The first time I experienced it, I was scared shitless.
Miles from home, deep in the Amazon, in a dark room surrounded by strangers. A cup of bitter black goo in my hands, and absolutely no clue what was coming next.
The excitement of something big waiting to be unlocked. The knowing that it wouldn’t come for free.
All the while wondering what the hell am I doing here?
But what I remember most isn’t the fear, it’s the thing I clung to.
I had the full, expert care of a guide who knew the territory. Who spoke the language of that place. Who truly cared, and was there for me and my healing.
That’s what carried me through – the first ceremony, and the four after it.
To face something infinitely bigger than you, a force capable of ripping you clean from your ego, is both humbling and intoxicating. That was the part I came looking for.
But underneath all that terror and wonder, I was met by something much stranger – the feeling of being fully held, no matter what.
12 days later I walked out of the jungle thinking I need more of this. And for a while I thought I meant the medicine.
Chasing the feeling
What I was actually chasing was the feeling of mattering. Mattering enough to someone that they would put everything aside. Every distraction. Their own needs.
To be there, fully, for my journey.
It was everything.
It took years to feel it that fully again. A quieter room in Amsterdam this time – a different medicine, a more intimate container. The care was total.
It wasn’t any one person, it was the sum of everything – the ceremony that wrapped the experience, the careful curation of each song. Guides that never once left the room in five hours.
They somehow knew when to speak and when to sit back. When to let me wrestle and struggle, sweat and panic, and find my own way back again.
They also knew when to step in – a tool, a word, a course correction. When to listen, and when to just let me vent.
I walked away thirsting as much as ever, but not for the experience itself.
What I wanted, more than anything, was to give that to someone else. To share that feeling of mattering with someone else who needed it.
That desire was medicine in itself. And it changed me.
The hardest part
The truth is, the most confronting part was never the journey. Not the visions. Not the purge. Not the darkest passages.
It was the overwhelming feeling of being held. Loved. Accepted.
It brings up everything. A huge wave of unworthiness. A mistrusting voice that asks – what game are they playing? What do they really want from me?
Sitting there, talking about myself for hours – it felt almost wrong. Selfish. Like I was wasting someone else’s important time.
After a lifetime – an identity – built around making room for others. Staying humble. Never taking up too much space.
To simply sit and receive felt like breaking some lifelong rule.
The medicine wasn’t just being held. It was staying in the room while it happened.
Sacred work
Almost ten years passed between that first cup in the jungle and the journey I keep coming back to. Many more ceremonies, and a lot more work on me.
Slowly, without quite noticing, I was being shaped into someone who could actually receive this. And maybe one day, offer it.
This time I was prepared. I knew what I was stepping into. I’d done my due diligence, chosen the guides carefully – and walked into a container built entirely for me.
The space, prepared with care before I ever arrived. The intense focus as they sat, listened, heard me. They felt my pain. They shared the burden of years of suffering.
They were lost with me – in the confusion, in the not-knowing.
But they never once lost their place. The container held, even while they walked through the darkness beside me.
That’s the craft.
Anyone can fall into the hole with you. Very few can sit down there beside you and still know the way out.
And when the moment came, they held up the mirror gently.
Not to show me what was wrong – to show me what was already there.
More than the medicine
Everyone asks about the medicine. What it does, what you see, whether it’s real.
Almost nobody asks about the guide.
I’ve begun to see things a little differently. The chemical cannot be separated from the container it’s held in – or the hands that hold it.
What those ceremonies actually gave me, underneath the visions and the purging and the cosmic fireworks, was hours spent with someone who wasn’t trying to fix me. Or impress me. Or educate me.
Someone who wasn’t just waiting for their turn to talk. Someone whose presence didn’t change no matter what I did, how I struggled, how messy it got.
Most of us have never had that. Not really.
We’ve been loved in the gaps – between meetings, between someone else’s pain, between the demands of ordinary life. Loved sincerely, but rarely completely.
No wonder when someone finally offers it, the first instinct is to look for the catch.
So much of what passes for love is really about them. People who love you most for how you make them feel, not for who you are.
Mattering – real mattering – asks for nothing back. It’s being held by someone with no stake in the outcome except you.
No expectations.
No distraction.
Just another human, showing up for you – so you can show up for yourself.