“Aya», Cactus at Mescaline, LSD, hallucinogenic fungi… what if psychedelic substances became our new drugs?First part of our investigation into the great renewal of psychedelics.
“The first time I left, I saw myself double, as if I got up while sitting.Then, I raised in the sky and I saw my body in the room.»Stan*, 37 -year -old sound engineer, had everything to be happy, but was not.The sessions at the shrink did not help.Energy therapy either.Stan did not “like».Stan was in semi-depression.
A friend to him had followed a ritual of Ayahuasca in Switzerland and had dithyrambic out.Stan called the shaman, found him "coherent" and registered in the next session."I arrive a winter Friday, at the end of the day, in a country house.We are fifteen, with two shamans and an assistant.There is a room with a fireplace, an altar with statues, photos, candles and mattresses posed against the walls.»
Un liquide noirâtre “au goût de réglisse et de soja, avec une texture terreuse» leur est distribué tandis que le chaman et ses assistants chantent et jouent de différents instruments de musique.Nobody talks to each other, and some leave after the other.It vomits, it screams, it shouts, it laughs, it moans."There are even howls of pain around me, but it doesn't scare me because I know it's a bad for a good.»
Diet without coffee, alcohol or sex
After seven hours of travel which he refuses to detail out of modesty, Stan descends on earth, in Switzerland.It is 2 a.m..The next day, each debrief in breakfast, before a second session the same evening.
Ayahuasca only takes itself at night, when the shadows engulf the world, where the vision is disturbed, where the contours are blurred, where fears and ghosts lurk, because the day would risk breaking everything.And takes himself on an empty stomach, or after having followed a rigorous diet imposed by the one who drives the ceremony, the shaman, often without coffee, nor salt, nor alcohol, nor sex elsewhere.Ayahuasca would be jealous, could be annoyed to feel the remains of an orgasm in the body of the one who receives it ...
“L’aya», pour les intimes, est le résultat d’un savant mélange de deux ingrédients récoltés en Amazonie : d’une part, les feuilles de Psychotria viridis, une plante de la même famille que le caféier contenant un puissant psychotrope naturel, le DMT ; d’autre part, la liane ayahuasca, dont l’écorce permet l’action du DMT, naturellement empêché lorsqu’il est pris par voie orale par l’une de nos enzymes.
Existant, pourrait-on dire, depuis “la nuit des temps», l’aya participe depuis quelques années au grand renouveau des substances psychédéliques.LSD, hallucinogenic mushrooms, cacti in mescaline, iboga, DMT are on the rise in the United States and Europe, where Ayahuasca rituals are organized..
“Ce n’est pas une drogue mais dix ans de psychanalyse en une nuit.The degree of violence felt depends on what you have to settle.» Stan
Si le DMT est interdit depuis la convention de 1971 sur les substances psychotropes adoptée par la Conférence des Nations Unies, certains pays multiplient les demandes de dérogations concernant le breuvage lorsqu’il est utilisé “traditionnellement par certains groupes restreints bien déterminés à l’occasion de cérémonies magiques ou religieuses» (selon l’article 32 de la convention)).This is the case of Brazil, where ayahuasca has been decriminalized as an object of worship since 2004, and Peru, where the uses of beverage have been listed as cultural heritage since 2008.
Les États-Unis l’autorisent dans un cadre “religieux» depuis 2006, et ont entraîné à leur suite l’Australie, l’Italie, les Pays-Bas ou encore l’Espagne.In France, Ayahuasca is strictly prohibited (in 2018, a Peruvian shaman and a Frenchman were sentenced to two months in prison for importing six kilos in bottles)).An aberration for his disciples who praise his therapeutic virtues.
"It is not a drug but ten years of psychoanalysis in one night, insists Stan.The degree of violence felt depends on what you have to settle.But whatever happens, it's positive.You finally have the opportunity to see everything that was hidden under the carpet.» L’ayahuasca provoque des hallucinations, exacerbe les sensations et émotions, fait ressurgir des souvenirs et revivre des traumatismes.
