Updated 2 years ago

This was a very early article on ayahuasca.
By KIRA SALAK
New York Times
Published: September 12, 2004
Here’s the truth: I have traveled more than 4,000 miles to the middle of the Peruvian Amazon to be ”cured” by shamans. It’s nighttime. The riverboat I’m on plies dark waters, the jungle thick on either side, emitting loud reptilian sounds that drone on like police sirens. I see no lights, no villages anywhere.
My companions are Kevin, a pan-flute maker from Canada; Wendy, an acupuncturist and energetic healer from Massachusetts, and her husband, Joe, a burly carpenter who wants nothing to do with us or shamanism, who has said upward of five words so far and who busily reads ”Chomsky on MisEducation” as the jungle slides by.
Hamilton Souther, our shamanic guide, sits with long, burnished legs on the guardrail of the boat. ”Our greatest fear is the fear of death,” he’s telling us. ”During the ayahuasca ceremony, you’ll be taken to the edge of that fear, taught to surrender to it, release it.” He has the classic good looks of a ”Baywatch” actor. Hamilton is 26 years old, a native of California who has practiced shamanism for several years. His company, Blue Morpho Tours, features a ”shamanic healing center” in a remote area of the Amazon. Listening to him is like listening to the newest Castaneda. He talks constantly about spirit friends and alternative realms of reality.
I discovered Blue Morpho Tours while investigating the huge variety of New Age trips offered on the Web, many stressing shamanism in various cultures as a means of reaching spiritual ”transformation.” Skeptical but curious, I wondered what that meant, and how it worked. Not quite sure what to expect, I signed up for the trip.
Our boat ride will take 14 hours from the Peruvian town of Iquitos, followed by another river journey to reach our destination. On the deck below, passengers’ hammocks crowd together like rows of cocoons, bodies swinging and bumping into one another, frenetic guitar music rupturing the mosquito-filled night.
It’s midday. We’re all in a dugout, heading up a narrow river into the depth of the jungle. Giant butterflies with wings of blue satin fly sluggishly over the water. Nests of parakeets let off raucous squawks, rivaling the boat’s motor. The sun and its sticky heat burrows into my skin, exhausting me.
In our boat are two local shamans we picked up this morning from the tiny river town of Genaro Herrerra. Don Julio, 86, is widely considered by locals to be one the greatest living shamans in the Amazon; his only baggage consists of a small woven pouch full of mapacho (sacred tobacco) cigars, which Peruvian shamans smoke to secure the favor of spirits. The second shaman, Don Alberto, 46, Hamilton’s current shamanic mentor, rests on the gunwale and winces at the sun-dappled waters.
The sun vies with the clouds; large flies land painlessly on me, swelled with blood before I notice them. Joe has stuck the Chomsky book, now dog-eared and smudged, in the back of his jeans. His wife, Wendy, on this trip in part to try to improve her energetic healing abilities, has her camcorder out, recording our journey up the river. Kevin, who said he chose to go on this tour to ”hopefully release issues,” sits silently beside me. He is middle-aged, shy, unmarried. I tell Hamilton about the inexplicable daily migraines that started in just the past year and how they leave me temporarily blind in one eye.
The motor is killed. We pass through a swamplike area of low branches into a small lagoon. High on a nearby slope sits Hamilton’s healing center: a large hut made of rain-forest planks and palm-leaf thatch, with the jungle imposing on all sides. A single family acts as caretakers. Hamilton introduces us to their youngest girl, Carlita, only 5, a budding shaman who already knows the sacred icaros, or shamanic power songs. Carrying a Barbie purse around her arm, she gives us all a deep, penetrating stare that unhinges me.
Shamans don’t cut down medicinal plants in the jungle without first asking the spirits’ permission and giving thanks. Victor, our jungle guide, teaches us about this as he takes our group on an afternoon trek, stopping abruptly before a fresh skeleton on the ground.
”Bushmaster,” Victor says, beaming like a proud father.
The bushmaster is the largest venomous snake in the New World. Victor has also introduced us to a large wasp whose venom kills tarantulas and incapacitates humans. And now, overhead, he taps his machete against a vine that, if severed, he says, will leak a fluid that easily burns through human flesh.
These are only a few of the dry-ground threats, which don’t include the fare of the waterways: piranhas, electric eels, alligators It’s a shaman’s paradise, shot full of formidable creatures and the spirits that command them.
I return to the hut with another of my migraines. Kevin
and I decide to attend Hamilton’s energetic healing class, Hamilton taking us on a guided visualization. The idea, he explains, is to feel connected to the earth’s center and the universe. ”See yourself heading to the stars,” he says. ”Tell me when you see the planet Mercury.”
It’s hard to concentrate. Joe has been lecturing Victor on the uncanny similarities between George W. Bush and Genghis Khan.
”Thank the emerald light for taking you to the golden arc of the sun and the eternal flame,” Hamilton is saying.
I’m starting to hope that I’m not stranded in the middle of the Amazon with a bunch of lunatics. Little Carlita sits nearby, staring at us from the crook of a rocking chair. She takes slow puffs from a shaman’s cigar, her eyes narrow, face expressionless.
Last night, Kevin, Wendy and I met in the hut to participate in the first of our three shamanic ceremonies. We drank the ”sacred visionary medicine” called ayahuasca, which had been prepared by Don Alberto earlier that day. Perhaps because it had been burned accidentally, we felt nothing.
