Marijuana and a Transcendent Ayahuasca Experience

I never would have believed that marijuana could lead to a transcendent experience until Mother Ganga cast her amazing technicolor dreamcoat over my shoulders and carried me off for a ride, but that’s exactly what happened.

Overcoming Prohibition-Era FUD

Despite having been raised by a forward-thinking post-hippie movement mother (who secretly reaped the benefits of cannabis use long before legalization efforts made their stride), the clever anti-drug marketing strategies of the 80s and 90s left an indelible mark on my consciousness.

My belief that marijuana use could only lead to laziness, addiction, and other undesirable qualities was so pervasive that even first-hand experience with the heightened creativity and productivity that can accompany a marijuana-high couldn’t shake it. In spite of how much I enjoyed the sensation (and how much better I performed at creative and academic tasks while under the influence), I only smoked MJ socially and under the guise of “peer-pressure.”

When I did partake, I hated myself. Amid my laughter and enjoyment of my newly altered states, I grappled with an inner voice that was calling me an indulgent fool and ridiculing me for willingly submitting to a demonic intoxicant. In spite of my discontent inner-state, I found myself seeking out more social settings in which smoking MJ was part of the socio-cultural norm, but as I did my self-loathing grew.

In college, I managed to convince myself that I was allergic to cannabis, and I denied myself all access to the plant from that moment on. I supplemented the hit to my creativity and writing ability with Adderall. Voila! With one stroke of a doctor’s pen, pharmaceutical intervention allowed me to keep the creativity while dropping the self-loathing that accompanied my cannabis use… or so I thought.

Flash forward a decade and I was still full of self-loathing for my drug use, but now with a wicked dependence on a pharmaceutical substance. The self-deprecating voice that had once condemned me for smoking weed, now derided me every time I swallowed a pill. To make matters worse, I hadn’t written anything in years, and my once promising career as a religious studies scholar, teacher, and writer was little more than a shell. I was a penniless, overweight, unwed single-mother who lived in a spare room in my mother’s boyfriend’s house and depended on them for everything my daughter and I needed, which caused me to hate myself even more.

Somehow, I managed to scrounge together enough money selling things I bought at garage sales to (almost) afford my own place. With some continued financial dependence on my mother, her boyfriend, and my daughter’s father, my daughter and I moved out, and I struggled even more without the support that living with my family had afforded me.

I was an absolute wreck. Although I had managed to lose a majority of the weight I gained as a result of my pregnancy and the crippling postpartum depression that followed it (once again thanks to ANOTHER pharmaceutical substance), I never regained the sense of self-worth that a person needs to sustain him or herself long-term. On the outside things looked pretty good, but on the inside, I was as big a mess as ever, maybe worse since I was pretending not to be. I still hadn’t dealt with the deep emotional trauma that was left behind when my daughter’s father left me alone with a newborn baby almost five years earlier.

To make matters worse, I had gotten into a new relationship with a man who reminded me so much of my ex that I had trouble differentiating between the two of them. As my relationship with the new man went through the normal cycles of up and down that many relationships do, my trauma reared its ugly head. I had trouble coping. Every time I got into a disagreement with the new man, I was reminded of the fight that ended with me alone with a crying infant, police sirens blaring, and my ex in the back of a cop car. I was reminded of every terrible thing he’d said about me that night and in the months that followed to our counselor, to his attorney, and to our mutual friends. I was reminded of how I felt sitting across from him in mediation sessions to determine our custody arrangement, and how I couldn’t believe that he and his family – who I had once thought of as my own – could sit across from me and see me falling apart the way that I was and still say terrible things about me that they knew would hurt me even more.  Hadn’t I been punished enough already?

Apparently not. And I internalized all of my sadness and self-doubt yet again. The weight of it all began to crush me. The weight I had lost with pharmaceutical help began to creep back on. I couldn’t control my cravings for sugar, gluten, or the lack of energy that accompanied my poor nutrition. I couldn’t work out. I could barely get out of bed. And then I remembered my old friend, Mary Jane.

