May | 2015 | Wandering and Wondering Through South America

Natemamu, Part II: A Strange Brew

So what is it that makes people willingly take a glass-full of a bitter, thick liquid when they know that they will probably be bent over an hour later, purging not only their last few meals, but what the shamans believe are negative energies? Why subject oneself to this knowingly and repeatedly? That was something that certainly ran through my mind as I was bent over mid-way through the introductory ceremony. People not only pay money for this, but they actually come back and do it again? And again?

Chris Kilham, more famously known as the Medicine Hunter, and senior health editor for Fox News, regards this plant brew as the most potent healing agent in the world. And since, by his own admission, he’s participated in several dozen ceremonies, Kilham is positioned well to hold this opinion. He now leads groups to the Amazon to experience for themselves the healing powers of this amazing plant.

Known to the Shuar as natem, to others as ayahuasca, yagé, daime, la purga and many other names, this concoction has been in use for thousands of years in the Amazon basin. Now it is undergoing many clinical trials in South American countries following rigorous laboratory protocols.

Kilham, investigating medicinal plants for more than 30 years and a tenured professor at UMass-Amherst, believes (as do I and thousands of others) that natem unlocks a spirit world and permits us to enter this world in a highly personal way. He also goes on to say that those who criticize, those who disbelieve the existence of this spirit world are invariably those who have never attended such a ceremony. Like the Medicine Hunter, I’ve always believed that it is so very easy to have an opinion, and a very strong one at that, of something about which someone knows nothing.

The only thing that I knew, mid-way through that first ceremony, was that morning couldn’t come soon enough. Within 45 minutes of drinking my first cup of natem, I began seeing some interesting geometric hallucinations. They were tiny, moving lights forming a kind of spider-web pattern overlaid on my “normal” vision. Having experienced LSD many times more that 40 years previously, these hallucinations were actually pretty tame in comparison. I was expecting some of the pure terror that often accompanied LSD “trips” but natem is far kinder in its greeting.

My biggest problem with this first experience, and as it turned out, for the next several nights worth of ceremonies, was that most of the energy of the natem was focused on very stern, almost violent body reactions. This first venture was for me almost completely dominated by heavy twitching and shaking of my lower extremities. My legs were reacting as if I had just completed a marathon. There was no pain, and I was very lucid, but at that point my main concern was that my shaking and jerking about would disturb others around me. While they were making contact with this spirit world, each in his or her own way (and silently, dammit!), I was laying back on my mat behaving as if someone had inserted electrodes into both legs.

As I lay there on the mat, flat on my back, I bent my knees and placed my feet flat on the mat. This slowed down the twitching and my motions were less noticeable to myself and others. The geometric patterns were gone by then, but I was developing a serious headache and some nausea. I found out later that having some water, and frequently drinking same would easily mitigate these reactions. But man, that nausea!

Over the years I have been plagued with nausea to such a degree that I’ve almost become a connoisseur. Almost, but not quite. From heavy and painfully frequent doses of motion sickness as a child, to more recent and regular daily bouts, nausea and I are no strangers. Diagnosed as suffering from intractable nausea 4 or 5 years ago, I even went so far as to register, first in New Mexico and then in Hawai’i, as a medical cannabis patient to fight off daily, and often multiple times a day bouts of nausea. Standard anti-nausea medication would either put me to sleep completely or leave me semi-comatose and unable to function. At least with the cannabis (a personal friend of many years) I could walk and chew gum at the same time.

Well the morning after my first natem ceremony I was so heavily nauseated that I knew that I was going to leave the ceremonies, leave the retreat, and somehow stumble my way back to Quito. This first morning, after having no sleep the night before, was enveloped in one of the strongest, most vicious encounters with nausea that I had ever had. After 6 decades of nausea, that’s saying something. And I was saying something too.

Having a picnic by the river and getting ready for a Ceremony

Ursula, the German woman who earlier told me that after 80 previous encounters with natem, she was now ready to do some serious personal work, was laying on her sleeping bag to my right. I was explaining to her, while others were slowly dealing with dawn and their own journeys, that I was probably done. I needed to see Paul and back out of this retreat as gracefully as I could. It was fortunate for me that she happened to be next to me, or maybe she planned it that way.

The 2 of us were older than the rest of the group by a full generation, and I am about ½ dozen years older than she is. In Catemayo, while waiting for the taxis, we began talking and resonated quite well. Though chronologically younger, as time went on she became my older sister and her help throughout the time we were all together for nearly 3 weeks, proved invaluable. And of all the help she provided, the most valuable was during that first morning.

