Ayahuasca is a potent plant-brew that thousands have merged with for miraculous breakthroughs and healings. I myself am alive because of her love and wisdom, a former bi- polar, bulimic alcoholic that was one trip into darkness away from offing myself. She saved me not by curing me, but by giving me awareness of how and why I was mentally injured, and the tools by which I could make my way through hell and back to a stable, heart-opened awareness. Healing from trauma and mental injury is the most challenging task I’ve ever experienced. But with her help, and the loving and compassionate guidance of a few key humans along the way, I now get to offer the same support to others.

But anything that has the power to heal our darkest wounds can also bring the most horrific trauma too.

This reality is woefully hidden by even the most well-meaning facilitators. Some big-name retreats even have the audacity to *promise* miracles, touting the medicine as a cure-all for addiction, depression, and even COVID.

Please know these people are lying to you in order to charge exorbitant prices and woo the millions of folks who are hurting into a marketing trap of false promises. Ayahuasca does not cure a single ailment. She awakens us to the ways we heal ourselves.

If you’re curious about how to find and examine a legitimate and safe Ayahuasca ceremony, check out: To All Those Pouring Ayahuasca and Other Plant Medicines Without Legitimate Training: Please Stop

This means a single dose of her can expose more of our internal truth. Sometimes she has to force us to get real about the pain we are carrying before there is a chance to start the path to light and joy. This means it can get worse before it gets better. Not enough credence is given to this truth, and sometimes people are set up for failure, thinking it’s their fault if the darkness prevails and even strengthens after a cycle of medicine. As a result, there has been an increasing number of suicides shortly after an experience with this sacred medicine.

We need to talk about the reality of healing. We need to talk about the potency of the medicine to expose what is hidden. We need to talk about the prevalence of suicide in the healing space - how much people need and deserve help. And we need to talk about and own the responsibility of anyone pouring or partaking in this medicine to be prepared for what might be unearthed.

For Those Called to Drink Ayahuasca: Curves Lie Ahead

Let’s say you are someone with a deep addiction to alcohol, and you are called to work with Ayahuasca for insight and healing. It’s very possible the first few ceremonies with her would help to curb the attraction to binge drinking, but what she would reveal is the reason for the desire to lose yourself in the numbness of drink. So while folks like these (read: me) may have the benefit of no longer being tethered to an addiction, what instead becomes real is the pain it was masking.

Ayahuasca gets down to the truth of things. And the truth is often bloody painful.

She does not eradicate the need to feel and process our traumas. Beneath every destructive behavior lies a wound, and Aya has a way of peeling back the layers to show us the truth of what we are carrying. Then she cheers us on as we acknowledge, feel, process, and work through the emotional baggage that we had previously been avoiding.

This is the most Herculean task any of us face. We are not taught in our culture that is safe to feel our emotions in our bodies, and so most of us literally do anything necessary to avoid the darkest and shadowy vibrations. The mind can convince us that feeling these wounds will literally destroy us, so it hides the truth and does anything necessary to avoid Going There.

Mama Aya – her favorite thing is to Go There. If there’s a place inside us that says DO NOT LOOK HERE – that will be her target, immediately or eventually. That’s where our liberation is found.

But if we as individuals have yet to create a firm foundation of grounded-ness and support around facing and feeling these devastating emotions, we can short circuit. We can feel the darkness has consumed us. And we can therefore feel no other alternative than to attempt to destroy ourselves.

Please, if you feel called to work deeply with Ayahuasca, and you are aware that you have some profoundly deep traumas to work through, make sure you have these two core elements in place before you dive in:

1. Create a firm, consistent, and effective spiritual practice that you can rely on in the aftermath to help you feel safe, supported, and connected to your heart. Things like a daily meditation practice, a commitment to movement, a connection to nature, and a solid self-care game are literally life savers when the medicine – or life – taps into your core wounds. Do not wait until it’s needed to create this foundation; start the flow of your nurturing practice and stay committed to it so it’s there when things get shaky.

2. Equally important is your support system. Have a therapist, integration coach, energy

   workers, clinical doctors, naturopaths – whatever your mind and body needs for assistance as you take on the task of healing. Trust me, the more adamant you are that you won’t need help, and the more you think you don’t deserve it – the more you are likely to unequivocally need it when shit gets real. Again, this foundation is best when created before you go face first into shadow work; these spaces are not meant to be navigated solo.

Whatever you do, please do not enter into the experience of working with Ayahuasca assuming it’s going to be all lollipops and rainbows out of the gate. The miraculous stories of healing you read on the internet are often true, but they often leave out the devastating challenges that come all throughout the healing process, and most of us need a lot of self-love and a lot of support to heal our traumas and wounds. The medicine does not do this for us. She gets us the heart of the matter, loves us through the integrity of our healing, but she will not make the pain go away. We have to feel it, alchemize it, integrate it. That takes time, tremendous effort, and a whole lotta love and guidance.

