I hope you enjoyed reading about night 1. The following content is what I wrote in my journal the morning after ceremony 2. For those that might be new here, this is as unedited as possible from when I originally wrote it in order for you to understand what I was really going through at the time. Anything that’s italicized while still in the journal entry was added by me after the fact. Enjoy!

Beginning of Journal Entry

Jesus fucking christ. This is some powerful shit. To be honest, with all of the psychedelics I’ve done and the fact that I’ve been going to therapy since the beginning of this year, I really thought I had my shit together and didn’t have anything crazy deep to work on. Boy was I fucking wrong.

Last night I made the intention to let Mother Aya show me what she needs to show me again. I was given about half a shot of ayahuasca to start. My stomach started to rumble pretty quickly and I felt the medicine “working” even though I now realize I have no idea what the fuck that truly means. She works in mysterious ways. 

I started yawning, which is actually another form of purging, and I would occasionally get kind of hot and kept having to fart. I was definitely worried that my purging was going to be shitting which I really didn’t want to be the case. The pain in my stomach kept getting worse and I was becoming restless. I could hear others purging around me already and I just wanted her out of me. I was NOT having fun.

I went to the bathroom to try to shit. Nothing would come out. I came out of the bathroom and went back to my mattress. I was laying down and tossing and turning and just wanted this bitch out of me. Stace came over to ask how I was doing and I told him I was just trying to purge, but couldn’t. Besides that, I wasn’t tripping at all. He gave me another dose of what looked like a half-shot again to see if that would help. 

I started to feel a little sick like I was finally going to throw up, but still fucking nothing. I was feeling kind of pissed at this point, but would also start laughing a little because of the irony of the situation. Something was clearly wrong, but I just didn’t know what. 

I went back outside and was feeling a bit heavy and overall out of it. Drew, another one of the facilitators, asked me how I was doing. I responded with, “Not well. Mother Aya is kicking my ass and not letting me purge.” He told me to think about that statement. And by that he meant to think about what I could be holding inside of me that wants to come out, but can’t. Turns out I’m quite a stubborn nut to crack. What came out of that conversation was to stop framing the question as something I needed Mother Aya to show me. I needed to start thinking of the problem as something I had to show myself. I still couldn’t purge, but fuck it, this seemed like the right place to start solving the problem. 

Stace then came over to me to talk as well. I was still outside the maloca at this point leaning over the railing of the walkway and feeling miserable. I felt fucking defeated. He gave me a mapacho and told me to try swallowing the smoke into my stomach to see if that’ll force me to purge. It was painful and just made me feel sick and uncomfortable, but still no purging. I mentioned to Stace that I was feeling uncomfortable and he told me to ask myself what I think I could be holding inside of me that makes me uncomfortable. He said that rather than trying to fight the discomfort and get it out of me, I should maybe try to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Another clue.

With that piece of advice I went back into the maloca and layed back on my mattress. The guy on the mattress next to me asked if I finally purged, and I just sighed a defeated, “No.” I started to focus on the discomfort in my stomach with the intention to really understand it. I kept listing off different emotions and feelings. It honestly felt like I was just throwing darts at a board… I had no idea where this discomfort was coming from.

I began thinking about my childhood to see if I could dig up any forgotten or unresolved traumas. As I was thinking through these, the emotions of shame and guilt started to come up. No specific events or memories that made me feel ashamed or guilty, but just those general emotions. My stomach started feeling a bit better and some of the discomfort eased up. I kept thinking about the emotions of shame and guilt and really tried to get comfortable with them and feel them deeply. 

I was laying down and thinking about every memory I possibly could that made me feel ashamed or guilty for maybe 30 minutes, but it could’ve been longer. It felt like forever. It felt like I had to pee at this point so I got up to go to the bathroom. I was moving slowly and felt heavy. I sat down to pee and my stomach started rumbling. Then… Boom. I started shitting my brains out.

It felt so fucking good. I was on the toilet for maybe 10 minutes at this point, but I could feel that I wasn’t done. I focused more and more on shame and guilt, and as I did that more and more shit started to come out of me. Then I started feeling nauseous like I was going to throw up too. While still shitting my brains out, I grabbed the bucket next to me to prepare in case I threw up. I got queasier and queasier and kept focusing on shame and guilt until I finally started to throw up as well. Sweet relief. I then started sweating profusely at this point… Probably another form of purging.

