David E. Carpenter
It was night two of a grueling four-night ayahuasca retreat when Amber Wick says she had visions of pulling her own beating heart from her chest and holding it in her bare hands. “It was beating, it was actually pumping in my hands,” she says, “but it also looked black and dead.” Over the course of the next couple nights, Amber would make her way through the challenging psychedelic maze of her own mind and memories. At times she conversed with her deceased grandparents, who offered advice, spoke directly with the ayahuasca plant, and eventually reunited with her five-year-old self — the age, she reveals, when she was sexually abused.
A few weeks before that experience, Amber — who lives in Melbourne, Australia, and is a territory manager selling medical devices and an Akashic Records reader— had been listening to a podcast about emotional healing through the plant medicine ayahuasca, a brew containing the hallucinogenic substance dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Used in tribal rituals in Peru for thousands of years, over the past several decades the plant concoction has migrated to locations across the world and is used in healing ceremonies from Spain to the U.S. to Costa Rica. Ayahuasqueros — the shamans who administer and use ayahuasca — believe recipients can converse with the plant and ask for favors or guidance in life. Sessions drinking the brew often include vomiting, diarrhea and vivid mental transportation into otherworldly realms. It’s more often than not a frighteningly deep dive into the darkest recesses of the human psyche, and can be a costly and time-consuming endeavor to arrange. In Amber’s case, she paid $5,500 (US) for her experience and flew more than 30 hours to get to the retreat in Costa Rica.
While ayahuasca use is still illegal in much of the world and most of the U.S., last year the consumption of so-called “entheogens” was decriminalized in Oakland, and Chicago’s City Council approved a resolution that could pave the way for decriminalization there, too. In Denver, the use of magic mushrooms was also decriminalized last year, making the adult possession and use of psilocybin (the psychoactive substance in magic mushrooms) the lowest law enforcement priority in the city. Those are the first significant steps toward a much wider mainstream acceptance of psychedelic use in America, signaling the introduction of a growing psychedelic tourism trade. That acceptance has meant that bookings of retreats held at upscale locales around the world have in recent years exploded, as a New York Times article indicated last year calling its popularity the (Ayahuasca)”The Goop-ification of psychedelics.”
It would be easy to dismiss the phenomenon of psychedelic healing as a trend if it weren’t for one simple fact: psychedelics actually work. Where traditional methods like pharmaceutical drugs often fail, these medicines are delivering results for people with mental distress. Look no further than the research being conducted by Johns Hopkins on the hallucinogen psilocybin for its life-changing effects on terminal patients. Or the FDA-sanctioned Phase 3 trials of MDMA (known by the street name ecstasy) curing treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder.
For Amber, the ayahuasca plant had been calling her name for a long time, she says, “and was a last resort after she tried everything else.”
For the past seven years I’ve been working through emotional trauma from my childhood after experiencing sexual abuse at a young age. I first heard about ayahuasca on a podcast I listen to regularly — the guest was discussing how she used it to understand herself better and heal from her own pain. That resonated with me deeply. Even though I had done tons of work on myself over the years, I felt like a part of me was still broken and I was curious to see how plant medicine could help me.
What was the work like you’d done before that trip?
I started being honest about what happened to me as a child at the age of 30 — I’m 37 now. Finally giving myself permission to be honest was freeing, and created a desire to examine all aspects of my life. In this pursuit, I’ve sought out a myriad of therapies ranging from traditional talk therapy to regressive hypnotherapy and everything in between, including various intensive weekend retreats. I practiced yoga daily. Meditated. Don’t get me wrong, the investment I made in these workshops and prioritizing my health was helpful, however I felt they weren’t going deep enough. Like I wasn’t going deep enough to get to the root of some of the feelings of self loathing and deep rooted pain I knew I still needed to address.
What was it about the Costa Rican retreat that attracted you?
I first learned about ayahuasca about four or five years ago. At the time, I wasn’t comfortable with the places and people I had to go with to have an experience using ayahuasca. I felt they were largely unvetted and it didn’t feel safe to me. So when I heard about this center in Costa Rica mentioned in a vlog I follow — by a person I trust — I thought, Okay, this is it. This is the place I’ve been waiting for. I wanted to have an intense and authentic experience, but I didn’t want to be distracted by things like sleeping arrangements and availability of fresh food and water. I just wanted to be in a really safe environment and this was perfect. So literally I spoke to my husband, and had tickets booked on the Monday for two weeks later.
Did you go with your husband?
No, I went with my best friend. My husband was, and is, fully supportive. He wants me to be happy and understood this was part of my journey.
Were you at all scared leading up to this?
No, I was 100% ready.
What were your first experiences like taking ayahuasca?
