Ayahuasca and the Path of the Shaman (2018) - full transcript

[Lori]

Ayahuasca's just the doorway.

[Dave] Ayahuasca is a tool.

A healer who wants

to use Ayahuasca

can do wonderful things with it.

[Gabor]

Ayahuasca has got the power

to open up areas inside us

that otherwise are inaccessible.

[Lori] Basically, it's

a combination of two plants.

There's the Ayahuasca vine

itself,

and there's another plant

called Chacruna.

When you bring

these two plants together,

the spirit of Ayahuasca

can come in,

and it's my belief

that the spirit

wants to help people.

[Dave] It's been talked about

a thousand times before

is how did

the indigenous people know

how to combine these two plants.

It's not a far stretch

for indigenous people

to communicate with nature.

[Libby] I've lived my entire

adult life on antidepressants

and I couldn't live

in that state for another hour.

[Lisa] I did a line of heroin.

It was, like, this is the way

that life is supposed to feel.

This is

what I've been looking for

since I was a little kid.

[Shannan] I was depressed.

I always had suicidal thoughts.

I just knew

that I had to get out

of that head space.

[Dave] Our society is sick.

Our society is depressed.

And mass parts of the population

have huge traumas.

[icaro music playing]

[narrator]

Wikipedia defines Ayahuasca

as a brew made from two plants,

Chacruna and the Ayahuasca vine.

It is used as a traditional

spiritual medicine

in ceremonies

among indigenous people

along the Amazon river basin,

but it is currently making

its way out of the jungle

and into communities

around North America.

In the 16th century,

missionaries first encountered

South Americans

using Ayahuasca in ceremonies.

They described it

as the work of the devil.

Currently,

Ayahuasca is classified

as a schedule one drug.

It is in the same class

as heroin or cocaine

and is considered

to be highly addictive

while containing

no medicinal benefits.

[Lori] I had an injury

to my spine.

So, I had three discs

that were bulging

and one to the point

that it had displaced

all the nerve roots

and was beginning to leak.

It was really incredibly,

difficult to walk.

I spent about eight months

not really doing much more

than lying around.

And so I went to this ceremony.

I, you know, didn't really have

much of an idea

of what was gonna happen,

but there was some part of me

intrinsically that just knew

that this was--

that this

was gonna be helpful for me.

And so, I sat that night

and it changed the way

I looked at myself,

my relationship to what was

happening to me in the world.

It changed my relationship

to how I related to the world.

It changed my relationship

with how I perceived

how the world related to me.

It changed my relationship

with... everything.

And that was

the first step in, like,

turning things around for me.

[Adele] As soon

as I drank the medicine,

I was really excited.

And I was told that I was God.

And I freaked out.

I thought, "No way.

That can't be true.

I do not want that to be true."

And it kept showing me,

"You're God."

And I thought there's no way.

So many people hate me,

you know, if I'm God.

And they're gonna wanna blame me

when things go poorly.

And then finally I relented

when I realized

there was no turning back.

And I went on this journey

of being God.

Until I was shown...

a collection of dead bodies.

And I was told, "You did that."

And I thought, "Oh, my gosh,

I would never do that."

And then Ayahuasca said to me,

"Exactly. You're not God.

Stop pretending like you are.

Stop telling yourself you are.

Stop making it your fault

when other people

in your life are suffering."

And so it was just

like an immediate release

of this sense of responsibility

for the pain those around me.

I'm not God.

It's not my fault

they're suffering.

And I'm not the only person

who's responsible

for helping them.

[Mauro] I think it was

my fifth time drinking

that I had a really

big, big experience.

And I said, "No way.

I'm not drinking Ayahuasca

ever again. I'm done."

A lot of healing happened,

but it was more the process

that I had to go through

afterwards

that I really struggled with.

And the only message

that I kept on getting was,

"If you wanna know

what happened,

you need to come back

and drink."

It was about me

learning about myself

and relationship

to my environment

and the process that I needed

to go through to-- to heal.

And continue healing.

I would like to say

that the medicine has...

revolutionized

the way I lived and--

But it's not as easy as that.

It's not a panacea.

What it has done is

it's given me moments

where I busted

through something inside myself.

And on the other side of it,

there was something connected,

which is the opposite

of how I live most of my life.

I haven't undone all of that.

That's gonna take more work.

But every time I do Ayahuasca,

I'm reminded that that's just

a set of things

that I'm attached to,

and that if I'm willing

to show up and open myself,

healing is not only possible,

but its guaranteed.

I know I'm gonna go

back to my life

and I'm gonna repeat

some of the old patterns,

but I think

I'm gonna repeat them less.

As soon

as I drank the Ayahuasca,

a voice came to me and said,

"Whatever you see tonight,

go into your heart."

The heart,

it's the spot of loving,

and acceptance, and trust,

and mothering and nurturing.

And if you can stay there

when you're dealing

with all your daily affairs,

it's nothing but a loving,

nurturing world.

It's when you drop that

and you go up to here,

where most of us

westerners stay,

where all kinds of fear

gets manufactured.

And Ayahuasca said,

"Get out of the head,

get down into the heart."

[Matt] Ayahuasca will tell you,

"Here's the answer."

It made a big difference

just in how I see the world

and how I see

who I am in the world

and who I am

in relationships with others.

It gave me an understanding

of why behavior

that I don't like in myself

is manifesting itself.

Ayahuasca is the medicine,

and the surgeon is Dave,

and you put the two of them

together and it was just bam.

[narrator] Traditionally,

an Ayahuasca ceremony

is led by a shaman,

a guide for the participant

on their journey

with this plant.

I think it should be said first

that for me the word "shaman"

is someone who has been

practicing for 30 or 40 years.

A priest to their people.

Someone who has really mastered

the art of walking both worlds,

the spiritual world

and this world.

Thirteen or fourteen years

into this practice,

I'm by no means a master

in this work.

I don't bring rain

for my people,

so it's hard to call myself

a shaman.

Vegetalista is

probably the most accurate,

just people

don't know what it means.

[narrator] Dave apprenticed

with a Shipibo master

for 15 years in a small village

in the Peruvian jungle.

The work that I do is going

into the spiritual world

and communicating with spirits.

[narrator]

During an Ayahuasca ceremony,

the shaman enters

the spirit world

and works to move energies

that are creating

sickness, imbalance,

and disharmony.

In 2001, Dave travelled to Peru

in search of his own healing.

I got in a bad car accident,

went into a major depression,

and then my doctor

put me on antidepressants.

I took one pill

and the next morning,

I woke up, I said,

"Whoa, this is not my path."

And I went to Peru.

Travelled around Peru

for three weeks.

Never heard

anything about Ayahuasca.

And then I met this guy

who said,

"I drank Ayahuasca.

Whatever you do,

don't ever do it.

I cried in the corner,

and I puked,

and I fought for my life."

And I said,

"Tell me where to go.

I need to do this."

From that moment on, I was like

a laser-guided missile

to find Ayahuasca.

[birds chirping]

[owl screeching]

[birds chirping]

I'll bet that-- I'll bet you we

have a hundred dollars

of food bill a month

on these horses.

Carrots and apples.

Don't we, little guys?

-You get good treats.

-You're lucky horses.

Oh, oh. Tsk, tsk.

[Linda]

He was due January 12th,

but he came six weeks early,

in a big rush.

And he was pretty tiny.

I mean, when he came home,

he was just

like a little skeleton.

Then when he was

about a year old,

he started to show

that what he wanted

was what he wanted,

and if he didn't get it,

he would have a fit.

[Dave]

I grew up in middle-class

Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge.

My dad was a lawyer,

and my mom was kind

of stay-at-home

with me for a while.

I have one older brother,

one older sister.

Very, you know, run-of-the-mill

kind of suburban family.

And I was very involved

in athletics, sports.

Soccer from the age of three

because my parents are British.

[Linda] I remember one time

he didn't wanna come in

and he just flung himself

on the pavement,

and was screaming.

And my neighbor was out,

and she said to me afterwards,

"Why didn't you

just give him a smack?"

And I remember saying,

"If I ever smacked him,

I don't think

I might be able to stop."

[Linda chuckling]

So, I never smacked him.

Like any parents, they had

their own thing going on.

My dad was very busy at work,

you know, he had

a lot of responsibility.

And you know, there was times

I didn't see my dad a whole lot.

You know, he worked

from morning till late evening

and then he came home

and worked more.

You know, we weren't

religious in any way.

My dad used to make us go

to Sunday school,

but you know,

that didn't last long,

so we weren't, you know,

a spiritual family.

[Linda] They went

to Sunday school. That was it.

And as soon

as they could get out of it,

they didn't go anymore.

[Dave] You know, at that point

I was interested in medicine.

Either become a doctor

or something along those lines.

I guess it was some part of me

that just wanted to help people.

And, you know,

in our kind of family,

and especially in our town,

doctors were gods.

I didn't even know anything

about energetic work

or shamanism.

It wasn't even part of my scope.

