How I Processed my Traumatic Ayahuasca Experiences
Regulate and Integrate to Allow for the New
Trigger Warning: The information provided in this post is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a replacement for professional medical or therapeutic support. The below information may not apply to everyone, through no fault of their own, but hopefully it adds value to those who find it relevant. If you are in the midst of processing a traumatic psychedelic experience, this may bring up unresolved conflicts. If do-able, reading bits and pieces with regulating activities in between may facilitate your experience.
In 2021, I went through six ayahuasca ceremonies in the Sacred Valley of Peru. The original plan was to do a five-ceremony retreat in April, and another five-ceremony retreat in October. By the first ceremony of the second retreat (ceremony #6), that entire plan combusted and I ran back to the U.S. feeling ripped into a thousand pieces. I learned the necessity of patience and integration in an existentially shattering manner that would send me on a two year journey of piecing myself back together.
Looking back, I can’t believe I even got through every ceremony on the first retreat. There were some moments of beauty, however, the overall experience was 90% terror and incomplete exorcisms. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was already dealing with PTSD symptoms immediately after the retreat. Certain stimuli were coupled together; like a dog’s bark would send a wave of fear through me, reminding my nervous system of the stray dogs in Peru barking in the distance as I endured the most terrifying experiences of my life. Or a fear of the dark, coupled with a fear of the unknown. At the time, not knowing much about trauma or the nervous system, I just figured these were fears that were “part of the process” and I needed to “get through it.”
When I went to Peru for the second time, it was as if the medicine was like, “You shouldn’t be back here and I’m going to make sure you don’t come back for a long time, if ever.” That sixth ceremony was no doubt the most brutal experience of my conscious life. It felt like I spent hours in a demonic joker, carnival-themed realm with entities spiritually violating and possessing me to a point of giving up into perceived death. At one point, in the midst of exorcism chaos, I received a visceral message telling me, “This is not safe, this is not a game, don’t come back here.” After that ceremony, I knew I had gone too far.
It also came to light that the person running the ceremonies had ill intentions, was not equipped to properly facilitate, was abusive (a whole other post in itself), and was driven by power and greed. All a recipe for disaster.
The Sacred Valley in Peru
Coming Home Broken
The day after the sixth ceremony, I could feel something was off. I had what I can only describe as continuous terror energy streaming out of my body. I felt like I was partly out of my body and was having paranoid thoughts of all sorts, especially ones about whether or not evil entities were attached to me. I just wanted the safety of home. I cancelled the rest of my stay in Peru, changed my flight, and headed home to join the stories of thousands of other Westerners who bit off more than they could chew.
When I arrived home, my body knew it was in its safe space. The trauma processing started to occur and I didn’t know what to make of it. I felt like I carried this cloud of overwhelming “darkness” rooted in a deep terror that something, somehow, was wrong. Out of a sense of desperation, and utilizing the tools I knew, I tried microdosing psilocybin again, as this was something that always gave me a sense of lightness and joy. However, that was not the case anymore. Once the microdose kicked in, I felt an immense energy and thoughtform of wanting to end my life, and that the only way “out” was to rid myself of existence. It was very scary and I didn’t know how to make sense of it. I was scared my mind/this part of me/or even worse…a demon! (said sarcastically - I will touch on this soon)…would win and convince me that this was the only way. This is when I truly knew things were going to be different moving forward.
For the next few months, I endured a true dark night of the soul. My mind-body system took me for a ride through dissociation, rage, that “darkness”, intrusive thoughts that felt like my inner critic was given a megaphone, waves of terror, squirming bodily movements, fear of the dark, and a fear of falling asleep due to terrifying hypnogogic states and nightmares. I can vividly remember as each day turned to night, I would feel an impending doom and desperately wish the sun could stay up forever. It felt like my consciousness was trying to escape my body, except it had no choice but to feel every aspect of my shadow. It was as if my mind was out to destroy me. I was terrified that I was permanently going crazy. In the beginning, these psychosis-like states would encompass the majority of my existence for a couple weeks to a month at a time.
The most excruciating part was the perceptions from my mind in its effort to make sense of what was going on, and the most difficult story it kept producing was the constant question of “Is this permanent? Am I forever broken?” When that thought felt very convincing, hope would cease and I would start having really scary thoughts questioning why I would even choose to continue in this reality.
