At the time, I was going through a rough patch. Things were tense within my family, so much so that it created a major rift between relatives.
Professionally, I was coaching hockey but had grown to hate it. My boss constantly took advantage of my contract, and I felt stuck. I wanted to quit and go back to school, but I had already given all my savings to help my parents keep their house. They ended up losing it anyway.
All of this started to take a toll on my relationship with my girlfriend, who’s now my wife.
Around then, a coworker mentioned that a South American shaman he knew would be in town, offering ceremonies meant to help people heal. I figured I had nothing to lose and decided to give it a shot. Up until that point, I had only tried cannabis once and didn’t drink, so this was completely outside my comfort zone.
As the link explains, before taking the medicine, the shaman gives you bark that helps the yopo take hold.
While I waited the 20 or so minutes before the ceremony began, the shaman’s assistant sat with me to help clarify my intention. When I felt ready, the shaman came out, purified the space, and asked what I hoped to gain from the experience. I told him I felt like I was trapped in a dark corridor and needed to find a way out.
He crushed the yopo seeds into a fine powder and handed them to me, instructing me to hold my intention in mind as I took in the medicine.
As soon as I inhaled, the drums started (loud, rhythmic, primal) and the shaman and his assistant began to sing. It felt like that scene in Batman Begins, when Bruce Wayne inhales the fear-inducing smoke: sounds and visuals became overwhelmingly vivid.
Then I started vomiting. But it didn’t feel like normal nausea. It was as if I was expelling sadness, anger, and pain that had been lodged inside me for years. With each wave, I felt lighter. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally.
Once the purging stopped, that’s when I left. Not the room... I left. I felt like I had died and my soul had slipped free from my body.
I was floating in space... no body, no time, just awareness. Just a spirit of someone who used to be. At first, I reminisced about my life and even laughed at the idea of dying from a drug overdose. I thought, Man, Tas is going to be so pissed.
But as time stretched on, if you could even call it time, I lost track. Had I been dead for a month? A year? A thousand years? I couldn’t remember. Slowly, I started forgetting who I even was. My name, my past, everything blurred, except for one thing: the name Tas. I didn’t know who that was anymore, but I knew I had to find out. I needed to get back to her. I didn’t know why, I just knew I had to.
Then, suddenly, I was back.
I didn’t realize it at first, but I had returned to my body. I was lying in the same room, surrounded by strangers who all felt familiar. There was the shaman, his assistant, my coworker all watching me quietly, smiling.
I looked at the shaman and asked, “Are you God?”
He just laughed and shook his head. I tossed a pillow at him for fun. It made everyone laugh. It felt right.
Everything around me seemed magical, like I was rediscovering the world for the first time. Candles amazed me, they could light a room and provide heat? Pillows were impossibly soft. I couldn’t believe these magical things existed and provided such comfort.
I became obsessed with the candles, staring at the flames. That’s when the shaman asked if I wanted to see a bigger fire. He led me outside to a fire pit, where the flame roared. The heat and light pulled at me. I moved toward it, almost stepping in, until he gently held me back.
And that’s when I woke up.
It felt like surfacing from a dream, with one foot still in the other world and the other just beginning to touch down in this one. The two realities slowly untangled, and I finally remembered how I had gotten there.