Since I couldn’t possibly have hated myself any more than I did already, I succumb to my friend Lindsay’s insistence that I give the plant another chance, and you know what? It worked! Under MJ’s influence, I could feel my anxiety and depression start to lift. I could function like a normal member of society (minus losing the ability to drive)… at least for a little while.

A Rift in the Time-Space Continuum

One night I awoke from a deep cannabis-induced sleep with a message that I did not know how to interpret. I still don’t know exactly how to explain what I experienced, but it was as though I had been transported back in time into my past, and I had to use my rapidly-fading knowledge of the future to change the events of my life. I shot out of bed like a cannon, and these words came out of my mouth: “okay, relax. This is just as far as you’ve come.” Where did that come from? And who said it? I needed to know more.

I reluctantly began to embrace MJ even more, and as I did, she showed me things. On some days, she would leave me mostly alone, either making me lazier or more productive, more depending on my own subconscious desires than hers for me. But on others, she would send me into states similar to those I’ve heard described by Yogis following deep meditation. I suddenly understood how the world worked, how it was all nothing more than an illusion. A deep and sometimes disturbing conundrum. An oxymoron of the highest level.

There were times when that knowledge left me paralyzed… and others when it lifted me up to new and unexplored realms. Days when it gave me limitless power, and others when I was so unproductive that I longed for the days of my post-partum depression.  And then one day, out of nowhere, came another message. Once again, I shot out of bed: “My sister; your mother, needs to talk to you.” What the FUCK???!

My Sister; Your Mother Needs to Talk to You

Whose messages were coming out of my mouth? How had he/she/it hijacked my voice to say that? And what in the actual fuck did it mean?

I talked to my mother every day. I couldn’t possibly talk to her more. It simply didn’t make sense. I wondered if the message were more related to being kind and aware of my own mother, and of mothers in general. I started a campaign to protest the Women on the Block conference that was being held on Mother’s Day during NYC’s Blockchain week. It was largely unsuccessful. Probably because I had no Twitter followers, and the women who organized the conference dismissed me as a troll.

To try and compensate for the fact that I was unable to affect the world around me, I spent an exorbitant amount of money on a Mother’s Day gift that year, but the voice in my head would not abate.

“My sister; your mother, needs to talk to you.”

Again: what the fuck?!

The Mayor of Tribeca and A Lesson in Psychoactive Drugs

I accompanied my boyfriend to New York the following week. He was attending conferences at Blockchain week. I tagged along for the job fair… and because New York City is one of my favorite places on earth. While he was at conferences during the day, I visited old friends who lived in the city and worked on my CV for the job fair. One night, at a dinner with a VC who was associated with a Burning Man camp that my boyfriend and I hoped to join that summer, I got an abrupt answer to my burning question.

Although our new acquaintance – the VC – affectionately known in his local circles as “the mayor of Tribeca” – could not grant us entry into the Burning Man camp he was associated with, he provided invaluable insights. Though he was newly sober, the mayor had no shortage of experience with psychoactive drugs. He asked what substances, if any, my boyfriend and I intended to bring with us to Black Rock City for our first burn. We told him we planned to bring mushrooms, molly, alcohol, and cannabis. “Good,” he said. “Anything else that’s meant to cross your path while you’re there will.”

Offhand I remarked that I was afraid to try mushrooms because a psychedelic experience with LSD I had as a teenager left me scarred. I continued to tell a brief version of the story of my encounter traveling through space and time and conversing with two deities who to my mind represented God and the Devil. I recounted my hallucination with vivid clarity that I had previously lacked. The mayor told me that that kind of hallucination, accompanied by a fear that his drug use had awakened too much knowledge that he couldn’t handle, was a large contributor to his newfound sobriety. However, in his experience, mushrooms were unlikely to bring on psychedelic states of that magnitude. Usually, in his experience, that kind of knowledge was awakened by far more potent substances than psilocybin (the hallucinogenic agent in mushrooms). Ayahuasca was the particular substance with which the mayor was familiar that tended to produce vivid hallucinations similar to the one I had described.