On top of all of this was feeling the grief and shame of what I had put myself through. I was grieving the life I may have lost by going crazy. And feeling the shame for having “failed” at healing and forcing myself through such horrifying experiences. Who could I have been if I never drank ayahuasca? How could I have done this to myself? Why did others have amazing healing experiences, but I feel permanently damaged?
Where it all went down
What did not Help me Process my Trauma:
I would first like to state that what did not work for me, may work for others. Everyone’s journey is different in processing an experience like this. I can truly only speak for what has worked for me, as well as reflect on what’s been helpful for clients.
At first, I tried approaching my experience with the tools I already knew: talk therapy, psychedelics, breathwork, and force:
Talk Therapy - I had a wonderful talk therapist who had helped me a ton in my journey before ayahuasca. However, he just could not relate to the world of disorientation from psychedelics that I found myself in. He was at least someone I could speak with, but I found I needed more specialized support. I needed someone and something that spoke to me on a deeper level.
Psychedelics - I only tried psilocybin after my experience. I quickly realized that even microdosing was way too much and would bring my shadow up in even greater intensity. My system couldn’t handle anymore of it and the self-annihilation thoughts and feelings were overwhelming. This was saddening, as microdosing used to be a tool that would bring a sense of joy to me, but it no longer aligned with my process.
Breathwork - I tried gentle Rebirthing Breathwork, but again, the ungrounding sensations it stirred up were too much.
Force - I first found relief from the rage/insanity feelings by trying to force it out. I would forcefully scream, shake, air-punch, and kick the rage out. I would feel some relief and a sense of regulation, but it was short-lived. Soon after the relief, my nervous system would just ping-pong back into activation that felt even more disorienting than before.
Something else I had to walk a fine line with:
The context of other people’s stories and opinions - Another thing I had to be weary of was the context in which other people relayed their traumatic stories or advice on psychedelics, especially ayahuasca. When I would ask for help on ayahuasca forums, I would typically be met with feedback that was rooted in a fear of black magic or demons and entity attachments. And typically, their solution was that I needed to do more medicine. That I needed to “go back in” with a proper facilitator. I realized there weren’t many places to talk about my issue that wouldn’t just send me deeper into a mental fear-spiral. In addition, some of the psychedelic forums can carry a message of “there are no bad trips” or “the medicine showed you what you needed to see,” which just further reaffirms a sense of hopelessness, shame, alienation, and disempowerment. And sure, yes, ayahuasca did its job. It did exactly what it was supposed to do; put my conscious awareness face-first into the depths of my total being, the pretty and the ugly. That still doesn’t mean it wasn’t way too much for my nervous system.
I began to feel hopeless, unsure of how to manage my symptoms. I was actually communicating with an ayahuasca facilitator near me, considering trying ayahuasca again in an effort to force what I thought was a demonic attachment out of my system. That’s where my mind, ignorance, and a lack of grounding support was leading me. Thankfully though, the facilitator told me about a friend of his who ended up in a similar situation as me and was able to process their experience with Somatic Experiencing. I will always be incredibly grateful for that man. I will never forget the relief I felt when I realized I didn’t have to do more plant medicine in order to heal. That there are modalities that offer a more gentle route.
Traumatic psychedelic experiences can leave us feeling mentally shattered, disembodied, and terrified
What did Help me Process:
The following was not chronological, but rather occurred at differing times over the course of my healing.
Taking on the Journey:
The Pact - In the beginning, I made a firm pact I would never give up on myself. Whatever that meant. I would always have my back no matter what. I definitely had to practice some “fake it ‘till you make it” here. But “I will never give up on myself” became a mantra for me when I was really in the thick of it.
Wellness Tracking - I bought a large paper calendar from a store near me and used it to track my days of “wellness"". I made notes on how I felt in the morning and at the end of each day. I also created a scoring system based on the intensity of dissociation, fear, rage, and intrusive thoughts I experienced each day. The less symptoms I experienced, and the better I felt, the higher the number for that day. I then tallied up the daily scores at the end of each month and would compare the total monthly score to the prior month’s. Each month the score got a little higher, or at worst stayed around the same as the prior month. This was crucial in allowing me to see the big picture of progress without getting lost in the daily minutiae of symptoms and hopeless thoughts. I have also found this to be really supportive for the clients who have taken on this strategy. Any sense of progress is important to track.
