5 Uncomfortable Truths Learned from Ayahuasca
Courtney Lochner is a leading expert in psychedelic medicine for treatment-resistant anxiety, depression, and trauma. An Eric Hoffer Award-winning author and founder of the Intuition Rehab Lab (IRL), she teaches her signature holistic healing method to students, healers, and retreat participants around the world.
Everyone wants the vision. The colors. The cosmic download. The moment the universe finally explains itself. Few people talk about what comes with it. Ayahuasca is not a vacation. It is not a shortcut. It is a brew of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and Psychotria viridis leaf, a pairing that lets N, N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) reach your brain long enough to take you apart. Indigenous healers in the Amazon have worked with it for generations, and now the Western world wants a piece.
And yes, what science is finding lines up with what the medicine has been saying all along. The healing is real. So is the emotional cost.
I have sat with her many times. Here are five truths I wish someone had told me before the first cup. None of them are comfortable. All of them are necessary.
1. The medicine will meet you where you are
She does not meet you where you want to be. She meets you exactly where you are.
If you are in denial, you will deny the medicine (your ego will actually block you from even receiving a vision). If you are in pain, she will show you pain. If you are avoiding something, get ready to eat it.
I learned this the hard way. I once went into ceremony with a sweet, simple intention. I asked to learn how to sit in stillness.
What I got was the opposite of stillness.
My body filled with a sensation so uncomfortable I wanted to crawl out of my own skin. Every cell screamed at me to get up. To leave. To run. I came up with every plausible reason to leave the maloca as some desperate measure to escape the sensation.
And then I understood. This was the lesson. Not a peaceful meditation handed to me on a silver plate, but rather a test. Can you sit through this?
There is a reason this happens. Brain imaging from Brazil's Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte found that ayahuasca quiets the default mode network, the brain system tied to self-referential thinking and the stories we tell about who we are.[3] When that narrator goes quiet, the usual defenses go with it. What is actually there rises to the surface.
So, the intention you bring is not a request. It is an invitation. And she will answer it in the language you most need to hear, not the one you prefer.
She is the tool. You are the medicine.
2. What you think you resolved is still there
You did the therapy. You read the books. You forgave your father, mother, ex, you told yourself it was handled. She will decide.
The problems you promised yourself you cleared have a way of showing up in ceremony like old friends who never really left. Childhood wounds. A betrayal you swore you were over. The small denial you told yourself last Tuesday.
Nothing is too old. Nothing is too small.
Researchers have a clue why. In functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, closed-eye visions under ayahuasca activated the primary visual cortex at levels comparable to seeing real images, alongside regions tied to memory and emotion.[2] The memories do not feel like memories. They feel like they are happening now. After all, time is an amoeboid, not an arrow.
That is why a wound you filed away in your head can still live in your body. Understanding something is not the same as releasing it.
She knows the difference. Soon, you will too.
3. You may not come home the same person
People expect to leave ceremony transformed. They picture a lighter, brighter version of themselves. They do not picture six months of silence.
After one particularly strong session, I came home and could not be around people. The medicine had made me hypersensitive to technology. I could barely stand to watch someone scroll on their phone. Using my own laptop felt like an assault.
I stopped hosting dinner parties. I stopped answering texts. I pulled away from nearly everyone.
I was not broken. I was being asked a question, Life is in nature. You are nature. "Can you stay true to yourself?"
Technology is not going anywhere. That was the part I had to accept. No one was going to protect my peace but me. The boundary was mine to set.
I am not alone in this. The Global Ayahuasca Survey, which gathered data from 10,836 people across more than 50 countries, found that 55.9% reported challenging mental health effects in the weeks or months after ceremony. Feeling disconnected or alone was among the most common. Yet about 88% of them saw those effects as part of a positive process of growth or integration.[1]
Hard is not the same as harmful. But hard is still hard.
That question she asked me has not gone away. It is still painful. Every day is a remembering. A return to my core self, over and over again.
4. You cannot outrun yourself
There is no stop button. Read that again, because in the middle of a hard journey, you will look for one. You will bargain. You will beg. You will promise anything if it would just end.
It will not end on your schedule.
The brew combines N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) with harmala alkaloids from the vine that block the enzyme your body uses to break DMT down. That pairing is what makes the experience last for hours instead of minutes. Once it begins, it runs its course.
No shaman can walk the path for you. They can hold space. They can sing. They can keep you safe. But the journey she gives you belongs to you alone.
And here is the part nobody wants to hear. The truth is inside the difficulty, not on the other side of it. The moment you stop fighting is often the moment it turns.
The only way out is through.
5. The medicine is a mirror, and the lessons are yours to use
It is the deepest mirror you will ever look into. And what you see there comes with a responsibility.
What she gifts you in ceremony is the key to your liberation. But a key does nothing sitting in your pocket.
If you come home and do not integrate the lesson, expect it to come back louder. A whisper becomes a scream. A stomachache becomes a violent flu. Ignore the lesson, and you find yourself back at square one, facing the same wall with fewer excuses.
The science points in the same direction. After a single dose, a randomized, placebo-controlled trial found rapid antidepressant effects in people with treatment-resistant depression.[4] Follow-up imaging showed shifts in the brain's salience and default mode networks a day later.[5] The ceremony opens a window. What you build in that window is up to you.
This is not a race. Time is of no essence here. No one is grading how fast you apply what you learned.
The only question is whether you do.
If you're willing
These truths are uncomfortable because they are true. And that is exactly where the hope lives.
Ayahuasca does not heal you by making the pain disappear. She heals you by showing you that you were strong enough to face it all along. The denial, the old wounds, the parts of yourself you ran from. You meet them. You sit with them. You walk through them. And on the other side is a version of you that no longer needs to run.
That is the real gift. Not an escape from yourself, but a return to yourself.
The medicine is ready. The only question is whether you are.
Read more from Courtney Lochner
Courtney Lochner, Holistic Health Coach & Psychedelic Practitioner
Courtney Lochner is one of the foremost voices in psychedelic medicine for treatment-resistant anxiety, depression, and trauma. An Eric-Hoffer Award-winning author, board-certified health coach, and founder of the Intuition Rehab Lab (IRL), she has built a global reputation for turning the most complex healing modalities into accessible, life-changing practice. Certified in nutrition design from Harvard Medical School and medicinal plants from Cornell, and shaped by a career that has taken her across continents as a professional dancer and healer studying under various tribes in the Amazon, Lochner teaches her method to students and retreat participants around the world.
References:
[1] Bouso JC et al. (2022). Adverse effects of ayahuasca: Results from the Global Ayahuasca Survey. PLOS Global Public Health.
[2] de Araujo DB et al. (2012). Seeing with the eyes shut: Neural basis of enhanced imagery following ayahuasca ingestion. Human Brain Mapping.
[3] Palhano-Fontes F et al. (2015). The psychedelic state induced by ayahuasca modulates the activity and connectivity of the default mode network. PLOS ONE.
[4] Palhano-Fontes F et al. (2019). Rapid antidepressant effects of the psychedelic ayahuasca in treatment-resistant depression: a randomized placebo-controlled trial. Psychological Medicine.
[5] Pasquini L, Palhano-Fontes F, Araujo DB (2020). Subacute effects of the psychedelic ayahuasca on the salience and default mode networks. Journal of Psychopharmacology.
