Ayahuasca for Addiction with Tatiana Ayá Tupinambá

Transcript from the corrected English master supplied for Episode 5. Paragraphs have been grouped for reading; speaker wording is retained. Spoken views are the speakers' own and are not medical recommendations.

[00:00] Welcome to the Nekawa Podcast. This is another one of our teacher series. We have one of our in-residence teachers, Tatiana Ayá Tupinambá, who has come to join us today. And today we're going to be talking about ayahuasca, but we're going to be talking about ayahuasca for addiction. So thank you for joining Tatiana. Thank you for having me. Yes, always. We always love hearing from you. Your insights are oftentimes profound, sometimes funny, and it's just great to chat.

[00:45] All right, so ayahuasca for addiction. This is a subject right now in the world today. People are talking a lot about ibogaine. Ibogaine, ibogaine, ibogaine. Everyone's talking about Ibogaine. Ten years ago, everyone was talking about ayahuasca. Now it's turned to ibogaine. And recently there was an article that was written that I think it was in the Guardian, but they were talking about how Iboga and ibogaine is the next ayahuasca. And so they're talking about this flood of interest and this surge of popularity and how they're worried about how Ibogaine will be like ayahuasca. And we can talk a little bit about that, but I really want to talk today about how ayahuasca can be used to

[01:29] treat addiction because there's so much focus on Ibogaine right now, but ayahuasca is an exceptional tool. It's an exceptional medicine for helping people get out of addiction and it's been overlooked. There's really only one center that I know of in the world that specializes in treating people for addiction with ayahuasca, Takiwasi in Tarapoto, Peru, with Dr. Jacques Mabit. But otherwise it's not really discussed.

[01:57] Ayahuasca is seen just as a spiritual experience that people go to. And yet if we put two and two together, we would understand that addiction is a spiritual malady. And if ayahuasca is a spiritual medicine, well, they can help each other, but that still hasn't been talked about much. So I'd like us to start with you telling us about your experience with ayahuasca and addiction and a little story, if you would. Yes, thank you, Charlie. I wanted to say, all paths that lead to heaven or all paths that will lead you into heaven or lead you into the truth. Even when the paths that are distorted full of pain and suffering, if you are waiting for transformation,

[02:47] that path will lead you to truth or to heaven, the version of heaven that we imagine being healthy and walking steady upon this earth. Ayahuasca, as all the medicines upon this earth human beings have contact with, has the ability to transform human life. Society has addiction into hype, all the things that are new. And they get tired really quickly, we can see the lifespan, or like our attention span, is very short and shorter as the decades go, as years go by. Our scope of attention gets really short and that is similar to what happened in the big scope of society, that we get tired of something really quickly and we wanted to move to the next thing.

[03:37] We think that we study and we understand something and then we are barely touching the surface of something and we are next thing already there knocking at the door. So all the medicines lead to human transformation. All the medicines that are well practiced, that we can practice in our life, can transcend our life and it can bring a great sense of a reconnection.

[04:02] We are going through a great crisis of disconnection from self, great crisis upon the whole planet, disconnection from essence, the essence that is inside of us. Now we are living through this crisis of addiction all over the world. No matter where you look, you're going to see an encounter crisis of addiction. And addiction in all levels now, because we all used before to addictions just for drugs. But now we are seeing addiction in all levels, addiction of emotion, addiction of medication, addiction of social media, and so many addictions. The addictions, they're going to increase as we go living the life of a human being because society is also increasing the amount of distortion that is living through. So in my

[04:51] history, like with ayahuasca, I was in deep addiction when ayahuasca came to my life. I was living a very depressed life. I was studying in New York at the time, very depressed because why I was depressed. I was young, I was full of health, but I was depressed because I was disconnected from my own essence, the truth that lives inside of me. I was disconnected from great spirit, from the sense of purpose in my life, because purpose of a human life is not just work, study work, get married, get children and die. That is not a purpose for a human being. We will believe that that was the greater purpose. But that is not a

[05:30] greater purpose. The greater purpose of a human being that we can see is for us to reconnect to the great spirit or to the great mystery that lives inside of us. And from there we can have healthy professions, we can have healthy families, we can have a healthy life and healthy bodies from that place. And then we started somehow with the distortion that we see in place, all like running opposite, like running backward.

[06:02] So, ayahuasca came into my life when I was in that deeper state of disconnection. And the first thing that it showed me was exactly that. What addiction were you dealing with when you were at that state of disconnection? Yes, I did many drugs. My young teenager and young adult phase of my life, a lot of MDMA, a lot of ecstasy, another form of MDMA. I did a lot of cocaine. I didn't like it so much when I was in the phase of cocaine. It made me feel very monstrous like it. Like the disconnection was the greatest when I was going through the phase of cocaine. And the drug of choice was alcohol.

