My Ayahuasca Journey: From 30 Years of Addiction to Freedom
This is my story. Not a success story. Not a cautionary tale. Just what happened.
It was 3am on a Tuesday in early 2023. I was sitting in my apartment, two empty wine bottles on the table, watching Netflix because I couldn’t sleep. Again. I clicked on a documentary called “How to Change Your Mind” because the thumbnail looked interesting and I needed something to distract me from the hangover that was already building behind my eyes.
I didn’t know it then, but that random documentary at 3am would be the beginning of my ayahuasca journey—a journey that would take me to six different retreats across four countries, from 30 years of drinking to three years sober.
This is my ayahuasca journey. It’s not a story about instant enlightenment or magical healing. It’s not dramatic or neat. It’s messy and slow and still unfolding. But it’s real.
⚠️ Before I Continue: This is a personal story, not medical advice. If you’re struggling with addiction, please consult a healthcare professional. Ayahuasca can be dangerous with certain medications and conditions. Read my complete safety guide before considering it.
The 30 Years Before My Ayahuasca Journey
I started drinking at 13. Nothing dramatic triggered it—no trauma, no specific event. I remember the first time: red wine at a family gathering. The way it made me feel lighter, easier, less aware of all the sharp edges inside me.
For years, it was manageable. Social drinking, wine with dinner, beer with friends. Normal, or what passes for normal in a culture where alcohol is everywhere. But somewhere in my twenties, the line blurred. Wine and beer became whisky. Occasional became regular. Regular became daily.
By my late thirties, I was drinking almost every day. The blackouts started—gaps in memory, entire evenings I couldn’t reconstruct. I never drank alone, which I told myself meant I didn’t have a problem. Always social, always with others. But there were weeks, sometimes months, where I drank every single day. Morning drinking. Evening drinking. Not always, but often enough.
I tried everything except the one thing that would eventually work. I tried moderation—drinking less, switching to alcohol-free beer, setting rules about when and how much. According to NIAAA research, complete abstinence is often the only effective approach for severe alcohol dependence. Nothing else worked. The only thing that works for someone like me is complete abstinence. No alcohol. Not even alcohol-free beer. Not even candies with alcohol in them.
But I didn’t know that yet in 2023. I just knew I was tired. Tired of waking up fuzzy. Tired of the blackouts. Tired of watching people around me get destroyed or die from alcohol. I knew I needed to stop, but I had no idea how.
💡 What I Didn’t Try: No therapy specifically for addiction. No AA meetings. No rehab. I’m not saying those don’t work—for many people, they do. I’m saying I never tried them. I went straight from 30 years of drinking to a documentary about psychedelics that would begin my ayahuasca journey.
How a Documentary Started My Ayahuasca Journey
I didn’t search for “How to Change Your Mind.” I wasn’t looking for ayahuasca or psychedelics or healing. I like documentaries, and it was there, and I clicked. That’s it.
I didn’t know anything about ayahuasca. The word meant nothing to me.
The psilocybin episode hit me hardest. There was a man in it—I don’t remember his name—who had severe OCD. Obsessive thoughts that controlled his life. He tried psilocybin therapy, and afterward, he was able to start a family. Build a life. Function.
Something about that story cracked something open in me. Not hope exactly—I’d given up on hope years ago. But possibility. The smallest, quietest possibility that maybe psychedelics could help break addiction patterns. That maybe there was another way.
I finished the series. Then I opened my laptop and started searching. Not “how to use ayahuasca” or “ayahuasca for addiction.” Just one thing: “is ayahuasca addictive.”
It’s not. That was enough.
I think it was about two weeks between watching the documentary and booking my first retreat. Two weeks of research, reading trip reports, looking at retreat centers, trying to figure out if this ayahuasca journey was real or just another thing that wouldn’t work.
Finding Isabella: The Beginning of My Ayahuasca Journey
Everyone talks about going to Peru for the “authentic” experience. The Amazon, traditional shamans, the heart of ayahuasca culture. And I did eventually get there—but not for my first ceremony. For my first ceremony, at the very beginning of my ayahuasca journey, I chose Spain.
I chose Spain because I was terrified. I wanted to understand what was being said. I wanted modern safety protocols. I wanted to feel like if something went wrong, I could handle it. Peru felt too far, too unknown, too much.
