How Ayahuasca Saved Me

Sometimes we don’t notice how far we’ve come. I see this often with clients. Perhaps especially in cases of depression and/or low self-esteem, there is a tendency to deprecate or minimize one’s own accomplishments. As the therapist, viewing the client’s journey, I can see the changes. I would compare this to how someone on the outside will notice the big changes in a child’s growth, whereas the caregiver will not see it as dramatically, as they are with the child everyday.

The same, of course, applies to myself. Once in a while, I have a moment where I think back to where I was, and it is hard to imagine or feel anymore. I was chronically stressed, overworked and in constant fight/flight in my role as a public school teacher. I felt trapped after how many years I’d invested in school and the bills I needed to pay. I owned and ran two houses on top of a full-time job, all motivated by the fear of needing retirement money in case I got sick. I was breaking down and needed antidepressants and benzodiazepines to manage a very traumatic workplace. I had poor boundaries, was a people pleaser, and never felt good enough. I had had periods of suicidality since my teens and continued to struggle with anxiety and depression throughout the years.

I had gone to various talk therapists, naturopaths, and spiritual paths to try and find some help. Everything helped to some degree, but things were not shifting enough. At age 34, I finally heard about ayahuasca. I was at a Fringe play by T.J. Dawe, in which he spoke of drinking ayahuasca with Gabor Maté, and how this led him to a childhood memory which shaped his present. Right away, I knew I wanted to try it. Yet, it wasn’t until about a year later that my hairdresser mentioned she had drunk it. From there, I instantly followed up with her contact, and a plan was set for me to taper off of my antidepressants and drink ayahuasca at a retreat in Manitoba.

That retreat was the beginning of a new chapter. Ayahuasca was a clear path for me, leading me to drink it 47 times in the first year, including in the jungle of Peru a little over a year after that first drink. Ayahuasca shifted my perspective entirely, and I credit it with saving me.

Ayahuasca was able to show me, in an embodied and felt way, what the issues were, and how to change them. While I could have made slow progress with talk therapy, some of my held perspectives would have been too scary to shift without the embodied and clear directive from ayahuasca. It started to show me that I had built up my finances to protect myself if I got sick in the future, but that I was also making myself sick in the present by doing so. It showed me that the pain in my forearms (I was wearing wrist braces to manage the pain) was due to martyring myself in the school system. It helped me to see that I needed to take medical leave, which I would never have had the confidence to do without its prompting. As soon as I took medical leave, my pain went away. Ayahuasca introduced me to what the concept of God (aka Oneness) was and why faith was so important as an anchor outside of the self. I opened up to the concepts of magic, love, and possibility. I even went from thinking my voice was so horrible that I wouldn’t even sing in the shower, to singing in front of a group. Since that time, singing has become a central pillar in my life. Truly, ayahuasca gave me back my voice in many ways.

This is not to say it was easy or without bumps in the road. It has been a complicated path since this time, and there was, and continues to be, a lot of “chop wood, carry water” to do. Yet, I know that one of, if not the, biggest shift in my life was my introduction to ayahuasca. I am forever grateful.