Disclaimer: For legal reasons, I can’t give any specific details of where I did my Ayahuasca retreat, or with whom.
I’m trying to remember when was the first time I heard about ayahuasca. It was well over a decade ago, perhaps longer, I know that. I think it was an article in the Sunday Times magazine; the journalist had travelled to South America to partake in a ceremony, writing a rave review about what a transformative, life-changing experience it was. (For the uninitiated amongst you, ayahuasca is a plant medicine traditionally used in indigenous tribes for spiritual ceremonies. It’s a psychoactive brew so can bring on intense hallucinations)
Thirty years of therapy in one night, that’s how that article described ayahuasca. And I, still in the grips of my eating disorder, thought to myself, I’d like some of that. I was looking for the silver bullet then, the magic elixir which would instantly cure me. When I was hospitalised with anorexia at 21, one of psychologists told me that on average, it took 2-5 years to fully recover from an eating disorder, and I, impatient as ever, was having none of that. I wanted an over-night metamorphosis, a St Paul on the road to Damascus type of conversion. I would try a lot of things over the years in an effort to recover – reiki, angel healing, past life regression, ayurveda, hypnosis, homeopathy, crystals, and so much more – but doing the work, the slow, steady plodding of weekly therapy, the gradual unlearning of old patterns of behaviour? That sounded like a lot of, well, work.