I found a retreat in Alcover, Spain, facilitated by a woman named Isabella. What convinced me wasn’t mystical promises or spiritual language. It was the screening process. The detailed medical questionnaire. The follow-up questions about medications, health conditions, mental health history. The National Institutes of Health has documented serious contraindications with ayahuasca that everyone should know about. It was the small group size—just six people. It was the two full days of preparation before the ceremony.
Isabella had been working with ayahuasca for over 15 years. She wasn’t trying to sell me anything. She asked hard questions. She wanted to know why I was coming, what I hoped for, whether I understood what I was getting into.
In May 2023, I flew to Spain to begin what would become my real ayahuasca journey.
Two Days of Preparation: Essential to the Ayahuasca Journey
I arrived at the retreat center expecting to drink ayahuasca that night. That’s not how it works—at least not at a well-run retreat. We spent two full days preparing before anyone touched the medicine.
We did yoga. We learned songs—icaros, healing songs that would be sung during ceremony. We talked about our intentions: why are you here, what do you hope to heal, what are you afraid of? We built trust with Isabella and with each other, six strangers sitting in a circle in rural Spain, all carrying our own versions of broken.
Looking back, I think those two days mattered more than the ceremony itself. By the time we drank ayahuasca, I wasn’t walking into the unknown. I was walking into something I’d been prepared for, held by people I’d started to trust.
💡 Why Preparation Matters: Most people who have bad experiences with ayahuasca walked into ceremony cold—no preparation, no context, no trust. The medicine itself is only part of the ayahuasca journey. The container matters. The preparation matters. Read my first-timer’s guide for more on what proper preparation looks like.
The Night Everything Changed (And Nothing Changed)
The ceremony was at night. Six of us on mats in a dark room, blankets, buckets for purging. Isabella sat at the front. She sang an opening prayer in Spanish, then called us up one by one to drink.
The taste was bitter, earthy, wrong. I drank maybe 50ml—a small cup. Isabella said a prayer over me, and I went back to my mat to wait.
The Vision That Defined My Ayahuasca Journey
I’m not going to describe everything I experienced that night. Some of it feels too sacred to share. But there was one vision that I can’t stop thinking about, even now.
I found myself inside someone else’s body. A woman. An ancestor, maybe—someone from my family line, generations back. She was working with her hands, kneading something, repetitive motions. And I could feel everything she felt.
Her pain. Her helplessness. The weight of everything she carried that she couldn’t speak about, couldn’t share, couldn’t put down. Every fear, every disappointment, every moment of despair—I felt it all, as if her nervous system had become mine.
It wasn’t metaphorical. It was visceral. I was her, and she was me, and there was no separation between her suffering and mine.
I don’t know what that means. I’m not sure I need to. But something about experiencing that depth of pain—someone else’s pain that somehow was also mine—cracked open a space inside me that had been closed for 30 years.
What I Didn’t Experience
I didn’t vomit. Everyone talks about purging like it’s inevitable, but not everyone does. I didn’t.
I didn’t have a revelation about alcohol. No voice saying “stop drinking.” No moment of clarity about my addiction. The medicine showed me something else entirely.
And something unusual: I only did one ceremony during my five days at the retreat. Most people do two or three. But after that one night, I felt complete. Done. I didn’t need more medicine. I needed time to process what I’d already received.
Isabella understood. Good facilitators don’t push you to drink more than you need.
An Important Note About Ceremony Protocol
During ceremony, the facilitator generally doesn’t intervene with participants unless something dangerous is happening. Everyone needs to go through their own experience, their own “trip” if you want to call it that. You process what you need to process. The facilitator holds space, sings icaros, and only steps in if someone is in actual distress or danger. This isn’t neglect—it’s how the medicine works best in the ayahuasca journey.
When the ceremony ended—four or five hours later, I’m not sure—I felt peaceful. Quiet. Like something had been rearranged inside me, but I couldn’t yet see what or how.
What They Don’t Tell You: The Ayahuasca Journey Continues After Ceremony
I flew home from Spain expecting everything to be different. That’s what the stories promise, isn’t it? You drink ayahuasca, you see the light, you’re transformed. Your addiction vanishes. Your life changes overnight.
That’s not what happened in my ayahuasca journey.
I kept drinking. Not every day, not as much, but I still drank. Wine with dinner. Whisky with friends. For about a month, maybe a little more, I continued exactly as I had before Spain.
And then, sometime around June 2023—I honestly can’t pinpoint the exact date—I just… stopped.
