Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Unscripted conversations from the Nekawa team in Paraty, Brazil, about ibogaine, plant medicine, and the daily practices that shape a life to be free of addiction and nonsense. Charles Johnston sits down with the physicians, facilitators, and students who have embarked on the ibogaine and psychedelic path and takes a critical look at what is real and what is fluff in the emerging psychedelic and addiction healthcare landscape. We discuss far more than just the psychedelic experience, as Nekawa is a wellness program and evolving recovery into self-discovery. Educational only. Free online circles are open to anyone at nekawa.com.
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.
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
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.
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,
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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,
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.