Ayahuasca

[Music] The following episode documents the use of psychedelic drugs, which are illegal in the United States and other countries. While valuable scientific data may be obtained in controlled studies, we do not advocate the use of these substances.

[Music] This is Iquitos, Peru, the world's largest city inaccessible by road. The only way in and out is by air or by river, the Amazon River. I'm about to head up the Amazon to a remote jungle retreat called Refugio Altiplano—the refuge on the higher plane. There, I will meet with local shamans to drink an ancient psychedelic drug, ayahuasca. Ayahuasca contains dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a molecule shaped very similar to serotonin, a neurotransmitter in our brains. Ingesting ayahuasca and flooding the brain with DMT leads to what many describe as spiritual experiences: strong, vivid visions, a sense of oneness with the universe, even a sense of oneself dying. But mystical, magical language like that doesn't really seem relevant to scientific inquiry; it could often scare away those who are scientifically minded. However, understanding the human mind isn't complete unless it considers everything the brain is capable of. What does it mean to feel at one with the universe? Why should our brains even be capable of such a feeling? This isn't about having fun or taking a risk or doing something extreme; I want to learn what my mind is capable of. I'm about to embark on a journey.

[Music] Psychedelics are chemicals that are structurally similar to neurotransmitters already used by our brains. When we ingest them, they bind the receptors and alter cognition and perception in ways we're still trying to understand. When many people think of psychedelics, they think about people challenging societal norms and recreational thrill-seekers, but that only attends to a particularly narrow slice of human history and culture. Fossil records, cave drawings, and archaeological digs have all provided evidence that humans have been using psychedelic compounds for thousands of years. And by "used," I don't just mean in the stereotypical tripped-out sense. For instance, among the indigenous peoples of the Amazon rainforest, psychedelics were, and in many places still are, a normal, common, and totally mainstream experience. As a member of these groups, believing psychedelics can heal, give visions of the future, and connect you with deities is not some weird or new-age idea; it's the way things are. But when psychedelics became associated with certain counterculture movements, the United States banned research on them in 1970. Most other countries followed suit shortly afterward. From then on, testing on humans was essentially gone. But recently, restrictions have begun to loosen up, and a few researchers have started to investigate these substances in what some have described as a psychedelic Renaissance. Research universities are conducting comprehensive studies on the beneficial effects of psychedelics on addiction, depression, and cancer-related trauma. By approaching psychedelics scientifically, what we find could fundamentally transform our understanding of the human mind.

[Music] When I go to Peru, I will be accompanied by Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, one of the first British researchers in over 40 years to investigate the effects of psychedelics on the human mind. He and his colleagues have found that psychedelics don't increase brain activity as previously thought; instead, they decrease activity in certain areas, and the greater the decrease, the greater the reported feelings of what is called "ego dissolution" or "ego death." Your ego is your self-identity; it's the part that separates you from everything else, the part that creates narratives about the outside world and your story in it. When the ego dissolves, your sensations and feelings don't cease; like when you're unconscious; instead, your attachment to your identity does, and all that's left is naked perception. Ego dissolution is a concept that I find difficult to wrap my head around, but people who take psychedelics say that it can be an extremely frightening experience, but also a profoundly transformative one—one that makes them feel more connected to others and to nature.

Now, I knew that I might feel ego dissolution on ayahuasca, so to make sure I was ready, I decided to speak to some experts before setting off to Peru. Dr. Carhart-Harris traveled from Imperial College London to meet with me.

"This will be one of the first times that anyone has scanned a healthy person's brain with fMRI before and after ayahuasca."

"Yeah, it's quite pioneering work really. The thing that's on my mind right now is intention."

"Yeah. I've heard you should know why you're drinking ayahuasca."

"Yeah, I would suggest that you think about an emotional intention to make it emotional."

"That's a lot more frightening to me."

"Yeah, partly, I think I'm quite happy and I don't want to ruin that."

"Right. I don't want to drink ayahuasca and then think, oh my gosh, I'm not close enough to my mom or I don't show my wife I appreciate her enough and now I just feel terrible."

"There's something to be said for sitting with those thoughts—be mindful, right? In so doing, they become less of a threat. You look them in the eye, and all of a sudden, they reveal things to you, and their scariness seems to dissipate."

"I hope I can embrace that while I'm surrounded by people who are all filming me, you know?"

"Yeah, the most important thing is that intention to go in. You dive in and don't resist."

"You don't resist?"

"Yeah, I think that'll really be important while I'm on the trip."

Robert has arranged for me to have a number of scientific tests in order to measure brain activity, behavioral differences, and physiological changes to my brain. Today we are scanning micro-strain with functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. This allows us to see the whole brain and how different parts connect and talk to one another. This way, we can compare how Michael's brain may change before his experience with ayahuasca to after the ayahuasca experience.