In an episode of the Podcast Tourista which he co -fed with Marie de Brauer - available on streaming platforms -, journalist and humorist Maxime Musequa tells how a burn out mixed with a full -bodied break and unclutinte therapies led him to doA stay in Ayahuasca near Kathmandu, Nepal, with around thirty people of different nationalities and ages.
"I apprehended because I had already tested the champis who had put me in a ball in a bed, to ask myself when would it stop ... but I had confidence in the team since a friendhad made the same retreat the previous year.And then I lived so many nights of insomnia and depression that I said to myself: at worst, it's a night of shit more.I had to try it.»
Maxime spends his first night crying and yawning.The second to take itself for a gorilla, amounts to the custody in front of the yurt where the ceremony takes place.This is the third that turns out to be the most intense. “Je me suis dit : c’est ça la mort !» Maxime ne se sent plus être Maxime."My body was evolving but I was there anymore, and it didn't matter.No stress.» Maxime finit par redescendre et ne regrette pas l’expérience.
“L’ayahuasca te transmet des messages qui ne sont pas d’ordre intellectuel et agit à cet endroit-là que ton cerveau ne maîtrise pas.» Mai Hua
Among the Helpers then present to assist the shaman Figure Mai Hua, documentary maker passionate about Ayahuasca for five years and the beginning of his love story with Jerry, London therapist behind these ceremonies."It is not a Party Drug.This is not the ecsta you are going to take to have fun in the evening. C’est un travail sur ton âme», nous explique-t-elle devant son café crème, à la terrasse parisienne où on l’a rejointe.
In a posed voice, she tells the incests having touched several members of her family, her difficult relationship to her mother, her need to get out of it, and quickly, with her two children."Ayahuasca transmits messages that are not intellectual.It's like when you tell you "smoking kills".Yeah, ok, but you still turn it on your cigarette, directed by this anxiety knot.Ayahuasca acts on this knot, in this place that your brain does not master.»
Not recommended for schizophrenics and people under antidepressants
Mai Hua transmet son expérience mais n’essaie pas spécialement de convaincre, persuadée que consommer de l’ayahuasca doit découler d’une “démarche sincère»."This is a meeting that you have with the plant.Do not do it to do so, she says, we do not advertise.It works by word of mouth.»
On the security side, the helpers are there to watch over the grain, mainly retain participants who would decide to run very fast and far, risking getting lost, depending on the location, in the middle of the jungle or the countryside."What we do is dangerous, for sure," continues May Hua.So people have to check out: do not be schizophrenic, do not be under antidepressants, etc..We take care of security so that they can let go of it once there.»
A selection is practiced upstream, in order to rule out too young personalities (under 25, approximately)) or not having the right intentions."We realized that this plant became mainstream. Plein de gens voient la lumière et veulent en avoir», résume-t-elle.
Guérir un Occident “malade»
Les cérémonies changent de lieu et l’ayahuasca est directement achetée auprès des tribus péruviennes par “des gens de Londres qui y passent de quatre à six mois chaque année».When we approach the accusation of cultural appropriation brought against these Western circles, taking a passion for Ayahuasca and its cultural dimension, May Hua develops the vision of a world in crisis finally released by psychedelic substances.
"These Peruvian tribes see the West as sick.They want to bring us healing elements.For them, the more Westerners will heal, the more they understand the urgency than there is to save the planet and our relationship to others.Peruvian shamans therefore form Westerners to transmit Ayahuasca.»
Tourist-therapeutic circuit
More than 9,000 kilometers from Paris, in Peru, the rituals of Ayahuasca now form a tourist-therapeutic circuit, whether it is to treat a depression, a burn out, to discover the whole world, to accompanyThe end of life, or even getting out of an addiction to drugs (alcohol, cocaine, crack, heroin, etc..)).
In Tarapoto, the famous Takiwasi center has welcomed Peruvian drug addicts as well as around the world since 1986, with the idea that detoxification does not go through the substitution of an illegal drug by a legal drug or a single work on the physique, but by the research and the evacuation of fragility or even trauma having generated drug addiction.
The patients follow rituals of purges, ayahuasca, but also of diets, that is to say in the forest with swallowing of medicinal plants prescribed by the shamans of the center.These methods aim to bring up memories which will be seconded in a second step with psychotherapists and psychologists.