[Dave chuckles]

You know, I don't think

anyone in my town

of 5000 people in Pitt Meadows

would've heard the word

of "Ayahuasca" at that point.

I kind of went around the world,

you know, Africa, Asia.

Like I was, like, obsessed.

I had to see the world,

you know.

And I think in a lot of ways

that was the beginning

of my apprenticeship in a way.

I was, like, almost obsessed

with studying religion.

So I read parts

of the Torah, the Koran,

and studied the Bible.

I mean, I wasn't religious,

but I was just fascinated

with people's belief

of spirituality,

and then on top of that,

how people

kill each other over it.

So I just wanted

to understand people.

I think, at that point,

I was starting

to understand my own beliefs.

I did believe there was

something higher than me,

I don't think I had

a name for it at that point.

After I came back from that,

I mean, it was amazing.

I'd just seen a huge part

of the world,

but I was full depression.

[Linda] He came back

and he wasn't well.

And this is where it all

kind of started.

He went to the doctors.

He went to specialists.

And they'd all want to put him

on pills or whatever,

and then that's when he got

into looking

at the Chinese Medicine.

[Dave] I didn't leave my house

for six months.

All my friends

were buying homes,

and cars, and refrigerators.

And I had just saw the world

and all this poverty

and all these people

that were happy,

but impoverished.

And then you come home,

and people are on an hourly wage

and they just wanna make money

to buy a new car, a new Camaro.

What is the point of all this?

I'm gonna go

to my buddy's house and go--

go ride in his Camaro?

Like, I didn't like

the way our culture was living.

You know, I think

the higher part of myself

knew that this is what I needed.

I needed some kind of catalyst

in my life that changed

my whole perspective on how life

is supposed to be lived.

Coming from middle class Canada,

this stuff wasn't talked about.

But I knew in my heart

I was here

for something else

other than that.

And also, I just knew I needed

something to shake off

the depression that would

come in and out of my life.

[fireworks whistling

and bursting]

[Dave] The New Year's

millennium, I was, like,

at home in my bed.

And then I went to the doctor,

the doctor prescribed me

antidepressants.

I took one pill,

woke up the next morning,

threw the bottle away.

And that's when

my healing journey started.

Once I started

studying Chinese medicine,

I started to understand

that Chinese medicine

has its strengths.

I also saw that the way

it's being taught now

is that a lot of the spirit

or magic was taken out of it.

So that's when I started reading

about shamans in the Amazon

that use

the natural world to heal.

[icaro music playing]

I was on this surfing beach up

in Northern Peru called Máncora

and I met this guy

and I told him

about my wish

to drink Ayahuasca.

And he said,

"I know where to go.

It's a twenty-six-hour bus ride

over the Andes,

down in the jungle,

in a place called Tarapoto."

Next day, booked my ticket,

went there

and I drank Ayahuasca

for my first time.

Can you put my shoe back on?

Being married to Dave,

yeah, it's--

It's a--

It's a challenge.

It's not like I married

an accountant, you know?

I support him 100% 'cause I know

it's his calling

and his passion.

And he's very good

at what he does.

But when people ask me,

"How do you do it?"

And sometimes I don't know.

I honestly, I don't know.

'Cause it's crazy.

People like to romanticize

the world of the shaman,

you know, a Hollywood shaman,

and put him on a pedestal.

In traditional way of life,

the family would do anything

in their power

for them not to be shamans

because it was a lonely life.

And if you didn't do your job,

the village suffered.

So it wasn't the job

that people wanted.

If someone wanted

to do this work,

he would say, "No."

It's not conducive

to a normal life.

[Dave]

As a facilitator in this work,

you're just a garbage man.

You're like the cosmic janitor.

You know,

you're just going in there

and you're just cleaning up

all the shit.

It's challenging.

We have two kids

who want their daddy

and, you know, when he's away,

they miss him, and--

Yeah, there's not a lot

of people that go down this path

that continue to walk it,

but it helped me,

so it was only natural for me

to wanna help people.

I try to just keep

the home fires burning

so he can go out there

and do what he does,

but yeah, it's a lot of times,

yeah, I kind of feel

like single mommy.

I had no knowledge

of any other ceremonies going on

when I first started

doing the work.

[Lori] At the time, I think we

were some of the only people

in Canada working

with these plants.

I didn't hear about other groups

and circles and things.

When I first came

into this work,

you know, here was Dave,

who'd been down to Peru

and done a handful

of ceremonies and then suddenly

was like, organizing everything

and being the helper

in the ceremony.

[Dave] Lori and I have had

a steady relationship

for 15 years.

Once I started to develop

my own practice

and started to lead ceremonies,

she was the one

that was by my side

and she was also starting

to train herself.

So we worked

very closely together

for the last 14, 15 years.

I never really had any idea

that I was gonna work

with these plants.

There was a traditional diet

with some master plants.

And it was

like a seven-day isolation

in your tent in the woods.

And at the beginning

of that process,

I couldn't move my head forward

more than an inch or two

and then at the end,

I could touch my toes.

And I knew,

there's something here for me.

I'm gonna give

everything I can to--

to really be open

to whatever that is.

And I could see how much growth

was happening in the people

who were participating

in the ceremonies

and I just wanted to, like, be

some kind of support

to help them

do that in a good way.

[plane roaring]

[Dave] Well, when I came back

from Peru, I was--

I mean, I was excited

about the medicine.

I thought it was a

life-changing experience for me.

And I knew Ayahuasca was gonna

be a part of my life forever,

you know, in the role

of being a participant

and going to ceremony

and receiving doctoring.

I didn't even know

it was possible

for a middle class,

white guy to apprentice.

It wasn't even

in my consciousness.

I remember I asked him,

you know, are you apprenticing?

And he was like,

"Are you kidding me?"

I don't want anything

to do with that."

He really said that.

[Dave] I was very excited

to bring the medicine

and share it with people,

and that was basically

what I thought my role would be,

would just be

organize ceremonies.

There was a group

of about 12 of us.

Just good friends

that he had put together.

And he just really wanted

the people close to him

and that he really loved

to experience it as well.

[Dave] The first person I

drank with was an apprentice,

and I brought him up to Canada.

He'd been apprenticing

probably six or seven years.

And I started to work with him

over the course

of, probably, a year and a half

drinking quite regularly.

But I had no idea

that it was going to be

an apprenticeship of any sort.

That didn't come

for a good year after.

I organized

two ceremonies of 15 people.

Each of those 15 people

told five people.

So we did

another two ceremonies.

And then those people

told another five people

and we did

another five ceremonies.

And it exploded.

[icaro music playing]

And then I just started

listening to his chanting.

And all of a sudden,

I could pick up

what he was saying,

so I started singing along.

Next step was like,

"Why don't you come down to Peru

and meet his teacher?"

[icaro music playing]

[Dave] But I got stuck.

I was, like, "Do I really

wanna go that path?"

You know, I started to read

about some of the darker parts

of the work, the witchcraft,

the stuff that, in our culture,

we're not really familiar with.

And I was like, "Really,

do I wanna go that route?"

But I also just noticed that

as my fear,

and it was really clear to me

that this was gonna be my path.

And then it

just exploded in terms

of the dedication

that I had to put into it.

I was taking groups of people

down to Peru four times a year.

And then staying on my own

in doing isolation

for, you know, weeks

afterwards to do my own work.

And then going back and forth.

[plane roaring]

[Dave] So, when people ask me

to come to apprentice, I'm open.

But I'm realistic to know

that out of ten people

that are gonna ask me,

one or two are gonna make it.

So I tell people

to just continue on with diets.

[narrator] A diet,

traditionally called a dieta,

is a ceremony where

the participant goes into nature

and ingests a master plant.

These plants bring knowledge

and medicine to the vegetalista.

The medicine only comes

through years of dieting,

years of working

with other plants

to get the knowledge

of those plants.

And the chants

that have the most power

are the ones

that are given to you

by the plants or by nature.

I have to see the whole picture

in the person

and then I just wait

for that moment

where a dream comes,

or whether that knowing

inside that person

is ready to actually take it on.

And it's not two or three years.

It's ten years.

This is a serious field of work.

It's about truly,

truly, learning

the medicine of the plants

and nature to help people.

You have

to sacrifice a way of life,

you know, with the diets.

No sex. No salt.

No sugar. No alcohol.

And if people get one thing

from watching this film

is that this is not

something to take lightly.

[icaro music playing]

[Dave] I have two apprentices

right now.

The main apprentice

I have is Mauro.

[icaro music playing]

In 2006, I came to the medicine

for the first time.

I had no clue what Ayahuasca was

and what the medicine entailed.

I've always been fascinated

with healing,

you know, I'm a practitioner

of traditional Chinese medicine

for the last 20 years,

so I drank for the first time

and I was totally blown

wide open.

[icaro music playing]

[Dave] I met Mauro

ten years ago, I think.

He came to a ceremony

I was assisting at.

He had a couple

of big experiences

at the beginning and I

didn't see him for a few years.

