At home in Lyon, France
Facing My Demons with Ayahuasca
How 20 Shamanic Ceremonies with a Sacred Herb Helped Me Make Peace with Myself
—by Antoine Gee
Last Spring, a few close friends came over to my flat in Lyon, France to help me celebrate my 39th year on this magical planet. Flowers, hugs, wine, and well wishes for the coming year were in abundance, and all in all, it was a wonderful birthday. But celebrations aside, this day marked a true milestone for me after what had been a long and arduous journey. Sometimes I can’t even believe I survived it all—the heartaches, depressions, health issues, and the endless ruminations that held me captive for so long. I’m on the cusp of 40 now, which is usually regarded as middle-aged, but in many ways, I feel like I’m just now entering adulthood. Why did it take me so long to get here? Looking back on my childhood and the dark clouds that started forming in my teens, it’s clear to me that multiple factors were conspiring early to lead me down a rough and winding path. Admittedly, some of the pitfalls were my own doing, but what was at the root of it all? What was driving me toward self-sabotage? I also suffered from self-diminishing thought patterns and deep-seated anger that kept me in a state of chronic stress. Honestly, I’m not sure where I would be today if it wasn’t for the sacred mind-expanding herbal decoction, ayahuasca.
If you’re not familiar with it, ayahuasca (pronounced: eye-yuh-wah-scuh) is a psychoactive, hallucinogenic brew that is made from the bark of a special woody vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) and the leaves of the shrubby chacruna plant (Psychotria viridis). It is commonly used in shamanic ceremonies in the Amazon basin to cleanse old memories, reveal fears, and open a person’s mind to their authentic self.
Ayahuasca is commonly referred to as “Grandmother” or “Great Mother” because it tends to feel feminine and motherly as it circulates through your system. In fact, ayahuasca is often compared to the caring, “tough love” mother who shows you the things you need to see in order to grow and thrive in the world. I could not agree more. Ayahuasca has a unique way of pushing you into your truth. She will ask you to face things about yourself with courage, but she won’t push you too far. She won’t force you to face things you’re not ready to face, although at times it can seem as though she’s asking too much of you.
Ayahuasca steeping
[photo by Succulent Peyote]
I participated in my first ceremony in 2018, and by late 2019, I completed my 20th and final one. And while my healing journey is far from over, thanks to the revelations and guiding wisdom I received through ayahuasca, I can now move ahead in life with a lighter emotional load and a clearer sense of identity. Here is my story and testimony.
The Kindling We Gather as Children
At age 5
It’s hard to know where our suffering comes from. Is it rooted in early trauma, past life issues, family baggage from prior generations? At age 17, I was already struggling internally and wrestling with these deeper questions. I remember one experience in particular. It was late December just after Christmas, and I went out for an evening walk from my parent’s house. With the moon shining brightly over the French countryside, I hiked a few miles until I reached a hilltop where I saw distant villages under an enormous starlit sky. It was a spectacular sight, but as I gazed upon that vista with all those twinkling houses and all that beauty, all I could feel was sorrow and loneliness.
Everything in my world back then was cold and stark. I was sobbing practically every night over what felt like emotional bankruptcy. Fragile and confused, I felt like a knotted-up twig. Melancholy, rage, and resentment were my constant companions, and worst of all, I could not stop thinking and obsessing.
We all have our dragons and demons to face and mine starting wreaking havoc early.
I wasn’t ready to face my demons for years. The more they kept haunting me and growing in size, the more I kept running away from them. Rebellion, avoidance, addictions—these were the survival strategies I used to protect my vulnerability. It was anything but healthy, but these coping tools kept me alive long enough to gather my strength and courage so that I could do the deeper work later on when I was ready. Looking back now, it’s very clear to me that if you aren’t able to identify and learn the lessons that life is trying to teach you, she will continue giving them to you, again and again, in an attempt to break through your armor and teach you those lessons. Ultimately, it is your resistance to this growth process that can wear you down and break you apart—but sometimes, that is exactly what is needed in order to rise again and start anew.
By the time most people reach their early 20s, they usually know enough to make relatively sound decisions and are eager to tackle the demands of adulthood. But for those of us who carry childhood injuries beneath shame and resentment, it can be difficult to move into adulthood successfully. Ultimately, you have to move beyond victimhood and start taking responsibility for yourself, and this is where ayahuasca truly helped me.
