Extreme Wellness Travel - Psychedelic Trips in Australia

Exploring Ayahuasca - the trendy ancient spiritual ceremony of the Amazonian tribes - in top secret wilderness locations within Australia.

Seeing God

Instead of eating cake and singing karaoke with my mates, I spent my 32nd birthday rolling on the filthy floor of a hidden cabin two-hours outside of Melbourne. When I wasn't rolling, I was knee-deep in the adjacent river shoving my fingers down my throat, along with another twenty or so participants who appeared from said cabin at various stages of the evening. I cried like a mother at a wedding. I kicked my feet in the air like dogs do when they're sleeping, and on one occasion—in tandem with my feet—I let my hands dance in front of my face like a raver in the field on the last night of summer.

For what felt like three days, I went from water to cabin to floor and back again. When I finally got myself together enough to walk instead of crawl outside, I realised I'd only been under-the-influence for five hours. Ayahuasca (pronounced ai-ya-waska) is easily one of the most formidable experiences I've ever had – drug-induced or otherwise.

The plant-based substance has been quite popular in Yogi circles for years but has recently cemented itself as a bucket list item for the global Gypset. For the affluent vegans tired of sound bathing, funding NFTs, and making the annual pilgrimage to Burning Man, it’s about as swag as it gets.

The ceremony involves the consumption of a specially brewed potion made from a vine containing Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT as the kids call it. The beverage is known to Amazonian spiritual leaders as ‘the medicine’ and the substance it carries has powerful hallucinogenic properties said to trigger ten years of therapy in just one dose. It’s also not exactly legal - in Australia, or in most countries for that matter. In order to consume it anywhere other than South and Central America, you need to know someone who knows someone who knows whichever Shaman is in town giving out the goofy juice. And it's not cheap—it costs upwards of $600 AUD for a one-night experience (BYO everything except the magic distill).

If you don’t want to risk sharing narcotics with two-dozen Australian Yuppies, a legitimate Ayahuasca retreat is probably the way to go. I’m told making the pilgrimage to Peru affords you your very own hut to puke in - which is great if you want to keep your insides to yourself, metaphorically and physically speaking. You’ll also have a personal Shaman - kind of like a Butler, but mastered in the ancient Amazonian art of transformative drug-trips. This is a value add in my book, as I could have used someone holding my hair back, rubbing my shoulders and chanting happy vibes for at least the entire ceremony. A girl can dream… but I digress.

One of my friend’s invited me to the secret Australian Ayahuasca Retreat and logistically it felt right. If something were to happen, God forbid, I’d be in my home country close to western medicine rather than in the middle of the jungle a million miles from a proper hospital bed.  I was obviously telling myself this to alleviate any apprehension; I’m a mediocre drug-taker at best. Apart from the very occasional edible, I generally steer clear of mind-altering substances. I have suffered with bouts of anxiety since I was in high school, so because of that, I was slightly more intrigued about the ceremony and its supposed positive psychological effects than I was scared shitless, so I agreed to join her.

In an email sent by the organisers, we were told to pack a tent, a pillow, a blanket, a towel, a yoga mat, more than 2 litres of purified water, some fruit and a bucket with a lid. I didn't have a bucket, so I brought a beaker with a seal and then spent the whole way there - and much of the ceremony - worrying that it wouldn't be big enough to hold all my vomit even though I’d been fasting for what seemed like an eternity.

I arrived at the random, dilapidated cabin in the woods at sunset, not entirely sure whether I was ready to baton down the mental hatches but hell-bent on seeing what this thing was all about. I joined the other punters - a mixture of experienced hippies, first-time university-students, and smug CEO’s – sitting in a circle awaiting further instructions. Next to me was an English Professor whose psychiatrist had actually prescribed the ceremony…

"I was pretty heavily addicted to pot," he said.

"What kind of psychiatrist prescribes this?" I asked.

"An expensive one," he said.

'It works?"

"Yes," he said.

There was a young person to the left of me tucked under some material that strongly resembled a technicolor dream-coat. I debated whether I should ask if his name was Joseph but quickly decided against it; gender bias and all.

"It's your first time," he said, knowingly reading my fractured facial expression.

"Yes. What should I expect?"

"The universe," he said. "I hope you get to see the universe…"

And then everyone stopped talking while one of the organisers - a guy with a purple tie-dye headband and skin like alligator-leather - began to explain what was to come.