[Mauro] I had no clue

what apprenticeship was,

what it meant to be

a practitioner or what it takes.

And just started out

me sitting beside him,

getting the people,

bringing the people

to the washroom,

heat up the drum,

get the medicine.

We'd go out on the dietas.

That's where the learning came.

[blowing]

This plant here

is called ajo sacha.

We use this plant for,

you know, stomach problems,

any kind of intestinal problems.

We use it for headaches.

Anything that we take,

anything from nature,

we always offer up

a prayer to the plant,

give thanks for allowing us

to harvest the medicine

in a good way

and use it in a good way.

So, before I pick it, I'm

just going to pray to it and--

and offer some tobacco.

When taking

elements from nature,

we use tobacco as our currency.

[Lori]

In the practice of vegetalismo,

Ayahuasca is just the doorway.

You can access the worlds

of all of the different plants

through the ingestion

of Ayahuasca.

Basically, it's

a combination of two plants.

There's the Ayahuasca

vine itself

and there's another plant

called Chacruna.

When you bring

these two plants together,

the spirit of Ayahuasca

can come in.

And it's my belief

that this spirit

wants to help people.

They say that the knowledge

actually comes

from the vine itself,

and the vision aspect

of the medicine

comes from the Chacruna,

the leafy plant.

They make layers

with the Ayahuasca vine

and then a layer of Chacruna,

and the Ayahuasca vine

in a really big pot.

And they fill it with water

and it gets cooked down.

It's quite condensed.

And really, it's just a very

strong tea of these two plants.

[Dave] It's been talked about

a thousand times before,

is how did

the indigenous people know

how to combine these two plants.

It's not a far stretch

for indigenous people

to communicate with nature.

It's a far stretch for us,

'cause we live

in our little boxes

and drive around

in little cars on four wheels,

but when you live

for 24 hours a day,

for generation after generation

with plants and animals

and trees around you, eventually

you're gonna understand

that they have spirit

and they're gonna talk to you.

[Lori] The people who came in

to work with these plants

for the very first time,

that's how they did it.

They developed a capacity

to listen to the natural world

and really understand it

to the point

that they actually got to hear

these plants speaking to them,

explaining to them,

how to work with them.

It seems so farfetched

for many of us

in the cultural world

that we live in

which is disconnected, you know?

To most of the world,

that's just a given

'cause that's just what they do.

They don't even think about it.

It's not something that they

make an effort

to connect with nature.

They're just a part of it,

and we're a part of it too.

We just lost touch with that.

And it's something that,

hopefully, we'll get back to.

[icaro music playing]

[Dave] When you open up

the spiritual world,

all energy

is capable of coming in.

Each person's trauma

is gonna come up.

Each person's

spiritual connection

is gonna come up.

So you have to be aware

of the space.

The land

that you're drinking on,

who you're drinking with.

We have to use protection.

[icaro music playing]

[Lori] Sage is a great plant

for clearing out

any energy that is

not for the highest good

of whatever situation

that you're in.

It's an incredibly strong,

clearing, cleaning plant.

The songs have its own defense

to protect each person.

Perfumes.

[Lori] Whether its rose water,

or whether its Agua Florida

or whatever, you're putting it--

the energy of your prayer

and your chant into that

to either--

Let's just clear this up

right now and, like,

put some protection

or just let's just change

this person's energetic field

a little bit right now.

[Dave] Tobacco.

[Lori]

Tobacco is an incredible plant.

I mean, all the indigenous

cultures of the world

that I'm aware of, all revere

tobacco as a sacred plant.

If you work with these plants

in a way that is prayerful

and with intent,

tobacco can do a lot of things.

And you know, we work a lot

with tobacco in the ceremonies

to help move something

that's just not moving.

[Dave]

Tobacco is a great cleaner.

We use Mapacho from the Amazon,

but it doesn't have

to be Mapacho.

Mapacho is very strong.

That's why we use it.

I didn't like tobacco

when I first started.

I had a really

negative association with it

from my childhood.

Both my parents

smoked cigarettes,

so that's the association

that I had with it.

And then I started to work

and then I started

to see the impact of tobacco,

the job that it does for you.

It does any job

that you ask it to do.

Tobacco's like the vehicle

carrying the charge

or the chant that you just did

and it's a very powerful ally,

a powerful teacher.

It helps me get prepared

for the work

I'm about to do on someone.

An intuition about the approach

I need to take on the person.

It gives me a feeling

of how the night's going to be.

It just opens up

that connection.

I don't know

if it's possible to do

an Ayahuasca ceremony

without tobacco.

You'd be missing

a very important part

of the ceremony.

You know, I think when

it's used in a respectful way,

an intentful way,

and a prayerful way,

then it carries the medicine.

But even said,

you gotta be careful

because people still misuse it.

[puffing]

You don't wanna misuse

any plant.

[owl screeching]

[mysterious music plays]

[Dave] This work is big work.

I encourage everyone

to come to Ayahuasca

with a lot of humility

and a lot of respect.

Really, to come

from a place in your heart

with the mindset

of wanting to learn.

It's gonna test you.

It's gonna take you

to places inside of yourself

that maybe don't feel

comfortable, are painful.

This is what the plants do.

The plants take us there

for us to become

conscious of it,

to learn from it

and transform it,

bring light onto the shadow.

You have already asked,

consciously or unconsciously

for healing, so how

that healing comes to you

is not up for you to decide.

It's up to spirit.

It's up to Ayahuasca.

It's up to Creator.

Sometimes we get into resistance

when we ask for healing,

and the Ayahuasca takes us

to that exact core issue

that we're going--

we need to transform,

and it's very painful.

We don't like the feeling.

We wanna move away from it.

We wanna distract ourselves

and we do that in our life.

So the more you're

in the present moment tonight,

the more you're gonna receive

from the medicine.

The mind has

a very difficult time

being in the present moment.

It's going

to constantly tell you

a bunch of stories

that are not true.

It's gonna get you

to tried to fidget

and move away

from the present moment.

I'm here to work.

I'm here to take you

into those places

that-- that need

to be looked at.

The first two ceremonies

were like a ceremony

of my best friends.

[Dave chuckles]

But my friends

were also interested

in looking at their stuff

and doing the inner work

so that we started

drinking together regularly.

[Rosie] To be honest,

there was ambivalence,

'cause I really had no idea

what to expect.

Which was probably a good thing.

[man] And so how was

your first experience?

Horrible. Absolutely horrible.

It put all my fears right

in my face,

and my neurosis

and everything was right there.

And after it was finished,

everyone else was talking,

and I was still so deep

in my stuff

that I was just like, "I need

serious counselling after this."

So the next night,

I went and it was amazing.

It was beautiful. I really got

some deep, yeah, insights,

and it was

a different experience.

Kind of a pealing of an onion,

and then I was very grateful.

I understood it more.

[Lori]

There was a lot of enthusiasm

about the medicine,

a lot of people having

transformative experiences

and a lot of hope

and inspiration and ideas

and this whole brainstorming

of vision started to happen.

Yeah, it was

a very powerful time, I think.

I mean, I was young,

I was 25 years old

and we were facilitating

ceremonies for the people,

but also, we were

doing smaller nights,

just a core group of us,

working deep,

getting really deep

into our process,

but also into our connection

with each other.

[Lori]

There was so much excitement

and wonderment

in this community of people.

We had a group of--

There was about 14 of us

that really, like,

were trying to create this bus

to drive or something.

[icaro music playing]

And then, sort of,

more and more people

getting exposure

to these plants,

and what does that mean,

and how can we do this work

and then more and more people

doing different kinds of work

with these plants and, you know,

people work with the plants

in a lot of different ways.

Fractures started to happen.

Differences of opinion.

Egos. Power. Control.

All of that started to happen.

You know, the group got split.

And, you know,

it was a tough time

to have such a strong bond

with each other

and then to all separate.

We all went different ways,

and it wasn't a bad thing

in the end.

I think it was

a good thing, for sure.

Yeah, no one really knew what

we were in store for, I think.

[Dave] Ayahuasca is misused

throughout the world.

You know, it's not

all unicorns and butterflies.

Ayahuasca is difficult work.

We were all very naive

about the work in a certain way,

in that there was nothing--

nothing bad could come of this.

When we started

to sort of see other sides

and other pieces to the work,

it was very shocking

and eye-opening for a lot of us.

[Dave] When people ask me

about going to Peru,

there's a very,

very short list of people

I would recommend,

because everyone and their dog

can pour Ayahuasca for someone

and claim to be a Shaman,

but very few people can actually

walk into the spirit world

and bring people back safely.

In any kind of field of study,

there's the good and the bad,

and you're gonna find that

with Ayahuasca.

[Lori] The first experiences

with Ayahuasca

are kind of like

a love affair in a way.

Everything is so wonderful

and great,

and then when all the realities

of other pieces of it

start to come in,

you know, the only way

to not be disillusioned is

to go in with an awareness

that that will happen

at some point.