My boyfriend and I had heard of Ayahuasca the previous winter when my boyfriend was traveling to the Hoffman Institute in Northern California to work on his own personal development. We had heard/read that using Ayahuasca could lead to deeply personal revelations that could radically alter a person’s life, cause them to course correct, and even cure opiate addiction – which I found particularly interesting because my brother had been facing that disease for the better part of a decade, and he was losing the battle against it. I shared that despite having serious fear and trepidation, I felt as though an Ayahuasca experience was probably in my near future. The mayor recommended the experience but warned against using it at Burning Man, especially for the first time. Responsible Ayahuasca use is done under the guidance of a shaman and/or other medical professionals, and never in conjunction with other substances that can cause lead to serious medical issues. A final word of caution (regarding Ayahuasca use) from the mayor: “It’s the MOTHER of hallucinogens.” There it was. The “mother” I was looking for. Mother Ayahuasca.

Getting High on Life & Pushing Back the Mother’s Message

During my long flight back to Phoenix, I researched Ayahuasca again. Thank goodness for Wifi on airplanes. I found Ayahuasca retreats of varying lengths in different parts of the world. Most of them were ten days and in the Amazon. I would have to be gone for at least two weeks to travel to the Amazon to try and discover what this plant “mother” wanted to tell me. I hated to put her off, but whatever her message was, it would have to wait a little longer.

Back at home, my daughter needed me. Although my amiable relationship with her father allowed me to travel more than a lot of single mothers (or of parents in general) I know, I couldn’t be gone for more than a week or maybe two at a time. I didn’t want to be. I had been in New York for a week and later that summer, I was going to be gone for two weeks to attend Burning Man. My daughter was about to turn seven, and she would be starting first grade in the fall. Everything paled in comparison to the high I got from being around her. If MJ eased my pain and suffering, Sofia erased it completely, at least when I was in her presence. I wanted to be a better mother to her, to stop feeling sad and depressed on certain days. I wanted to give her everything the world had to offer, to keep a cleaner house and car, to earn more money at work so I could take her more places and buy her more things, but something was holding me back.

I couldn’t help but wonder if Ayahuasca might be wanting to tell me what that was. No matter; it had to wait.

Preparations for Sofia’s seventh birthday party occupied my time in late July. I was one of those moms who made all of the decorations myself, invited everyone from every class she had ever been in and our personal friends, and had the parties at home. I probably had no business trying to be that kind of mom, but I was lacking in some of the small things I felt my daughter needed, and doing the big things – like birthday parties – right was my small way of making up for my shortcomings. As I frantically cleaned my house and readied for the biggest party we’d had yet, I relied on MJ to boost my creativity once again. Walking inside from some yard work one day, it happened again. I saw nothing but black and when I stood, my lips moved again. This time they said: “Pay attention. Something big happens here. You’re going to need to learn to breathe.”

What was about to happen? Was the something big going to be something good, or something tragic? I had an ominous feeling. My fear that tragedy could strike occupied every moment. I took extra caution in all that I did to ensure that my family and I avoid all possible dangers. Months passed. Sofia’s birthday party was a success, and in August, my boyfriend and I went to Burning Man as planned.

A Message from a 747

Burning Man was more than I could have hoped for. Although it didn’t quite live up to the utopian ideals I had built around it in my head, the flawed reality was better than my fantasy. I could write an entire anthology about my adoration for Burning Man and the lessons I learned in Black Rock City, and I’m sure I will, someday, but for now, my biggest take away was summed up in a sign I read on a 747 nightclub parked in the middle of the inhabitable desert. It read: “You are not your baggage. Drop it and remember who the fuck you really are.” That’s so much easier to do at Burning Man, where the economy is a gift economy and no one keeps track of who owes what to whom.