So if you are taking on this task of healing, take on the task of receiving help and guidance too. Don’t let arrogance or woundedness or fear make you think you’re in this by yourself. One of the core things the medicine teaches is how to receive help. We are all worthy of it. We are a tribe, after all. And we have to learn to let love in. We have the love of our spirit tribe, the love of our friends and family, the love of our furry angels, but all that means nothing if we aren’t actually feeling that love. We have to learn to let go of the barriers that prevent us from feeling supported. That takes courage to lean in an ask for – and receive – assistance.

Healing is the only game in town. But it’s a bloody difficult road sometimes. If we aren’t helping each other, we are hurting ourselves.

For Those Pouring Ayahuasca: We are Responsible

When I first starting drinking Aya some 15 years ago, the word “integration” was not even associated with her journeys. It’s taken many years for us Westerns to realize that massive shifts in consciousness facilitated by things like entheogens are dicey as fuck for many of us to make sense of. It turns out the most important part of working with plant medicine isn’t about the plants at all – it’s about what we do with their wisdoms once we receive them. The aftermath is where the gold is, not the ceremonies themselves.

Integration is a thing now – something more and more people are embracing all the time. This is the good news. But there are still a majority of facilitators and centers offering these medicines that don’t offer any support in the aftermath.

This has to change. We as guides are responsible for the massive shifts that can occur in the lives of the people we work with. We are the ones that should know the power of our medicines. So while we aren’t responsible for their every choice or action in the aftermath, we are responsible for giving folks options for support when they need it. No more showing up, pouring the medicine, and leaving without articulating the need for support. We don’t have to BE that support, but we do need to lead people to safe places they can turn to.

Every single circle or retreat should have clear instructions around who to contact when participants go back into the world and need help. We should all have integration specialists on hand to help people if they hit those curves and bumps. These people need to be well versed on human psychology, but even more important, need to intimately understand the medicines. If a therapist doesn’t have extensive experience with altered spaces, they cannot aptly help those who are making sense of these journeys.

A good integration partner has had hundreds of trips into the unknown, understands the language of plant spirit communication, has a very firm foundation of the human psyche, and cares deeply for both people and plant medicines. I would even add that a familiarity with the tribal lineages that have carried and protected these medicines is also essential. Why? Because without that, they don’t know the truth about Ayahuasca, Huachuma, and the sacred plants. They only know what the Western world teaches about cosmology and consciousness. That’s not what the plants teach. So we must not over-Westernize this work. It undoes what the plants are teaching, and can leave people all the more confused and lost.

The painful reality is that I’m hearing about more and more suicides in the aftermath of Ayahuasca. This is not because the medicine is dark or dangerous. It’s because she’s so powerful in shifting our world views, in showing us the core of our broken hearts, that we are left with the arduous task of feeling our way through the darkness. And in many cases, we are left to do so alone. We cannot force people to receive help, but we are responsible for making that help readily available. And for making it abundantly clear that Aya is not a magic wand. Most circles could do a lot more to support integration, and the truth of the healing path. Lives can be saved.

We cannot blame the medicine for showing us the truth of our pain. It’s our job as facilitators, shaman, hosts and organizers, and retreat owners to be diligent about integration. If we leave it to participants to figure out, they may have no sense of where to turn when it matters most.

Yes, it’s true that the nature of healing is dicey, and that some of us just aren’t ready in this lifetime to face these demons. Rehabs and detox centers and psych hospitals know these truths all too well. We don’t hold these places accountable if they can’t help a patient, as long as they’ve given their all. Let’s ask that of our plant medicine communities too. We have to make help available in order to not have blood on our hands. That is sorely lacking right now in most places offering sacred medicines. Let’s work harder to cover the bases of preparation, safe journeys, AND integration and aftermath support.

We must prevent the medicines from being villainized for their power to reveal the truth of what lies within us. That means we must be responsible for guiding people through the entire journey of healing.

Thank you for reading, for caring, and for doing this work together.

About the Author:

Tina “Kat” Courtney, The AfterLife Coach, is a sacred plant guide, messenger, and devotee to organic altered spaces. Her wildly beautiful ride with plant medicine began in 2006, when she landed in the Peruvian jungle, seeking help with bipolar disorder, bouts of destructive depression, bulimia, alcoholism, and severe + chronic anxiety. Her first journey with Ayahuasca ignited in her the awareness that despite what doctors had told her, she could in fact be stable, happy, and strong. She know has the incredible honor of passing along that ray of hope to those she works with.

As was this message and directive from Ayahuasca herself: “Darling, you will bring thousands and thousands of people to this work.” Mission accepted.

Kat took on a shamanic apprenticeship that lasted a decade, drinking in hundreds and hundreds of plant ceremonies. She launched a well-known plant medicine blog in 2014, and formally began coaching people in the precarious aftermath and integration stages of plant medicine work, as well as those facing the truth about death. She has transformed into shamanic guide, a trusted mystical therapist, and a messenger for the plants. Kat is also a Master Level Reiki practitioner, has an English Degree from Loyola Marymount in LA, and won the National Council of English Teachers award as Best State Writer in Montana. You can find her blog, event schedule, coaching opportunities, and more, at www.afterlifecoach.com.