I'm suggesting that, you know,

if people are gonna

come into this work

and be all enthusiastic

about doing this work to,

like, take one step at a time

and move slowly

so that you really are aware

of where

you're putting your feet

before you get them there,

you know?

I really don't think

many of us understood

the implications

of the work we were doing.

Like, there was no processing,

no psychotherapy.

I was nowhere near understanding

the true impact of trauma

and how that comes out

in a ceremony, right?

[icaro music playing]

After that first night, I really

felt I need counselling.

I needed-- I felt like I needed

someone to help me unpack

all of what I had just seen

and what to do with it next.

[Lori] The first ceremonies

that I ever went to,

it was kind of like, "Okay,

here we are and here's a cup,

and here, a drink."

And then at the end

of the ceremony it was like,

"Okay, goodbye."

And a lot of people

were like, "Uh..."

They needed more than that.

And I knew that what Gabor

had to offer was the--

a missing piece in the work

that we had been doing.

I think once I met Gabor,

things changed then,

'cause I started to really see

the need and the gift

that the processing

can be around the ceremony space

and, you know, so I learned

a lot myself from that.

[narrator]

Gabor Maté is a physician.

He is widely recognized

for his work

with childhood trauma

and addiction.

His book,

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts,

is a Canadian national

best seller.

After the book

was published in 2008,

I began to get

all these inquiries

from perfect strangers.

"What do you know

about Ayahuasca

and the healing of addiction?"

I said, "Nothing."

I'd heard about Ayahuasca

from an acquaintance once,

but really, I just dismissed it

as mumbo jumbo.

The inquiries kept increasing

in number,

but it began to feel

like the universe

was knocking on my door.

So I participated

in the ceremony,

and an hour

into my first ceremony,

I understood

why people were asking me.

Because it has got the power

of the plant to open up

areas inside us-- our psyche

that otherwise are inaccessible.

I got an email from a guy

called Jeff, who said,

"My wife,

she used to be a heroin addict,

who is now being maintained

on methadone,

which an opiate

replacement for heroin.

But she called it

her liquid handcuffs."

[Lisa] I was looking

at some serious jail time

for trafficking.

And I was able

to get out of the charges

by agreeing to go on methadone.

[narrator] For 20 years,

Lisa was a sex worker,

struggling

with an addiction to heroin

and eventually, crack cocaine.

[Lisa] I od'd so many times.

I was given Narcan

so many times.

I don't know how I'm alive.

I tapered methadone

for six years

until I got to a point

of about 40 mils.

And I was

having psychotic breaks

from trying to get off

methadone.

And I'm being sent

to this doctor,

and that doctor and this--

What I'm hearing

from all of them is,

"Lisa, think of it

as your insulin.

Just accept."

It just wasn't

sitting in my soul.

I still had to wake up

every day and take something,

and ingest something.

[narrator] Libby, a small

business owner in her thirties,

has been struggling

with depression

since she was 16.

[Libby]

I looked around at some point,

probably in my twenties,

and went--

You know,

where I was aligning myself

was with this group of people

that--

high achiever, A-type,

business people, professionals,

and I was trying

to reach the top of that.

How I lived my life

and how my life actually was

was totally separated, 'cause

nobody could see my struggle.

I felt, like, emotionally

I couldn't do it.

Like I couldn't live

in that state that I was in

at that point for another hour.

I read Gabor's book,

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts,

and thought, "Okay, I need--

I need to meet Gabor."

By then I trusted Gabor

like he was, you know,

"All right. This is my path.

I'm following Gabor.

So, if he's going there,

I'm going there."

Found him,

and just kind of said,

"Do you know anyone

you could recommend

that does Ayahuasca?"

And he just gave me his card

and said, "Email me."

[narrator]

Shannan is a youth worker

also struggling

with severe depression.

She believes this depression

stems from childhood trauma

buried deep inside

her subconscious.

[Shannan] I got really sick

and nobody could tell me

why I was sick.

I just felt there's no diagnosis

for what's wrong with me

because I just am full

on traumatic experiences.

Like I don't have any more space

in my body for any more trauma.

And so, you get depressed

and you sleep all the time

and you hole yourself up

in your house.

I have no sense

of what I might uncover.

I hope I'm gonna

uncover something,

because that would make sense

why I'm feeling

the way that I'm feeling.

All of the research

that I've done on Ayahuasca

say it's helpful for trauma,

and maybe it will just help me

understand better the trauma

that I do remember

or that's a part of my life

every day,

which could take the load off

a little bit, I feel.

I feel like this was something

that I needed to do.

Like being pulled

towards the medicine.

And whatever needs to come out

or needs to come up

is welcome to do that.

That's the way

I'm going into this.

I had just spent four years

in social work,

and the week before

I went on stress leave,

a little boy that I worked with

almost the entire time

I was in social work

passed away.

I signed off on the contract

saying that I saw them fit

to take care of this little boy,

and he went back

and he was there

less than a month,

and he choked on his vomit

in his sleep.

And that was enough for me.

I blamed myself for that

for a long time.

And then I took

a ten-day nap in the hospital.

Just my body

completely shut off.

Part of what happens when people

are suppressing

emotional reality

is that they're spending

so much time

on a screen or the phones

all the time.

Anything to take

the awareness away

from what's actually

going on in the body.

You know, I think

that I use TV a lot

to disassociate from things.

I don't have really

a drug addictive personality.

Um, maybe sex.

Definitely sex. Yeah.

People tend to push further

and further away from the body

anything that can take them out

until the body's

just gotta scream,

and these are the ways

that the body screams.

Cancer's one example.

I went to the doctor, and he did

a complete blood count

and found that I had

all of the markers for leukemia.

Normally, when your doctor

looks at you and says

that you could have cancer,

people cry and are, like,

"Oh, my God! This can't be

happening to me."

But I was just grateful.

I was, like, I have an out.

I have a legitimate out

that's not gonna

hurt anybody's feelings.

I'm not going to make

anyone uncomfortable.

"Thank you" was

what went through my mind.

I just knew that I had

to get out of that head space.

[mysterious music plays]

[Shannan] I have

some intentions going into it,

but I have no sense

of what I might uncover.

I'm just trying

to keep an open mind.

[mysterious music plays]

[Shannan]

So, the night started--

As I'm talking about this,

I'm getting so scared,

which is

what happened last night.

Um, I was clear that I was

gonna let her in

and she needed to show me

what I needed to see

and she gave me clear memories

of past sexual traumas.

One in particular,

when I was a small kid,

I was drugged

when I was only ten.

[inhales]

The man made me drink

hot chocolate,

and then I don't remember

anything after that.

And I woke up in the morning,

in his bed,

with him rolling over

and his head hitting mine.

I had repressed

that memory completely.

It seemed as soon

as I would give myself

the love that I needed

in that moment,

she would take me

into the next thing.

And the next thing was so hard.

[exhales]

My dad committed suicide

when I was ten.

And I really idolized him.

[sobs]

[whispering] I'm sorry.

[sobbing]

He was so funny,

always the life of the party,

but he had

so much trauma in his own life.

The last two times

that I saw him...

The one time, he had my mom

up against the kitchen counter

with a knife to her throat

and there was me and my sister

standing in the kitchen,

and I was just screaming

for him to stop.

Just stop. Stop.

And that was the second

to last time I saw him.

And the last time I saw him,

he came to my youth group

to give me a suicide note

to give to my mom.

And then three days,

later he died.

[Dave] For everyone

working with Ayahuasca,

it's going to bring up

the unintegrated part

of ourselves,

or the shadow,

the unconsciousness.

So however that looks

for each one of us is different,

but at the root of it,

it's all the same.

You know, it's lack of love.

Self-love, but even beyond that,

we have this disconnection

that happens for us

with our parents

from their own unconsciousness

that we're gonna take on.

So the trauma is--

is too severe and too intense

for the child to-- to cope.

So it just finds

a way for your body

just to tuck it away somewhere.

Certainly, my work with Gabor

has allowed me to see that.

I'd always wanted to be

a physician, a doctor.

I suppose healing people

is the natural consequence

of the experiences

that I endured

as a very small-- as an infant.

I was also quite conscious,

that, um,

it would get me

respect in the world,

but what I wasn't aware of

is how much I was lacking

in self-respect.

So how much the title of doctor

and the respect

that goes with it

were compensations

for my own lack of self-respect.

Well, my first job

as a physician

after I finished my internship

was actually

in the downtown east side.

After 20 years

of family practice,

I was really ready to move on

when the invitation

came to work down there.

And it was almost

like a natural fit

that I should go work

in the downtown east side.

Because I was quite aware

of how people can be made

to suffer

for no fault of their own.

I was also quite aware

of what it's like

to be ostracized

and an outsider.

As a Jew in Eastern Europe,

I knew that.

As an immigrant in Canada,

I knew that.

I really resonate

with the people

in the downtown east side.

I mean, I just don't feel

that different from them.

I mean,

I am different in many ways.

[narrator]

Vancouver's downtown east side

is infamous across North America

for its drug use,

poverty, mental illness,

sex work, and homelessness.

