¡Jahakatu a Paraguay!: I Tried to Get High

I tried to get high in the Amazon jungle. More specifically, I tried to acid trip on
ayahuasca. Ayahuasca, or “soul vine,” is a medicine used by the people of the
Amazonia. Its main ingredient is the ayahuasca vine, but it also consists of the barks of several other trees including capirona (firewood tree), catahua, lupuna (kapok tree), uchú sanango, and the leaves of chacruna. Amazonian people believe that illnesses are caused by negative energy in the spirit world such as el mal ojo (“the evil eye”) and brujería (witchcraft or spells). Ayahuasca is not your typical Western medicine. People visit a curandero (healer) who prepares and then administers the medicine during a special night ceremony. Often they ask him to find the causes of illnesses while under the influence of the drug. Everyone drinks the pungent brew. It causes la purga (“the purge”), a physical cleansing, in other words, vomiting and often diarrhea. Then they start hallucinating and seeing visions. They see psychadelic colors, the kind that you associate with the ’70s and LSD. Many people use ayahuasca for the visions, to discover truths about themselves. They see past lives and replay sins committed in their current lives. They travel with animals, visit distant friends and relatives, and hear voices. I wanted to drink ayahuasca. I wanted visions.

First, my guide had to find a shaman. He came back with his 21 year-old neighbor.
Great, I was going to have a kid as my shaman. I was reassured when I learned that he
was the grandson of the great Julio Jerena, a renowned ayahuasca healer. The morning
of the ceremony, we went on a mission to collect the ingredients for the ayahuasca.
We used a machete to cut the bark from a capirona and other trees. My shaman looked
like the strong man at the circus as he scaled the thick ayahuasca vine with a machete in his mouth, searching for a good piece to cut. Once back the campsite, he put the ingredients in a large pot along with several gallons of water and placed them over the fire. As he worked, he sopla-d (blew) the mixture with mapacho (hand-rolled cigarette) smoke to ward off bad spirits and cleanse the pot of negative energy. After several hours, he strained the mixture using an old shirt. Then he set it back on the fire and let it boil again. Several hour later he repeated the procedure. At 4 PM, eight hours after he started, the mixture was ready. Out of 20 liters of water, only half a liter was left.

The ceremony began at 8 PM. The shaman chanted icaros (songs composed for the ceremony) over the ayahuasca and then passed us each ¼ cup. I only remember some of the words: “Buena medicina, buena medicina/ Legitima medicina/ Legitimo doctorcito…Dominando la ciencia oculta…Llamando a los espíritus/ Llamando a los demonios/ Mágica blanca, mágica verde, mágica roja, mágica negra” (“Good medicine, good medicine/ Legitimate medicine/ Legitimate little doctor…Dominating the occult science…Calling the spirits/ Calling the demons/ White magic, green magic, red magic, black magic.” He sure invited everyone to join in the ceremony! The man next to me drank and then gagged from the foul taste. I, on the other hand, had little trouble swallowing my portion. The shaman drank, turned off the lights, and we waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing. No lights, no colors, just pitch black.

As I stared into the darkness, I began to imagine that the lighter spaces where the sky showed in between the trees were a jaguar’s eyes staring at me. They began to spin. They turned into three diamonds and spun back and forth like a screensaver. I knew it wasn’t the ayahuasca, it was just my mind playing tricks on me out of the pure boredom of staring into blackness for too long. I kept on closing my eyes, hoping that when I opened them my world would explode into bright colors. I hoped for yellows and greens, maybe oranges and reds.

Two hours passed by. My world remained black other the occasional shooting star or exploding light. The shaman continued to sing his icaros and shake his shacapa (leaf-rattle). “Cristhian,” I whispered, “no veo nada” (“I don’t see anything”). “What is your name?” he asked me. “Pooja.” “Come here,” he said, beckoning me to the space in front of his feet. He shook his shacapa over my head and prayed for the spirits to give me clear visions, “Buena mariación/ Claros visions…” I returned to my seat and waited another 30 minutes. “Would you like to drink more?” he finally asked. Hell yeah. I wasn’t leaving until I saw something.

The second cup was much more vile than the first. I could barely keep it down. The urge to vomit came upon me so suddenly that I didn’t even make it off the porch. Reaching the railing, I threw up a second and third time. Of course, most of what I threw up was water because I hadn’t been allowed to touch food since breakfast. In my daze, I imagined that my bile was bright yellow, yellow like the salsa of papa a la huancaina. I lay back down. The world remained black.

At 11:30, the shaman lit a candle thus ending the ceremony. The man next to me, who had also drank, was pleasantly high. He was singing. I was not a little disappointed. As I stumbled off the porch and to my room, I felt drunk (at least what I can imagine being drunk feels like). I walked as if I’d put on the beer goggles from my tenth-grade drivers’ education class. I continued to feel sick to my stomach and visualized brief explosions of light, it took me an hour to fall asleep.

Neither the shaman nor my guide’s parents spoke over breakfast the next morning, I assumed because they didn’t want to mention the previous night’s failure. I was only too happy to shovel beans and rice, fried plantains, avocado salad, oatmeal, and fruit salad into my mouth. No one said anything until my guide walked in, sat down, and commented, “Pooja es muy fuerte” (“Pooja is very strong”). He told me that he didn’t drink because “You didn’t last for five minutes with the sapo. I thought, ‘This [the ayahuasca] is going to get her good.” His father cut in saying that on some people, who are far and few between, ayahuasca has no effect. However, some of those people, the sapo nearly kills them. “Tienes un espiritú raro,” (“You have a rare spirit”) he remarked. It could’ve also been because it was first time. The second time could be different. I don’t know whether I’ll ever have the chance to try ayahuasca again, but I honestly would like to. I want to see yellows and greens.

The ayahuasca vine