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The sun was setting over the horizon, which meant the mosquitoes were getting ready for dinner. It was time to get inside. I was way out in the sticks, in a small jungle compound sitting next to a tributary of the river Amazon about a two hour\u2019s boat ride from Iquitos, the nearest town and the world\u2019s largest urban center unreachable by road. Together with my fellow travelers I\u2019d come here to this remote part of the Peruvian Amazon to take part in an ayahuasca ritual. What is ayahuasca? Oh, only one of the most powerful hallucinogens known to man.<\/p>\n
There was probably just over a dozen of us altogether, mostly Americans and Canadians but also a few Europeans (all gringos I know, but the locals do it too). Among them were a really nice German couple from Munich and a Canadian rock musician named Bruce. And then there were the support staff, on-hand to make sure we don\u2019t do anything stupid like jump into the river while we were tripping off our balls. They were Isabella, a super-chill Spanish hippy; Tommy, who was basically a Geordie version of Dolph Lundgren; and Sasha, a Russian girl with whom, after nearly 3 months in Latin America, I\u2019d finally have someone to talk to about the motherland.<\/p>\n
Some of my fellow participants were experienced trippers, veterans in psychedelics and well-versed in the works of Terrence McKenna<\/a>. Me, I preferred other alternatives — stuff that lets you have fun but allows you stay in the real world. The only other time I\u2019d done psychedelics was LSD when I was 19, which I bought in a rave at a dingy nightclub from a man dressed as a wizard. Over the course of the next six hours, I witnessed all my thoughts melting together, time going back and forth, the club\u2019s bar stretching to infinity and, having watched the Smurfs earlier that day, only being able to hear \u201csmurfsmurfsmurfsmurfsmurf\u201d coming out of people\u2019s mouths when they talked. It sounds funny now but it\u2019s fucking annoying when you\u2019re trying to work out what they\u2019re actually trying to say.<\/p>\n But ayahuasca was a whole different beast. I\u2019d first heard of it around two years ago when the BBC reported a British student died<\/a> drinking it in Colombia. Just like any other time someone tells you not to do something because everything fun is bad for you, I felt inexplicably drawn to the idea of drinking hallucinogenic compounds with a wise village shaman in some hut in the jungle.<\/p>\n Ayahuasca is a brew (some call it a tea, but it tastes like an ass smoothie) that\u2019s been prepared by the indigenous peoples of the Amazon for centuries, possibly millennia. Upon drinking it releases the chemical DMT in your brain, which is what takes you to another dimension. And that\u2019s when all bets are off. Some people think they transform into an animal; a powerful beast like a jaguar or an eagle. Others meet “things” — beings that guide them and show them where they\u2019ve been going wrong. In a way, ayahuasca acts as a kind of therapist, giving you space to work out your own personal issues.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not something to be taken lightly. Besides the powerful visions, unlike stuff like acid or shrooms, ayahuasca’s tendency to make you vomit and shit your pants makes it hard to recommend for the normal person. For some reason, I thought my trip would be like that episode of the Simpsons where Homer eats that super-strong chili.<\/p>\n It\u2019s probably worth noting at this point that I\u2019m neither religious nor one of those “spiritual” New-Agey types. I believe that there could be some sort of \u201chigher intelligence\u201d in the same sense that there could be aliens, but at this point in time their true form and intentions are far beyond what our little puny mortal minds can comprehend.<\/p>\n Our ceremony was to be led by three wise men. Well, two men and a woman: Wheeler, Ernesto and Angelina. I know Wheeler was for real because he only had one good eye; the other one he used to see into the spirit world or something.<\/p>\n Before the ceremony began, Isabella and Wheeler took me aside to discuss my \u201cintentions\u201d — what I planned to achieve on my trip. Ayahuasca\u2019s supposed to help you deal with your trauma so they asked me if I had any history of childhood sexual abuse. I told them even I though went to a Catholic school but none of the priests even looked at me. I had however served just under a year in jail and while the soap never slipped from my fingers, it was still a very traumatic experience that fucked my self-esteem and a few of my personal relationships.