My name is Alejandro and this is my experience going to an Ayahuasca retreat with my cousin and how I know there’s a far better option for people with depression/anxiety than commercial antidepressants and all those big-pharma medications.
Ayahuasca (pronounced: eye-ah WAH-ska) for those who don’t know is plant-based psychedelic, it affects all senses, altering a person’s thinking, sense of time and emotions, it also can cause a person to hallucinate; that’s seeing or hearing things (more on that later).
The first time I heard of this was from a very spiritual friend who told me about her experienced after she read my tarot cards and the main reason I was attracted to all this was because ayahuasca is supposed to help people with depression, anxiety and at that time me being embarrassedly fired, broken up with my former girlfriend, emotionally exhausted from my idiot boss and long hours of unpaid work, it sounded like a great idea.
So, thanks to Facebook who is listening to my conversations all time soon enough I get an ad about an Ayahuasca retreat happening three hours away from my town, excited I tell my cousin about it and his response being “hell yeah, sounds like an adventure. Let’s go!” but while browsing this Facebook page I just find stock images of white folks in a circle, who knows where. I live in the northern part of Mexico and this immediately seems sketchy. My worries did nothing to change my cousin’s mind. The day finally comes. We get there an hour early to do some recon then later we find ourselves inside this nice lady´s beautiful house and she takes us to the kitchen to meet our shaman for the night.
Before we started the ritual he gave us a talk about his experiences in doing this kinds of ritual, how it had impacted peoples life, he also explained that the ayahuasca brew he brought for us didn’t have any kinds of hallucinogens because he wasn’t interested in us seeing things his main goal was for us to begin to heal from emotional and physical trauma.
He explained that what the ayahuasca brew does is to elevate our frequencies and our state of mind to be able to receive messages from the universe or god or “abuela” (grand-mother) theses messages are relayed to us by angels, which are not the angels depicted in religion as winged humans but energies that serve as a bridge for our connection to the universe or god or grand-mother. The emotional healing starts when you let yourself give in to effects of this brew -he explained. Then the universe is going to make you face whatever you’re been suppressing, hiding from yourself and/or ignoring. He gave us and example of this by telling us a story about this time in a retreat near Mexico city a young man was lying just like every one else then he started to have a panic attack the shaman’s helpers took him to the bathroom and asked what he was experiencing , the only thing he could say was “I killed her! I raped her then I killed her and I can still feel her blood on me” The shaman approached this young man and said that you have to ask the girl he did this too for forgiveness and he did, got on his knees and beg her for forgiveness.
The shaman explained that another thing we have to be able to let ourselves cry through this process of healing if we don’t then we would get the urge to throw up and if we fight the urge to throw up then we would get real bad diarrhea. As I laid there covered in my sleeping bag, I start feel myself being elevated and I start to hear in this tribal music the had played for the night very specific messages regarding my problems. I started to hear “its ok if you’re not perfect” “forgive yourself for this” “You are good enough“ and I started to give in more, I started crying for who knows how long. I asked god for forgiveness because back then I was very cynical about the divine. Then my hands started to get real warm which later it was explained to me that my gift was that of a healer which I thought that is kind of cool. After everyone came out of the effects, we had dinner and for the first time in many long years I felt peace. I felt calm, I was sitting in a table with these people and not once I felt like I was supposed to be somewhere, I just felt happy being in the moment.
Some people are able to see past lives and some are able to see visions of the future and things that happened in the past like the story of the girl who had a very distant relationship with her mother; she never got any kind of affection from her. Then a vision was shown to her that her mother was raped by her husbands best friend and in result got pregnant. The mother never told anyone about it and had her anyways but she couldn’t find love with her unwanted child. Then this girl went to see her mother and told her she knew about what had happened, astounded the mother confessed everything that helped both start to heal.
Other people have healed or got better even from physical ailments such as heart cancer related illnesses and addictions. Personally, I had a flu that completely disappeared but don’t take my word for it I don’t want to spread misinformation about alternative medical treatments.
I do encourage people to seek out this kind of experience and judge for themselves. I’m really thankful I got to. That day I learned that there is a spiritual side of me that I should not neglect.
Author: Alejandro
Disclaimer: This is Alejandro's story. The All Is One Movement does not advise to consume or not consume psychedelics. What you consume or get inspired to do from this article is entirely up to you.
