Human Soup

Part I

“I’m going to camp this weekend… Well, I call it camp.” I was on the phone with my mom, sitting on a bench by the ocean. I pressed the volume up as high as it would go so I could hear her over the surf.

“You’re going camping?” she said.

“No. No… it’s… It’s like a retreat, I guess. We’re going to do Ayahuasca. It’s a psychedelic drug,” I said.

“Oh, that’s nice,” she said. “You’ve done this before?”

Well. No. I mean, I did LSD a couple of times and hated it. And mushrooms a couple of times, didn’t love it. And DMT a couple of times, which was slightly traumatizing. So… yes? I guess?

I didn’t say that part out loud.

“There’s supposed to be a lot of crying and throwing up,” I said.

She paused.

“You’re going somewhere to spend the weekend crying and throwing up? On purpose?”

Yes. Yes, I am.

“Please be careful,” my mom said, pleading.

“I will,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I meant it. I mean, you don’t dedicate your weekend to throwing up, maybe having uncontrollable diarrhea (do I need to bring diapers?) if you’re in a really great place. Right? I mean, if you can continue going on like you’re going on, you just… like… go on, right? Right.

When I got back home, my phone dinged with a WhatsApp message from the camp. It let me know it was going to be a ‘sacred weekend’ of ‘sitting in the circle’ with ‘mother medicine.’ It was full of the kinds of phrases that make me want to curl up and die. Words that are used to make people who do a thing feel like they are special for doing that thing. When they could just say the thing: we are doing drugs in the jungle because we are broken.

I was assured that I was a magical being of light, a warrior, and that I was supported by the universe.

There was also a packing list. It included:

• Water bottle
• Journal and pen
• Light rain jacket
• Towel
• Warm clothing for nighttime
• Flashlight
• Swimsuit
• Bug spray

Things not to bring to camp? Recreational drugs, alcohol, or single-use plastics. Got it.

Oh. Also. You might die. Probably not. But maybe. Followed by butterfly emojis.

Finally, it asked me to be mindful of what I put in my body over the next few days, and of the ‘thoughts that we keep.’ The thoughts that I keep? Good luck. If I could control those, I wouldn’t need the drugs.

I’m worried. Always.

I’m worried I’ll lose my favorite hoodie. I’m worried about how bad it will taste. What if I can’t even get it down? What if I poop my pants? I’ll bring extra pants. What if my stuffed dinosaur talks to me, and it changes our relationship forever? What if nothing changes? What if everything changes? What if I die? What if I don’t?

And most of all, what if I come out ‘fixed’ but saying things like ‘we are magical beings of light,’ unironically? If that happens, please kill me.

Part II

I hadn’t read the directions, or maybe there hadn’t been any? But as I drove my tiny red car off the paved road, one of the women I was driving to the retreat said casually, sandwiched between declarations of intent and inner strength, “They said this road needs a four-wheel-drive car.” My car has four wheels, yes, but not the kind they meant. I felt the gravel catching under the tires as we started going up, praying to the gods I don’t believe in to please get me back down.

We climbed for at least thirty minutes before we reached a stretch of paved road. I felt the tires relax, my hands unclench. There were no houses close, no businesses that required pavement, and as quickly as it had appeared, I heard the gravel beating the underside of the car again. Eventually, we reached the top. I knew only because we started going down. The road got worse, giving way to wet dirt, and ditches, and rocks too big to call gravel.

Finally, we reached a black gate and followed the driveway down, down, down until it opened onto a panoramic view. “This is it!” one woman said. “This is the view I saw online!”

It was not it. As it turned out.

A man appeared from a house overlooking the breathtaking ravine, shirtless and barefoot. “Are you looking for the retreat center?” he asked. “Yes!” the women said. It was the next property over. “This is amazing,” the women said. And I mean, it was. But was my car ever going to get back to reality?

I wanted to be there already. I wanted to find a bunk bed and cry. I wanted to be alone. The women wanted to look at the view and talk about plant medicine. I interrupted them, addressing the man, who had purchased this property to be close to ‘the medicine.’ He would be ‘sitting’ with us later. “Will I be able to get out of here?” I said. “Yeah, you should be fine,” he said. “As long as it doesn’t rain.” Great. I thought. Great. I looked up the steep hill I’d just come down. “It looks like I could just pick that car up and set it right back down,” he said. Yes. Yes, it is a very small car. Can we go now?

