time, we went into the front room to
be smudged with sage on the wrestling mats
by a woman in her sixties with the silver hair
and beatific smile of a Latina Mrs. Claus.
When she finished waving her smoking sage
at me and said, I hope you have a beautiful
journey, I was so moved by her radiant
good will that I nearly burst into tears.
Once we were all smudged and back in our
circle, Little Owl dimmed the lights. You are
the real shaman, she said. I am just your
servant.
When it was my turn to drink the little Dixie
cup of muck she presented, I was stunned
that divine consciousnessor really
anythingcould smell quite so foul: as if it
had already been vomited up, by someone
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whod been on a steady dieta of tar, bile,

and fermented wood pulp. But I forced it
down, and I was stoked. I was going to visit
the swampland of my soul, make peace with
death, and become one with the universe.
Soon thereafter, the woman on my left
began to moan. To my right, the woman next
to Molly had started retching, and the
woman beyond her was cryingsoftly at
first, and then in full-throated, passionate
sobs. Little Owl, meanwhile, was chanting
and sometimes playing her instruments.
I felt a tingling in my hands not unlike the
early-morning symptoms of my carpal-tunnel
syndrome. I focussed on my breath, as
everyone Id interviewed had said to do, and
then, for fun, I started thinking about the
people I love, arranging them first
alphabetically and then hierarchically, as the
people around me puked and wailed in the
dark and Little Owl sang and played her little
flute.
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It seemed as though hardly any time had

passed when she announced that anyone
who wasnt feeling the medicine yet should
drink again. My second Dixie cup was even
worse than the first, because I knew what to
expect: I barely made it back to my jack-o-
lantern in time to throw up. As I was wiping
my mouth on a tissue, the girl across the
room whose wild printed pants I had noticed
started hollering, I love you! Some of us
giggled a little. She kept at it, with growing
intensity: I love you so much! It feels so
good! The helper angel went over to calm
her, and those of us who still had our wits
about us said Sh-h, soothingly and then,
as the screaming got louder, resentfully. All
of a sudden, she was on her feet, flailing.
Ive eaten so many animals! she
screamed. And I loved them all!
It was the flailing that got to me. I thought of
the girl whose parents had called Charles
Grob and the Canadian kid who stabbed his
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associate in Iquitos. Any second now, I

would be descending into the pit of my
being, seeing serpents, experiencing my
own death or birthor somethingand I did
not necessarily want that to happen in a
windowless vomitorium while a millennial in
crazy pants had her first psychotic episode.
Her yelling was getting weirder: I want to
eat sex! I got up and went into the front
room with the wrestling mats, where I tried to
think peaceful thoughts and take deep,
cleansing breaths.
Siobhan came out a minute later. Bloody
hell! she said. She did not look entirely O.K.
All the animals! Crazypants yelled in the
other room.
Lets focus on our breath, I told Siobhan,
as the club music pounded next door.
Were supposed to be doing this in the
flipping jungle, she said, sitting down next
to me on the wrestling mat. I thought about
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mosquitoes and Iquitos and felt that,

actually, it was probably for the best that we
werent.
Another woman came out of the ceremony.
Im not fucking feeling anything! she said.
She had pink hair and a nose ring and
looked like a ratty Uma Thurman. This is
fucked!
I want to feel the animals! the girl
screamed.
Those are some bad vibes in there, Pink
Uma said. Im very sensitive to vibrations.
You dont exactly have to be a tuning fork, I
told her.
Sex and meat and love are one!
I demanded that we get in a positive
spacequickly. We all sat cross-legged on
the mats, trying to focus on our breath.
But more women came out of the ceremony.
I miss my sister; I dont like this, said one,
33 de 39 02/10/17 10:21
who had clearly been crying, a lot. An older

woman with long gray hair seemed
panicked, but soon started laughing
uncontrollably. I used to live on the
houseboats in San Francisco in the sixties,
she told us. But all we did was grass.
Maybe not so much talking, Siobhan said.
Lets all sit down, I said, in an aggressively
serene voice that I realized I was borrowing
from my mother, who is a shiatsu masseuse.
Lets all have a nice trip now.
Then the helper angel came out and asked
us not to talk. Shes shushing us? Siobhan
whispered, as Crazypants kept yelling and
the club music hammered away.
Listen, I said, in my peaceful, bossy voice.
I think that girl is having a psychotic
episode and its time to call 911.
Not necessarily, Helper Angel said. This
happened from time to time, she explained:
the young woman with the pants was just
34 de 39 02/10/17 10:21
having a strong reaction to the medicine. I

