How Did an Ordinary American Gal End Up Living at an Ayahuasca Retreat in the Peruvian Rainforest?

Trigger Warning: Depression and Suicidal Ideation

I never planned to live in the Amazon rainforest. In fact, two years ago, I couldn’t take a shower without having a full mental breakdown.

First, let me back up.

I’ve always had a touch of neuroticism.

I was anxious. I didn’t know I had a nervous system or that it needed regulation. I had zero capacity to tolerate stress. One minor inconvenience could ruin my entire day.

And once, I actually googled “What is a boundary?”

I was lost.

Over the last seven years, I had slowly made improvements to my life. I quit drinking. I committed to a strict Paleo diet. I started therapy. Yoga, breathwork, and meditation became daily habits. I devoured the popular works of New Age and Self-Help gurus. I studied astrology and Human Design, desperate for the answer to the riddle of my life.

In 2020, I returned to school to study psychology where I learned the aforementioned term neuroticism. I had a stable job as a remote graphic designer, but I was burned out and isolated. Adding online classes only amplified that. At my pace, it would take a decade to graduate.

By 2022, I was consumed by stress, anxiety, sleeplessness, and depression. When my doctor prescribed medication to help me stop smoking, I accepted even though it came with a warning that it might increase suicidal thoughts in a small percentage of patients.

Whoopsie.

Soon, I was plagued by thoughts of ending my existence, convinced everyone’s life would be better without my broken ass in it. My husband, expertly dissociated from his own emotions, had no idea how to deal with mine.

In my search for a way out, I came across a clinic in Europe offering permanent solutions for terminal illness and treatment-resistant depression. They required proof that patients had truly exhausted every option before pursuing something so final.

I had just enough savings for a one-way ticket and their services.
Or I could try Ayahuasca.

In truth, the clinic never would have accepted my application. My situation wasn’t dire enough. But the thought of a plan eased my urgency.

Still, my toes scraped against rock bottom. Until an opportunity appeared: a one-on-one guided psilocybin ceremony. For safety reasons, I had to discontinue the medication I’d been prescribed.

Did it help? Yes.
Did it fix everything? No.

The message I received was simple: Do less.

Well, duh.

But over the next few months, mental clarity began to return. I quit school. And then I did the scariest thing I’ve ever done. I quit my job.

It was February and still rather frigid outside, but I needed sun. I needed nature. I spent a lot of time in my backyard lying on a blanket inside a clear plastic bubble tent, whose invention was courtesy of COVID. I took long scorching baths with galaxy lights. I dabbled in acrylic painting. I journaled. I read. I stretched.

And I began to feel a little bit better. At least I wasn’t crying the majority of the day.

Then I became aware of an opportunity to experience Ayahuasca. It was in California. I lived in Oklahoma and had never traveled farther west than Colorado, but I was excited. Maybe this was the answer I had been looking for.

As the event approached, organization for the retreat appeared to fall apart. Dates kept shifting and the cost of flights skyrocketed. Stress and anxiety returned as it became clear that the timing was not right. I was devastated.

Then my phone rang. A friend was calling to invite me to a different gathering taking place on the same weekend as the California retreat.

Through tears, I told her how disappointed I was about the lost Ayahuasca opportunity. She had traveled to Peru to drink Ayahuasca several years earlier, and it had changed her life. I trusted her guidance until she encouraged me to wait to drink this medicine until I could do so in the place where it was born — Peru.

Peru?

South America?

Did I have enough money saved for that, especially after quitting my job?

I had never left the country.

I didn’t have a passport.

I couldn’t possibly travel to a third world country to take powerful psychedelics by myself.

By mid-November, I had separated amicably from my husband, begun a new relationship, and we were stepping off a tuktuk into the Amazon rainforest in Peru.

That relationship was highly toxic and thankfully short-lived. But it served its purpose by getting me to the jungle.

I met the sacred medicine that is Grandmother Ayahuasca that very night and began my first plant dieta with Ayahuma after ceremony. Before I knew it, the constant buzzing of anxiety within me fell silent. The sleep that had eluded me returned, restorative and rich with lucid dreams. My creativity surged.

And I learned what boundaries were.

I never wanted to leave. As I grew close with the shaman and his family, it became clear that moving permanently to the retreat was a viable option.

I knew that I looked certifiably insane on paper. Quit school, quit my job, got a divorce, drank Ayahuasca, and moved to the jungle.

But I was healing. And I was happy.

I still am.

I now live full time at the retreat. I provide preparation guidance and integration support to those who feel called to the medicine but understandably feel nervous.

I would love to continue sharing with you about daily jungle life and the lessons I’ve learned from the sacred medicinal plants and skilled shamans I get to share it with.

In service to the plants,
Debbie Eve 🌿