So there I was, shitting, throwing up, and drenched in sweat all at the same time. What a fucking hilarious scene. As I was wrapping everything up, I thought to myself that purging all of that out of me was me being able to finally forgive myself for holding onto all of that shame and guilt for just no fucking reason.

As I just wrote that previous sentence in my journal, I quite literally burst into tears (I also just started crying again as I’m rewriting this on the blog). I felt that self-forgiveness again in an incredible way. I’m so fucking hard on myself for no reason at all. It’s like I hold myself to this impossible standard that no human could possibly meet. A standard I hold literally nobody else too, yet for some reason I feel this need to be so much harder on myself. Not only was I forgiving myself, but I was finally allowing myself to have some grace. 

I didn’t cry at all last night during the ceremony, but crying in this moment feels like I truly understand now just how important this lesson is. I have the choice to allow myself to be free and to just be fucking human. That’s all I am at the end of the day. I understand on a very deep level what it means now to treat myself with the love and grace that I deserve. 

I came out of the bathroom with a big smile on my face. It felt like the weight of the world was off my shoulders. Drew asked me if Mother Aya was still kicking my ass. I chuckled and told him she finally let me have a break. Drew looked at me and said something like, “Maybe she was never kicking your ass in the first place; it was you kicking your own ass.” Truer words have never been spoken. I’m crying again thinking about how beautiful that moment was. 

I went back to my mattress and just layed there feeling good about the fact that I just did some deep, emotional work. I was hoping to start “tripping” at this point, but I just saw very faint colors and patterns in my eyelids to the point where I thought to myself I’m trying to imagine I’m tripping when I’m not. Then Drew brought me to Lydia for my limpieza, which is a cleansing ritual performed by the curanderos during the ceremony for each person. I could feel her energy very strongly around me and it felt like my senses were heightened, but I still wasn’t tripping. Just good energy. Shortly after that, the ceremony was over. I went outside the maloca to sit on the deck and then make myself some tea before going to bed after a long, strenuous night.

Now that I’ve written this down, this helped solidify the lesson of forgiving myself and showing myself some grace. There’s no need to be so hard on myself all the time. That just creates misery and suffering. I’ve been causing myself to suffer without even being aware of it, but that doesn’t serve me anymore. I finally understand what it truly means to love myself unconditionally. I can’t only love this version of myself my ego has created in my head. It means loving every part of myself down to what I might consider the very worst of me. Once again, I feel at peace.

End of Journal Entry

Even the morning after the ceremony when I wrote this entry, the concepts of self-forgiveness and grace were the only two takeaways I had from this night. I only now realize it was much deeper than that. When I started having an emotional release again as I was writing this on the blog, it occurred to me that self-forgiveness and grace are the tools that allow me to unconditionally love myself. It took me until this morning to truly understand that those tears I was shedding were actually the tears of unconditional self-love. I genuinely and intensely feel what unconditional self-love feels like in a way I’ve never felt before. This was my original intention before going on this entire journey, and I’m only now realizing it happened. Crazy shit.

The medicine continues to work even after the ceremony. This was something the facilitators made a pretty big point to us about. They said most of the work, in fact, is actually done outside of the ceremonies. The ceremonies might open the door, but it’s on you to continue to integrate afterwards. I now understand how important that integration process is. Without taking time to integrate, I don’t think these lessons will stick. I don’t quite know what that process fully looks like or how long it might take, but I know I can’t just dive directly back into normal life without taking some time to focus on myself first. 

As you can maybe tell, I’m still connecting dots and uncovering themes from my ceremonies weeks after they happened. I have a feeling this is going to be a longer process than I originally thought, but I’m ready and excited to do that work. I read this quote by Lana Pribic today that said, “True Integration is not about making changes to your external reality; it’s when your external reality changes as a result of solidified inner shifts.” I think this quote sums up the process perfectly.

This night was by far the most intense and meaningful night of the trip for me. Both the actual events of the night and how they unfolded, as well as the overall lesson still gives me goosebumps. It also made me realize that ayahuasca is not just a drug you take to get high and trip balls, this shit is WORK. I was genuinely suffering and in pain for about 4 hours during this night before I finally figured out what the fuck was going on. The release of those emotions at the end of the night was fucking intense. The release of emotions the morning after I would argue was even more intense. Ayahuasca is not something you should do if you are not prepared to do some deep work on yourself.

Hope you enjoyed reading about my experience. As always, if you have any thoughts or comments please feel free to DM me or comment below. Can’t wait to write about ceremony night 3!