Integration:
Coaching - I met with a Psychedelic Integration Coach from Being True To You (the same organization I ended up getting my psychedelic coaching certification from). My coach’s hands-on experience with psychedelics provided me with comfort in navigating the experience. They also helped me make sense of the ceremonial content in a more grounded and less terrifying manner. I was invited to perceive it simply as a message, rather than an absolute truth, and was given practical tips in grounding myself.
Dream Work - My dreams may have been the most significant piece in helping me integrate and make sense of my suffering. I have always been connected with my dreams and their symbolism, however, after this experience, they were going haywire with very direct symbols and messaging. There was a clear message that I was dealing with the shadow of my inner baby from my pre- and perinatal trauma. It became as literal as having multiple dreams with a giant, angry baby attacking me. This helped take away a lot of the scary demon-entity-black-magic-I’m-going-crazy interpretations of my experience, and rather allowed me to simplify this as “Oh, I’m just feeling what my inner-baby felt when coming into this world.”
Relatable Stories - Finding more grounding experiences of others who had gone through similar situations. I actually found a story about a philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, who was believed to have gone through psychosis after a terrible mescaline experience that resurfaced his birth trauma. Finding that was crucial in helping me not feel alone.
Psychedelic Education - Reading the book Ayahuasca Wisdoms by Jules Henry Rivers, in particular, was very helpful in calming my fears and allowing me to understand what I had experienced in ayahuasca. Jules theorized that what traditional ayahuasca circles called demons, are actually self-actualized alter-egos that are born of our traumas and habitual thoughtforms. In the dramatic exorcism experience, they are essentially fighting to protect you from fully feeling the source of their creation (the trauma), because they will then “die”, since the only reason they were ever created was to protect you from that pain. However, through their protection they have become habitual patterns of suffering. The exorcisms I experienced in ayahuasca were just the medicine trying to show me the root of my suffering, and that part of me (inner baby) REALLY did not want to be felt, which is why they never processed to completion in ceremony. I don’t think I even had the capacity at that time to feel them to completion. I realized that all these different ways of healing are doing the same thing through different lenses. There is no universal Best way to heal. The best way is whichever method resonates most with an individual’s process. What Peter Levine (of Somatic Experiencing) calls Survival Energy, is what Richard Schwartz (of Internal Family Systems) calls a Part, is what a monk calls a thought, is what a shaman calls a demon. It’s all the same stuff, through a different medium.
Trauma Education - I began education myself on PTSD, trauma, and the nervous system. I had heard the word trauma before going through this experience, but had no idea what it was actually like to consciously experience it until now. I needed to gain insight into what professionals had spoken about it and how it can be healed.
Friends and Family - And of course, having a support network I could connect with was very helpful. And not even to connect with about the trauma, but to just be with at whatever capacity I had available to me.
Letting go of the Trauma:
Somatic Experiencing - This has, by far, been the most important tool in my journey. I found a great Somatic Practitioner that created a safe container for me to learn how to regulate my nervous system, resource, and grow my capacity to feel. I realized that my answer to healing was a gentle and nurturing path, rather than one of extremes. I didn’t need to force trauma out of me anymore. Everything I needed to process was already at the surface, and trying to force it out would just cause me to go deeper into psychosis. Instead, I needed to support myself in embodying safety and get out of my own way to allow my nervous system to mobilize the trauma energy within it. In addition to processing the trauma from ayahuasca itself, it became apparent that ayahuasca also brought the psyche of my inner baby directly to the surface. I was processing its trapped perceptions of terror, rage, grief, and shame. It made sense why I was constantly squirming and morphing my face and body in these unnerving ways after ayahuasca. I literally became the baby. I had no choice but to nurture the capacity for my mind-body system to feel these sensations fully in order to let them go. Almost all of my clients I work with that are processing a traumatic psychedelic experience are initially dealing with a dysregulated nervous system. We cannot have an ontological integration of big psychedelic experiences without nurturing ourselves back to safety.
Not Identifying with Thoughts - Realizing that the mind is just a meaning-making machine, and my thoughts are not the totality of who I am. I realized that when my nervous system would regulate, my thoughts would also become less intrusive and disturbing. This helped me in taking back the agency of my conscious experience.
Gathering Tools - I cultivated a go-to toolbox of exercises and activities that I could utilize to help regulate myself. I’ll never forget the first time I did an orientation exercise and feeling my system go from overwhelming fear to a regulated state. That’s when I knew there was something to this nervous system stuff.