The women were enamored. He had just bought a duck. We learned the duck’s name, but I’ve since forgotten, because the duck was not my priority. I took my shoes off and walked through the grass. It was a cute duck. Now, can we go?

After too long, honestly, I couldn’t tell you if it was five minutes or thirty, we got back in the car and started up the hill. I smelled burning rubber as my tires spun in place. Barefoot duck man ran up the hill behind me and said, “Why don’t you just park here. I’ll drive you over.” Fine. He put on his shoes, and we loaded into his truck, which easily climbed the hill and then wound through dirt roads until we reached the retreat center. He pointed at a tree covered in vines. “That’s the Ayahuasca plant,” he said. The women cooed.

The camp overlooked the same ravine. We were greeted with hugs. I always thought I was a hugger. I am not a hugger. I was taught that you hug hello, you hug goodbye. That’s what you do. My hugs, I imagine, have always felt like steel. These strangers hugged me longer and tighter than I think I have ever been hugged. I may have liked it.

“Everyone, we’re going to head down to the maloca!” I heard the retreat leader yell. First of all, what is a maloca? A woman was pointing at some monkeys in the trees. They were over a large, round, open structure with a tall, pointy straw roof. Bingo, I thought. Maloca. “Don’t forget to bring your journal, a pillow, and extra underwear!”

I remembered setting aside underwear, but I vaguely remembered putting them back. Why? I wasn’t sure. But alas. I had only the underwear on my body. I asked if there were bathrooms. There were. Three of them. “You’re going to be fine,” she said. Was I, though? Was I going to be fine?

I walked down some notches in the hill as the sun was beginning to set — the sky went pink, changing the color of the air in front of me. I passed a roaring fire, picturing the Amazonian women sitting over it, cooking up their potions for us. I left my rubber sandals on the steps and stepped into the maloca.

I stopped at the threshold. There were at least thirty thin mattresses arranged along the edges like spokes of a wheel, each with a neatly folded blanket on it. There was also a brightly colored plastic bucket and a large roll of toilet paper in front of each one. I had expected something bucket-shaped, but I pictured a beautiful, wooden, handmade bowl, something more… ceremonial. This was a dollar store bucket. The toilet paper was high-quality. None of that thin septic tank garbage. It was the good stuff.

The mattress closest to the bathroom already had someone’s bag on it, so I settled for the third one from the bathroom. I arranged my bucket and toilet paper carefully, unpacked my bag, and then… just sat there. For a long time, nothing happened. It got dark. I practiced the walk to the bathroom, noting the single small step down.

Finally, three beautiful, small women walked in in traditional, colorful, patterned dresses and beaded jewelry. I had read that this was “one of the most powerful female Pajés in the Shanenawá Nation of the Brazilian Amazon.” A pajé, I googled, is a medicine woman (or man).

They spoke Portuguese through a translator. I wish I could remember everything they said. It was not informative.

They offered traditional face painting. Sure, I thought. While they painted, the translator said, “She is painting a butterfly as a symbol of your transformation.” Transformation is kind of my thing. If I said things like personal brand, I would say it here. But I don’t. But I also dread transformation, agonize over it, write about it, and compare it to a caterpillar dissolving into goo — the way mobsters dissolve a body in acid. I have a somewhat complex relationship with it.

I sat back down with sticky paint on my face that I could feel but not see. The women offered Hapé, which I had not heard of before, but now understand to be tobacco and burned tree bark that is blown up your nose. I tried it. I cried. It was cool.

And then, the women left the maloca. Which was confusing. I leaned to my mattress neighbor, who had clearly done this before. “Where are they going? Was that it? Are we done? What’s happening? What is going to happen?” Could someone please just tell me what was about to happen? “Are they going to make the tea?” I don’t think they call it tea.

“I think they’re having the medicine couriered in,” she said. I guess bringing plants over the border would raise flags at customs. My images of the women brewing tea over the fire were squashed. I imagined them now waiting at the top of the hill, for the courier to come up that gravel road in the dark with a DHL envelope.

It was getting late. We were called to a circle and instructed to be vulnerable — not fake vulnerable, real vulnerable. The results were mixed. At my turn, I said, “I have a lifelong history of anxiety and depression, and…” I honestly don’t know what else I said. I didn’t say that I agonize over everything. That I constantly feel pulled in more directions than I can count, and always feel like I am going in the wrong direction, that it feels like I am constantly pulling myself apart, and sometimes it feels like I never quite get put back together. I didn’t say I couldn’t live inside my head anymore.