Let the Ceremony Begin
They say that ayahuasca chooses you when the time is right, and when she calls, her pull can be strong. This was definitely true in my case. As the old saying goes, “When the student is ready, the teacher will come,” only for me it was like, “When the wounds are ready, the healing will come.”
After I broke up with a significant male partner in 2016, I realized I could no longer bear my heartache and brokenness, and I started looking for relief. I had already participated in a few meditation retreats and had adopted some breathing and energy-work practices, but my moods and emotions were still overwhelming me. I needed something more powerful than meditation to break through my fears and open my mind, and this is when a series of synchronistic connections led me to a shaman in Spain.
I was lucky to find him—such a benevolent and spiritual man. At the time, I knew nothing of ayahuasca, but I signed up for a retreat and committed myself to it fully. In the weeks leading up to the retreat, I followed a special diet along with rules for purifying my energy, which included abstinence from drugs, sex, and healing practices. Then, shortly after arriving for the retreat in Spain, I set my intention for the coming ceremonies, asking to be released of my suffering and to become more aware of my true nature. The retreat was organized into three ayahuasca ceremonies over the course of three nights, and these were preceded by “kambo ceremonies” in the afternoons. Kambo is a sacred medicine that uses the venom of an Amazonian frog to replenish a person’s vital energy and purge toxins and obstructions from the body and mind. Kambo is a sacred medicine in its own right, but it can also prepare you for ayahuasca, although its use in this way is purely optional. As an alternative, you can drink a mapacho tobacco infusion as a way of purging (literally vomiting) the impurities. The tobacco is commonly referred to as “Great Father” because it has a strong paternal quality to it, much like the wise father who teaches strength and discipline.
By the time I finally entered the sacred ceremonial space, I felt an immense sense of gratitude for just having the opportunity to be there and participate. But the experience was still new to me, so feelings of anxiety and discomfort were also very present. Dressed in white and laying on a mattress, I received the purifying smoke of the palo santo wood, which an attendant smudged over and around my body. In silence, I waited for the shaman to open the ceremony, and then I waited for my turn to drink.
As I mentioned earlier, ayahuasca is an herbal brew made from chacruna leaves and the bark of a special vine. But there is another key ingredient in this potent mixture and that is the shaman himself. Indeed, it is the shaman’s connection to the spirit world that sets the tone and sets things in motion for the ceremony. So when my turn finally came, I swallowed the medicine down with a sense of surrender and trust, and then quietly returned to my mattress. There weren’t any changes at first—nothing seemed to be happening. But then gradually, almost without a beginning, sounds started coming in differently.
[photo by Antoine Gee]
Voices, bells, rhythms coming from the heart...slowly, the medicine takes you.
Soon, my sense of being separate from others in the group faded away, and before I knew it, all of our energies were blending together and growing in intensity. Oddly, whatever would be experienced and expressed in a moment by someone in the room would immediately be felt and released by all of us. We were working together, raising our group energy, and the process was soothing and beautiful.
Then slowly and softly, the chants come...
Your body starts to feel very heavy at this point as you enter into a deep meditative state. Drums fill the air with rhythmic pulses, and the drumbeats almost seem to be coming from inside your body. Once again, an attendant comes to your side to blow mapacho smoke over your body for protection and support. You go deeper, your energy intensifies, and this is the point where the inner work truly begins. There is no turning back now, no escape. Everything in your life has brought you to this point, and the only way forward is through yourself.
Your illusions, your lies, your love, your humanity... whatever needs to be revealed is brought to the surface.
Looking back on that first ceremony, I recall disconnecting from everything around me and gently drifting away in my mind, riding waves of thought and imagery. But then two days later in the final ceremony, I struggled with myself more and actually had a panic attack toward the end of it. Thankfully, one of the attendants pulled me out of it quickly by blowing Mapacho tobacco across my face. Somehow, in a split second, I went from being in a full-blown state of terror to being back in my body and relatively calm. How could this be? How could these mental states change so quickly? This incident in itself opened my mind to the greater mysteries of this world and whatever lies beyond it.
A Burning Desire to Heal
[Inner Space photo]
When I returned home after that first retreat, I experienced a state of relaxation that I had not known for nearly a decade. I also burst into tears when I realized how much effort I’d been making to simply manage my life and live. For years, stress-management had been the prevailing focus of my life, but why was I under stress all the time? It was a wake-up call. So I signed up for another retreat, and then another, and then another. I was highly motivated to heal myself, but I also wanted to just get rid of the inner pain. I later discovered that this urgent desire to heal myself was just another way of rejecting the unwanted parts of my personality. Over time, as my self-acceptance grew, I let go of that desperate drive to fix myself.