He instructed us to swig a full cup of putrid brown liquid the two Shaman’s had concocted earlier using probably half a cup of mud, a quart of water and then the boiled-down remanence of the therapy vine. Unsurprisingly, it was difficult to keep down. We were told it would take 20 minutes to kick-in and if at any time during the ceremony we felt scared, sick, or both, to put up our hand and a Shaman would come and ‘guide’ us through the ‘blockage’ by swishing some sage and chanting some ancient remedies in a foreign tongue. To be honest, it didn’t sound all that comforting but I had come too far to back out now.

I don’t recall much else of what alligator-man said, because what happened after 20-ish minutes was insane. Ayahuasca is comparable to other drugs but only in a way that walking briskly with your arms outstretched is comparable to flying. It's very hard to put the experience into words…

The beginning—let's call this the good part—started off with the shadows on the walls losing shape and tiny golden trails zipping in front of my eyes. So far, apparently pretty normal for anyone who's taken acid, mushrooms, or trippy pills. On either side of me, I could already hear the sounds of my compadres dry heaving into their buckets. They made a noise like cows being impaled on traffic signs. But I wasn't nauseous… yet. At that time, I was dropping into a panoramic collage of fractals and bright colors and jungle foliage and extreme wellbeing. With no exaggeration, I can say that moment was probably one of the most blissed-out of my whole life. And I don't say that lightly. It was like the universe was wrapping me in giant mutating arms and filling me full of love. I saw God and I was God and everything was God.

For most of this part - the good part - I just lay on my back with my eyes closed in a little euphoric bubble. I wanted it to last forever. But pretty soon, the bad part kicked in…

Without giving away too much of my private life -let’s just say I revisited one traumatic incident after another in my childhood. It played out like some celebrity E-True Hollywood story—only instead of showing the best clips from my long and illustrious life, I was forced to witness the moments that had bruised me most. I was in the womb feeling my family's stress, in school worrying about my marks and being socially accepted, and in my teenage bedroom listening to Smashing Pumpkins while writing poetry about the meaning of life and why love sucks.

In the middle of this trip down misery lane, I broke out in a feverish sweat and felt the need to puke. But like I said, I was worried my container would be too small, so I got up and wobbled outside to the river. I’ve never been much good at making myself throw-up but somehow I'd got it into my head that the only way to end this hell-ride was to expel the Ayausca from my poor, drug-addled body. My stomach was a mess, but nothing came out.

Defeated, I went back to the cabin, lay down on my mat, and suffered. I mean really suffered. When I wasn't terrified, I was crying big tears of sadness about myself, my short-comings, human-beings as a species, the universe and aliens…. Was there life on other planets? And if so, did they have McDonald’s? What were black holes, really? So many questions - shit was deep. Halfway through this existential crisis I do remember making a speech and accepting an award in front of an auditorium full of people. I’m going to assume it was recognition for my future best-selling novel or screenplay – which was kind of cool. But for the most part, I was in seven circles of plant-based hell.

Some time later, I vaguely realised my friend and the English Professor we’d adopted had left the cabin, so I worked up the courage to get up, join them and congregate by the river.

Imagine a plane crash, where the front of the plane explodes in two and the rear somehow lands on flat ground and everyone from Row F backwards survives. Picture the survivor's faces. That's how we looked.

We hung out next to the river for a while staring, occasionally puking into buckets (or in my case a beaker), and trying to make sense of things until someone else came along and suggested we go for a swim. This was a great and horrible idea because I wanted to cleanse my body of all remnants of this venom that had taken over my subconscious but also horrible because I didn’t want to drown.

In the end, all I really wanted was to be wrapped up in cotton wool and left in a corner with fresh water. So I called it a night and retreated back to my tent and I have never slept better in my life.

The next day I woke up early feeling truly amazing. And for now, that's how things have stayed. Whatever happened that night shook my little blockages free—or, as a psychiatrist would put it, broke my coping habits.

In the Amazon, if you go on an Ayahuasca retreat, you normally spend three long nights in a row sifting through all your metaphoric bullshit. In Australia, it took just one deep, crazy, insane, evening to shake my scaffolding free. In the wake of the experience, and a good 6 months on, I’d consider doing it again. By no means am I saying it’s 100 percent user-friendly, but the unknown is what makes it so transformative.

Witnessing your own limiting experiences sweep past like a dream helps to place them into perspective. Painstakingly re-living the good and the bad from a drug-induced hindsight is comforting and scary but also empowers you to grow. In a way, Ayahuasca takes you back to your original essence; it opens your mind and body to the possibility of a world without judgement and fear.

…And getting props for your future literary masterpiece is pretty cool too.