She explained that since the nausea was the strongest experience that I took away from that first ceremony, then nausea was my target, was my subject. Ursula believes that nothing is an accident and my initial encounter was my personal message to return to the nausea that second night and ask why. Somehow I believed her. And with her German precision she would hear of no talk of backing out. It was inconceivable and therefore impossible to discuss leaving. Get up, get dressed, we are climbing those cobblestone steps, all 163 of them, for breakfast.

Thank you so much Ursula. You were, of course, correct.

I did make it up those steps. I had breakfast and felt fractionally better. And as the day slowly moved by and I was able to grab an hour’s sleep I realized that I really did owe it to myself to stay for a second night and maybe I could gain some benefit. After all, I had been reading about the amazing properties of ayahuasca for years, and really, a substantial reason for finally coming to South America was to drink the brew.

I had known for some time that ayahuasca is a healing enigma on the grandest scale. In the Andean countries and Brazil, many researchers, both psychiatric/psychological and medical have been deeply involved in trying to find out just how this mysterious plant works. It is, of course, an illegal substance in North America and all of Europe, as defined by the finest minds in politics. But down here, where people take a more rational view of the individual in relation to the environment, one can purchase the vine in an indigenous market a 10-minute walk from my room in Quito.

The term ayahuasca is loosely interchanged with both the vine, Banisteriopsis caapi, and the brew, which varies by country, by region, by shaman, and by what the particular shaman wants to accomplish for a particular ceremony. I refer the interested back to the Medicine Hunter for as much detail as you might like for these variations. His website, the Erowid website, and many others offer truly informative material for the truly open seeker of healing.

In my personal case, some years back I was in a losing battle with what finally was diagnosed as clinical, or major depression. But fortunately my primary care doctor put me in contact with a psychiatrist who is vehemently opposed to pharmaceuticals. She, along with a number of other renegade psychiatrists, were working at the time with the University of New Mexico’s Medical School, studying the effects of DMT as a healing agent.

DMT, from another crucial plant often referred to as chacruna, happens to play a critical role in the ayahuasca brew. My older sister Ursula would argue that none of this is an accident: my having depression, connecting with a scientifically curious psychiatrist, UNM/Med-School research, a plane flight to Ecuador, etc.

Now DMT, you must understand, has also been classified in the USA as a dangerous drug of no medical value. Along with cannabis. These classifications were determined to be true through rigorous medical research conducted by, wait for it: YES!, politicians. Aren’t we happy that they are protecting us from ourselves? Umm, no, not really.

With all of this information rolling around in my mind, there could be no debate. Following another tasty lunch and a shower, I came back to my mat, cleaned up some of the surrounding area, and got ready for the second, or Opening Ceremony. This turned out to be a brew of different proportions and, to put it in a most melodramatic way, it really did change my life.

Natemamu, Part I: Catemayo

It began easily enough: I received an e-mail from Paul saying to meet the group for breakfast at “La Bachita” restaurant, near the town square. How hard can that be in a town whose central business district only extends 3 or 4 blocks away from the town square? Thing is, there are actually 3 La Bachita’s on the same block!. It must be that in Catemayo, if you want to open a restaurant, at least on that block, you’ll name it La Bachita or find another line of work.

La Bachita number one, according to my hotel’s front desk, was the breakfast bar on the top floor of the hotel itself. Well I knew that the breakfast bar, 7 flights up, wasn’t what I was looking for. La Bachita number two, the actual meeting place, was conveniently, if confusedly, located right next door. And the third one was down the block on the other corner. Of course, that’s the one I decided must be the place.

Since I was up early, had already eaten (at La Bachita #1, where else?) and feeling full of energy, I walked around the Plaza Central and surrounding blocks, watching the tiny town bloom into its weekly Saturday morning market. In towns this size all around Ecuador, the weekly market is both the family buying spree and the chance to happily catch up on community gossip. Everyone I met was in a friendly mood, even to an obviously out-of-place gringo. So, slowly circling back to the hotel, I came across La Bachita #3 and hung out there waiting in vain for my intrepid retreat buddies to appear.

It eventually dawned on me that this was not our rendezvous, so I doubled back and looking in the window of #2, recognized Paul from his website photo. The group was just finishing their meal, and after some hasty introductions, people split up to raid the food mercado and local merchants for last-minute purchases like Wellington boots and ponchos and bushels of carrots.