Purify body and soul
If drug addicts remain at least three months in Takiwasi, the center-declared non-profit association-also welcomes the all-year to these pensions/diets, and can thus exempt certain addicts in need of payment of the'Accommodation and care.
The 750 dollars program offers the taking of a vomiting plant on Wednesday at 3:30 p.m., an Ayahuasca session on Thursday at 9 p.m., then, the next day, an isolation of a week in a cabin with ingestion of plantsmedicinal so -called mistresses, prescribed according to the needs of each.The goal?purify body and soul.A sort of two in one.
Apparu dans les années 1960 avec le mouvement hippie, le tourisme chamanique engage plusieurs idées qui se rejoignent : le monde occidental post-révolution industrielle court à sa perte et il faut donc renouer auprès des tribus indigènes une connexion avec la nature maternelle et nourricière ; il faut se purifier pour retrouver l’état primitif qui existe en chacun·e de nous, détenteur d’une forme de sérénité ; il faut se connecter avec l’univers, découvrir le monde invisible, peuplé de l’esprit des ancêtres, des morts et de la nature ; l’industrie pharmaceutique nous abreuve de drogues chimiques labellisées “médicaments» dont il faut se séparer au plus vite.
Fashion like yoga or meditation
In the 1990s, shamanic tourism experienced a first boom in Peru, carried out in particular by the publication of the cosmic snake of Canadian anthropologist Jérémy Narby. “Les locaux ont rapidement compris qu’ils avaient quelque chose à gagner à cet afflux de voyageurs», retrace David Dupuis, anthropologue spécialiste des substances psychédéliques et de leurs usages, qui étudie l’émergence de ce tourisme singulier.
"Shamanic centers have been created around the great metropolises of Amazonia.Institutions intended to welcome Westerners for more or less short stays with Western codes: beds with mosquito nets, showers, etc..»
The Western world is nonetheless in crisis today, and social networks having disseminated the good word of Ayahuasca, shamanic tourism would be almost in the process of becoming a fashion, in the same way as fasting, meditation,Yoga, veganism - hallucinations and vomiting as a bonus -, in a world in loss of bearings and in search of meaning and spirituality.
At the top of Mount Rushmore
Samuel*, 30, musical artistic director in western France, had nothing special to settle, just the desire to test Ayahuasca, which he had heard a lot.In 2016, after finding an address with a friend who followed a ritual of Aya to mourn his grandmother, he went to Peru, to the village of Pisac, backed by the Urubamba Cordillera, alone-hiswoman, with whom he was doing an eight -month road trip in Latin America, not being ready.
There rises a large temple pierced with a well of light, in which mattresses and buckets are arranged on the ground.Once the sun is lying, guitar, Santour and percussion set in motion.The glasses are filled with Ayahuasca."Started champis type effects that I practiced, recalls Samuel.Heart pulsation, hand sweating, biased tactile perception, nausea, loss of space benchmarks, difficult balance.»
Everything changes with the second catch, almost two hours later."I experienced a devout by a root that I saw very well.A hideous liana that came into my eyes, my ears.I Morflais.I didn't know how far it could go.»
“Je ne sentais plus de séparation entre l’air et mon corps.I was evolving in a sea of atoms, a liquid, global world, without borders, ultra-luminous.» Samuel
Everything changes again when the musicians swap the brutal noise, very dark, which they poured until then to engage on lyrical music."I no longer felt a separation between the air and my body.I was evolving in a sea of atoms, a liquid, global world, without borders, ultra-luminous.To fart my eyes.»
Samuel finit par vomir, ce qu’il qualifie de “libérateur».There follows a second phase, more focused on memories.Here he is at the top of Mount Rushmore, a monumental sculpture of four American presidents, where friends try to explain to him that this is his relationship to excess.Later during his trip, Samuel understands that he must get rid of the ring he wears in the ear.
"The sun has pointed out gently.Shamans have brought fruit.It was not a descent, just a blurring.From the moment I was able to move, I got off the temple and I threw my ring.The next morning, I was in good shape.I walked an hour to the village.I hadn't eaten anything for thirty hours, except for some fruits.I was in a hyperperception.I joined my wife and I collapsed in tears.»