All my tools of taking on the journey and integration helped me rebuild my worldview, however, the most vital addition to my healing journey was learning about trauma through a nervous system lens and implementing Somatic Experiencing. After ayahuasca, my window of tolerance had shrunk, and things that would not trigger me prior, could now send me down a spiral of PTSD symptoms. Somatic Experiencing helped me to realize that I was simply stuck in a state of survival after ayahuasca, as well as forced to process my original big trauma from birth.
I learned how to nurture safety into my nervous system so that I could grow my window of tolerance, build my capacity to feel, and bring the survival impulses from birth and ayahuasca to completion. Eventually, this allowed me to establish a primarily regulated existence feeling more like myself.
By embodying safety, we can reconnect to our authentic selves
So…what now?
Overall, it took me about 2 years to feel a sense of normalcy again. And what would I define as “normalcy”? For me, it was getting to a place where when my trauma symptoms came up, they didn’t hijack me into a spiral of hopeless doom. I had the capacity and resiliency to come back to regulation in a timely manner, and was confident that each trauma wave would pass. I felt like I had more agency in my being and that my nervous system was becoming more predictable and overall regulated. I was able to sleep in the dark, and embrace the day turning to night.
Nowadays, I can confidently say my nervous system is actually in a better place than before ayahuasca. For years, before any form of therapy, I was waking up in a state of freeze almost daily (before I even knew what that was). With the help of Somatic Experiencing, I was able to process enough of my birth trauma that I now rarely wake up in freeze.
My healing is definitely not finished, however, I am far more equipped to take on what needs to be felt. If a trauma wave comes up, I understand that I just need to feel and witness the rage, fear, shame, dissociation, intrusive thoughts, etc. associated with it, and know it will process, and I will come back to regulation. My role is to simply nourish myself through the process. These trauma waves are also far less common than what they were immediately after ayahuasca, and when they do occur, I know it’s primarily birth trauma processing at this point, and not the ayahuasca experience itself.
I may always wonder though: Would my experience have been different if I did smaller doses? What if I was in the presence of a well-equipped facilitator? Will I ever consume psychedelics again? Some of those questions can’t be answered, or it may just not be the time to know, and that’s okay.
Reflections
Everyone’s timeline is different. I’ve read testimonials of it taking people anywhere from a few months to multiple years to process their traumatic psychedelic experience. And these reactions can occur with all sorts of psychedelics, such as Psilocybin, MDMA, LSD, Ketamine, and 5-MeO-DMT. What matters most in healing is accessing the tools, support, and education that align best for a specific individual, and trusting the process.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much research available on what can predict whether or not someone will have a challenging experience with extended symptoms. However, we can do certain things to mitigate risk; such as proper set and setting, titrating with smaller doses, and maybe trying more controllable practices beforehand to see how we handle altered states of consciousness (e.g. breathwork or meditation).
Having seen a consistent theme of a dysregulated nervous system after these experiences, my initial goal with clients is to help them regulate. And as they do, we find that a lot of the existential conflicts carried with these harrowing experiences tend to not feel so big. They can turn into manageable, bite-sized wonderments that can be addressed in a nurturing, philosophical manner, which can be integrated into our daily lives.
Processing a traumatic psychedelic experience is a blend of grounding ourselves in our body, mind, and spirit. It is a somatic, cognitive, and existential wound that needs to be approached with self compassion and patience. I can at least look back at my process and know that my mind-body system did exactly what it needed to in order to protect itself. The experience was too large to handle, and it dissociated from the re-traumatization of ayahuasca pulling up my shadow’s wounds in a manner I did not have the capacity for. And this was, of course, all potentially a result of just doing too much medicine, too fast, without proper integration or support.
As the cliche goes: Healing is feeling. It’s not supposed to be sunshine and rainbows the entire time, however, I don’t think we have to shatter our psyche, or push it to the brink of self-annihilation in order to find peace.
As horrific as my experience was, I have gained priceless wisdom about my spirit, body, and perception. I’m grateful to say that, nowadays, I at least feel more like myself, and that I have the honor of helping others who have experienced similar situations. Although these experiences can be incredibly trying, they offer us an opportunity to heal old wounds and see what it means to truly nurture ourselves. Through these experiences, we gain insight into how fragile - yet resilient - consciousness can be, and that can flourish an immense amount of gratitude.