[06:42] I will drink alcohol at least five days a week and I will go to school. I will drink. I will sometimes, the sadness, the heaviness inside of myself will not allow me to have a pleasant day, going to school, even being young and being beautiful, living a young life, health, and no really reason to be in that state. So, I will use alcohol to actually bring me a little bit up and not feel the sadness, not feel the pain, not feel the disconnection. And I will go do things. I will go to the park. I will go drink. I will go to the meeting with the friends in restaurant. Please, say we're going to go to the restaurant. Any

[07:20] excuse for drinking alcohol. In the end of the addiction, there are many excuse for drinking alcohol socially and not seeing that I was already an alcoholic person. I will say for my friends that will call my attention. Like you were drinking too much. I will say, this is just social. This is normal. This is what people do finishing the day and go drink it and not finish drinking until I'm actually pass out. Pass out. I'm really, really drunk. I don't know what I'm doing of my life anymore. And it becomes normal. It's like a normalized thing. And I see that normalization in society that we get into addiction. Then it's normal. It's like it was what people do.

[07:57] Medication now is the case. We see the scenario in today's days, the amount of people that is under medication, that they cannot come out. And they will be much healthier, much happier, even if they actually treat their body in an organic and natural way and not giving medication in the form of it is going to pick me up somehow. So then alcohol was doing that for me. When I was drunk, I was not depressed. When I was drunk, life didn't suck.

[08:25] When I was drunk, I could actually have a glimpse that I was having fun. But all like in a way, not a true sense of a connection, not a true sense of a purpose, what am my life meant to be as a human being upon this earth. So medicine was a blast upon the sky when it came into my life. I do truly feel that if a medicine didn't come in at that point, I will not be alive today because I was on my purpose then was actually to finish life as much as possible. And so you were drinking a lot. It was not just social, right? You were drinking alone by yourself oftentimes. Yes. And

[09:06] when you drank medicine that first time, was that it? Did it just change instantaneously? And you were like, I'm done drinking. I was ready. I see in my experience of life with human beings, they come suffering through medicine, through psychedelics in general. They suffer enough. And when we have suffered enough of the pain, the struggle that we are going through life, it can be a little blow, very soft blow. It can be like a touch of a finger, like a pushing, of life of your universe and boom, the transformation happens. A lot of times opportunity comes to our life, medicine, opportunity to get well, not even medicine, but ways that you learn to make your life

[09:50] better, but you don't do it because you didn't even not suffer enough. If you have suffered enough, it will take anything that comes to your life that gives you opportunity to change it and will change it right then. But your experience with medicine was not just a soft blowing. No, of course not. I have suffered enough. And when medicine came to my life, I drink that night that I drink the first time that I drink medicine, I knew that I was not living in my purpose. The medicine actually helped me to understand that I was living a very miserable version of life that I meant to live. The medicine showed me that I was truly

[10:30] disconnected, that I didn't know who I was. I didn't know who I was, not what I wanted truly in my life. If I didn't know who I was, I didn't know what I wanted of my life. So it showed me this deeper level of disconnection, the disconnection of existing, existing as human being. What is that I'm doing here? And all the answers that come later with that, as the understanding start opening in this way. So when I drink a lot of medicine at that first night, because I was very toxic, toxic? Yes, I was very toxic in my body. I was being in the addiction for many years already, over 10 years of my life. I was like, drugs

[11:14] after drugs after drugs, until I settled into alcohol, feel comfortable with that drug. And that was my drug of choice. And then became in the later phase the addiction, I was actually locked in myself, inside of my house and drinking by myself until I passed out on the floor. And I was there for months at a time. And not seeing like in no way out of that. My only way out that I saw, it was like, I'm going to eventually I'm going to die.

[11:38] And I was happy with that. I don't want to live this miserable life anyway. So I was going again and again and deeper, you know, I start drinking. I'm out of alcohol. When I start drinking, by the end, I was drinking like a bottles and bottles and bottles by myself in one night, in one given night. And it was really sad. Some people there was worried about me, started telling me that you have a problem. You have to look for help. But I didn't want to hear that because they didn't know what I was feeling inside. So you also with that, your problem was not drinking alcohol, your problem was much deeper than they identified. Exactly. And I saw, like,

[12:14] how come human beings can be happy? Maybe they don't feel the pain. Maybe they don't have suffering in their life. I do feel the pain and the suffering inside of me. So I'm going to numb this as much as I can until I was ready to shift to that. Because actually the awareness came to be ready to die. I didn't want the miserable life anymore. I wanted to more and more deep in the addiction because I wanted my life to be finished.

