I know that psychedelic experiences are ineffable by their very nature, so I won’t mince words: My fourth ayahuasca ceremony was the single-most healing moment of my life... forcing me to confront, the darkest depths of my psyche: the root of my suicidal ideations and depression.

The settings and culture of the ayahuasca tourism industry are very different, nigh unrecognizable, from Indigenous ayahuasca traditions… The modern ayahuasca scene in Peru and elsewhere around the globe, is but a puppet, dressed in ceremonial garb to give the impression of authenticity…

While ayahuasca has become quite popular in the U.S. and the rest of the industrialized West, I realize many people don’t actually know what it is or what it does. So today, I want to elucidate some of the mystique surrounding this powerful medicine from the Amazon jungle.

As I pray, I can feel the acidic sludge churning in my stomach, like a snake, writhing it’s way down, deeper and deeper into my intestines… Unexpectedly, and without the consultation of my rational mind, my prayer morphs into a new intention:

Please Mother Ayahuasca, help me heal my gut.

Later in the evening, I would learn exactly why this shift occurred.

Integration is the single-most important—and most frequently bypassed—aspect of psychedelic therapy. It is most often thought of as a period of processing after a psychedelic journey… And it is. But I believe integration begins before the psychedelic experience itself.

In the following post I will take a look ‘under the hood’ of my own biology, and demonstrate how a complex web of interactions began undermining my mental and physical wellbeing.

This is especially important to remember as we step into this moment of global transformation. “Sorry” represents the past, the events that got us here, to a global pandemic, systemic racism, police brutality, oceans full of plastic, the loss of a species every twenty minutes, and utterly ineffectual leadership. Now is not the time for sorry. Now is the time for action and change.

The truth is, nothing “died inside of me.” No, on the contrary, something was very, very alive. A thriving colony of dysbiotic bacteria, feasting on and mis-digesting my food intake, themselves belching sulphorous, malodorous gases that caused intense discomfort inside me.

In my efforts to heal from depression, suicidal ideations, and IBS, I no longer feel I am in a battle against these afflictions, but rather on a path away from them, and toward something else entirely: wholeness... My inward journey, and specifically the experience of ego dissolution, completely changed my relationship to the world...

In this moment, fully immersed in its presence, I wanted nothing. For the first time in my life, I felt completely accepted for who I was… All of my worries, anxieties, ambitions, needs simply melted away, and I became one with the light.

Unresolved trauma runs us, on a subconscious level — like malware running in the background of our central processing unit — subtly (or not so subtly) influencing every decision we make, every reaction to stimuli, and yes, even our thoughts, beliefs, and actions.