[Gabor] There's a kind of a

restless, authentic misery

about them that I could

completely could resonate with--

identify with.

The intention of the Portland

Hotel Society was beautiful,

which is to take

the most helpless

and the most downtrodden

and to give them a life

that at least is livable.

If you ask, "Did I help them

stay healthier

or have less misery as a result

of their addiction?

Did I give them

some moments of understanding

and listening and empathy?

Did I look after

their medical needs?

Did I approach their addiction

in a humane manner

that made a difference to them?"

Yes, I did.

Did I help them

overcome their addiction?

That would've been very rare.

That would take

a whole revisioning

and reorganization

of the entire treatment system,

not to mention

the laws in this country.

[Lisa] So I started

mixing cocktails at age 11.

That's when I began

dulling it and saying,

"I can't handle this."

Tried cocaine

by the age of about 14.

And I did a line of heroin,

and it just, it was like,

this is the way that life

is supposed to feel.

This is what

I've been looking for

since I was a little kid.

It felt like safety

and like I could--

I was okay.

Like the world

was a safe place to be.

And I can do

this thing called life.

[narrator]

To afford her drug habit,

Lisa becomes a call girl.

This begins a spiral down

with her eventually working

as a street prostitute.

Once I took methadone,

and couldn't get high

on heroin anymore,

I was like, "Well, I need

to get high on something."

And somebody

at the meth clinic said,

"You know, have you tried crack?

It works really well with--"

And I'm like-- Meth clinics

are wonderful places

for honing your skills

as an addict.

They're just lovely for that.

First of all, you have

to break down the crack

with vinegar and water.

And I remember times taking,

like, water out of a puddle.

The smallest things

were the hardest to find.

Like a piece of cotton

to pull the syringe through.

Like, who has that

when you're out there?

I was always

in stores stealing vinegar.

You put the crack in the spoon.

You break it up.

You add some vinegar.

You add some water.

You heat it up.

You put the heroin in.

You pull it through the syringe.

Then you gotta put it--

The hard part is getting it

in your vein.

If you miss the vein,

you get this big, burning bulge

and you waste it.

You don't get well.

You don't get high.

You've blown your money.

You have to go turn

a few more tricks.

You're sicker.

You're frustrated.

It's way better to do it,

feel better, back to work.

[icaro music playing]

[Lisa] I didn't really

understand what Ayahuasca was,

but I had

a lot of trust in Gabor.

Really, is what it came down to.

His suggestion was

for me to look at my past.

And I was like, "Really?

[chuckling] Like, you want that

to be my intention? Like--"

And much to my surprise,

I went through this process

of, like, a slide show.

It started with Gabor.

Then it went to the shaman

that Gabor works with.

My husband.

It went backwards in my life

from Sister June,

the lady in the recovery house,

the woman at my rehab, Sherry,

to nurses,

to doctors,

to crisis care unit workers.

But all the love that I've been

shown and all the--

And it went back, back,

back, back, back,

and it ended with my mom.

And the slide just stayed

on my mom

for a really long time.

So, one thing

that I say about Ayahuasca

is like you really, really,

get what you need.

[car horn honks]

[Lisa] So for the last

two years of my using,

I started doing crack

intravenously.

I had very severe pancreatitis,

hepatitis C.

My kidneys were shutting down.

I was about 80 pounds.

Missing my two front teeth.

My hair was falling out.

When I came in, I found out

that I didn't have AIDS,

but I was pretty sure I did.

And I sure looked like it.

That's my point.

I was not the girl

that you wanted to pull over

and have sex with.

That's for darn sure.

You wanted to run.

I was out on the street

trying to get a trick to stop,

and a guy pulled up that knew me

from when I was an escort.

And he's like, "Lisa?"

And I'm like, "Oh, who are you?"

So we went and picked up

what I needed and we went to...

To me it looked

like the Taj Mahal.

And I'm, like, just itching

to get in there and use,

'cause now he's given me money

and I've gone and scored

and got booze and this and that

and I'm, "Let's go."

He took another look

at my physical condition

and said,

"I'm gonna go check in,

and I'll come around

and open the back door."

And boom.

I'm right in the washroom.

I remember trying to get a hit,

trying to get a hit,

and I had

a crack pipe beside me,

and I was trying

to wake up enough,

'cause I kept passing out.

And I tried to wake up enough

with the crack pipe

and then do a hit

and then, like, pass out again,

wake up, drink some booze.

Then boom, I come to.

And the police are there,

and they're kicking me.

And not the first time

I've been beaten by police.

I've been sexually abused

by police.

I've been--

They put me under cold water

and they put my hands

behind my back.

And this time, they didn't

take me out the back door.

They paraded me

through the lobby,

naked, blood dripping.

And I'd been humiliated

so many times.

But something happened

in that moment

of walking through that lobby,

where I saw

this ugly,

pained, diseased, body

being walked out.

And I was looking at it,

where that was my disease,

and I was something

that was clean

and of divinity,

and there was something separate

from

that physical manifestation.

And I never picked up again.

[Dave] We don't love ourselves.

I mean, that's the root of it,

you know?

Our society is sick.

Our society is depressed.

And mass parts of the population

have mental disorders

and huge traumas.

So what do people do

when they're sick?

They're desperate.

Ultimately,

it's just about people

just wanting to be fixed.

And I think that

the western medicine--

I think it is so far gone.

I think it's such a sick system.

They just say,

"We can fix you with a pill"

or "We can take this part

of your body out

and you're cured."

That's not healing.

Healing is the integration

of every aspect of our self.

Not a denial

of a part of ourselves

or avoidance

of a part of ourselves,

It's exactly what a pill does.

Or any kind

of recreational drug.

It stops us from experiencing

the whole of who we are,

which is the part of ourselves

that we don't like to feel.

The unconscious. The sadness.

The anger. The rage.

All of that.

[Libby] I've lived my entire

adult life on antidepressants

and I had no understanding

of what needed fixing

I just thought

that I was broken.

I'd been thinking about suicide,

all day, every day, for months.

I'd driven into the forest to...

do that.

I had voice memoed

a suicide letter.

[sobbing] So I'm not sure

exactly what this is

or could quite possibly be

the lowest I've been in my life.

I feel completely alone.

I'm a bad person.

And I mostly just feel

like, there's, like,

absolutely no end to this.

If Mexico doesn't work,

there's--

I don't even feel

like I can make it to Mexico.

I feel like I just need

to figure out how to do it

so that no one finds me.

And I don't know

why I'm making this

just to explain to people.

Like, explain why.

I can't feel this much pain

for this long.

If anyone knew

what this feels like.

I just wish

I could talk to anyone.

I just-- I don't want anyone

to think it's their fault.

It's not. It's me. This is me.

So, when I voice memoed,

I was trying to find a place

to hang myself in the forest.

But I wanted to not affect

anyone else's life

with that trauma.

I kept thinking,

like, what if it's a family?

It's gonna, like,

just impact them so much.

And then I kind of thought,

"Well, you can come back here."

Like, "You can come back here.

You know where you're gonna go.

You have everything you need."

And I basically,

just promised myself

that I would get to end it

after Mexico if it didn't work.

I believed that there was

just something wrong with me

and that it needed to be fixed.

And that how it had to be

fixed had to come from within.

And that I had to be

smart enough

and motivated enough to fix it.

My last-ditch effort was

to go to this thing with Gabor.

If that didn't fix it,

it was okay.

It was okay

to kill myself, yeah.

And it wasn't

because I hadn't tried.

I felt like I had tried

for 20 years.

Going to Gabor's retreat,

somewhere inside me

I felt like it would work.

[plane roaring]

[sad music plays]

[icaro music playing]

[Libby] The next day

after the first ceremony,

I came in and said,

"Oh, that didn't work,

nothing happened."

I just felt really sick

and I felt poisoned.

And,

"This is kind of ridiculous."

I was joking

about the chanting a little bit

'cause I just felt like it was,

you know, kind of funny, and--

I wasn't comfortable with that.

I would've preferred to have

done Ayahuasca in a hospital.

And I just thought,

"This is terrifying.

This is not contained.

For me this is not contained.

Like, I don't want--

I want walls."

Gabor said, "Okay, what did you

go in to the ceremony wanting?

Show me fear."

[rattling]

He just validated me

and he said,

"Well don't you think--"

I might cry.

[chuckles]

He said, "Don't you think

that the most,

you know, brave thing

that you could do

was to come here

when you didn't trust

any of it?"

Showing you all the road blocks

last night

was a really good way

of showing you trust

because there was

something you trusted.

And then everything else

was fear.

It was true and I think

I kind of needed that, like,

"It's okay to feel that.

You're not wrong."

That's not funny

or sad or bad or whatever.

And then the trust was built

between the relationships

between people.

Myself and Dave and--

And that was--

That was the key piece,

'cause I don't think

I trusted people.

[Gabor] In all the countries

where Ayahuasca is used

as a teaching plant,

it's not done

as a one-off ceremony

with a bunch of strangers.