Then we learned the rules. They were very specific. “When you throw up, do it like this,” on hands and knees, face over the bucket, to avoid pulling any muscles. Great. “When you’re done throwing up, take the bucket and dump it over the side of the maloca.” I imagined how many plastic bowls of puke had been poured over the side and decided not to go exploring outside the maloca. “And then you say thank you to it. Say, thank you for the purge, because you don’t need it anymore.” Most of the rules were about throwing up. Other rules included not turning the bathroom light on and not locking the bathroom door, because they can’t help you if it’s locked. I tried not to imagine what type of help might be needed.

Trust, Surrender, Allow was supposed to be our mantra. We were also told that throughout the night, the women would ask us to come get more medicine if we felt it in our hearts. “If you’re offered more medicine and you find yourself questioning if you should drink it, take it. Intuition doesn’t argue.” But for someone like me, there is no a little more. There’s more, more, more — or nothing.

And then there was more waiting. I thought about my car, stranded at the duck-man’s house. I sat on my knees, practiced the proper vomit position. I started worrying about unlocked bathroom doors. That would mean I’d have to knock, and knocking on bathroom doors is one of my lifelong anxieties. I have a lot of lifelong anxieties that sound really dumb when you write them out.

I asked my neighbor more questions. How bad would it taste? I had heard gasoline or motor oil. It’s rude to make a face, she said. So drink it, don’t make a face, and also don’t drink too much water after, or if you do, swish and spit. How big a cup is it? It depends, she said, it could be a little, or it could be a lot. Her hands made it seem like it could be a full pint. A pint of motor oil.

Finally, the women returned, and it was time. I obediently got in line, my bare feet sticking to the wood floor, my mind racing.

They were using the tiny waxed paper cups from my bathroom in the 80s, just big enough for one sip of water. The pajé would choose a cup and hand it to you. With two hands, you were to accept this sacred liquid born through thousands of years of history passed down through generations, in a bathroom cup. You were supposed to think about your intention, then shoot it like vodka. And then what? It wasn’t clear. My turn was next, and oh shit.

I looked down at the table filled with cups as she scanned them, choosing the right one for me. Each had barely a splash of brown liquid. She handed it to me. I looked at her, lifted it, and downed it, keeping my face still. I think I forgot to set my intention.

Then I tried to give the cup back. She didn’t take it. What was I supposed to do with it? The sacred Dixie cup that was now empty. Eventually, she accepted it, looking confused and slightly flustered. Did I just hand garbage to a pajé? I walked back so distracted that I almost forgot to taste it. Almost. It tasted like dirt, and… mint? And something else. Anyway, it ended up being better than most of the shots I drank in my 20s.

We sat quietly in the dark for a while. Then the women started singing the prayers — the Icaros. Their voices were at once coarse and sweet, intertwining into vibrations I felt in my whole body. Sometimes, instead of holding a note, they let their voices slide — not falling so much as letting the note become something else. It’s the kind of sound we’re trained to hear as sad, but it wasn’t sadness. We were to remain in the maloca while they sang. This was out of respect to the women, because they were singing the Icaros for us.

I watched their faces. I expected them to be serious. And they were serious. But they were also so joyful — a kind of joy I couldn’t quite identify. There was nothing polite about it. Nothing fake, nothing performative. It was just…joy. I don’t know if I have ever felt that kind of joy — not because I’ve never felt happy, but because there’s always something else in the way. A fear, an expectation, a judgment.

But it wasn’t even about the joy. The joy was just what they happened to be feeling at that moment. I’m sure they got sad, angry, tired — and I imagine those looked just as real. There was nothing between what they felt and what they showed.

And then, it started happening. I recognized it. The electricity in my body, the floating feeling, the quickening of my breath. And the same thought came with it.

Make. It. Stop.

But I can’t make it stop, I drank the brown mint from the Dixie cup, and the women are singing, and now this is happening, and I can’t stop it.

The roof of the maloca started to open, splitting between the tree trunks that held it up. I closed my eyes. Flickers of color, almost something beautiful, but I felt so scared. I could feel myself on the edge of something. When I closed my eyes, I started to see shapes, light, and I felt like someone was about to show me something that might have been important.