Back in the default world, things were not all sunshine and roses for me. The business I had built selling goods online was crumbling. The price of cryptocurrency was stabilizing, but it wasn’t rebounding to the all-time heights that would have left me with enough money to live on – frugally – forever so I could just relax. I had lost a consulting gig I got as a result of my trip to New York earlier that summer because I couldn’t get along with a female executive at the company, and they owed me money. I was never good at collecting on debts because I knew how it felt for me when I couldn’t pay them back. I had been struggling to overcome an enormous amount of personal baggage that I had been accumulating and carrying for my whole life, and my sister was getting married in the fall.

The Magic Kingdom, My Sister’s Bridal Preparations, & A Tragic Ending

I took my daughter to Disneyland every October break for a vacation. I couldn’t allow my financial insecurity to impact the magical and wonderful time she and I had every year. Particularly not after she had just seen me ordering so many things online in the month before Burning Man. I didn’t want her to feel like she had to sacrifice her fun annual vacation so I could go on one alone. I cashed in some cryptocurrency – at a huge loss from when I bought it with the proceeds of selling my house – to take her. I’m glad I did.

Waiting outside the gates on our first day, the line to check bags was much longer than it had ever been in years past, and it was moving much more slowly. Someone from the line told me that very recently, someone had overdosed on heroin inside the park. I looked it up that day, and there were lots of videos about it, but I couldn’t watch them to find out because I was at the park with my daughter. Months later, it appears as though all reference to the incident is buried. Disney is good. Anyway, I felt a chill run down my spine. I thought of my brother. I hadn’t talked to him in almost a year, but I had mailed him a letter to his rehab center that morning.

Sofia and I had a wonderful time at Disneyland. It was a fun, family vacation and everything felt good. When we returned, I was still stressed out. My sister’s bridal shower was the next day, and I was responsible for the decorating – which I always take very seriously. Over at my sister’s house, my mom went to the store to stock up on supplies. I received a text message from her now ex-boyfriend and my brother’s father (long story).

“Joshua is dead. Please don’t text me back.”

A Death Close to Home

I nearly collapsed. I called my mom. “Who is dead Niki? Josh who? “ “Josh-Josh! Our Josh! Joshua Eberle!” – I think I screamed in reply.  It didn’t feel real. She began to sob. We got off the phone. I called my boyfriend. He offered to come get me, but my sister’s party had to happen the next morning, so I kept decorating. When I returned home that afternoon, I was in shock. Alternating between laughter and inconsolable crying, I had no idea grief felt like that. I thought of myself as an empathetic person, but I had no idea that range of emotions existed. I had experienced high-highs and low-lows, but nothing could measure up to this.

A week or so after his death, I was still paralyzed. I couldn’t sleep. I was having anxiety attacks. I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t understand: he was dead, but, where was he? Was his spirit scared and alone wondering in the dark somewhere? Was he among the exalted, shining down on me from the heavens? Was he communicating with us through nature? Had he been reincarnated?

I began crutching on MJ hard. I had relied upon her guidance in the past, but not like this. Never like this.

Finding Ayahuasca Closer to Home

I told my boyfriend that I needed to know what happened to people when we die, and I believed at the time that DMT – the chemical component that is released by Ayahuasca – was the same as the one that is released in human birth and death. That is the most widely regarded theory out there, though DMT has never actually been found in a human’s brain. It has been found in the brain of a rat. I was going to order DMT on the dark web. My boyfriend encouraged me to book travel to Peru and an Ayahuasca retreat instead. I started looking into it. Pricing them out. Trying to figure out how I could make that work in our schedules. My family was planning a move from Phoenix to Boise in a little over two months. I had my hands, and schedule, full. It would be at least four months before I could get to Peru, and that was a best-case scenario. I felt better having made the decision to do it, but the time was a real issue for me.

I was desperate. I searched Google. Much to my surprise, I found a group on meetup and they were meeting in two days. I was going to that meetup, come hell or high water.

Urban Icaros & Meeting My Destiny

Urban Icaros is the name of the group I met that night. Anyone in the Phoenix area looking for more information can find them at their website.