There's a communal basis for it.

So people know each other,

and there's a shared culture.

Whereas here in North America,

people come

to one or two ceremonies,

and there'll be no processing.

There'd be discussion.

There'd be no preparation.

No intention setting.

So I thought that's

not the way it's meant to be.

And I thought, well, I just need

to find people to work with.

[Dave] Gabor came

to a ceremony that we did,

and I heard he was planning

on putting together a retreat

using Ayahuasca

and psychotherapy.

And he had gone to ceremony

with these two other

practitioners,

and it wasn't his cup of tea.

[Gabor]

I was introduced to Dave.

And once I did

a ceremony with Dave,

I just knew that this is

the guy I wanna work with.

Right after ceremony,

I remember we put the candle on

and the two of us

started talking

about doing a retreat together

in two months' time.

[Gabor] There was just a kind

of integrity and a humility,

a desire to serve the plant

or the truth of the plant

that I just picked up on,

so it just--

It was instantaneous.

And that's how it began.

[Lori] Gabor and his work

brings a great deal

of compassion

and a deep understanding

of the human psyche

and how people get themselves

into certain patterns.

Where does it all originate?

And he has a great skill

in helping people

find that for themselves.

He has a really

compassionate heart,

really, to listen to people.

He's been around a lot

of suffering

on the east side of Vancouver.

He really holds that space

for people in an amazing way.

So I would just sit back

and listen

to how he was processing

and just watch how he would,

with a lot of presence,

bring-- bring that out

and help the person.

[Daniel] Building

on his many years as a doctor

and kind of a psychotherapist,

although, he never trained

as a psychotherapist,

he just kind of became one,

'cause he was the kind of doctor

who listened to his patients

and who got interested

in their minds

and their life stories

and started connecting the dots

between the emotional lives

that people have lived

and the way they're experiencing

their health now.

What makes me feel qualified

is sheer arrogance.

I don't know.

[chuckles]

It's just something in me tells

me what I can do and can't do.

I'm called to it,

and when I'm working

in that space,

something happens for me

where I can see people

and I see what's in them.

And most of the time,

I find the tone

and the language to help them.

And sometimes I don't.

So I need help myself sometimes.

So there are other people

that work with me

to make sure that I'm

giving people what they need.

[icaro music playing]

[Daniel] People go

through all kinds of shit

in these ceremonies

and they see things

they do not understand.

My mind is gonna take over

and make up

a bunch of stories about it,

and sometimes

they're really invalidating.

It's like, "There's something

wrong with me, I'm doomed.

This didn't work.

It's the Shaman's fault.

It's the medicines fault.

There's no hope for me."

And at the heart of it,

there's a lot of fear

that I can never really change.

He helps them

to understand and accept

that the healing that's being

brought by the medicine

when that can be hard to see.

[Gabor] What we conceived of

is a retreat

where at least we create

a temporary village.

Within 24 hours, people

are sharing of themselves

in a deeper way

than they ever have

with anybody in their lives.

And people are hearing

each other in a deeper way

than they've ever listened

to anybody in their lives.

And from that place then,

we help people

set their intention

for the first ceremony,

which then happens

the second night.

And that's when

the shamans take over.

[Lori] Our role is to go

into the ceremonial aspect

of those retreats

and work with the plants

to gain access to the vision

to help guide people

deeper inside themselves

and take them

as far as they are able to go.

And that can look like chanting

or doing energy work

or helping to bring

a kind of energy

into the energetic field

to help move anything

that doesn't belong there.

[icaro music playing]

People have lots of different

sickness, and that sickness--

I mean, it's an energy.

So the energy

is then there in the space,

and can it have an impact

on the practitioners?

Can it have an impact

on other things?

The first thing

that, as practitioners,

we really learn about

is how to protect the space.

A lot of times

we're working with things

like really serious addictions,

or maybe somebody has cancer.

All of these different

sicknesses, they have an energy.

So that energy

is a palpable, actual, thing.

So we're working to untangle

and unwind and move that energy.

And in order to move that,

we have to make sure

that it's not just gonna

go around the space,

it's going to fill up the room

and the people

are gonna be impacted by that.

You have to be able

to protect it

and hold that space

in a good way.

[icaro music playing]

The visions started out

super sexual again.

And I was like,

"Oh great, here we are.

We're in this, like, gross,

sex-shamey space again.

Why am I here again?

Like, I don't have

any issues with this.

What am I not seeing here?

Like, show me something."

[icaro music playing]

[Shannan]

So, then she opened up,

and in bright,

Moulin Rouge style,

neon lights in the background,

"You're a sex addict."

She started showing me

visions of my parents

and their addiction.

There was no filters really

on what was happening

in front of kids

and not in front of kids.

There wasn't a time when sex

wasn't a huge thing

in my life ever.

She was like, "This was

where it all blew up for you."

And I was working at

a children's mental health place

and there was an IT computer guy

that was working there.

And so, he was like really sweet

and sent me flowers on my desk

all the time and--

Almost too sweet.

And then he took me out

for coffee and he was like,

"We can date, sure, that's fine,

but there are

other parts to my life

that, you know,

you might not agree with."

There was something

alluring there for me.

So we had, like, a bit of a

bondage relationship for a while

and he's like, "I run an escort

agency with my ex-girlfriend.

I want you to be a star.

You could go so far."

And I was already

in this, like, fucked up space

where he's beating me,

and fast forward

three months later

and now he's got

my sister involved in it also.

And he's like,

"Let's do this porn website."

I have no idea

how I let my sister

get wrapped up

in that shit also.

Things got super crazy,

and I was like, "Fuck it."

Like, "I'm not doing this

anymore. I can't do this."

And I went home

and I had a bottle

of some antianxiety medication,

and just fucking downed

the entire thing.

[somber music plays]

And I don't think--

I don't know if I wanted to die

at that moment

or if I was just,

like, "Somebody help."

I don't know.

[sobs]

[sobs]

Oh, those images?

I did-- I tried so hard

not to think about those things.

[chuckles]

And then fast forward.

I'm still doing that,

but in just a different way.

I have a complete disregard

for who they are,

how they treat me, anything,

as long as the sex is good,

I'll stay.

It doesn't matter.

'Cause I'm getting

whatever I need out of that.

[sniffles]

But not what I need here at all.

[sniffles]

She was clear.

That's stopping.

"Don't do that

to yourself anymore."

I feel like-- Well,

that's gonna be interesting,

because how do you not have sex?

[Shannan chuckling] You know?

It's not like I can be,

"Oh, I'm addicted to heroin,

I'm never gonna touch it

ever again."

And I just remember saying

to her over and over again,

"Okay, I see

all of this stuff, I get it,

but I don't know how to fix it."

And she's like, "It's okay.

You'll figure it out."

I should have known

that this was gonna be

what it was gonna be about,

because it's the one thing

that I hate about myself.

I still feel like...

there's more in there.

[Dave] Well,

the Gabor style retreat is--

it gives you the structure

of the psychotherapy

and helps people to work

with what material

has been brought up in ceremony.

So I'm there in the ceremony

doing my job, which is to work

on the energetic level

spiritually,

work with the physical body.

He really goes in there

to the unconscious,

the ego, and the mind

and allows the person

to really focus

on the intention that they wanna

discover within the ceremony.

[Lori]

We won't actually be present

for all of the processing

of the people.

So, we're not even

fully aware on that level

of what the person

is working with

and so the people will come

and say, "What did you see?"

And so we can share

our perspective on that.

What's very interesting to me,

and this shows up

over and over and over again,

is that whatever I find

about somebody during the day,

as I'm speaking with them,

the same dynamic will be

uncovered or recognized

by the shamans at night

when people

aren't speaking at all.

They're just lying there.

The work that I do is going

into the spiritual world

and communicating with spirits.

Any illness that someone has

exists on this physical level,

but it also exists

in the spiritual world.

So, with Ayahuasca

and certain plants,

we can see the spiritual world

and see the root

of that illness

on a spiritual side of things.

[Gabor] We don't live

in a very symbolic world,

we live in a very practical,

technological world

while the visions

that people experience,

or voices they might hear,

or the experiences

they might have

are full of symbolism,

full of the kind of meaning

that the verbal left brain

has difficulty understanding.

So people have sometimes

very deep, sometimes scary,

sometimes painful,

sometimes beautiful experiences,

but they don't necessarily

know how to interpret that

in terms of what that means

for their lives.

So again, that's my work.

With each ceremony

and with each day,

people go deeper

and deeper and deeper.

So, at the end

of three ceremonies

and the seven days that surround

those three ceremonies,

people have had an experience

of themselves

that's in some ways richer

and more profound

than any other experience

of their lives.

And it's certainly

more instructive.

You know, the other thing

that I would say

about the Gabor retreats

is that we try to also provide

tools for people to help them

to carry that into their lives

so that the work

that they've done can reflect

in their day to day living.