Every experience with ayahuasca is different. At times, it can be intense and exhausting, but at other times, it’s not. I remember one retreat in particular where my mind kept conjuring elaborate stories that had no grounding in reality at all. I even became convinced that I was Alexander the Great, which I find amusing now. I also remember feeling stuck to the floor in several ceremonies, and once I even found myself moaning and creeping on my mattress like a worm. The whole process can be quite intense and exhausting, especially at the onset of a ceremonial journey. And of course once you’re in it, there’s no “on-off” button.
There were times when my mind would turn ‘round and ‘round as if stuck on spin in a washing machine. On several occasions, too, I saw elaborate and colorful kaleidoscopic shapes whirling at high speeds. When this first happened, it was amazing to watch—but then it quickly became dizzying and overwhelming, and I just wanted it to stop. Fortunately, vomiting was useful here. Looking back, I think deep-seated issues and fears were surfacing in my mind in the form of kaleidoscopic patterns, and these patterns were like psychological boundaries that I needed to deal with and pass through. So once that work had more or less run its course, I think the act of vomiting would release things, like a final therapeutic cleanse.
The shaman would provide one-on-one care and attention during the ceremonies, and these individual “healing moments” were highly beneficial. In one of my sessions with him, I found myself going through fits of anger and releasing primal screams that seemed to have no causal root whatsoever. I still have no idea where this emotion was coming from, but after returning home, I could see a clear difference. My mind was more settled, my stress levels lower, and my moods were more even. Something had changed.
Ayahuasca also helped me uncover some long-standing, deep-seated fears that had been sabotaging my psyche and inhibiting my higher self. For one, I discovered I was harboring a profound fear of death as well as an insecurity rooted in childhood about “not feeling safe”. I could also see how afraid I was of my own anger and potential for rage, and how this fear had affected my life and the lives of those around me. I had been harsh and cruel with certain people, and I deeply regretted that. Still, I needed to see it because this was the beginning of a long process of forgiving, accepting, and making peace with myself.
Great Mother does not do the work for you—she simply shows you what you need to work on, and then it’s your turn. At first, I was in awe of her wisdom and strength, but in time, I learned to value and rely on my own wisdom and strength. Whether I was taking part in a ceremony or living my everyday life, I could stand upright and tall, on my own two feet. I also learned to value and rely on my own inner guidance and thought processes—because in the end, even though an experienced shaman may be leading you through these ceremonies, you have to become your own trusted guide in your own life.
Sometimes though, in spite of your progress and better efforts, things will still fall apart. I say this because in 2020, six months after my final ceremony, I collapsed from exhaustion and was forced to take a 9-month sabbatical for severe burn-out. I had to wonder, “Did the ceremonies contribute to this?” It’s difficult to say since multiple factors are usually involved in these conditions. But it really doesn’t matter, because I have no regrets or lingering doubts about whether I chose the right path. There was just so much to be healed in my mind and body, and ultimately, my body could only take so much stress before it finally gave out. In fact, I think it’s very possible that I suffered a “grand release” of accumulated stress along with a discharge of toxins from all the tobacco, drugs, alcohol, and sugar I had consumed over the years. But whatever the case, it was a wake-up call that I could not deny. And in the end, thanks to my time with Great Mother, I had the inner resources I needed to meet this particular challenge—and all those to come.
Home Sweet Home
[photo by Antoine Gee]
With every precious gift, there usually comes a challenge and responsibility, and for those of us with extreme sensitivity and empathy, I think there is often a disproportional need for acceptance as well as confusion over what is truly you and what is expected and projected onto you by others. To be honest, I’m still working on this because I can still feel the impulse at times to sacrifice myself for others in order to feel accepted. So it’s not fully healed, but at least I’m aware of it and I’m keeping a watch on it. The work is never done, of course, but for me, the promise of shining my light into the world becomes a true possibility now as the self-knowledge I have gained in recent years keeps pushing me closer and closer to my authentic self.
This chapter of my life is coming to a close and a new one is beginning now. So in this moment of recollection and reflection, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Great Mother, the shaman and his team, and my guides in the spirit world for helping me to find my way out of the darkness and back to myself. And to everyone out there who is currently struggling with their own demons and walking through darkness over ashes and coals, I hope my story will serve as a source of strength and inspiration for you. Ayahuasca was a godsend to me, but whatever healing path you choose, above all, keep walking bravely, one step at a time, until you find your way home.