asked how she could tell it wasnt something
requiring immediate medical intervention,
and the angel replied, Intuition.
And what did I know? Id never done
ayahuasca, or even seen anyone else who
was on it. She did this all the time! It was
getting very crowded on the wrestling mats
and the music was so loud next door and
the woman whod lived on the houseboats
was talking about Haight-Ashbury and
cackling. Siobhan and I went back to our
spots in the ceremony.
The smell inside the yoga studio was not
great. But Pants Girl was yelling only
intermittently now, and Little Owl was
strumming a guitar and singing her version
of Let It Be: When I find myself in times of
trouble/Mother Aya comes to me.
It occurred to me that this wasnt working
that nothing was working, and now I would
35 de 39 02/10/17 10:21
have to find another hippie to give me this

disgusting drug all over again. And then
maybe my default-mode network shut down
for a second, or maybe I had a surge of
serotonin, but for whatever reason the whole
thing abruptly seemed hilarious, fascinating,
perfect. I thought of my grandmother
Tanya Levin, not ayahuascawho had
recently done some hallucinating herself
when she took too much heart medication
and saw bugs everywhere laughing at her,
and it didnt seem like such a tragedy that I
wasnt having any visions. Maybe the
ayahuasca was working: maybe this was the
experience I was meant to have.
Help, I heard Molly, the young woman to
my right, squeak.
You need help getting to the bathroom? I
whispered. Some people had been
stumbling when they tried to get up and
walk.
36 de 39 02/10/17 10:21
No, I just need... some assistance, she

said, her voice shaking with barely
contained desperation. Helper Angel was
still busy with Pants on the other side of the
room. So I held Mollys hand. I told her that
she wasnt going crazy, that we were just on
drugs, and that everything was going to be
fine. Please dont leave me, she said, and
started to sob. I told her to sit up and focus
on her breath. Little Owl was drumming now,
and chanting, You are the shaman in your
life, in a vaguely Native American way.
Please say more words, Molly whispered.
I did, and Molly seemed to calm down, and
pretty soon I was thinking that I was indeed
the shaman in my life, and a downright
decent one at that. It was at that moment
that Molly leaned forward and let loose the
Victoria Falls of vomit. She missed her jack-
o-lantern entirely and made our little corner
of the room into a puke lagoon.
37 de 39 02/10/17 10:21
Just as when you stub your toe and there is

an anticipatory moment before you actually
feel the pain, I waited to feel the rage and
disgust that experience told me would be my
natural response to another person barfing
all over me. But it never came. I thought of
something Dennis McKenna wrote in his
diary in 1967, about the effect that DMT was
having on him. I have tried to be more
aware of beauty, he wrote. I have enjoyed
the world more and hated myself less. I sat
there in Mollys upchuck, listening to Little
Owls singing, punctuated by the occasional
shriek of No more animals! And I felt
content and vaguely delighted and
temporarily free.
Video
Magic Mushrooms and the Healing Trip

Eddie Marritz, a cinematographer and
photographer in remission from small-cell
38 de 39 02/10/17 10:21
carcinoma, was a participant in N.Y.U.s

Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study. Marritz,
and the researchers, take us through the
experience.
Poems
Shiva
Were all in the desert / together.

Your mother // liked the water
cold, / Ruth saysnews to me.
ByAndrea Cohen
Briefly Noted
Briefly Noted
Chester B. Himes, Saving

Charlotte, The Burning Girl,
and Border Child.
ByStaff
39 de 39 02/10/17 10:21

The Ayahuasca Boom in The U.S.

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The Ayahuasca Boom in the U.S. about:reader?url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/1...

The Ayahuasca Boom in

How ayahuasca, an ancient

Ayahuasca, used for centuries in South American

The day after Apollo 14 landed on the moon,

hungry for answers about the mysteries of

together, the drugs produced hallucinations

If these sound like the joys and hazards of a

Leanna Standish, a researcher at the

United States do so in small ceremonies,

both of which have developed a presence in

Terence McKenna died in 2000, after

Ayahuasca, like kale, is no joy ride. The

using ayahuasca for the rest of his life. He

ceremonies in New York, Cape Town, Las

hours. This was followed by hours of grand-

ritualized use: traditionally, shamans purify

people from all over the world report similar

gone, and it never came back.

replied that every participant would fill out a

species to improve its circumstances as the

on humans, because it is rapidly degraded

one. Some believe that the plants delivering

on ayahuasca, Araujo thinks that the brains

in Manaus, Brazil, that investigated the

among those with intractable depression,

facilitator who has some knowledge,

Problems can also arise if someone takes

were told to leave our bags, amid worn

across the room. We had carefully followed

Asian-American woman she referred to as

whod been on a steady dieta of tar, bile,

It seemed as though hardly any time had

associate in Iquitos. Any second now, I

mosquitoes and Iquitos and felt that,

who had clearly been crying, a lot. An older

having a strong reaction to the medicine. I

have to find another hippie to give me this

No, I just need... some assistance, she

Just as when you stub your toe and there is

Magic Mushrooms and the Healing Trip

carcinoma, was a participant in N.Y.U.s

Were all in the desert / together.

Chester B. Himes, Saving

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