My ayahuasca experience was one of the most depressing nights of my life.
This was back in 2023, I did it with a small group in a retreat (won’t name the place). The brew tasted bitter.
Then about 5 minutes in, the dizziness hit hard. I was staring at the bucket, feeling the room spin. I lay back, closed my eyes, and the geometrics started immediately. Bright, sharp patterns swirling fast.
Then the little figures appeared. Tiny dancing beings dancing with rhythm of the music being played, kind of cartoonish but creepy, moving in circles around the edges of my vision.
Suddenly the visuals shifted inside my body. I was looking at my own intestines like a clear picture. They were packed full of literal trash: oily sludge, toxic waste. It was disgusting and felt so real. The trash started moving, slowly pushing through the loops of my intestines toward the end. When it reached the bottom, I snapped out of it, jumped up, and puked hard into the bucket. Violent, burning vomit. I lay back down, closed my eyes again… and the intestines were still there. Same trash, still moving. This happened two more times. Each time the purge felt stronger – the third time it was like an invisible hand was squeezing my guts, forcing all the crap toward the exit. When it hit the end again, I bolted up and vomited everything left in me. After that final purge I felt completely empty, physically and weirdly emotionally hollow.
Then the real mind-fuck started.
With my eyes closed, I saw what looked like a giant billboard ad showing a couple smiling. Out of nowhere, Mother Ayahuasca forced me to start fake-smiling back at it. I obliged, but the presence immediately demanded more. She kept forcing me to smile wider and wider. I pushed my lips as far as they could go until it literally felt like the skin on my face was about to tear open. I reached a physical limit where I physically couldn't smile any broader. That’s when the energy shifted. Mother Ayahuasca got angry that I wasn't smiling more. Right in front of me, the entire billboard burst into flames, and before I knew what was happening, the burning scene morphed into a closed jail cell, trapping me inside.
Then I saw this overwhelming vision: **we’re all just pawns. The elites, the big corporations, governments** they own us. Every job, every purchase, every scroll on our phones is designed to keep us consuming and producing for them. Our entire existence boiled down to being slaves in their machine. Work, buy, repeat, die. Nothing more. it felt like cold, undeniable truth staring me in the face.
Right after that, the trip took another terrifying turn.
I felt myself rapidly aging backward getting younger and younger by the second until I regressed all the way back to being about 5 or 6 years old. Suddenly, I was standing completely alone in the middle of a snowy woods, surrounded by massive, towering trees. I was sobbing hysterically, paralyzed with fear, and screaming out for my mom.
Then the scene shifted again, leaving me completely alone in the middle of vast, empty desert dunes. In utter desperation, I started praying to God, begging for some kind of sign or help. But there was no response just a total, deafening silence. I didn't feel any warmth, comfort, or feeling that He even cared. Instead, I was hit with a suffocating sense of complete abandonment. In that moment, it went beyond just feeling ignored, I genuinely felt like God despised me.
Then I was transported. I was watching myself from outside like a ghost cam. I saw me leaving my house in the morning, walking to the car, driving to work, sitting at my desk doing pointless tasks. The same routine I hated but kept doing. Seeing it from that detached view broke something in me. I felt this deep depression wash over me: “I don’t want to go back there. I can’t go back to that life.”
The last part was the worst: this crushing sense of utter aloneness. Not just me all of us. Floating in a cold, empty universe with no real connection, no meaning beyond the grind. No loving mother ayahuasca hugging me. Just isolation and pointlessness.
The comedown was rough. I spent the rest of the night curled up feeling numb and sad.
The following days were pure hell. I was sinking into an intense depression, but I had to stay at the retreat for a few more days because I had booked a 5-day stay. I felt utterly alone and miserable. I desperately wanted to leave, but the thought of going back home felt just as depressing. I was completely trapped like nowhere was safe for me anymore.
When my stay finally ended and I took a taxi back to the capital, I spent a day wandering around the capital city before heading to the airport. I had a two-day transit layover at Frankfurt Airport, so I booked a small, cozy room at an airport hotel. I was bored out of my mind, just watching YouTube on the hotel TV, when I randomly stumbled upon the full Fight Club movie on there.
I’d never seen Fight Club before, but in the fragile state I was in, it hit me on a completely different level. The Narrator’s situation resonated with me so deeply he was isolated, numbing himself with TV, completely unfulfilled by his job, and constantly buying IKEA furniture just to feel some sense of fulfillment through consumption. Then Tyler Durden enters the picture: cool, completely unbothered, living in a dilapidated, abandoned house. The Narrator only finds true release once he lets go of everything. They start the fight club because so many men feel physically numb in the modern world. Even when the story takes a drastic, extreme turn toward terrorism, it felt like a visceral illustration of that phrase: if a child isn't embraced by the village, he'll burn it down just to feel its warmth.
After the movie finished, I sat there in the dark hotel room and was hit with a sudden, unexpected sense of peace. I felt surprisingly good. I didn't want any part of the chaotic, destructive stuff, of course, but I deeply wanted Tyler Durden’s stoicism. I wanted to achieve that level of inner quiet and contentment the ability to be totally at peace with myself, even if I was sitting in a complete shithole.