Today, a new batch is being prepared, and tonight’s ceremony promises to give us a real shamanic experience — whatever that will entail. Anxiety settles in my gut. ”Ayahuasca” itself is the name of a jungle vine, but the word is used as shorthand for a concoction of boiled plant essences that, when drunk, allow for — as Hamilton puts it — ”journeys into the realm of spirit.”
Our group joins Don Alberto in collecting and preparing the fixings for the special brew. Any would-be Peruvian shaman must master an extensive knowledge of Amazonian plant species, each of which, the shamans believe, has a spirit that contributes protection or guidance to the ceremony. Don Alberto puts several different ingredients into a large cooking pot to be repeatedly boiled for the next several hours: pieces of tree bark, crushed ayahuasca and fresh, green chacruna leaves.
”Once you take ayahausca, you can meet any spirit you’d like — deceased loved ones, guardian angels, power animals,” Hamilton tells us seriously. ”Just call upon them, and they’ll come.”
”I’ve always wanted to meet Walt Whitman,” I muse out loud.
The hour arrives — 9 p.m. Having fasted for seven hours, Kevin, Wendy and I take our seats in the middle of the hut. We each get a plastic bucket and a roll of toilet paper for wiping our faces. Shamans believe that the inevitable vomiting — ”purging” — caused by the ayahuasca mixture is a physical manifestation of negative energy being dispelled from the body. The more disgorged, the better.
Hamilton, Don Alberto and the ancient Don Julio sit before us, lighting their cigars. When they yawn, which is frequently, they make undulating sounds like horses neighing. Don Alberto blows tobacco smoke into the bottle of thick, brown ayahuasca, then whistles under his breath. Spirits, Hamilton says, are now filling the hut. All manner of wholesome, positive spirits. Don Alberto begins pouring out cups of ayahuasca, blessing our serving before we drink; the ayahuasca has the taste and consistency of Bailey’s Irish Cream. The shamans are last to drink.
I wait. Ten minutes. Twenty. It looks as if the rafters of the hut are swaying. Someone extinguishes the kerosene lamp and there’s complete darkness. The shamans start shaking their shacapas, leaf rattles, and singing loudly. I lie down, eyes closed, a pleasant vibration coursing through my body to the beat of the shamans’ songs.
A piercing scream tears through the hut. I hear violent gurgling and retching. ”Hamilton!” Wendy yells. ”Get this out of my head! Make it stop!”
Hamilton stops singing for a moment. ”Wendy,” he says soothingly, ”that’s just your fear speaking. Ask God to take your fear away.”
Now Kevin lets out a loud wail. ”Oh, God! Help me! No! No!” He throws up, and I hear the loud, mysterious plop of something large landing in the bucket.
The shamans get up to perform healing songs over Kevin and Wendy, who are vomiting now. ”Don’t resist,” Hamilton tells them. ”Surrender to your fear. Surrender. Let it all out.” He comes over to me. ”The spirits tell me that your migraines are caused by worry energy trapped in your head. I’m going to take that energy out for you now.” He puts his lips to my temple, sucking hard several times and spitting the unsavory energy over his shoulder.
I start to see geometric patterns. Colorful realms. Shapes and forms coalesce into an endless stream of beauty and perfection. An old man in a white robe walks toward me, smiling. He greets me with a long hug, kissing the top of my head. Walt Whitman!
Wendy and Kevin’s desperate bellows retreat into distant space. The visions end. I feel an awful, painful ball of nausea in my gut and vomit prodigiously into the bucket.
Kevin has stopped screaming and sobs now. ”I see angels,” he chimes. ”It’s so beautiful.”
The shamans fall silent. Don Julio announces that he’s called back the spirits and ended the ceremony early because the forces were too strong for Wendy and Kevin. A light goes on. I open my eyes to see Hamilton holding Kevin in his arms like a small child. ”You’re back,” he’s cooing to him. ”Welcome back.”
Kevin looks around him in wonder, smiling. ”I’ve never been so happy,”
he says.
We all received a day of downtime after the ceremony. Wendy had met me outside the hut, crying and distraught, and I didn’t know what to do for her. Hamilton assured us that she’d soon feel better, that she was still ”resisting the experience.” Luckily, Victor had taken her and Joe to see some pink dolphins, which seemed to calm her. Ignoring her protestations, Kevin and I went ahead with our final scheduled ayahuasca ceremony on the last night; we both had little vomiting and our visions were pleasant ones.
It’s almost the end of the trip. Wendy sits before Don Julio and Don Alberto, reading their palms. Joe passes me a bumper sticker: ”Bush Lies — Who Dies?” I catch Kevin smiling. He initiates a conversation with me for the first time, and takes out his pan flute to serenade us.
”How are you feeling today?” he asks me.
I try to be scientific about it. My migraines are completely gone, I tell him. I’m enjoying a bizarre, inexplicable feeling of happiness and peace that actually transcends my usual writer’s angst.
The others leave. A few days later, on my own overnight journey back to Iquitos, I lie beside Hamilton on the roof of the riverboat and discuss what has happened. ”O.K.,” I say, ”so how do I know if any of this was real?”
He chuckles knowingly, putting his hands behind his head and staring up at stars so bright that they burn afterimages on my retinas. ”It doesn’t matter if you think it’s real or not,” he says, ”just as long as it works.”
INFORMATION: www.bluemorphotours.com; river journeys cost $100 a person a day, $85 if part of a group.
Kira Salak is the author of ”The Cruelest Journey: Six Hundred Miles to Timbuktu,” forthcoming from the National Geographic Society.