I don’t remember making a decision. I don’t remember a final drink or a dramatic moment of commitment. I just realized one day that I hadn’t had alcohol in a week. Then two weeks. Then a month.
It happened so quietly that I almost didn’t notice it happening.
This summer—2026—will be three years since I last put alcohol in my mouth.
📌 The Truth About My Sobriety: I’m physically sober, but mentally and psychologically, I’m still dependent. I know—deeply, certainly—that if I put even one drop of alcohol in my mouth, I’ll be right back where I was. That’s why it has to be complete abstinence. No alcohol. No exceptions. Not even a sip.
What About Therapy? Integration?
I didn’t do formal integration therapy after Spain. I had a psychologist I talked to occasionally, but never specifically about the ayahuasca experience or my drinking. We talked about other things—life, work, relationships.
Eventually, I stopped seeing him too. At another retreat later—I’ll write about that part of my ayahuasca journey separately—someone told me something that stuck: “A person shouldn’t charge you money just to talk to you and give you advice.”
It woke me up. I realized my psychologist was just another person making money off me, with a financial interest in keeping me coming back. That might sound cynical, but it’s how I felt. So I stopped going.
My integration has been informal: reflection, trying to live differently, being honest with myself about what I can and can’t handle. And, as I would later discover, continuing the work through more ceremonies.
The Call to Return: Continuing My Ayahuasca Journey
After Spain, I felt something I can only describe as a pull. Not immediately—it took months. But gradually, I felt called back to the medicine.
I didn’t understand it at first. I’d stopped drinking. The work felt done. But ayahuasca had opened something deeper, and I kept feeling that there was more to learn, more to heal, more layers to peel back.
Between May 2023 and June 2025—those two years between my first ceremony in Spain and my 40-day dieta in Peru—I attended several more retreats. Different countries. Different facilitators. Different styles of ceremony.
I went to the Netherlands. Small ceremonies, intimate groups. I went to Portugal—twice, actually—to a retreat center near Albufeira that I felt drawn back to. I even brought my partner to one retreat in the Netherlands, wanting to share this part of my ayahuasca journey with someone I cared about.
Each retreat taught me something different. Each ceremony peeled back another layer. It wasn’t about the alcohol anymore—I’d already stopped drinking. It was about going deeper into whatever ayahuasca had opened in me that first night in Spain.
💡 Why Multiple Retreats? For some people, one ayahuasca ceremony is enough. They get what they need and move on. For others—like me—the medicine becomes a practice, a way of continuing to work on yourself, layer by layer. There’s no right answer. You’ll know when you’re called back. And you’ll know when the work feels complete.
What I Learned From Returning
After each retreat, I came home changed. Not in dramatic ways, but in subtle shifts. A decision I finally made. A pattern I finally broke. A clarity I hadn’t had before. Changes that seemed small but added up to something significant over time.
I also learned what I needed from a retreat. Spain taught me the importance of preparation and small groups. Portugal showed me that returning to the same place can deepen the work. The Netherlands gave me intimate, personal experiences where I could really connect with the other participants.
And I learned something else: for me, integration wasn’t about sitting at home and doing formal practices. My integration happened through continuing the ceremonial work, through showing up again and again to whatever the medicine wanted to teach me.
This isn’t the only way to integrate. But it was my way.
Going Deeper: 40 Days in Peru
In June 2025, almost two years after my first ceremony in Spain—and after several retreats across Europe—I finally went to Peru.
Not for a weekend retreat or a week-long experience. I went for 40 days.
I wanted 40 days because if I was going to travel halfway around the world, I wanted it to be meaningful. Memorable. I needed a reset. A detox—not just from alcohol, which I’d already quit, but from everything else. The noise, the patterns, the version of myself I’d been living as for decades.
Those 40 days in the Amazon jungle changed me in ways I’m still unpacking. But that’s a story for another time. That experience—the isolation, the darkness, the work with master plants, the people who quit after days, the reasons I stayed—deserves its own space.
For now, I’ll just say this: Spain opened the door. The retreats in between taught me how to walk through different doorways. Peru showed me how deep those doorways could go. My ayahuasca journey didn’t end after one ceremony—it expanded into something much deeper than I could have imagined.
Where My Ayahuasca Journey Has Taken Me
I’m not “healed.” I’m not “cured.” I’m not enlightened or transformed in the way those words usually mean.
I’m three years sober. I wake up without hangovers. I remember my evenings. I don’t have blackouts anymore. My relationships are better. My health is better. My life is better.