"I expect to see that one network of the brain that relates to introspection will become more strongly connected after the ayahuasca."

[Music] After meeting Robin, I still felt some trepidation about my trip, but with my preayahuasca fMRI completed, it was time to go to Peru. The trip to the Refugio Altiplano retreat involved a flight to Lima, Peru, a second flight to Iquitos, Peru, followed by a 90-minute boat ride up the Amazon River. It was a long journey, and every minute I got closer meant it was that much harder to turn back. The Refugio Altiplano retreat is in a remote area of the Amazon rainforest in the northern part of Peru. It would be an authentic setting for my ayahuasca experience.

"So, Kelly, what does the word ayahuasca mean?"

"Ayahuasca means the vine of the soul. Ayahuasca has been used for possibly over 4,000 years in shamanic rituals and is the primary plant medicine for healing in the villages."

With the ayahuasca ceremony just hours away, I met with José, the shaman who would be my guide during this experience.

"Hola José. EMU estan? Gusto. A pleasure, Lieutenant Sokka."

"It's my pleasure. Welcome to the poetic black bottom where many people come to look for change in their lives."

"José, how do you feel about someone like me coming in who is not part of your culture taking part in it in a way that might not come from the same history?"

"But, I mean, me when I do it, for me there's no difference—and for the medicine, it makes no difference. This medicine, all it wants is to make your life better and heal you. On the very first night with our guests, we give them a very small medicinal dose to see how each person is gonna react differently to the medicine, and then tomorrow night we’ll dial it up a little bit."

It was great to speak with José about what the ceremony will entail. I am nervous about the emotional part of it, and I'm nervous about the visions and feeling like I've been disconnected from the real world. Scientists know very little about how ayahuasca works since its illegal status in many countries makes it difficult to study. We do know that its key ingredient is dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, which is a hallucinogen thought to occur naturally in the human brain in small amounts. DMT can create psychoactive effects by acting on certain receptors in the brain. But normally, DMT is broken down rapidly by enzymes in the brain. However, ayahuasca is actually a brew made from two plants: one contains DMT, and the second contains a chemical inhibitor that blocks our body's ability to break down DMT, allowing the effects to last for hours. Dr. Carhart-Harris gave me a series of tests to compare how I changed during this experience.

"Given that we're in Peru, we're in the jungle, and you're drinking ayahuasca, it has authenticity that perhaps sometimes you lose when you give psychedelics in the laboratory environment."

"Yeah, because we're going to be doing this after you drink ayahuasca. We need a control condition. So what I'm going to do now is I'll ask you a short list of questions about your journey here, and I want you to rate how you feel about these questions on a scale here. We have zero to nine, nine will be strongly agree, and zero will be strongly disagree."

"So, I learned more from my journey here to this retreat center about how past events have influenced my present behavior."

"I'd rate that a two."

"Five, six with different psychedelic drugs to ayahuasca like LSD and psilocybin also DMT. We've found some quite consistent changes in brain activity. We've seen that the brain activity is richer and more varied. Of course, we can't wheel an MRI scanner up into the jungle, so the EEG setup that we have is pretty much the best possibility we have to do this."

According to José, this flower bath would protect me from bad spirits during the ceremony. I didn't believe in such things, but I was glad to do it because it was a symbol of José's good intentions.

[Music] "Hola, buenas noches." The initial smaller dose ceremony was expected to last about two hours, with the effects beginning after about 30 minutes. "We'll begin with their ceremony tonight, asking God to guide us to give us knowledge and intelligence. We're gonna bless the medicine first."

[Music] The ayahuasca tasted earthy, maybe also a bit like fennel or something—it's hard to say. I never tasted anything like it. After swallowing it all, my heart started racing; it was the most nervous I would be all night. DMT from the ayahuasca was flowing into my blood and brain; there was no going back. Throughout the ceremony, shaman José sang Icaros, or chants, which were meant to guide me through my spiritual experience.

[Music] [Music] The initial dose was meant to gently introduce me to ayahuasca. The effects began slowly and were mild. I began to feel as though the room were swinging like a cradle. I was aware that the motion wasn't really happening, but it made me feel sick and nervously off-balance. Nonetheless, my imagination was more vivid; images in my mind were more detailed but almost always under my control. The ceremony ends when the shaman lights a candle; I was comforted by this because it was a sign that the effects would only be weakening from here.

"Thank you, José." Neither were two moments where I was actually surprised by something that I saw. One was like a very vivid bamboo that had been cut so that it was at a slant, and I remember going, wow, where did that come from? But as soon as I did, it was gone. One of the effects of ayahuasca is to kind of create a sort of chaos in the cortex that can lead to dreamlike visions. The second time, I was like, oh yeah, nature, and like, do I feel more at one with everything? I imagined trees, but only in this ring, and then all of a sudden, they came really close, and they were all right here in my head. But I was like, I did not think that; I didn't intend for that to happen.

