The Black Smoke of Ayahuasca: A Cancer Patient Finds a Cure and Love in Ecuador

By Adam Elenbaas, Reality Sandwich. Posted April 8, 2009.

As a lover and apprentice I was "up in there," learning during healing rituals. And that was great. I spoke with another person recently who'd apprenticed under a healer. He said there should be a support group for shaman's apprentices!

Throughout eleven trips you went back and forth to Ecuador to the United States and Canada. Was healing slowed by having to come home, or were these integration periods necessary?

No, the healing wasn't slowed. After my first trip I'd found out from doctors in New York that the cancer had disappeared. But I had a lot of integration to do. I was making judgments in my dreams and rearranging my feelings while I slept. I'd dropped my composing career, and my marriage fell apart. I lost my home. Everything flipped. And ayahuasca came to me in the States. First I'd smell it as it swirled down -- the revoltingly sweet, rotten smell. I'd have just enough time to grab on to something before I was in the spirit world. I'd be taken for as long as eight hours. Ayahuasca -- we're married now. And I don't every want to get divorced from la medicina.

Aside from writing a thoughtful book, how do you explain your experiences? What's the right way to talk about the Ayahuasca healing cosmology here at home?

I had no thought of writing this memoir. I am a composer who couldn't put two sentences together before this whole thing began. I didn't think of writing a book until three or four years after things had settled down. Then, I was forced into it. The medicine wanted me to write from a personal point of view, naturally, and in the form of a healing story.

The right way to talk about ayahuasca is with reverence. I know plant spirits and energy heal the body. I know there is a vast, inexplicable universe and there's inherent power in that knowledge. I want people to know that ayahuasca embodies the holy sacred, natural living, respect, and love for Mother Earth. The medicine reveals to a person that they know what life is. To know how to live. To know its great value. As an apprentice, to know one has helped people heal is the happiest feeling. Carlos showed me remarkable treatments that were both death-defying and life-affirming. Black Smoke reveals the process of deep risk, trust, and the female voice establishing psychic and physical authority.

The book chronicles your journey through the jungle, but it also takes you back to the Hudson Valley and puts Carlos in your world. Did the relationship change and how did he deal with your culture?

People were crowding us to be healed. I was talking to cancer patients daily. Carlos's work was very effective here. But Black Smoke is a cautionary tale. Crossing cultures can be dangerous, and in the book the reader will see how dangerous it was for Carlos, and for me.

What is the role of the vision quest today? Can it still serve a purpose in western, post-modern culture?

Absolutely. Vision quests strip away the false, the pretentious, the negative, and open one to a world of life, possibility. Both are gateways beyond fear. The roots of disease (spiritual, emotional, physical) are fear, repression, the calcification of love and the life force within a person. Ayahusaca and vision quests unleash artificial trappings and burdens. This kind of healing is the holiest work in the world.

Any new projects in the works? What are you up to these days? What do you want to learn more about yet?

I've recently returned from Nigeria where I live very simply in an Igbo village. No electricity, running water, bathrooms, refrigeration. But Ah! The people and the land. Palm wine. Kola nuts. Hot peppers. Pounded yam. Music. Holy Spirit. Spirit Masks. Tradition. Ancient ways of curing. Herbal medicine people. Traveling has allowed me to work with healers in Brazil, Egypt, Sub Sahara Africa and Indonesia. There seems to be another book coming about spirit possession, I think.

See more stories tagged with: ecuador, cancer, margaret de wys, ayahuasca

A recovered Christian fundamentalist, Elenbaas lives in New York and is currently working towards the publication of his book, Fishers of Men, a memoir based upon his recent years of recovery work with Ayahuasca shamanism in the Peruvian Amazon. Adam is a Contributing Editor for RealitySandwich.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from DrugReporter! Sign up now »