Ultra-perception
A few weeks later, Samuel held the experience in another village, Colombian this time, Leticia, located on the Amazon river.Nothing is planned, except that the man holding the hostel where his partner and he went down to him is about to organize a ritual the next day.Twenty-four hours of fasting, and here is Samuel lying in a hammock under a mosquito net, in the middle of the forest, with a few Colombians and the shaman, who plays the flute and sings.
"I was spreading in the universe.I had the impression that I was threw branches of chromosomes in the face.I was no longer a body.I felt water.Then, I started to bug, like an overheating computer.It was close to epilepsy.I was really afraid, I thought I was going to die or that my brain was going to stop.There I extracted myself from the hammock and I vomited.»
The second catch gives him an ultra-perception."It is too disproportionately powerful to be able to formulate anything and have a mobility or exchange project at the moment.It’s a bit of a first state.You feel naked.You touch your zero point and you can write the rest of your life.» Zéro regret, Samuel se dit même “rassuré» à l’idée que l’ayahuasca existe et qu’il puisse y avoir recours pour surmonter d’éventuelles épreuves à venir dans sa vie.
“Certaines plantes sont abordées comme de véritables sujets, dotés d’une personnalité, d’intentions et d’un pouvoir d’agir qui leur sont propres.» David Dupuis, anthropologue
The meeting between Western demand and the supply of Amazonian tribes creates new positive as negative.An experience in Ayahuasca is not a ride, nor a little delirium under MDMA. D’où l’extrême ritualisation de la prise de “la médecine» – comme la surnomme ses adeptes –, qui permet tout autant de fixer un cadre avec des règles à ne pas enfreindre, au risque qu’elle ne se retourne contre vous.
"In Amazon, the relationship of indigenous populations with living beings is marked by animism: these beings are thought of as inhabited by" spirits ".Certain plants - and in particular psychotropic plants - are then discussed as real subjects, endowed with a personality, intentions and a power to act their own, sums up David Dupuis.
The shaman's work consists precisely in negotiating relations with these beings in order to obtain profits.We are far from western representations of biomedical inspiration reducing psychotropic substances to their "active ingredients".
Plant minds
For the healers of Peruvian Amazon, ingesting Ayahuasca, it is going to meet a being with which we will build a relationship.And it is also a question of negotiating this relationship, because these "plant" minds are renowned for their ability to harm, or even kill.Again, we are far from the romantic vision of a perfectly benevolent nature that inspires most Western customers in shamanic centers, who often approach these practices in the prism of the New Age imagination.»
May Hua abounds: "You can't do that because you are looking for the pleasant.You will surely be confronted with something awful.But there is often no shortcuts to solve certain problems.»
In the universe of ayahuasca, any vision, emotion, sensation is meaningful.It is therefore necessary to take the time to analyze it, to dissect it, in order to understand what the plant wished to communicate to you. Libre à chacun·e de déterminer s’il s’agit d’un esprit extérieur et invisible à l’œil nu qui entrerait en communication avec l’âme alors qu’une partie du cerveau (la rationnelle)) serait mise en sommeil, ou bien s’il s’agit tout simplement de l’inconscient over-stimulé sous l’effet d’un puissant psychotrope naturel.
"Intercultural misunderstanding"
"In the Amazon, which is often the most important for indigenous populations who use Ayahuasca, it is the vomitable properties of beverage, notes David Dupuis.While Westerners come mainly in search of "visions" and psychotherapeutic experiences.There is a fairly massive intercultural misunderstanding here.Many Westerners are disappointed by the fact that local healers are not very interested in the analysis or commentary of their visionary experiences.This is also explained by the fact that visions are often marked with the seal of secrecy in indigenous populations.It is a private affair, between the person and the spirits, and to speak of it with other humans could degrade this relationship.Certain centers have understood that the spaces of verbalization of the experience were lacking in Westerners and now hire psychologists.»
Centers adapt to their new Western customers, even embracing New Age terminology and the concepts of depression and burn out.Shamans are more and more numerous.
