Hi there,
I am new to this site, discovering it courtesy of Jim, a friend from way back in University days who I recently got back in touch with via the magic of Facebook. I checked out the site and loved what he was doing. My life has been pretty crazy these last few years and he suggested posting something about it here. I have been meaning to do it for ages, but finally have gotten round to it. I hope it provides some hope and inspiration to anyone in need of a little:
Over the last decade I had gradually been developing a worsening skin condition. The doctors called it eczema and it made my skin dry, red and sore. They prescribed steroid cream and for a time this helped. As the years passed it started to return more and more frequently, and would last for longer and longer.
Just over 4 years ago it reached a sort of crisis point, where my condition deteriorated rapidly. The cream was now completely ineffective and I was covered from head to toe. Literally every inch of my body was bright red, my skin just started falling off and didn’t stop. It was completely raw and a thick black, putrid smelling liquid would ooze out of it day and night, sticking me to my bed sheets. The slightest movement caused my skin to tear and I was in utter agony day and night. I couldn’t sleep and the itching drove me to complete insanity.
The doctors could do nothing to help and for the next year I lived this way, trying every alternative treatment I could think of, from different diets to acupuncture and Chinese herbs and even hypnotherapy. Nothing helped.
Out of complete desperation, and knowing it was my only possible chance of help I made a terrifying decision. A couple of years previously I had been in South America and had drunk ayahuasca in the Amazon jungle with some shamans. This is a sacred visionary medicine used there for thousands of years. It had been a profound experience, and something told me that this could help. With no alternative I decided to return there and live with them for as long as it took to heal myself or until I knew that it wasn’t going to work. It was just about the last thing I wanted to do, but I knew that my only alternative was suicide (and I came pretty close to that).
In order to get there I used huge quantities of immunosuppressant tablets and steroid cream, just to be able to move enough to travel, and then stopped them once I arrived. For the next year and a half I lived through even more pain than I thought it possible to experience as I worked with the shamans, participating in ceremony after ceremony. Quite aside from the physical torment, the ceremonies were almost without exception absolutely terrifying, as they took me into altered states of reality in order to help me purge both physical and emotional energetic blockages. (I quickly came to realise that the 2 were closely linked).
Anyway, to cut a very long story short(-ish), I have now been here in Peru for almost 2 and a half years and am way, way better, though there is still a way to go in my healing. I at least know that there is light at the end of the tunnel even if I cannot see it yet. Recently I was well enough to leave my jungle home for the first time since I got here, a great sign of progress.
While the last 4 years of my life have been pure hell, it has been without doubt the best thing that has ever happened to me. It took something this drastic to wake me up and to make me really take a look at myself and my life and to start making the changes necessary for a happy and fulfilling life. I had always knew that I was unhappy, without really wanting to do the work to find out why or to change it. I wanted it to be done for me, though I am now patently aware that life doesn’t work that way!
My experiences with ayahuasca have completely changed my entire view of what life is and how it works. It pushes me every day and forces me to confront things I would rather not deal with. But in doing so, I not only get healthier physically, but also life changes (that is, not just my perception of life, but life itself is actually different), and these changes are always positive.
Writing is becoming more and more an important part of my healing and I hope one day that what I have will be good enough to be published as a book. Ayahuasca teaches that anything is possible if you are prepared to put in the hard work. And that life never gives you more than you can handle (though it quite often gives you WAY more than you think you can handle!)
Anyway, I am hoping to be fully healed and out of here later this year. I cannot wait to get back out into the world again after 4 years of isolation and feeling like a prisoner. I don’t know whether it is acceptable to post links on here, but if it is I can share the website of the place where I am staying if anyone is interested. Also, I took part in a documentary here last year which has just been finished and submitted to various film festivals around the world. I can share the link to the film’s website too, if anyone wants to take a look, it includes some footage from the movie.
Anyway, thanks for reading! Be well.
Cheers
Mark
