Tobacco Dieta in the Peruvian Amazon
Location: Inti Yacu, Contamana, Peru
Teacher: Juan Carlos Taminchi
In this solo episode of Cura Medicina, I tell the story of those ten days: why I went to Peru, what happened when I was alone with tobacco, and why coming home was one of the hardest parts.
Returning to where it began
In 2009, I sat with a Shipibo teacher for my first ayahuasca ceremony. I hadn’t been back to Peru since. Much of my work in the intervening years had taken me to Brazil, especially into relationship with the Noke Koi. I’d also done plant dietas before. This was my first in Peru, and being there felt like returning to the place where a part of my life had begun.
A plant dieta, as I experienced it with my teacher Juan Carlos, is a period set aside to develop a relationship with one plant. My relationship with tobacco had grown over years of working with hapé in ceremony. When I first sat with Juan Carlos, I was visited by the spirit of tobacco, and I knew at that moment that I was going to do a dieta to tobacco with Juan Carlos. I also knew Juan Carlos had spent years getting to know this plant himself and had completed 30 dietas with tobacco. That mattered to me. As I put it in the episode, “The teacher becomes a bridge until the plant has the opportunity to really root in you.”
Getting there took flights through Lima and Pucallpa, then a small plane into the interior. Once the dieta opened, my world narrowed to a small cabin, a hammock, and the sounds of the forest. Other people were doing dietas nearby. We came together for ceremony, and most of the time each of us was alone.
What I heard in the quiet
On the second day, I remember thinking, “What am I doing here?” I’d come all that way, and my mouth tasted like an ashtray. I laugh about it now, but the doubt was real. I wanted to be there, and I was still getting used to what being there asked of me.
I walked in the forest, did yoga, and played music as an offering to tobacco. I drew the plant and wove a little altar piece from a fallen palm frond. Some days I spent hours in the hammock listening to the birds, frogs, and crickets. I started to recognize how much of an ordinary day I spend taking in other people’s words and deciding what to do next. In the cabin, I had time to stay with whatever came up and to remain in silence.
The second ayahuasca ceremony brought up resentment and judgment that surprised me. By the final ceremony, I felt something I’d carried for a long time loosen, and with Juan Carlos’s help, I was healed of an ancestral wound that had plagued me for decades. A dream near the end brought a recurring dream I’d had for decades to a close. I share what I can of that experience in the episode. Some of it still feels too personal to put into words.
The dream in the temple
About six days in, I dreamed I was sitting on the floor of a temple in India, eating dried leaves with a group of people. Each person had an empty paper bag in front of them. A teacher would speak a word, something would appear inside a bag, and the person sitting beside it would carry it to the altar.
At first I watched. Then I pulled my bag closer. When something appeared in it, I got up and brought it to the altar, too.
“Everything that manifests in our lives is to be returned back to the divine.”’
That was how I understood the dream when I woke. Later, sitting in my hammock, I thought about how I’d been offering tobacco to fire, rivers, and trees. I wondered what I could offer tobacco itself. I put a small mound of hapé on my altar. “I’m giving tobacco back to tobacco,” I remember thinking. I’d been asking what I could receive from this relationship. I was starting to think more about what I could give.
Coming home slowly
Juan Carlos closed the dieta with song, salt, and hot chili. Afterward, we shared breakfast. I can still remember how good that first piece of bread tasted. We also sat in a circle and heard what the others had experienced during all those days when we’d not spoken to one another.
Then came the thirteen-hour boat ride back to Pucallpa. After ten days in the forest, the city felt loud. I spent much of my time there in the hotel, and even once I was home, I still felt as though part of me was in the dieta. I wrote a poem. Things that had happened in the forest were still taking on meaning in the quiet of that first week.
“Take at least a few days after your diet to not rush back to your life.”
With Juan Carlos, the ten days in the forest were bracketed by ten days of preparation and ten days of easing back into ordinary life. I knew about all three phases going in, but I underestimated how much quiet I would want in those last ten days.
That’s what I’d give myself more of next time. I’d stay somewhere quiet for a few days before going home. I’d left room in my life for the dieta itself. Now I know how much it means to leave room for the return.
You can hear the full story on Cura Medicina, including how Juan Carlos held the dieta, what the ceremonies brought up for me, and what I’m still learning about relating to plants as teachers.