“Shamanism was in the process of dereliction in many Aboriginal communities in the region, analyzes David Dupuis.Because initiation involves living in the forest for a long period with many food, sexual, relational prohibitions.In a region marked by the postcolonial context, shamanism had also lost its attraction with youth rather fascinated by Western technology and consumer goods.With the emergence of shamanic tourism, shamanism has suddenly become an enviable "career": the opportunity to enrich itself, to acquire symbolic prestige, to frequent Gringos.» Avec le risque que n’importe qui s’autoproclame chaman et escroque, voire abuse d’une clientèle étrangère souvent dans un état de fragilité psychologique et/ou physique.
Bad meetings
Les histoires de viols, notamment, sont courantes, même si aucun·e de nos interlocuteur·trices ne souhaite s’étendre sur le sujet… mettant plutôt l’accent sur le fait qu’il faille se tourner “vers des personnes de confiance», fréquenter “des lieux sûrs», suivre “les recommandations d’un tiers» et non le ou la premier·ière venu·e qui vous accosterait dans les rues de Cuzco, au Pérou.Because Ayahuasca's ritual supposes to let go entirely to the hands of a shaman and his team ...
In January 2020, several women told the BBC their rapes under the influence of Ayahuasca. Parmi elles, Rebekah, Néo-Zélandaise de 20 ans, expliquait comment, alors qu’elle était sous l’emprise de l’ayahuasca, un chaman péruvien l’avait violée en lui assurant que cela lui apporterait “un avancement spirituel».
Rapes become such a problem that the American Institute Chacruna, which works on medicinal and psychedelic plants at the psychological and anthropological level, has put online a guide to awareness of sexual abuse for the user of Ayahuasca,Available for free in fourteen languages.
Sexual abuse
Among other things, he is noted: "The abuse of the participants by healers and facilitators in the context of use of Ayahuasca, like any sexual assault, is an abuse of power.It is a distortion of the relationship between healer and patient during which the healer uses his position of power in order to satisfy his personal interests.This is all the more harmful and shocking since many women turn to the use of Ayahuasca in order to deal with the consequences of sex trauma occurred in the past.»
Nine years ago, when he had to get rid of addictions and a post-divorce depression, Domi*, 47 years old today, turned to Ayahuasca.After two ceremonies in California, where she was an interior designer, the Frenchwoman embarks for Peru, at a certain Don José.
"I didn't have any particular problems, but I didn't feel it.I have never seen him again, and he was in prison ... you have to be wary of death.Ayahuasca is a powerful energy.It is a great power for people who do not use it in the light.» Et d’ajouter : “Je connais plein d’histoires horribles, de viols notamment.I know a person who had bad meetings ... You have to be wary.»
To remedy the problem, that which was dazzled by a Near Death Experience, an imminent feeling of death, which can be lived via Ayahuasca, has dropped everything and now organizes ceremonies on French territory with a Brazilian tribe thanIt ensures 100% secure.
“Quand je vois le nombre de personnes qui arrêtent la drogue ou les antidépresseurs et qui trouvent une joie de vivre grâce à l’aya, ça vaut tout l’or du monde.» Domi
"I take the risk of conviction, this is my mission.When I see the number of people who stop drugs or antidepressants and who find a joy of living thanks to AYA, it's worth all the gold in the world.» Compter 500 euros pour deux jours de cérémonie en France, et de 600 à 800 dollars aux États-Unis, où elle les exporte également. “Si quelqu’un n’a que cent balles, on s’en fout», précise-t-elle.
Money, ensures Domi, is used to buy land in Latin America to plant Ayahuasca and do everything to preserve the medicinal knowledge of Aboriginal tribes. Domi monte actuellement deux centres au Mexique qui travailleront avec l’ayahuasca mais aussi le peyotl, un cactus à mescaline, lui aussi porteur de puissants effets psychotropes, “plus doux» selon elle.
Because this new attraction for psychedelic substances does not only concern AYA, any more than it is the result of some isolated followers.For their part, the scientific community like Silicon Valley are seriously starting to take an interest in it ...
*These first names have been modified.
Next month, find the rest of our survey on the revival of psychedelic substances.
