I wouldn’t call my self an ayahuasquero but the first time I drank ayahuasca I spent an evening in the kitchen with my good friend, brewing this shaman’s drink ourselves. We bought some Banisteriopsis caapi containing several harmala alkaloids as a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAO) and dried leaves of Psychotria viridis containing N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Alternatively you can use Mimosa hostilis as a DMT containing plant. These plants are all native to the Amazon rainforest and some beyond up to Mexico.

The end result was a bottle of a brown, muddy liquid tasting incredibly bad. We had no idea what the correct dose would be, so we drank enough for a violent out-of-body experience into hyperspace, fighting space aliens until death for many hours. This was self administered under a full moon in nature. I’m not even sure if I’m brave enough to repeat the experience at this moment in life.

The Peruvian painter Pablo Amaringo made an attempt to visualise his ayahuasca visions. I believe it’s quite difficult to relate the ayahuasca experience to anything known in our three dimensional experience. Especially when time itself dissolves and you are sucked into inner visions. I think the visions are a direct product of our brain and not a real spirit world, which exists outside of our mind. The human mind is quite amazing. There are doors to be openend.

After my first experience I drank ayahuasca in a ceremonial, and controlled, setting several times. Jah Levi (his real name) organised ayahuasca evenings when he was living in Amsterdam in the 1990s. With Jah Levi the music was always good. I also tried a ceremony with the Dutch Santo Daime Church, a Brazilian syncretic religion founded by Raimundo Irineu Serra, a descendent of African slaves, soon after his first encounter with ayahuasca in 1914. I considered the Santo Daime ceremony too strict. I wasn’t even allowed to move my chair because it would block the ‘spirits’. Because I don’t believe in spirits outside the human mind I considered this silly. If I want to move the chair I will move the damn chair.