Have You Ever Taken Ayahuasca in the Peruvian Amazon?

By Alexander Zaitchik, Killing the Buddha. Posted May 22, 2009.

The shaman, Noemi Vagus, was like no octogenarian I had ever met. Her jet black hair, nimble barefoot stride, and straight-backed squat reminded me more of a teenage gymnast than her elderly counterparts in American cities, with their four-legged walkers, slouching postures, and debilitating arthritis. Then there is the fact that she habitually consumes more elite psychedelics than every parking lot 'shroom dealer at Burning Man put together.

Noemi's health and vigor are not uncommon among the elders of the Ashaninka tribe, whose population of 45,000 sprawls across the national borders of Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, and Brazil. When asked about this vitality, the Ashaninka will point to Ayahuasca, known as "Kamarampi" in the tribal language. As do most Amazon tribes, the Ashaninka consider the vine to be the ultimate healing plant. For millennia it has been imbibed and smoked as a way to cure a range of mental and physical illnesses. Since it often induces violent vomiting and diarrhea, it is also used to purge vicious jungle parasites. Judging by the fit state of Ashaninka tribal elders, regular use is also something like drinking from a fountain of youth, or chewing on the branch of immortality.

Like most psychedelic aficionados I have known, Noemi did not need to be pressed very hard before agreeing to hold a ceremony that night. She immediately led us into the jungle and over to a thick-barked vine the width of a baseball bat. "Here," she said, touching it reverently. Then she led us a little deeper into the forest and pointed to the nondescript green leaves of a plant known as Chakruna, which contains natural DMT. When boiled together with the Ayahuasca vine, which contains a class of alkaloids known as beta-carbolines, the Chakruna leaves' DMT is activated for oral ingestion. Botanists have estimated that the chances of randomly mixing the two plants together is around one in five billion. When I asked Noemi how the Ashaninka knew to mix the two plants in such a way as to unlock their power, she pointed to the sky. "The thunder and the lightning told us," she said, matter-of-factly.

The process of making the Ayahuasca brew began that afternoon, after Noemi had hacked down a vine and collected the leaves. The cooking is simple but takes all day: First the vine is stripped of its bark and hacked into strips. It is then soaked and bundled together with Chakruna and placed in a pot, where it is tended to and stirred for several hours. Slowly, the water becomes dark as it absorbs the divine plant matter. The resultant broth is left to cool and strained into another pot.

At sundown we gathered at Noemi's hut, where she had placed a thin black blanket on the packed earth. She instructed us to lie down and wait, then disappeared. She returned half an hour later carrying the pot in both hands. By then the stars were out and the jungle's nightlife was in full swing. Nobody spoke. One by one, she called the four of us participating in the ceremony up to the pot, where she ladled out the psychedelic soup into a grapefruit-sized gourd. The lukewarm liquid was bitter, but I didn't gag on it, as I sometimes do when chewing psilocybin fungi. North American magic mushrooms taste like sour shit; this tasted like moist soil, like drinking the forest itself. I wiped my chin, mumbled thank you, and returned to the blanket.

We lay quiet for some time, listening to the rushing river to our left and the teeming jungle to our right. Then, gently but swiftly, the Madre spirit announced her arrival and mine. She did this with a sound as natural to the jungle as the taste of the vine. The noise of the river rushing over rocks began to merge with that of the buzzing rainforest to form a warm insectoid hum. It was as if waves of bugs as big as rodents were swarming from every direction; as if the river was full of prehistoric flying insects. Yet somehow this wasn't frightening or even creepy. The enveloping sound did not threaten us; the forest and its many creatures were our protectors.

I shut my eyes and breathed deeply. The jungle drug was taking hold.

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Alexander Zaitchik is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist and AlterNet contributing writer.

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