[12:39] And then when I was in that state, it was a state of, this is the state of readiness that I say. Like there is a point in our suffering that we hit the bottom, and anything that touches life towards like transformation, you will accept it and take with all your might because you are ready to transform. If I was ready at that point to die, I was definitely ready for a transformation that medicine came into my life and gave me that opportunity. So when I drank ayahuasca and ayahuasca showed me all that, for me it was very easy.

[13:11] I was choosing death and now I'm choosing life. I'm choosing myself. I'm choosing to know what I didn't know before. I'm choosing to reconnect to my essence and know my purpose to walk upon this earth. And then the rest has been history. And that was what, 15 years ago? About? About. Yeah, 15 years ago. Okay. And I wanted to talk about this as well because my own experience has been unique with ayahuasca, in that I encountered ayahuasca after my immediate serious addiction was addressed.

[13:45] I had a heroin addiction, cocaine and heroin, and I used ibogaine and that resolved those addictions. But then after that I was still not super healthy. I still had a lot of problems that were going on, a lot of addictive tendencies and a lot of the more socially acceptable addictions. I didn't have substance addictions anymore but I had the behavioral addictions going on with the phone and with certain behaviors and with eating and what I watched and how I entertained myself. And I had an addictive mindset. And then ayahuasca came into my life and that was about the time I met you.

[14:25] It was about 11 years ago and I started to understand that there was something deeper. That as I drank medicine I started to go deeper in and as I went to the jungle especially, I started to break away from the life and from the experience that I knew and thought was the right way and started to reconstruct my beliefs and how I wanted to be. And now I can say that after many years I've peeled away many of these addictions and behaviors, and I feel much more free in my life and who I am and how I operate. And so I think there's certain layers, right? There's layers to addiction. It's not always just, "Oh, I'm in the

[15:06] most intense thing and I need to get out of that." That's actually very important. But then there's many layers after that which in today's world we would call integration. But I actually look at that as we have to continue the process of healing. We have to continue the process of taking medicine to address the deeper and more subtle addictions that are going on. The integration is the re-education of self. You have to re-educate your mind the way that you think, the patterns, you have to reframe that, integrate that inside of yourself. But it's like educating yourself how to live a cleaner, healthier, healthier life.

[15:44] Yeah. So you were very helpful with that when you said, "What are you eating? What are you doing?" There was a lot of those moments at the beginning. Sometimes we will find people there supporting us in our process and it's going to push us harder than we could push ourselves. Yes. Yes. Laugh. Laugh. Good. So, all right. Now you've been serving Ayahuasca for quite a while. You've worked with many, many people. And many of those people come to us because they have addictions. Sometimes very serious addictions to opioids or stimulants or psychiatric medications. Sometimes more mild and accepted addictive patterns.

[16:34] And what have you seen for other people as they've come to drink medicine? What has been the general experience that you've seen for those that have been working through their addictions with ayahuasca? I see great results for people. Like I mentioned in the beginning, if we can actually see for ourselves the level of disconnection that we actually living through being human beings. And if it's something, a mirror can come to you and show you all the aspect of that, like the mirror being medicine, psychedelic, if you practice in seriousness, in seriousness to transform your life.

[17:11] The medicine is going to show you all the levels of disconnection, all the level of lack of purpose, and once you have that information, it's very easy for you to take the next step. So what I see the transformation of people coming through Ayahuasca is exactly that. We are suffering as human beings. We are struggling upon this earth because we don't know anything about this very self that we are. And because we don't know about this self that we are, we suffer so much of all the distortion and condition the society puts upon human beings. So the medicine clears out that distortion of the mind. The medicine detoxes deeply. One session you have with medicine,

[17:53] the level of detoxification that happens in your body, my God, and with that detoxification that happens, there is more space inside of you. There is more space for you to listen to the quietude. There is more space for you to listen to your intuition. Even if for the two nights, even for the retreat for ten days, even if for 30 days, you're going to receive some information that is crucial for your transformation as human being that the medicine is going to bless you with. So I think great benefit of people wanting to come out of addiction and drinking medicine to reconnect with themselves and make that choice for themselves. Yeah. I like the point you brought up around detoxification because

[18:35] ultimately when we go through life and we develop these addictions, which are kind of like little demons or ticks or parasites that attach to us over time, we drink the medicine and we purge. Sometimes we purge physically, sometimes we purge spiritually, but we literally purge ourselves of these attachments and free ourselves and free our mind. And what I like about ayahuasca that's different than other psychedelics primarily is that when you partake of it, you're oftentimes doing so in a community. You're doing so with guides. And I know in the world today, psychedelics are getting commonplace and you have therapists that are giving people psychedelics all over.