Coming in, I’d felt like I had no other option but to barrel through and come out the other side fixed, and I was prepared to do it. But that is easy to say before you feel the edges of your being disintegrating — like that fucking caterpillar turning to goo. I knew I needed to stop thinking, but I needed to keep thinking. And then I thought, who am I if I don’t think? Who am I if I am not afraid? Who am I if I let all of this dissolve? I opened my eyes. The people walking to the bathroom had no faces.

I was not ok. I needed help. I could not do this alone. Do I stand up? Could I stand up? Did my body move? I was standing up, and I crossed the maloca toward the helpers, and quietly screamed, “Can someone sit with me?”

A woman came toward me. “I’m so scared,” I said. “I’m so scared.” And she held my hand, and she said, “It’s ok to be scared.” I said, “Will you stay here with me? She said, “I’m here.” I was so scared. And then, I started crying. Not just crying, but bawling, with my entire body heaving, grabbing my chest, wailing.

And then the room began to fill with the sound of vomiting. On either side of me, across the room. It was not hungover-after-the-club vomit. It was not food-poisoning-I-ate-some-bad-fish vomit. It was there-is-a-demon-deep-inside-me-and-it-has-to-come-out vomit. I understood the purpose of the vomit instructions now.

The woman holding my hand said, “Don’t worry about anyone but yourself. Don’t worry about them.” And I continued to cry. And at the same time I was crying, I just kept saying to myself, I am so scared. Why am I so scared? What am I scared of? Is this the fear coming out? I thought, I am thinking too much. Then I thought, I read on the internet that crying counts as purging. Am I purging? Maybe I won’t vomit. God, I don’t want to vomit.

And the crying started to feel good and the woman said, “It comes in waves, see? The wave will pass.” And then she said, “I’ll be back,” and didn’t come back, but I was ok. The wave had passed.

The women sang all night. Their voices became hoarse and dry, and they kept singing. They offered more medicine, some took more tiny cups, but I didn’t, no way was I going back in. I just sat there, rocking, thinking. Eventually, I walked to the fire and looked at the stars. I said to myself, “Now, ok, I’m ready to see what you wanted to show me.”

I had thought I might meet my guides; I had hoped they’d be funny. I thought I might meet my spirit animal, and it would talk to me, and I would later have it tattooed on my body to always remember all the sacred wisdom I received. I thought I might see my late mentor, Diane, and chat about the weather. I thought I might see myself as a child. But what I ended up seeing was nothing. The moment had passed.

When I returned to the maloca, one of the men was chanting in tongues, angry, loud. All three women held him in their arms as they sang, walking with him in circles.

At four thirty, the monkeys began to roar. If you’ve never heard a howler monkey right above you, it is so loud and so deep that it short-circuits your brain and just triggers pure emotion. I had none left.

In the light of day, I was shaken. Worried about being last in line for the shower, but I climbed the stairs to find myself alone in the bunkhouse. I washed the paint off my face. Transformation my ass. And let the warm water clean me. I called my boyfriend and cried, without the words to say why.

I had failed. I had come to transform. I had come to dissolve into goo and come out the other side as a fucking butterfly, and I hadn’t. I had to control everything. I didn’t let myself see what was outside the roof of the maloca. Trust, Surrender, Allow. I got a 0/3. All I had done was ugly cry.

After lunch, each person shared their experience. Someone saw themselves as a child, someone saw their own death, someone saw a demon, someone felt the healing, and someone saw their mother’s face in their vomit. To each person, the response was, “That’s the medicine working.” Great experience? Bad experience? Weird experience? No experience? That’s the medicine working.

By the afternoon, I had decided that this was not for me, that there was no possible way I could do this again. And I didn’t have to. I don’t have to do this, right? I messaged my boyfriend. I don’t have to do this, right? I asked Claude.

I thought about what they told us, “Intuition doesn’t argue.” But doesn’t it? And it’s very confusing because which way is it arguing? Or not arguing? It’s like a double negative — it starts a loop, and then you can’t see a way out. I’m always stuck in a loop.

I was there, I should have the experience, I wanted to be transformed — how could I be transformed if I didn’t do it? But maybe not doing it was the stronger choice. I didn’t have to do it. No one could make me do it. Maybe I was not broken after all, maybe there was nothing to fix. Maybe the medicine for me was simply deciding not to take the medicine. Already I was saying the medicine. That had to be a bad sign, right?

I would simply not get in line for the tiny cup. I would meditate and listen to people vomit, and that would be my medicine.

I felt amazing. I had decided! There would be soup at six o’clock. Who would want to eat soup if you were going to throw up? I wanted to eat soup because I wasn’t going to throw up! And the soup looked so good.