[car horns honking]

[Dave] Well, the first thing

that Ayahuasca does is,

it's a medicine,

and it brings up the sickness.

And the sickness

appears in the vision.

And as a trained vegetalista,

we're trained

to understand the vision,

to work with the energy.

You'll see the spirit

of the illnesses that come up,

the spirit of the trauma.

And it's up for you to--

to move this energy,

to work with this energy.

[Gabor] Really, it's

an intentional community

with a deep shamanic experience,

around which the seven days

are constructed.

There is people out there

that they're like,

"If this doesn't work, I don't

know what else I'm gonna do."

[birds chirping]

[Libby] I sat down and drank.

Probably within ten minutes

I started--

Just the most beautiful visuals.

I looked down, there was

this beautiful, amazing,

strong horse.

And I looked,

and there were whip marks.

And I thought, "Oh, my God!"

Like, "What happened

to this beautiful horse?"

Like, "Look at those whip marks,

who's been doing that?"

And then I was told,

"Well, that's you."

And I was horrified,

because when I was

looking down at the horse,

I felt for the horse,

and then when it was me,

all of a sudden, I felt for me.

You know, I felt bad for me.

And sad for me.

And compassionate for me.

And then I was handed

the reins of the horse.

You know, I was given the reins

to this beautiful horse

that had gone through so much.

I just, basically, promised it.

"I won't do this."

And then the horse disappeared

and it was me.

And I was looking at me.

Physically me.

Sitting there. On my mat.

I was looking at myself

and I started bawling.

Like I just remember I kept

trying to touch my own face

and I just said,

"She's so beautiful."

[chuckles]

I was like,

"Thank you. Thank you."

[birds chirping]

[Dave] Everything

that happens to us as an adult

is a by-product

about how we're taught

as children how to live.

And we go out

and we learn things on our own,

but the choices we're making

are largely based

on how we were taught as kids

how to respond

and react

in different situations.

As we start to work

into people's psyche

and we start to see

how as young kids,

when mother and father

neglected them,

they isolated themselves.

They become adults,

and what happens

as soon as challenges happen?

They won't open up.

[Libby]

I definitely group up isolated.

We grew up in the middle of...

Yeah, the middle of nowhere.

I was home schooled.

My dad worked

twelvish hours away

and would be gone for months.

And my mom took care

of my brother and I.

My parents were...

The nice way to put it

is homesteaders.

The other way to put it

would be, like, survivalists.

I had never connected

with the feeling

of being isolated as a child.

I felt like I was

a social child,

and I had a brother,

and we just did things together,

but it was honestly

the first time I recognized

that I was isolated

and lonely as a child.

And then I was recreating that

for myself again in my life.

And realized as an adult, "Okay,

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

This is actually a problem."

And then you get depression,

which is just the suppression

of any emotion.

You go to the doctor

and say that you're depressed.

The doctor doesn't say, "Well,

you know, you should cry more."

They give you a pill to suppress

the emotion even more.

So then everyone

is just walking around numb.

[Libby]

I was on Prozac for 20 years.

When I originally went on it,

I was anorexic, depressed.

Had, you know, like, kind

of half-assed a suicide attempt.

I was just,

not really, connected.

To express emotion

is to be alive.

That's why we're here.

Sadness is not a bad thing.

Anger is not a bad thing.

It's important

that we do express that,

and as young kids,

how many times have you seen

a parent shutting down

a kid's emotion

because the parent

can't hold it for the kid?

Like a child just normally

expresses emotion.

That's what they do.

I don't wanna do this anymore.

I don't wanna do any of it.

I don't know

that I'm strong enough,

or my body is strong enough

to keep going.

My heart hurts.

Like, it hurts all the time.

Yeah, but it's like,

sometimes you can see

all of that healing

really clearly,

and then sometimes it's hidden

behind all of this dark shit

that you know

you still have to do.

Maybe it's just nerves

for getting close

to another ceremony

or all of these fears

are coming up around.

"Oh, great, if this is what's

happening in my dream time,

what's gonna happen

at ceremony?"

This is gonna sound weird.

I thought

it was gonna be easy street

and I was gonna have to deal

with my dad's suicide.

That's easy street for me.

After the last ceremony

I thought,

"Great, it really felt like,

this is the end.

I can put all of this

sexual abuse stuff behind me.

This is gonna be great.

Let's move on

to Daddy's suicide stuff.

Let's just, like, plow through

all of this stuff really fast.

Look at me,

I'm doing all of this work."

And then it's still all

about the sexual abuse stuff.

All my dreams are

about the sexual abuse stuff.

[Lisa]

I ended up meeting with Gabor.

I walked into a hotel room

where he was staying,

in, like, stiletto heels

and bad make up,

but he saw beyond that.

So then he told me

about Ibogaine.

Ibogaine is an extract

of an African plant called iboga

and it has the wonderful quality

of actually

curtailing withdrawal.

So we have no way

in western medicine

of stopping withdrawal

except by giving people

more opiates.

I liken the of Ibogaine

to like, Pacman

going through my blood

and eating up the methadone.

So every night,

as the sun went down

and they would start

working again,

and it would go all night long

till the sun came up

and it would just let me be.

May 23rd, 2011.

Done with methadone.

Whoa, take the methadone

out of the picture,

and everything starts to flow,

and Gabor says,

"We have a next step,

don't worry.

Hang on a month.

We're going back to Mexico."

[Gabor] When you stop

using the methadone,

you gotta remember

there's a reason

why you started

using the opiates.

And opiates are painkillers,

and you're using the opiate

to kill your pain.

All the pain that you've been

suppressing is gonna flood in.

Now you need to work

with the Ayahuasca

to get underneath the pain

to find out who you really are

and to find out

what has been blocking you

from being yourself,

which is always

childhood trauma.

[Lisa] So I flew to Vancouver,

and met with him

and went to Mexico.

And I drank Ayahuasca

and did group processing

around it.

Dave primarily worked with me

at the beginning.

And I have a list,

like, so long of...

things that have changed

in my life

because of working with him.

I was

at my second Gabor retreat,

and one of the subjects

that came up

was that I had had

two abortions in my using days.

He said, "You have to clear

those three beings, souls.

Coming between Creator's

creation is a big deal,

and if I'm gonna work on helping

you clear these three,

you're have to promise me

that you're going to spend time

talking to them

and asking for their forgiveness

and releasing them."

And I was like,

"What are you talking about?

Three? I only had two."

And he said,

"No, I think you had three."

And after he did

that freeing of those,

I felt some kind of stirring,

something going on

that I hadn't felt

in my uterus and my ovaries.

So again, I take the flight home

and I go to the washroom

on the flight

and I have my moon cycle.

After 20 years.

My mom picked me up

at the airport

and I told her the story.

She said, "Yeah, Lisa, you

don't remember the third one.

You were incarcerated,

and I had to come

and sign for you.

You were of no sound mind and--"

So there had been

a third abortion

that I didn't know about,

that he was able to see,

and feel, and release.

[rattling]

[Gabor]

She's a wonderful example

of what's potentially possible

with the use

of these medicinal plants.

[Shannan] Yesterday was the

anniversary of my dad's suicide.

So my intention was

to heal whatever is left.

She was like, "Let's explore

this stuff that happened

with your dad a little bit."

And she showed me how it

happened and when it happened.

And then I was like,

"Okay, I can handle this."

His mental health

was really deteriorating,

and we were staying

in a women's shelter with my mom

and I would sneak away

from school

and go and see him

in the morning.

And I was trying

to take care of him.

And in his mind,

it got so messed up.

You know?

And then I was like,

"Did I kill him?

Was that me?

Was he so upset

about what was happening

that he did that?"

And I was like, "Oh, God!

I don't wanna be in that."

It started showing me one

of my childhood best friends.

She had been sexually abused

by her dad.

And then she started to go

into all these dark places,

and I was like,

"Oh, I'm not going there.

I can't. I'm not doing this."

And she was like, "You have to.

We gotta go in there.

You wanna heal these parts

of you, you have to see this."

[exhales]

She just kind of threw me

right into this space

of what happens

if you were the reason

why your dad committed suicide?

Can we go in there?

And I'm like, "Oh, my God."

I've never been so uncomfortable

in my entire life

and I just knew that the only

way through it was in it.

So in we went.

The visions that she sent me

was, like, me and my dad

laying on my bed

and kind of playing,

and me thinking

that I was taking care of him

in some way or shape or form.

And his mental health

was completely deteriorated.

And...

She started showing me

visions of the sexual things

that happened

between me and my dad.

And really went

into all of the--

All of it. And just disgusting.

And then to know that that was

days before he killed himself.

When I came out of ceremony,

I felt responsible

for his suicide.

Yep.

I think even...

how traumatic that was

and how I was thinking

that I was responsible for it,

there was this part of me

that was like,

"Thank God this is out of me."

And then I tried to spend

the rest of the evening

talking myself

out of how none of that is true.

"I just made it up.

I'm a drama queen."

I was doing everything,

everything I could

to talk myself out of how

that didn't actually happen.