It was at night — all the ceremonies happen at night — everyone had mats to lay on, a blanket and pillow, and a bucket beside them in case they vomited. We were in a large room of about 50 or 60 people with everyone on mats and going through their own deep experiences after drinking the medicine. We were fully supported by the shamans in the room. The first night it felt like nothing happened to me, and after the ceremony I returned to my room that I was sharing with my girlfriend, who had a wild experience. She’d gone back to her childhood and witnessed some repressed memories that were very upsetting. But I was like, what the hell? I didn’t feel anything! I ended up vomiting after she went to bed that night, it was after midnight, and I had a conversation with the medicine in which I was shown in order to open up to this experience fully I needed to stop caring how others perceive me.
So to be more open to the experience.
Yeah, to allow the medicine to show me who I have become, to give me the opportunity to heal my heart. During the day the center holds classes where they prepare everyone for what’s going to happen that evening, and give everyone almost a roadmap on how to navigate the medicine and set some expectations for each day. So the second night I was completely exhausted, even though very little happened on the first night. After receiving the medicine from the shaman, I started getting really scared about the fact I’d invested all this time and money, and what if I don’t get what I’m came for? Then I started crying like I have never cried in my whole life. It was insane. A female shaman came over to help me and it was as if all of my feelings of low self worth, and the deepest, darkest feelings about myself welled up. Like I didn’t feel worthy of love, or deserve love from my husband. I realized in that moment the medicine had shown me who I had become, which was someone who felt they weren’t worthy of love. So my next step was to heal my heart, and I asked the medicine to do so. I physically put my hands to my chest and it was like a Mortal Kombat situation. I pulled my heart out of my chest. It was beating, it was actually pumping in my hands, but it was dead and black. Then I asked the spirits to heal my heart. It was so intense. And my old heart disappeared in front of me and a new one appeared that was fresh and vibrant. I had it in my hand, it was pumping and alive, and I put it back in my chest and I was like, Wow … I have just healed my heart.
You felt like you were literally holding your heart?
Yes. It was amazing. Literally holding it in my hands. So then I thought, Okay, I’ve just healed my heart. Now I want to merge back with my soul. The classes at Rhythmia taught that everyone has an event when they’re young where they’re split off from themselves. Some events are as innocuous as not being held enough as a baby. Most people are walking through life feeling that disconnection. For me, it was suffering sexual abuse. That was my splitting event. So I asked the medicine to merge me back with my soul. Immediately, in my minds eye, I was walking down a set of stairs leading into what looked like a basement. As I reached the bottom step I saw my five-year-old self, the age I was when the abuse occured. She was waiting for me. I had this knowing that she had been waiting for me this whole time to find her again. I sat down, she climbed on my lap, we hugged, and we merged back together as one. It was the most beautiful experience of my life. And it was as if the whole universe celebrated us.
What did that look like, the universe celebrating?
What I literally saw was a black sky full of stars and all the stars were vibrating in celebration, the whole universe. They were applauding. This little girl had been totally disconnected from me up until this point, for 32 years. And we finally merged back together.
That’s massive.
Yeah, it was. I got my miracle.
You mentioned to me before that you felt as though you spoke with your deceased grandparents and also talked directly with the ayahuasca plant.
That was on the third night. By then I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I wanted to pretend I was sick and miss the next ceremony — it was like, damn, what am I going to uncover tonight?! I wasn’t prepared for how unrelenting the whole experience would be. My grandparents, who are both deceased, came through and gave me a whole to-do list, messages for my mom, my uncle, my sisters, my niece. Once they left, it was like I was talking with the medicine inside of me and was going over everything I’d experienced that evening.
Like taking inventory.
Yes, exactly. Then on the fourth night I slept pretty much through the whole thing! We were told that can happen sometimes, and the shamans say that’s when deep healing is being done on you by the medicine. It’s so deep you cannot be awake for it.
This was such an intensive experience, people might see it as having potential to be addicting.
In my experience, it was the opposite of addictive. You’re not going to want to jump right back into it, because it’s so exhausting and emotionally draining. It takes courage — a lot of courage — facing the deepest parts of yourself night after night. How many people will do that? This felt to me like 20 years of therapy in four days. In my experience at least, and with the people I’ve met, they’ve tried talk therapy, they’ve tried antidepressants, they’ve tried all the “traditional means” to heal themselves. And so this is after you’ve tried everything else, it’s that feeling of being a total last resort.
What would you say to people who want to learn more about the safe use of ayahuasca?
I would say 100% do your research. I think we’re really lucky at this moment in time where there’s so much information at our fingertips and we have the ability to connect with others. So whether that’s through InstaGram or Facebook or people’s blogs, do your research. Don’t just go to the first place that you find, figure out what’s important to you for an experience like this. And then go and talk to people. Anyone who wants to can contact me through InstaGram, if they like, they can (ber_wick_merlo). I’d be happy to connect with people if they want to learn more about my experience and ask me any questions that could assist them in their own journey.
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