The guides were knowledgeable, experienced, compassionate, and well-equipped to deal with the host of issues that can arise from psychedelic drug use. I decided I wanted to do it as soon as possible. I contacted the co-facilitator to ask how soon I could participate. She told me the December group was already fully booked, but they had an opening in January. That wouldn’t work for me. My family and I were moving from Phoenix to Boise on December 27^th. I wrote back, asking her to please let me know if any spots were to open up in December. Just my luck! Two spots had just opened up. I nabbed them for my boyfriend and myself.

Dieta Preparations & Tripping While Sober

My boyfriend and I had to start food and medication prepping almost immediately since we booked the trip within 3 weeks of the date. We needed to first cut pork out, then red meat, then all meat. Cut waaaay back on dairy and all animal byproducts. I had to stop taking Adderall and Ambien, and I had to stop ingesting marijuana. That was the part I had the most difficulty with.

As I said, I had bad anxiety. I felt a physical weight on my chest most days. I would wake up and fall asleep crying. I couldn’t imagine why I would need to stop treating such debilitating anxiety to take something that was supposed to help me. There was certainly no chemical explanation like there was for SSRIs and MAOIs. There were even tribes in the Amazon who smoked MJ in concurrence with Ayahuasca ceremonies. But Demi told me it would muddy my journey, and most of the dietas for the Amazonian retreats actually stipulated that MJ should be out of the system for at least a month, if not longer.

Regardless of good reason, I had to do it. I couldn’t risk my trip. The week before my journey with Aya, the mother had already started to enter my system.

Three days before our Aya experience, my boyfriend and I traveled to northern Arizona to hike the Grand Canyon. This was going to be difficult for me because I would have to do it all without taking Adderall, eating an edible, or eating meat. Keeping my strength up was going to be challenging. Also challenging was that I hadn’t been to the cabin since Josh died. In fact, no one had.

The night before we hiked the canyon (which I had done at least a dozen times before), I had my first communication with my brother since his death. In my sleep, during what some will likely interpret as a “dream”, my brother told me I didn’t have to worry about him anymore. He showed me where he lived now, and what everyone there does. I saw people who I knew who had died, and many many people who I had never met. Josh showed me everyone just doing their own thing, whatever that might be. He explained that people don’t depend on each other here. They like each other still and spend time (which is not so much even a thing there like it is here) together, but since they never had to exchange currencies or worry about food, there was no reason for anyone to ever depend on anyone else to go anywhere or do anything. So everyone just does whatever will make that person happiest at that moment. It was eternal presence. I woke myself up giggling several times. The next morning, all three of my friends commented on me laughing out loud in my sleep.

As we hiked through the Grand Canyon, I felt a wave a relief flood over me. I cried, and I laughed. I sketched Josh’s initials into a heart I drew on the sand of the banks of the Colorado River, and then we hiked out. One more night at the cabin, then we drove back to Phoenix and said goodbye to our friends. We slept one more time before doing Ayahuasca.

Ayahuasca Tripping & Learning About EVERYTHING

Going into the trip, I was nervous and excited. At their house, Demi and Brian introduced everyone who would be journeying together that night and waited on a few late arrivals. Everyone except my boyfriend and I had traveled with Aya before.

After the opening ceremony, one by one we approached the alter and drank our Ayahuasca brew. It was not something I would want to drink a lot of, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I anticipated. As Demi sang her songs, I laid on my mat on the floor, waiting for the Ayahuasca to kick in. The first song was in Spanish. I translated the lyrics in my head as best I could. I liked the song, and I really liked her voice. It’s difficult to know how much time really went by, but if I had to guess, I would say it was about 15 minutes.