But I’m also still the person who spent 30 years drinking. That doesn’t go away. The patterns are still there, quiet but present. I still have to choose, every day, not to pick up a drink.
Ayahuasca didn’t magically fix me. What it did—what that first ceremony in Spain did, and what those ceremonies across Europe did, and what those 40 days in Peru did—was show me that change was possible. It opened doors I’d been standing in front of my entire adult life, paralyzed, convinced they were locked.
The doors were never locked. But I needed ayahuasca to show me I could turn the handle.
Everything that came after—the actual walking through, the building of a different life, the daily work of staying sober—that’s been on me. The medicine opened something. I had to do the rest. That’s what an ayahuasca journey really means.
This Is Not a Success Story
It’s not a success story because I’m not done. I’m not “recovered.” I’m recovering. Present tense. Ongoing. My ayahuasca journey continues every single day.
Ayahuasca didn’t save me. It gave me a chance to save myself. There’s a difference.
Why I’m Sharing My Ayahuasca Journey
I created this site because when I was sitting in my apartment at 3am, desperately searching Google for information about ayahuasca, I couldn’t find what I needed.
I found marketing copy from retreat centers. I found spiritual bypassing disguised as trip reports. I found generic travel blogs from people who’d done one weekend ceremony and declared themselves transformed. I found either romanticization or fearmongering, with very little honest middle ground.
What I didn’t find was someone saying: “Here’s what actually happened. Here’s how hard it was. Here’s how long it took. Here’s what worked and what didn’t.”
During my time in Peru—those 40 days in the jungle—I watched person after person quit their dietas. People would arrive committed to 20 days, 30 days, 40 days. Within a week, sometimes within days, they’d leave. The isolation was too hard. The diet was too restrictive. The darkness was too much. Sitting with themselves, with no distractions, was unbearable.
They weren’t weak. They were unprepared. Nobody had told them what this work actually requires. They thought it would be difficult. They had no idea how difficult.
That’s why this site exists. To tell the truth. To fill the gap between the marketing and the fearmongering. To give people the real information they need to make informed decisions about whether ayahuasca is right for them—and if so, how to approach it safely.
I’m not selling retreats. I’m not promoting ayahuasca as a miracle cure. I’m just telling you what happened to me, and what I’ve learned, and what I wish someone had told me when I was sitting at 3am with two empty wine bottles, watching a documentary about psychedelics and wondering if there might be another way. I’m sharing my ayahuasca journey so you can make your own informed decision.
If You’re Where I Was: Starting Your Own Ayahuasca Journey
If you’re reading this because you’re struggling with addiction—whether it’s alcohol or something else—I want you to know something: ayahuasca might help. It might not. It’s not a guarantee. It’s not magic.
What I can tell you is that it helped me see a possibility I hadn’t seen before. It opened a space where change could happen. But the actual change? That came slowly, quietly, over months and years of daily choices. It’s still coming.
If you’re considering your own ayahuasca journey, read my complete first-timer’s guide. Learn about preparation, safety, what to expect. Don’t go into this unprepared.
And remember: the ceremony is just the beginning. The real work happens in all the days after, in all the small choices you make when no one is watching, when the medicine is long gone and you’re just you again, deciding who you want to be.
You deserve healing. You deserve freedom.
And you don’t have to figure this out alone.
A Note About Privacy
I’ve shared my ayahuasca journey here, but I’ve kept certain details private—my location, Isabella’s last name, specific retreat names. This is intentional. I want to be honest about my experience while respecting the privacy of the people who helped me.
If you’re struggling with addiction and need help now, please reach out to a medical professional or addiction helpline. Ayahuasca is not appropriate or safe for everyone, and it should never be your only form of treatment.
Continue Reading
- 📺 How “How to Change Your Mind” Changed My Life – The documentary that started everything
- 📖 Complete First-Timer’s Guide to Ayahuasca – Everything you need to know before your first ceremony
- 🌿 Ayahuasca Integration: Making the Healing Last – What happens after ceremony
- 💚 About This Site – Why I created Ayahuasca Retreats Guide
⚠️ Disclaimer: This is a personal story based on my experience. It is not medical advice, addiction treatment advice, or a recommendation that anyone should try ayahuasca. Ayahuasca can be dangerous or fatal if you have certain medical conditions or take certain medications. Always consult a doctor before considering ayahuasca. If you’re struggling with addiction, please seek professional help.