"I think a good comparison for what I felt last night is if you, in a sober state of mind, just imagine something—think of a pink elephant. Okay, now an image probably popped into your mind, but not like a super detailed one. If I asked you a specific question, like how many wrinkles are on its trunk, you'd have to probably imagine it again and then fill in that detail. But under the effects of ayahuasca, those details were already in these imagined images. They seemed only as real as an imagined image, as a daydream, but they came with more detail, and a few times, I'd say maybe three or four times, things appeared that I did not feel like I had put there. But as soon as I was aware of that, they disappeared."

"I'd like to look at the stars."

"Yeah, let's do that." The morning after my initial dose of ayahuasca, my head was clearer, and I wanted to discuss my experience with shaman José.

"You've had a perfect introduction ceremony emotionally and sort of personally. The only sort of revelations I had was that I was probably more worried than I needed to be beforehand, and then I'd let that affect my behavior. Now I'm not as dominated by what might happen or what has happened; I'm just kind of in this moment right now. Like, I feel much more open to mystical thinking."

"Yes. Demons must completely—he recommends that you complete with more medicine tonight so that these will help you complete the insight into yourself."

"Last night I had a third of a cup."

"Esta noche, a third isn't worth of three quarters; will be those for tonight—three quarters."

"Okay. It's weird; I had an intention going in. I experienced this as a very interesting scientific endeavor, but I'm fascinated by how I want it to have meaning. I feel like I didn't hit that oneness yet. Tonight might be different."

"Mike was getting the high dose tonight, and the experience is very likely to differ quite substantially from the dose that he had last night. I'm interested in personal development; I know that that's a big part of ayahuasca for a lot of people. I'm open to it for sure, but I do feel still some apprehension for a larger dose tonight."

"Hey, Michael, I'm here to pick you up for ceremony—buenas noches." The higher dose ceremony was expected to last for hours, with stronger and more vivid hallucinations.

[Music] José smoked a cigar made of a tobacco plant that’s indigenous to the Amazon called lapacho. The smoke is believed to clean the energy fields of the body and remove negativity from the ceremonial lodge. The second ceremony included another shaman, Daniel, who drank and sprayed floral water.

[Music] [Music] I started to see very geometric bright squares stacked like Aztec pyramids moving, and I was traveling down through these repeating kind of fractal images of everything—too many things to really describe: music notes and colors and shapes and squares. Then I started to feel like, oh my gosh, this is going faster and faster; this is too fast, and it hasn't even been that long. Then I felt my body being covered with these blocks, and I saw my body from above and felt like I was disappearing, and that's when my heart started racing, and I said mmm, this was very bad; this is not good.

A lot of emotions I always have were amplified so loudly I couldn't ignore them, and I had to come up with ways to console myself so that I wouldn't be consumed by them and have a complete breakdown and panic attack. I resisted, and I successfully brought myself back to calmness just by saying I'm fine, I'm not going to die, and everyone here can help. The visions were really, really vivid; they didn't feel like they were under my control; it really felt like they were just there. A note from the song would occur and it would cause this image, and that was pretty frightening because I wasn't—I was like on a ride that I didn't know.

[Music] "Robin, yeah, I can do the EEG now."

"Yes, sure." I spent a lot of the ceremony being anxious about having to do these tests with Robin. I didn’t know how to deal with the lights coming back on and Robin talking to me and asking me questions. But the more I concentrated on why I feel anxious, the more I realized it was just about me; it was about how I felt. But then I said, I'm here to do a show; we're filming this. Robin wants this data; everyone will be happier if I do it, so I'll just tell Robin I'll try my best, and that gave me the courage to do it.

"So, being less selfish basically saved me from a panic attack." Each time I read an item, if you could give me a number according to how you see yourself at this moment...

"Okay, I see myself right now as extroverted, enthusiastic."

"Okay, this is a big change for Michael. Usually, he's very extroverted, and on his preayahuasca answer, he gave a higher number: extroverted, enthusiastic—a five. But now I'm seeing signs of withdrawal and introversion from him."

"I see myself right now as critical, quarrelsome."

"To see myself right now as critical, quarrelsome—six." The experience has led to a change in how he sees himself; it's in a way reflective, perhaps, of a higher waking state. It's interesting to already see those changes, and it's only halfway through the ceremony.

Shaman Daniel sang in Shipibo, an indigenous language spoken by only five thousand people in the world. I'd always been frustrated by the difficulty people have explaining what it feels like to have a psychedelic experience, and now I know why. It's a different state of mind, and trying to describe it is like trying to describe anger to someone who has never felt it or what colors are like to a blind person.