<\/p>\n In particular there was one girl, who I\u2019m gonna call Rita, who I\u2019d kind of had a crush on and who was always there for me but as a friend, but when you\u2019re sitting in a cell all day every day your thoughts go round and round like a carousel of insanity and I started to obsess, which together with my newly acquired jailhouse paranoia made me do some strange things and push her away. I was still thinking about her, nearly two years on, when I fell asleep on a beach in Colombia and spent the next few days looking like a strawberry.<\/p>\n That, said Isabella, is what we are gonna work on.<\/p>\n Ceremony #1<\/strong><\/p>\n A few hours later and it was after dark. We were all sat in a circle in the maloca<\/a> while Tommy blew smoke around the hut like an Orthodox priest. I\u2019m not quite sure what the purpose of this was, but it added to the ambience. Anyways, we all sit there while Isabella and Wheeler call us over one by one. When it\u2019s my turn to receive the medicine, as it is called here, I get up and walk over to the shamans. Angelina pours me a mixture of reddish-brown sludge into a shot glass from an old Cola bottle.<\/p>\n Do I really wanna go through with this? Since my acid trip ended up with me curled up in the fetal position and speaking in tongues, I can\u2019t really say it was a fun night. Then again, I paid good money to be here and to pussy out now would be kind of lame. Fuck it, time to drink the Kool-Aid.<\/p>\n The shot tastes terrible but I still manage to get the whole thing down my throat. I was the last to go, so once I took my seat, out went the candles. We were now in complete darkness. Silence. Then the sounds of the jungle fill my ears. Frogs, snakes, birds, monkeys . . .<\/p>\n Nothing yet. Oh wait, here it is. I can make something out through the little light that gets through the windows. It\u2019s a spider, a giant spider. The window frames on the maloca have become its legs and it\u2019s crawling around, just minding its own business. I look up and there\u2019s some kinda frog or lizard hanging from the ceiling, staring down at me. Heh, I\u2019m tripping, and it\u2019s kind of funny. I look back to where the spider used to be and there\u2019s another huge frog. It\u2019s beckoning me to come with it as it gets on a raft and starts paddling down the river. What I see next can only be described as an infinite, never-ending kaleidoscope of impossible shapes and colors, before plunging back into total darkness.<\/p>\n I start to panic. My heart\u2019s racing and I\u2019m sweating like a priest in a maternity ward. While ayahuasca\u2019s not usually dangerous by itself, it can be with a heart condition or in combination with antidepressants or with something called to\u00e9, which can make your trip even more insane. I flash my flashlight to signal to Sasha.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s going on, where am I?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter where you are. Let go, surrender to it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t feel so good.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo you wanna take a shower? It might help.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes. Shower . . . \u201d<\/p>\n Sasha takes my hand and leads me to the shower, which bathes me in rainbow as I bounce between the walls. This trip has the dubious distinction of having the weirdest shower I\u2019ve ever taken, and I\u2019ve showered in prison.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere am I?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re in the shower!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes! I\u2019m in the shower. What\u2019s going on?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou drank some ayahuasca, remember?\u201d<\/p>\n Oh yeah.<\/p>\n \u201cHave I been here for a long time?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAbout five minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n It seemed like I\u2019d always been in the shower, like Jack Torrance at the Overlook Hotel. Good thing I wore trunks.<\/p>\n \u201cIs it gonna be like this for long?\u201d I ask Sasha.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just beginning!\u201d she laughs.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n![\"Niko](\"https:\/\/www.theexpeditioner.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Niko-Vorobjov.jpg\" "\\"Niko")
Born in Leningrad in the dying days of the Soviet Union, Niko\u2019s family emigrated to Italy and the United States before settling in Great Britain where he went from behind the Iron Curtain to behind bars, serving a prison sentence for selling drugs at university where he was studying for a degree in history and, ironically, criminology. Writing letters to the outside gave him the inspiration to take this hobby up further and he now works as a freelance writer, mainly helping students cheat on their homework but also putting out pieces for sites like Salon<\/em> and the Influence<\/em> based on his experiences of crime and drugs.