[19:18] You can go to the ketamine clinic. You can go to psilocybin in Oregon and Colorado, but when you sit with an ayahuasca curandera or curandero, it's a totally different experience because these people are not just trained to give you the medicine. They are trained to be in the medicine with you. And that's, I think, the biggest difference is that you have people who have trained to be in that space with you and to help you rid yourself of the parasites. And that is something that's very unique. That's something that we are not seeing in today's medical model with most addiction treatments. You do not have even with ibogaine, you do not have people giving you

[20:02] Ibogaine who are also, one, experienced with ibogaine, but two, in the presence of the medicine at the same time to help you move through that. But with Ayahuasca, you can do that. It's very rare. I don't know of anyone who drinks ayahuasca kind of like on their own. Maybe some people do and they listen to music or something on the speaker, but it's pretty rare. You usually have guides.

[20:23] Sometimes the guides are singing whatever songs and are not very well trained. But when you sit with professional facilitators, professional curanderos, professional healers, you are getting that experience where people are actually there, present, as you're going through it, seeing what's happening to you and helping you rid yourself of these things, which I think makes ayahuasca a fantastic tool for addiction. I think it makes a very unique tool in the landscape of treatment.

[20:55] And that's why I'm a huge advocate. I think it's wonderful. And also you can do it many times. One of my favorite practices with all psychedelics, it is with ayahuasca. Why? Ayahuasca not only assists us and helps us to remember what was forgotten, the level of disconnection that is going on inside and repurposing our lives as well, but also we regain, definitely regain the sense of community. Ayahuasca in a jungle, for generations upon generations, it be served and practiced inside the whole village that takes place. From the youngest, the baby in the lap of the mother, to the older person that cannot even stand, because of how old they are. It's a collective and communal effort that everybody

[21:47] do because every single human being suffers from disconnecting themselves, losing their mind, distressing their beliefs of what is truly important for life-giving or healthy life upon this earth. So I feel almost like it's a complete package, you know, because we come for medicine, we sit there, we clean our body, we clean our mind and also we recognize that we've been living in separation long enough. Society have trained human beings to live in separation, so individual and everything is mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, and we create great separation among us. And that great separation is the disease itself because we are humans, never meant to be individual and living on their own, isolated and annihilated on the corner. We are meant to be part of collective

[22:41] groups. We are collective as human and we are meant to be in that connection within one another. So then medicine help us to see that reconnecting all that is cut from us back to what is natural, back to what is organic, and back to what is feels good to our health. So absolutely one of the greatest practice and also one of the greatest thing for me to be in ceremony, when we are in ceremony, how the sense of bond that we feel is for one another, the sense of family that we have with one another, and how much that makes us feel fulfilled when we are inside of that space.

[23:19] Everybody knows they have a place, they belong, they gain the sense of purpose for themselves, for their life, and doing that thing, collectiveness. We feel other people that are doing the same thing, healing themselves, reconnecting. It is really beautiful and I am wishing nothing more upon this earth than like replicating this practice and also supporting this practice more for us human beings because we miss that to sit together, to share our struggles together, to drink medicine, to clear our mind and have a profound experience as human beings.

[23:58] Awesome. Yes, I agree. The community piece is so vital and we have some students here who were talking the other day and they've been to many, many rehabs and they said the place where they went, here and another place where they drank Ayahuasca with each other, was the first time in their life that they stayed connected to the people. There's something about sitting in ceremony with one another that allows us to know I'm not alone, I'm doing this together and through that we can heal.

[24:31] So thank you for sharing today, Tatiana. Thank you for being with us today. If you are feeling disconnected, if you know someone who is going through an addiction and has forgotten who they are and is feeling lost, know that there are options, that there are avenues, and that we are here for you. So please reach out, comment, share and if you want to talk more, continue to follow us.

[25:03] If you want to be a part of the conversation, reach out, we'll talk, we can get on the phone anytime and we hope that you've learned something today and that you get an opportunity to feel a little bit better and a little bit more hopeful and a little bit more joy knowing that the world is changing. Yes, there are a lot of problems and yes, there are forces drawing people into addiction every day, new forces in new ways but if we can recognize that there are avenues out, then that's all we have to do. Eventually we will find our way. So thank you for joining us today on the Nekawa Podcast. I am Charles Johnston. We

[25:44] have Tatiana Ayá Tupinambá with us and we will look forward to another one. Ayahuasca is going to be a common topic so see you next time. Thank you for having me.