“How are you feeling about tonight?” my maloca neighbor asked me in the soup line. I told her I didn’t think I was going to do it. She gave me a look. “They say, the more you don’t want it, the more you need it,” Which, honestly, sounded a little brainwashy to me. Nevertheless, I scooped around the larger vegetables, mostly filling my bowl with broth.

Down to the maloca I went, my head held high. I sat on my mattress, resolute. Mostly. My neighbor said, “You look relaxed!” I said, “Because I decided I’m not going to do this!” And then we waited approximately 5 hours until anything else happened.

I napped until one of the helpers came over to check on me, which I would have appreciated had I actually planned on doing this. But since I hadn’t, I wasn’t really sure what to say. I said, “I might not do it.” I wasn’t fucking doing it. She said — honestly, I don’t even remember what she said, but in her earthy, breathy voice, in some accent I couldn’t identify, she made it clear that I really should do it. She said ‘no one will force you to do anything’ more than once. Which is almost forcing, if you think about it. Eventually, she disappeared. I sat on my mat. Shit.

Shortly later, she came toward me, the bottoms of her patterned dress swaying as she walked. “We thought maybe you might like to talk to the pajé.” Ok. The pajé herself. The woman who can see into people. A real, honest-to-god healer. “Can I still decide not to do it?” I asked. “Yes, she will not force you to do anything.” There it was again. I took a breath, but my zen was gone in an instant. Anxiety took over my body, my hand went to my heart, and tears streamed down my face. I knew where this was going.

I sat next to the pajé on the love seat, and she grabbed both my hands. Hers were small and warm and firm. The translator leaned over, her hand on my knee. I wish I could remember every word. She said — it was something like — “You cannot go on like this, feeling like this, and this is the reason you are here”. She said, “You don’t have to be afraid because the medicine is from the earth and so are we. Take the medicine, and tonight you will be healed.” I said, “Just a little bit, ok?” She offered to let me sit with her until the fear passed. I had not wanted to do this alone. Doing it next to the pajé was next level. It was decided. Again.

This time, my little cup had even less in it. I went to the bathroom and stuffed my underwear with half a roll of folded toilet paper. I carried the other half of the roll, my plastic bowl, and my water bottle over to sit next to the pajé like I was going to my friend’s house for a very strange sleepover. The view was different from here. Now I saw each of the helpers come up one at a time to take their drink. And then the pajés themselves. Everyone drank the medicine. Then we were quiet. And I waited.

Eventually, they started singing, but this time right next to me, vibrating me from the inside. I waited. I watched the roof of the maloca, ready for it to split open. Nothing. They kept singing. They offered more. I leaned over to the translator and said, “I don’t feel much.” She said, with a little smile, “It is because you didn’t drink very much. Do you want more?” I said yes. They gave me another splash. Then I waited. I felt relaxed. Nice, even. Was I doing it wrong?

The Icaros went on for several hours. When they brought out the drums and the guitar, several women started to dance. So I danced. Really, it was more like walking in a circle with a little bounce, but it counted as dancing. Then I lay down for a while. Later, I sat by the fire and looked at the stars. At four thirty, the monkeys howled. And that was it.

In the morning, the nice duck man got my car up the hill, no problem. We said our goodbyes, and three women and I, not new friends, but people who’d shared an experience we couldn’t put into words, drove down the mountain. Well, they tried to put it into words for the 90-minute drive. I just wanted to get home, to my little yellow house that I had bought to be my own type of medicine, to hold me under monkeys and the ocean breeze. And eventually I was there, and I lay down, and I slept.

In the end, which is really the beginning, I am left with more questions than answers. Did I do it right? Did I drink enough? Am I empty? Did it work? How would I know if it did? Do I feel better? Was just a little enough? If I had let myself say things like magical being of light, if I let myself belong, could it have been different?

I don’t know. I really don’t. But I’ll go back to camp and try again — and I’ll bring adult diapers, because I was kidding before, but now I really do think it’s a pretty good idea.

Here’s what I do know. In the days since, I’ve noticed the waves fold in on themselves and stared at the patterns they make in the sand. I’ve watched fish swim against the current, not knowing their own strength. I’ve let myself ask questions without needing answers. My breathing seems a little slower, and my hand finds its way to my chest less often. And every day, I’ve pictured the joy on their faces.

Is this the medicine working?