By now it was nearing mid-day and time to collect our baggage from a mountain of various backpacks, duffels, and other luggage at the back of the restaurant. Paul had contracted for 6, 4-door Toyota pickup taxis to meet us in front and we bucket-brigaded all our gear, 25kg. sacks of potatoes, and other sundries on board the trucks and raced out of town.

We were headed to a finca, or farm, up in the cloud forests above Catemayo. These cloud forests extend the length of the Andes from Colombia through Ecuador and Perú down the coast to Chile. They are a major source of water for these countries and, through over-development in many places, endangered along with the flora and fauna they sustain. Little rain falls in these parts and so the life in the cloud forests depends entirely on moisture left by the clouds as they ceaselessly track across this steep and craggy terrain.

After an hour’s ride through this stunning mountain scenery, catching glimpses of tiny indigenous villages impossibly perched on narrow ridges or up steep defiles, we arrived at the finca. For most of the year this isolated property is only visited by it’s owners, Mario and Susan and young Mario junior on the weekends, when they escape the “urban madness” of their home in Vilcabamba, a village of around 3,000 people. But now all three were there, with 8yr old Mario junior bouncing from taxi to taxi, greeting everyone in both Spanish and English and highly articulate in both.

Susan, a retired attorney from the US, and Mario, a Peruvian national also retired from years as a financial advisor, are far along in the conversion of their property into a wonderful spiritual retreat center. They already host several gatherings each year, and with a creek and a river and a half-dozen waterfalls rushing through the property, it’s easy to see why. Their goal is an off-grid haven for personal growth.

With this abundance of water, they have their own supply of domestic water, captured high up on the mountain. It’s as pure and cold as one could hope for, and it made our morning showers a delightful, if frigid, wake-up. Cloud forests are poor locations for solar heating, so personal hygiene was a choice between the showers or the river. All of us switched between the 2 frequently throughout our time there.

Also there to greet us was Alberto Catan, a Shuar shaman registered with both the Ecuadorian government and the Shuar Federation. Ecuador is one of the few South American countries that both recognizes and regulates indigenous healers as viable health-care professionals. Shamans, curanderos(as), uwishin, yachacs and other healers are federally certified and often work side-by-side with modern physicians, exchanging patient information back and forth quite freely.

Alberto had come to deliver all the natem we would consume for the duration of the retreat and he stayed on to conduct the first night’s opening ceremony. He and Paul, along with Paul’s assistants would be working with us individually and as a group. While most of the attendees had been working with natem for some time (Ursula, from Berlin, had for example taken natem about 80 times by her account), several of us were attending ceremonies for the first time.

By now we had all unloaded our gear and we gathered in the group dining room for lunch and a rundown of the events and schedule for the rest of the day. The lunch, like all of our meals during the time there, was light, vegetarian, with hearty portions of flavorful soup. No onions, garlic, fats (including all forms of dairy), or sweets, though the teas and coffee did have raw sugar available.

The idea was to be kind to our digestive tracts because natem is a natural purgative and the introductory ceremony was only a few hours away, beginning just after sunset. As you might suspect, those of us who had never taken part in a ceremony had more than a smidgen of apprehension regarding the idea of a night of puking. It’s not normally something one might willingly seek out. But then too, none of us “newbies” was unaware of the process involved. We were first-timers but we all were well aware of the order of events involving ingesting natem.

The ceremony, and the majority of the rest of the ceremonies at the retreat, was to be held in what we referred to as the Shaman’s Lodge. It is an open affair with a roof to keep out the rain, and a low wall circling about a third of it to compensate for the slope that it was built into. The Lodge was down a very steep slope from the main house, and the path to it was a series of cobblestone steps (163 someone counted). This was also our bedroom for the 20 or so of us who were the participants plus Paul’s assistants.

We had our sleeping bags spread out around the perimeter and each of us had a thin mattress to place under the pad but on top of straw mats that also circled the outer portion of the Lodge floor, which was hard-packed dirt. I’d guess that the Lodge was at least 60’ in diameter, with a continuous wood fire in the center. This fire, banked during the day, was the sole source of light during the ceremonies, though the Lodge did have a single, very dim light at the peak of the roof (maybe 20’ above the floor) that only came on for custodial chores at other times.

At this point we were ready: the sleeping bags were spread out, we each had some form of flashlight/headlamp, we all had knee-high rubber boots for avoiding the poisonous vipers when we needed to leave the lodge to vomit, and the working toilets, shower, and common sink were less than 20’ from the rear entrance to the Lodge, lit with low-voltage lighting. All we had to do now was wait for sunset.