A Rather Peculiar Brew: Musings on Ayahuasca

Let me begin by saying that ayahuasca is quite possibly the most ludicrously named substance on the planet. It sounds like the punchline to a joke about a sneeze in a Mexican restaurant. "Ah...ah...AYAHUASCA!" One can hardly say it without involuntarily spraying a mist of saliva droplets.

But I digress. Ayahuasca, for those of you blissfully unaware, is a powerfully hallucinogenic tea concoction that has been brewed and consumed by indigenous Amazonian tribes for centuries, possibly millennia. It's made by boiling together a couple of very specific plants—the ayahuasca vine and chacruna leaves—which, through some biochemical wizardry, create a psychoactive beverage with enough potency to completely reorder your brain chemistry.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Bill old chum, ingesting a mysterious psychotropic potion cooked up by inscrutable jungle shamans sounds like a perfectly delightful idea! When can I sign up?" Well, hold your horses there, my friend.

Drinking ayahuasca is, by most accounts, a thoroughly unpleasant experience from start to finish. First, the tea itself is said to taste like a moldy sock that's been soaked in rusty drain water. Then, once you've got that foul sludge sloshing about in your stomach, the purging begins—an evening of protracted bouts of extremely vigorous vomiting and diarrhea.

As one ayahuasca researcher delicately phrased it: "You will experience a prolonged period of gastrointestinal armageddon that will make you wish you had never been born." Jolly good!

But ah, if you can survive that harrowing physical ordeal, that's when the real fun starts. Because that's when the hallucinations kick in with full force. We're not talking about a few mild visual distortions here—ayahuasca is like strapping yourself to the front car of a psychedelic freight train bound for parts unknown.

Accounts of ayahuasca trips are all over the map, ranging from profoundly spiritual, life-altering revelations to utterly terrifying descents into hellish, nightmarish realms of existence. Some have reported encounters with insectoid aliens, conversations with long-dead ancestors, visions of past lives, and so on. Others have experienced their own births, deaths, and literal rebirths as interdimensional beings.

One researcher, after partaking, claimed to have spent the entire night as a "sentient ball of energy" traveling through wormholes to other galaxies. Another said he momentarily merged his consciousness with that of a hummingbird outside the ceremony hut. I don't know about you, but that sounds utterly dreadful to me. I can barely handle being a human most days.

At the end of the day, ayahuasca seems to be one of those "you had to be there" sorts of experiences. Either it alters your consciousness in profound, indescribable ways, or it just makes you vilely ill for a few hours. There's really no middle ground.

Is it a doorway to higher spiritual planes and a deeper understanding of our universe? Or just a highly unpleasant purgative with some very bizarre side effects? I haven't the foggiest idea. But I do know one thing—you'd have to pay me a considerable sum to even consider drinking that vile, vomit-inducing, psyche-shattering jungle brew. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go have a nice, safe, ordinary cup of English Breakfast tea.