Psychedelics Are Not Enough
I had just had my mind blown after two nights of ayahuasca. It wasn’t my first dance with this medicine, but it might as well have been because I had taken a twelve-year break from working with this powerful plant from the Amazon.
My childhood friend Clarke had joined me for the weekend’s psychedelic adventure, and we were ready to celebrate after it was over. As soon as we returned to my place, we rushed to a local restaurant and opened a bottle of wine. Alcohol had been a central actor in my life for decades, and it felt appropriate to invite her to this special occasion.
Looking back, this was the first sign that a powerful psychedelic experience wasn’t enough to break through various addictions that I had spent a lifetime developing.
Ayahuasca isn’t a Quick Fix
I had heard stories of people leaving alcohol after a weekend of ayahuasca, and I had secretly wished that for myself. However, it would take me another full year of deep work with psychedelics and therapy before I was able to break the chains of alcohol. Those stories of miraculous awakenings inspired me to keep going, but frustrated me because I wanted a quick fix.
I came to realize I was the slow-cooker type. Ayahuasca took her time with me and would require both a commitment and a willingness to do the work outside of the ceremony. I realized that my recent experience had started a sacred dance between moments of insight and a lifetime of practice.
I returned to ayahuasca frequently after that ceremony, and I kept getting the same message: get serious about your practices. Grandmother relentlessly told me repeatedly to work on myself outside of the ceremony. I longed for a big message, some vision of my path, but she nudged me to focus on my mind and body.
This lesson hit me hard while I was in my course with Josh from the Mythic Body. Josh talks about preparing the vessel of our mind, body, and soul to connect with the divine energies. We are all vessels, and to receive anything divine, we need to understand the energies associated with our bodies and minds.
How could I expect any profound healing while pouring alcohol down my throat after an ayahuasca journey? I was polluting my vessel with this behavior and dishonoring all my work with Grandmother.
A Culture of Pills For Everything
We live in a world where drugs, both legal and illegal, seemingly fix all of our problems. My Dad, who is 82, takes a handful of pills to fall asleep each night. He is so out of it in the morning that he has to take another handful of pills to wake himself up. What kind of life is that?
The average person over 60 takes approximately 4-5 prescription medications daily. It’s not just the elderly taking medication. In the US, it’s estimated that between 25% and 43% of children use prescription medications daily.
Of course, there are instances where medication can both improve and save a life—my point is more about our overwhelming cultural reflex to fix things with a pill or a short-term hack, just like I wanted to fix my alcohol addiction with one weekend of ayahuasca without spending the time to understand the complexities of why I was using alcohol in the first place.
The matrix surrounding my addiction had deep roots in my childhood trauma. Wounds that went back decades, emotions that had been sequestered into dark places behind closed doors in my heart. Psychedelics allow us a glimpse into our issues, but they don’t fix them like a pill.
Ayahuasca allowed me to unravel the enigma and shed light on those hidden recesses. However, healing came through therapy, journaling, conversation with loved ones, time alone in nature, and deep introspection.
As I cultivated my daily practices, humility, forgiveness, and gratitude sprouted wings, and the roots of healing began to inform new behaviors. Old patterns started to drop away, and just as the snake sheds its skin, I was birthing a new version of myself.
Though I deeply support psychedelics and their usage, I don’t think that psychedelics are the panacea that some claim. Psychedelics offer insights and open doors; they jumpstart new thought patterns and reboot stuck emotions, but real change demands profound work outside of the ceremony.
I am a massive proponent of psychedelics. If you are reading this and exploring the idea of using them, I encourage you to jump in—but don’t expect them to be a cure-all potion. Use them as one tool in a toolbox of modalities that enable you to get at those aspects of yourself that require care and attention.
Find Your Foundational Pillars
Since that first ceremony, my path has had three healthy pillars: a commitment to new habits (while leaving the ones that don’t serve me), deeper self-understanding (by slowing my mind through meditation and yoga), and developing a relationship with the divine cultivated through ritual and devotion.
The first two pillars work on strengthening my vessel, and the third allows me to fill my cauldron while connecting to the animate world—in my view, an eye toward what is sacred.
I thought one weekend of ayahuasca would untangle all the knots in my heart. Looking back five years later, I realized that ayahuasca helped loosen the grip around my heart, enabling me to soften enough to start the real work.
If you are reading this, please take note that ayahuasca is more like a catalyst than a magic pill and requires us to have a post-ceremony plan that digs deep into our shadows with non-medicine modalities that support the unfolding of our wounds and traumas.
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