Yeah. So what you can trust

is the feeling

inside of you,

the sadness that was present,

the anger that was present.

All the other stuff

that comes in,

the fear, the doubt,

the confusion.

All that stuff

is coming from the mind.

But, you know,

when you're crying there,

there's no doubt in me

that that emotion is true.

So I'm not sitting here going,

"I don't think

that really happened."

It would be hard to generate

that sense of feeling.

Unless it's true.

Thank you.

[Lori] In the end,

I just have to trust.

You know, I trust in creation.

I trust in nature.

I trust

in my own intuitive sense

and I know that this

is what I'm meant

to be doing in my life.

I know that this

is helping people.

I know that this is good.

I know that this is true.

And I don't really believe

that what I'm doing

is not lawful.

[Rosie] I want people to know

that we're a regular family,

kind and normal,

and not, you know--

There's so much misinformation

out there about Ayahuasca.

And it's always linked

with drugs

and, you know, it's really sad.

It's such a sacred medicine.

[Dave] Thank you for this day

and thank you

for this food on the table.

[Rosie] We don't even use

pharmaceutical drugs.

We don't drink. We're in bed

by nine every night.

You know, we're pretty simple,

natural people,

using plants to heal us

if we're sick.

[Dave] Plant and humans have

a symbiotic relationship.

We rely

on each other to survive.

You know, and plants have been

here a lot longer than us.

So, they have

a certain knowledge

that they can share with us.

I think there's obviously--

There's a master plan

that's happening

around all of these plants.

Terence McKenna called it

the Archaic Revival.

You know,

it's like, the old ways

are gonna come back and save us.

So, you know,

this is only my opinion,

but I think there is obviously

something happening

on that level, where plants

are coming out and giving us

an opportunity to heal,

because if we don't heal,

they're gonna die the way

that we're treating the earth.

[Mauro]

Just for the people, you know,

if they're coming to Ayahuasca,

you know, to--

Have tremendous amounts

of respect for the medicine.

You're not coming

to take a drug.

You're coming to work

with a sacred medicine

that's been used for who knows

how many thousands of years

that has been put here

along with all other plants

to help heal us

and bring us back to ourselves

and bring us back

to the connection with nature.

[Daniel]

I'm really grateful to everybody

who makes this work possible.

It astounds me, the stamina,

and the fortitude,

and the concentration

it must take

to lead these ceremonies.

To chant. To channel this.

To be with people's suffering.

Like, to bring that quality

of presence

that these practitioners bring,

that Dave brings.

How much work must

they have done on themselves?

The work is never done.

The healing is never ever done.

[Daniel chuckles]

It never ends.

I never get to say I'm finished.

But there's all kinds

of medicine in the world

and there's all kinds of healing

and this is

a really powerful one.

[Dave] Well, the last 15 years

I've learned

so many things about myself,

but about

the society we live in.

Our society is sick,

and there's a need for medicine

and plants to help people

because western medicine

is not doing it.

The war on cancer, whenever

that was started in the 70's,

the rates of cancer

are higher now than they were.

So there's gotta be another way.

Antidepressants

and antipsychotics,

all that stuff, truly it's--

I think it does

more harm than good.

[Gabor] How society lives

has a huge impact

on the emotional outlook

and health of its members.

And the plant world,

the vegetalismo world,

is very much a non-dualistic

perspective on human beings.

They don't make the splits

that western medicine makes.

By the time I'd begun

to work with the plant,

I'd gone beyond

the ideological restrictions

of mainstream medicine.

I already understood that mind

and body can't be separated,

that people are

creatures of physiology,

but also psychology and they

have a spiritual nature as well.

I understood about the

relationship of adult illness,

physical or mental, or addiction

to childhood trauma.

But it did open me

to a whole way of working

and thinking about things.

I've had some deep experiences

with the plant.

I have to say...

[chuckles]

...that, personally,

those experiences

have not been as transformative

as I've seen them be

for the people that I work with.

I've had insights.

One specific insight,

very important one,

and I didn't follow it.

Boy, did I create suffering

for myself and others.

So it speaks the truth.

[icaro music playing]

The chanting

during the ceremony started,

and it was just all male voices.

I had all my guy friends,

in the vision,

and I just felt like,

"This is great.

They're all here."

And then, sort of, the feeling

of the chant or the song changed

and I realized

they were there to send me off.

And I realized

that they were saying,

"We've had you with us

for so long,

but now it's time to move on."

And I got anxious.

I didn't wanna go.

And we were all

on the bank of a lake.

And I realized that they

were chanting towards the lake.

And I turned around and there

was a raft coming forward,

and there was a woman

on this raft.

She was the most feminine figure

I've ever encountered.

And she was

in, head to toe, red.

And her dress was made of roses.

And the guys waved goodbye

and they said,

"You need

to go forward with her.

You need to go forward

with this.

And she's gonna take you."

I was told--

[exhales]

[sighs]

You need to--

You need to go and spend time

with your girlfriends,

and you need

to spend time with mothers.

You need to learn from them,

because within a year,

you're gonna have a baby."

[chuckles]

And I was like,

"That's impossible.

I'm going through a divorce."

Um, and they said,

"You're gonna have a baby girl."

And, uh...

And so I also said,

"Well, I don't know how."

You know?

And they said,

"You have a lot of good friends

that are really great mothers,

and you need

to learn from them."

The next April rolled around,

I was pregnant

and found out

that it was a baby girl.

[woman] Please go ahead

and create another memory,

by sharing with us

your very first kiss

as husband and wife.

Hey, sweet pie.

I just feel really grateful.

I know that sounds--

Yeah, I had no idea.

You know?

I had no idea.

And just to...

step out of my comfort zone

for just a second...

That's all that it took.

Just a second.

And just trust.

Oh. Yeah.

[Shannan] I feel like Ayahuasca

made me love myself

in the biggest way possible.

I do everything for me now.

I have a meditation practice.

I exercise regularly.

I eat good food because I want

to, like, nourish my body.

I wanna keep going.

But it was, like,

connection to spirit

that was the big kicker for me,

and it's definitely continued.

I'll just be driving

in my car to work

and I'll just get

this overwhelming feeling

of gratitude,

and the tears are falling

and that happens

because I have this connection

with-- with the spirit,

or Creator, or whatever--

whatever you wanna call it.

I would say I think

about my dad every day.

I forgave him

after that ceremony,

because I saw

where he came from.

I saw what happened to him.

I felt all of that, all

of the stuff he was feeling.

And you can't help

but have compassion for somebody

who had that amount of trauma.

[Lisa] One thing that I say

about Ayahuasca

is, like, you really,

really get what you need.

I thought I was diving

into darkness,

and instead

she showed me the exact--

the exact opposite

of how I've been loved

and how I survived.

And I survived

by being through this love.

And it's not an easy path.

But I couldn't feel more blessed

by anything in my life

than Ayahuasca.

She just allows me

to look at myself

with love and compassion.

And she's had me look

at some real dark times.

But she's held my hand

through them,

as has the community.

[icaro music playing]

Dave is, no doubt,

one of the most experienced

people

in North America.

Few would've had the dedication

to be in the jungle

all that time that Dave did.

And Lori as well.

And for a long time,

they were working

under the guidance of a Shipibo,

native Indian Peruvian teacher.

So, they learned a lot

in a very dedicated,

disciplined, fashion.

There is in Dave

that kind of integrity

and so he's a very

experienced Ayahuascaro.

And I've seen his work deepen

immeasurably

over the years that I've been

associated with him.

You know, it's impossible

for me to say

why I chose the path, other

than I wanted to help people

because I was sick when I--

when I came to Ayahuasca myself.

You know,

I had the depression and--

I think there's

just higher powers

that are helping guide him,

and this is his path.

[Dave] As much as I was

pulled towards the path,

I also had to walk

towards the path.

But it doesn't take

some kind of special person.

[Gabor] I don't know any other

place where there's actually

a community in the sense

that has coalesced around Dave.

So what's more beautiful

than to see a group of people

committed to healing

and to offering

that healing to others?

[Dave] Until we learn

to respect ourselves,

respect something

higher than ourselves,

something greater

than ourselves,

something that created us.

its where we need

to put our emphasis

with gratitude and reverence

for this amazing place

that we live.

[rock music plays]

[Dave]

I remember this one example

of being in a retreat

with Gabor.

Me and Lori were

the practitioners back then.

And we spent the whole day

in circle processing the group,

and one of the women said,

"You know, I'm really excited

to meet the shamans.

When are they gonna be here?"

[chuckling]

And Lori and I were like,

"Yeah, that's us."

You know, I guess people

want us to come in there

with an eagle headdress

or a staff or something and--

A shaman's path is here.

It's not the color of your skin.

It's not where you come from.

It's the desire to help people

and that ability

to navigate both worlds,

that spiritual world

and this physical world.

Very early on, I understood

that as long

as my heart was clear

on what I wanted to do,

it had nothing to do

with what color my skin is.

[rock music continues]