I wondered if anyone else was experiencing anything yet. I worried that ingesting MJ about 7 days prior would mean that jealous Aya wouldn’t appear to me. I feared that I had done something terribly wrong. And then I remembered, all you have to do is surrender. Surrender your fears, your worries, your doubts, and surrender to the medicine that you helped enter your system. So I just let go…

I entered a dance with what appeared to me as rainforesty-celestial beings. I say “rainforesty” because although they were abstract, they were tall and deep green with some purple and other colors that I don’t think I could name. They asked me, in a language that needed no words: “Do you see now? What were you so afraid of? You are one of us, and you knew it all along. You are where you belong, doing what you are supposed to be doing. Let go of that fear and just be yourself. Who cares about what anyone else thinks? That’s all just an illusion anyway, and you know it.” I did see now. And then came my first purge of the night.

I was the first to throw up into my bucket, and I did so violently. There was not much in my stomach because I had been fasting for about 12 hours and hadn’t drunk water since 7pm, but it felt as though I let go of a lot. As I would hurl once and let go, I felt an emotional release. The purge is more than your body letting go of whatever makes you physically ill, it’s also your soul releasing the things in your life that no longer serve you. For me I think that meant releasing a lot of ideas that other people held about me that I had internalized and taken into myself. I didn’t have to worry about what other people thought anymore. Every time I would finish one purge and think I was ready to lay back down, another one would come. It finally stopped. I went to the bathroom to rinse my mouth and I filled up my water bottle in the kitchen. Brian told me not to drink again for at least an hour.

I laid back down and felt nothing again but pure unconditional love. The message now was “be kinder, be more patient. Be more loving, more forgiving… to others, but most of all to yourself.”

I was humbled and relaxed. The weight I usually carry in my chest was lifted for the moment. As I lay there in a relaxed and hyperaware state, there was one message that was slightly dark. It said: “This is so much easier to do in spaces like this where no one is judging, and you are not judging others. But this isn’t news to you Nicole. You know this always, and you can always choose to be in this state, but sometimes YOU chose not to… It’s okay that you chose not to, everyone has their own reasons for doing the things they do. That’s why judgement against others is so unbecoming. You can always come back without fear of punishment or that anyone will be mad at you for taking so long. And this is how you really love someone else too.”

The music stopped and the lights faded on, just a little bit. Second call to drink. I knew the second call was supposed to be very impactful, so even though I felt as though I didn’t really NEED anymore, I went to drink again. My boyfriend was the only other person to answer the call to drink, and he did so even faster than I could. He essentially ran to the altar, I knew he hadn’t felt anything yet. I hoped he would allow himself to surrender enough to feel something. I knew that was unlikely.

The messages Aya had for me were clear. You should write A LOT more, especially when you’re high. The world you live in is an illusion, as are money, fame, success, and the idea that we are not all a part of one larger whole. You know these things already. You do not need to take Ayahuasca, Marijuana, Adderall, or any other substance to access this information. It is all contained within you… but it’s totally okay if you chose to seek help, from whichever avenues you chose. Your brother is not dead, only his pain is. He lives in you and in the others whose lives he touched. You can talk to him anytime you want. All of the things you think that people tell you are crazy are not crazy. You are right! It might not make sense to other people, but you actually do know where you’re going, and you’re following your path to get there. Don’t listen to the naysayers… and above all, judgement is a killer. You don’t know what’s going on with anybody else or what they’ve been through. Others are on their paths like you are on yours. It is not your place to judge anyone, ever. This is easier said than done. Love, forgive, and be gentle with others, and with yourself. That which you see in others reflects that which you see in yourself. If you want gentleness and kindness from others, you better start practicing it first.

Three months after my journey, I continue to receive revelations from MJ, Aya, or myself (depending on which philosophical stance you want to take). The latest one came in the form of a poem and hurled out of me while I was completely sober. I had to race to find a pen before the words were lost.

“It can be really hard to just be yourself

When you are so different from everyone else.

Just continue to try and if you work hard,

Someday you might figure out who YOU really are.

The weight of that all might crush you at first

When suddenly you realize you are the jerk.

But take a deep breath.

Step back and you’ll see:

Knowledge Empowers

To every degree

The only thing standing in your way is you.

Get out of the way! You’re blocking the view.”

I’m trying to do just that!