Fear mixed with anger and amazement as I tried to cope with the repeated bouts of nausea and fantastic visions. I wondered if I had been poisoned and would not survive the night. Yet I was strangely alert and focused on the shaman’s chanting, and the visions in my head. Three hours ago I had swallowed a small cupful of a hideously repugnant tasting drink called ayahuasca (“eye – a – waska”), and for the last three hours I felt disoriented, dehydrated, and near death.

Lying down so the nausea was not as incapacitating, I could hear the chanting of the shaman’s singing their icaros along with various jungle sounds interrupted only by the other peoples’ occasional coughs and gurgling sounds as they threw up. I had been vomiting and dry heaving for over two hours, and had several bouts of projectile diarrhea. It was very dark, except for the faint glow of the shamans smoking their mapachos. It almost sounds hokey, but there I was in the Peruvian Amazon jungle. What is ayahuasca? What happens during an ayahuasca ceremony? What types of people from North America participate in ayahuasca ceremonies? Why do they do it, and what do they get out of it?