[Music] "Oh man, I'd say about five minutes into that first song, I really panicked. My heart rate picked up, and I actually touched my chest to make sure it wasn't beating as fast as I thought it was. But that moment, I may have left my body or something near it before I stopped. I was very scared that I was disappearing."

Michael was describing what to me sounds like quintessential ego dissolution—the start of it; that feeling that he's disappearing, that his control over his mind and his body is ceding entirely, and he felt some resistance to that. With a high enough dose, you're just forced into that space. My feeling is that the intensity of his experience was just short of that kind of profound transformative type experience. I think he got a bit of that, but I don't think he was all the way.

"I was there in that ego-dissolving state for a moment, and it terrified me. I wish I'd been able to surrender more fully, but I definitely got a good taste of it."

"So, the dosage last night was much higher, yes?"

"Visions? The visuals were really vivid, and the feeling of strangeness was really strong. I'd be curious to know what José was doing last night. What was he reacting to that he saw in me? What plants did he call forth and why would they need...?"

"Glad, okay, Styles, Bobby, you were going through an intense ceremony. It was strong for you."

"He said he was very happy because he knew this was gonna have a positive ending for you. I'm really interested in what the lessons were. I felt so small and so humble, but honestly, I liked it. I wasn't afraid of it; I was glad to be reminded that I'm weak. I feel like the experience amplified everything I'm concerned about way above what would be a normal amount to care about, but that made my fear and anxiety big enough that I could actually relax them. The question is, will I remember to apply that or will this kind of stay in the jungle?"

Before leaving Peru, I completed one last round of tests with Robin.

"Now, place this ahead in order to gather data after my higher dose of ayahuasca."

"Thank you so much."

"Thank you. I can't wait to see you back in LA and see what other thoughts you've had with these tests being here in the jungle. It is more organic. The cost of that... I feel that I've collected data that's gonna tell us something important and meaningful about how psychedelics and ayahuasca specifically work on the mind and the brain."

After returning home to Los Angeles, I had my second MRI so that Robin could see if there were any changes. Although my ego dissolved only for a brief few moments, I was teetering on that edge throughout the entire ceremony, and I was anxious to see what it looked like in my brain.

"Robin, welcome to my home."

"Thank you for coming back. I can't wait to see what results you got."

"Yeah. How did ayahuasca affect my brain?"

"Okay, so we found something quite interesting. We found that your brain activity became more complex, more diverse, more rich, more varied under the ayahuasca than baseline."

"What does it mean to have more complex brain activity in terms of how I experience things?"

"I think we can understand it in terms of the richness of your imagination, of your ideas. Trains of thought can be more varied, more changeable, more dynamic."

"I definitely experienced that."

"Alright, you looked not just at my brain through the surface, but you went deep inside. What did you notice there?"

"He looks at a particular brain network called a default mode network that seems to relate to our sense of self or ego. We've seen in other studies that during a psychedelic experience, that network is dramatically compromised; it shows a kind of disintegration, and actually, that process relates quite strongly to people's ego dissolution. Yet after the experience, the network comes back as a kind of reset or a kind of rebooting of the network. What we found in your brain after ayahuasca, as predicted, was that your brain reset; the network became more cohesive, more integrated, more strongly connected within itself."

"Wow. Yeah, you know, afterwards, I really did feel much more preoccupied with my identity and my past, my future."

"Yeah. You asked me a lot of questions before and after about my insight into experiences. How did those compare?"

"Well, actually, we saw something really nice in those data. So your ratings of insight for the journey—the lower dose and then the higher dose with ayahuasca—and what we saw was that there was a graded increase in your levels of insight. Your score at baseline was 27; after the low dose experience, it was 39; after the high dose serum, it was 49."

"Yeah, I definitely felt the larger the ayahuasca dose, the more I considered and learned about myself."

"Yeah. Well, Robin, I'm glad that we were able to do such a, you know, in-the-environment type study. So thank you for coming all the way out to Peru with me; I really appreciate it."

"I hope that I helped; it's been a great experience, and I've learned a lot. As I look back on it now, I feel like my experience with ayahuasca was one of resistance. Instead of surrendering myself to its effects, I dipped in and then got scared, and I told myself it'll be alright, I'm not going to die. But I should have just gone in and through that. That said, I learned a lot about how to control anxiety—that relinquishing control and selfishness can make it vanish. But perhaps in doing so, I lost the chance to experience my mind operating without the controls and dampening I'm so used to, that I'm more comfortable with."

Scientists like Robin have managed to break through tight legal restrictions surrounding these substances and have begun to find out what they can teach us about the mind. Their findings so far are just the beginning of our understanding of these powerful compounds, which shows us how much we have yet to learn about the mind and brain.

And as always, thanks for watching.

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