Introduction and AMA (Ask Me Anything) about Living and Working on an Ayahuacsa Retreat Centre in the Amazon Jungle [Cross-Post]

 Hey, I'm Liam. I'm 27 and I currently live in Las Vegas, Nevada with my  wife. We met 10 months ago in Pucallpa, Peru, while both working with  the ancient visionary plant medicine known as Ayahuasca. This is us in  Cusco, Peru.  

Given the nature of this community I will assume that many of you  have done some research on ayahuasca, and perhaps some of you have tried  it. For those who haven't I will give this brief explanation.  

To me ayahuasca is a spirit which can be ingested with the intention of gaining profound teachings about oneself and the world. Ayahuasca experiences can be captivating, blissful, terrifying, confusing and everything else in-between. However, once one has had adequate time to integrate, it is always useful and enlightening. The experience lasts between 4-8 hours and is often called the strongest psychedelic experience known to man. It is something entirely different to using LSD or mushrooms. The active entheogon contained in the medicine is DMT.  

My journey with ayahuasca began in 2014, during the summer of my  second year of University. At the time my life was chaotic and I was carrying a very heavy heart after a relationship failure. I gained a lot of healing and much needed clarity during that first visit to Peru. I  drunk 3 times. Here is a photo of the group I stayed with.   

In the following months after my trip I fixed a lot of things in my  life. It would be more accurate to say, actually, that my attitude changed. I sold a lot of the possessions I was hanging onto, I stopped drinking, I began reading a book a week, my relationships improved, and I generally felt like I was making better decisions. 

I decided that I would definitely be heading back to South America to continue the work with ayahuasca and whatever other plant medicines I  was drawn to. I did, however, have my final year of University to finish. At this point I was utterly apathetic towards school. The entire system, content, structure, etc. seemed stupid and pointless to me. I  don't think it's necessary to get into how broken the schooling systems are, as most of us are aware.  

I made the decision to leave University during my final semester. My grades were good and there wasn't much left to do in the grand scheme of  it all, however I just said to myself: "fuck this, I don't want to  continue with any bullshit for another single day of my life", and that was that.  

In the summer of 2015 I made my way back to Peru, this time to volunteer at the camp I had visited the previous year. The months leading up to my departure were not the most constructive. I had gone back to drinking, most days now, in fact. I was partying again and having casual sex with multiple partners. I was playing in high-stakes poker games I probably shouldn't have been in. You get the idea. I  really needed to regain some discipline and focus. 

All in all, I lived at the retreat center for 6 months. During that time I drunk ayahuacsa 14 times and facilitated the experience for other 100 individuals. I saw a lot of interesting stuff and met a lot of  amazing people during my time there. 

I would like to mention though that it was not all some magical and mystical experience. Life is different in that environment and you have to adapt. You are also working through a lot of your own shit that inevitably comes up when working with powerful, introspective entheogens. You are also  helping people through there own shit (I did quite literally once,  in fact), which isn't always easy. I was also present to help my own mother  and cousin through the experience. 

Anyway, I don't wish to get into too much detail about my life and experiences in the jungle, as I would like to leave ample room for  questions. I hope that I can provide valuable information for anybody thinking about trying ayahuasca. I am also happy to just give open-hearted accounts of whatever anybody is interesting in hearing. 

I'll leave you all with a few more photos from my time there.  

I also have a website - www.liamobtv.com - where I share my favorite books, foods, and videos plus articles that I find useful. 

Enjoy and thank you for reading.