Resonance
LII — Ayahuasca – The Experience
For those drinking ayahuasca tea for the first time, it can be a daunting experience. As hitherto mentioned, ayahuasca is not a recreational drug, and unlike some party popping pill driving you off your head in seconds or minutes, the initial stages of ayahuasca can be very unpleasant. There will be a sense of trepidation in you as you see first see the colour of the tea. It looks as though it has just been scooped out of the murky, slow-moving waters of the Amazon. Unlike a traditional tea, mixed with milk to lighten its colour, ayahuasca is more dark and muddied and looks very totally uninviting. The initiate will be present with a small glass, and the glass will be filled with the tea. Many practitioners have ready strong fruits or sweets in preparation for the next stage: the taste.
The taste of Ayahuasca must be one of the worst tastes known. It is positively vile, so repulsive that you have to swallow the glass in one mouthful: this ain't a tea for sipping. It is as though the mariri and the chakruna plant are still alive, and the texture of the drink has a very distinct and thick body, not viscous at all, but thick and dense like the Amazon. Once the glass has been relieved of its contents and the drink swallowed, there will still be this obnoxious taste, and the strong fruits and sweets help to alleviate this foul-mouth taste.
Next is the wait. And next can comes the sickness.
The wait can be anything from 30 mins to 40 mins, generally. And it is in this time, and, indeed, at any time throughout the whole experience of borracheira – and this can be anything up to four hours – that you feel an intense feeling of vomiting, and many do vomit. This is because the ayahuascan vine is part of monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) The absence of MOAI, the stomach and its processes are suspended awhile, allowing the visionary properties of chakruna and DMT to be released and journey onwards to reach the higher states of the brain and the pineal gland, and allows the borracheira to become active. The drawback to this is vomiting, and it is a perfectly natural act and a by-product of the experience. As previously mentioned, drinking ayahuasca is anything but a pleasant 'recreational' drug.
It is advisable that you have ready a warm blanket or cloak for the internal journey to your soul and the Universe, as the regions can be felt as very cold or hot, depending upon the nature of the borracheira which comes to visit you.
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About Karl Swainston
Karl Swainston is a writer and storyteller whose work is forged from a life lived across the North of England and far beyond. Growing up on a Leeds council estate in the 1960s, Karl's journey was anything but linear. By the age of thirty, he had already lived a dozen lives: from the rigors of grammar school to a degree in Latin, a stint as a fishmonger, a period of discovery living in Marseille, and a return to the hustle of London. Whether working as a postman, a builder, or competing as a county-level chess player, he was, above all, an avid reader—constantly documenting the world around him. This restless spirit continued into his professional life. Karl later taught in Bradford, where he ran a specialist unit for 244 of the most excluded students from across the region—young people whom even the local Pupil Referral Units could not accommodate. Working alongside his old friend Malcolm, Karl spent his days navigating the volatility of Bradford's most aggressive and dysfunctional teenagers. Throughout his life, Karl has been an avid runner and has always shared his home with a rotating cast of beloved dogs and cats—companions who have been constant witnesses to his work. As a writer, Karl's range is as expansive as his history. He works across a wide breadth of genres, including fiction and short stories, autobiography and memoir, biography, non-fiction, and metaphysical writing, as well as providing sharp commentary, opinion, analysis, and essays. Whether writing about his years managing the Harrogate Arms or offering insights from his current adopted home in South East India, where he lives in a simple village with his dog, Bambi, Karl's voice reflects the full, untidy, and deeply human breadth of life. He continues to draw on the rich, decades-long tapestry of his experiences to tell stories that matter, proving that no matter where you live, the human story remains the same.
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