Believe it or not, I wasn’t always the world-weary libertarian shaman bro your girlfriend dreams about in her most twisted daddy-dom fantasies. Once I was a Mormon missionary! Though that may not come as a surprise to Spud’s readers (ex-mo’s make the best freaks). I like to think I began my own real journey the same way Terence McKenna did… I was always interested in the strange and the beautiful. I was always looking for something real. And like McKenna, I “studied yoga. I wandered around the East. I was fast-shuffled by beady-eyed little men in dhotis. I know the whole spiritual supermarket and rigamarole.”
Before I majored in psychology, I went to trade schools for hypnotherapy and something called emotional release therapy. I attended workshops on neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), yoga, meditation, feng shui, holotropic breathwork, and reiki. Around the time I was becoming completely disenchanted with the higher education racket, I took a class on “Magic, Myth, and Religion.” It was the first time I encountered any academic writing about psychedelics. I was astonished at the dearth of any studies on the supposed harmful effects of psychedelics. This class specifically launched my investigation into shamanism. The first book I picked up to report on was Supernatural: Meetings With the Ancient Teachers of Mankind,” by Graham Hancock.
A big reason I was interested in all of this stuff was a lifelong struggle with depression. So when I read about shrooms and ayahuasca I was eager to try it. A coworker at my local psych hospital shared some magic mushrooms with me and I became enthralled with ‘the trip.’ Shortly after busting my psychedelic cherry I went all in on the heroic dose (5+ grams of psilocybin mushrooms). I had a life-changing experience where I met my spirit guides and had an encounter with an entity I can only describe as a Goddess.
Later, through a friend of a friend, I found a traditionally trained ayahuascera in California and had a weekend retreat dosing on ayahuasca. That was a whole other kind of trip. After coming home I found others in the psychedelic community. I made friends with a therapist who had done some volunteer work at an ayahuasca retreat center in Peru. She put on a weekend retreat and flew a shaman couple into the States for it.
These Shipibo ayahuasceros were looking to start their own retreat center in Peru. You see, the fancy tourist sites you see on the internet are mostly owned by gringos who are paying the indigenous shamans a tiny fraction of what they charge. This shaman couple wanted a gringo to go back with them and sort of be like their liaison or tour guide… and I wanted to get some sort of real traditional shamanic education. So I sold everything I owned and flew down there with a backpack.
It was a bad move, but not without value. All these shamans had was a hut in the jungle. I knew some Spanish and was trying to learn more, but the locals mix indigenous Shipibo words with their Spanish. I lived with them in their hut which was an hour hike in the jungle from the nearest village… which was a 6 hour boat ride from the nearest city, Pucallpa. I think I got malaria. The shaman couple had to go every other week to work at the fancy tourist retreat centers. I wasn’t being educated much and I was running out of money. But damn, did I trip my balls off! We drank ayahuasca 2 or 3 times a week (when the shaman couple was gone, their family members still came by the hut). I wanted to stay for at least a year but in the end, my jungle adventure only lasted a few months.
When I came back to the States I found peeps in the psychedelic community who knew of a Lakota ‘Road Man’ who was facilitating traditional peyote ceremonies to us whiteys. I started attending these 10-12 hour long ceremonies. These were highly regimented by the Native elders present. And again, peyote is a whole other ball of wax. Our Road Man told us his people weren’t happy he was doing this for whites, but they weren’t interested in their own medicine. It sounded like a really sad situation. After so many ceremonies with Grandpa peyote, I felt guilty for going because I knew I wasn’t ever going to convert wholeheartedly to the Native American church. I felt like a spiritual tourist. “Spiritual, not religious.” Yeah, it’s a meme.
During all these adventures, I still kept getting visitations from my Mushroom Goddess. Throughout it all, she kept telling me, “This is good, I want you to learn from this. But remember, you’re mine. I chose you first.” I suppose I was looking for some sort of validation. Some sort of accreditation. To officially become a shaman. But you know what… that doesn’t exist. Even the word shaman is borrowed from some of the first Siberian medicine men and women that early European explorers met. I was born and bred an American city-slicker. Something just turns my stomach about trying to be another new age guru making money off of another culture’s sacred traditions. Traditions that even those indigenous shamans themselves feel they are exploiting to make a living.
I don’t like being called a shaman. The real ones come from real cultures with real identities. It’s the difference between THE Amazon and amazon.com. But I’ll be your shaman-bro any day.
Spud media 