Alcohol addiction and Ayahuasca.

You’re reading/watching these blogs/videos because you yourself or someone that you know is struggling with alcohol addiction.

You may have tried different methods, therapies, alcoholics anonymous and groups with a little bit of improvement.

Maybe no improvement whatsoever, you’re wondering;

“Can Ayahuasca work? Is it safe? Am i going to get addicted to something even worse? Is the person that i want to help going to suffer even more and end up traumatized, lose their minds instead of solving their alcohol challenges?“

Before we continue, i’d like to share with you that this particular topic was very close to my own experience.

I started drinking when i was 14 years old, to fit in.

I grew up being a very, very introverted kid, i was very shy, self-conscious and i had an extremely hard time socializing with people.

Which meant that when i realized that i could drink to make my inhibitions come down, then i’d be more social.

A little bit more extroverted, authentic in a way.

Which led to not being able to connect with women, nor friends. To being invited to parties and actually enjoying them instead of sitting in a corner, being overly subconscious.

This spiraled into over 10 years of heavy abuse, it would be at one point that i was drinking a bottle of vodka at least per day, anywhere from 3 to 5 times a week.

Or at the very least, a bottle of wine.

The worst of all this is that i thought it was normal, i thought i was just being social, i had it under control… it’s just a little bit of wine, it’s just another party.

The problem came when i realized that i couldn’t go out without drinking, i couldn’t meet up with friends without a drink, i couldn’t go on a date without involving alcohol in the process.

When i realized also that it was never just one drink, quite often it would be a few bottles.

I would end up in a blackout, waking up the next day not knowing what happened with my night.

It started damaging my relationships with my family, with the women that i dated, with my body first and foremost.

Can Ayahuasca help? Yes.

But it helps in a very different way than you may imagine, i don’t remember how long it’s been since i “quit” drinking.

“Quit” because i’ll have a glass of wine with family on a special occasion, i’m not afraid of alcohol but i don’t enjoy it anymore.

Now it’s a conscious choice, one that i rarely use because i really love being sober.

A lot of the people that you meet who quit alcohol or drinking tell you:

“I’ve been 7 years, 3 months, 21 days and 2.5 hours sober.“

Maybe they don’t drink alcohol anymore but they’re thinking about alcohol every day, that’s not healing, that is just repression.

They’re always one drink away from relapsing into total chaos.

True healing means that it can be a conscious choice and not of choosing, consciously you don’t do it because you realize how unnecessary it is for you.

Ayahuasca in my experience and for you or the person that you want to go through this journey can help you take care of your alcohol addiction.

By allowing you to understand that alcohol is not a problem.

You may have heard this in some of my other videos/blogs.

If you haven’t i invite you to understand that, like any substance, we never come to any of them without a reason.

You’ll find that everything that we grasp onto, everything that we hold tightly, especially those things that are not very useful and very healthy are the solution to something that is a lot deeper.

It’s rooted a lot deeper within us, in this case, for my story, alcohol was the solution to being someone that was very shy.

Alcohol was the solution to my lack of social skills, the solution to having been raised in a family that was overprotective.

The solution to the lack of connection that i felt with other kids and other young people, alcohol was the solution to my shyness around women.

A solution to my fear of having conversations, connections, so i went to it because it provided a solution to all these problems.

Alcohol was originally a tool that helped me be more authentic, live a fuller life, have better connections.

The problem was that it was a tool that was very destructive in the long term, unsustainable and one that eventually took more than it gave me.

The same way for you or your loved one, alcohol is not a problem, it’s a solution, just not the best one.

Alcohol is what we reach towards when we want to disconnect ourselves from life, it’s also a reach when we spend too much time in our head, our minds – it’s not a pleasant place for most people.

With alcohol, you dull and numb yourself from your throughts, you can experience for a few hours or for a night the sensation of freedom, but it’s a very expensive freedom.

It’s a freedom that you often don’t remember, one that comes with a lot of ugliness, the lack of inhibitions can make you feel a little bit more loose and free.

But also more violent and volatile emotionally, it comes at the price of your body sufferings, it’s a lot of things that are derived from alcohol that make it a solution that we don’t want.

Ayahuasca can help us by allowing us to understand, in a deep way, what is that which we are looking a solution for.

What’s the underlying problem, what’s the underlying trauma, pain and disconnection that alcohol is trying to solve?

Because if that pain wasn’t there, the need to drink would fall by its own.

Which is what happened in my life and what has happened in the lives of a lot of people that i know, with different substances, addictions.

After drinking plant medicine, we start to realize that the problem was never the substance, the problem was never the addiction, those were solutions.

What we actually needed to take care of was the reason WHY we were drinking, the reason why we were taking substances.

The reason why we were working ourselves to death, the reason why we were pushing ourselves into toxic relationships.

Everything that is unhealthy for you – you’re doing it because of something.

You’re getting something out of it, the first step is recognizing that.

Ayahuasca allows us to recognize what is the thing that we’re trying to solve with our drinking, and more importantly, it gives us a chance, if we’re ready and well prepared, to get through it.

To understand and heal it, to let go, come to terms with it, maybe it was childhood trauma, maybe it was a sense of abandonment, a mix of different things.

Come to terms with that, so the next time you out, someone asks you: “Hey, would you like to drink.“

Then the need will be gone, the attachment, the compulsive nature is gone.

You can make a choice and realize that when your body is clean from that need, when you drink, it tastes very different.

I tried that after one of the first ceremonies, i came back to Toronto and then i went out on a date, grabbed a glass of wine and as soon as i sipped it, my whole body was just cringing.

I thought, what’s happening? Maybe i ordered the wrong kind of wine.

So i ordered a different one, same thing, it happened one more time.

Then i realized, actually, i think that i can just listen to my body in a very clear way right now, and it’s telling me that he doesn’t want that.

I guess that’s it, i guess i’m no longer someone who drinks often, and so on.

It’s been one of the best decisions, it was something that just happened on its own in my life.

It happened thanks to understanding the root of what was underneath it, understanding what would happen if i didn’t change anything in my life.

The medicine showed me a very clear image of where my life was heading if i kept drinking, 3-5 times a week.

It was a life of pain, illness, chaos, it was very, very ugly.

It also showed me what would happen if i decided differently, i decided to honor that, because it was so beautiful.

And It felt like the direction in which i wanted to move forward, now here i am, living a sober life.

Not through struggle or repression but through conscious choice.

A life that was possible in a natural way, when we understand that, at the source of our addictions there’s something.

Once we understand that something the addictions just fall, we don’t need them anymore, they’re crutches that we no longer need to rely on, to walk on.

I hope that now you understand how Ayahuasca can support you or your loved ones in healing through alcohol addictions.

By allowing you to connect to the roots of what’s causing the drinking in the first place, heal them, understand them.

What’s going to happen in your life if nothing changes, what may happen if everything changes.

Then reconnecting you in such a profound way to your body that even if your mind wants to go for that extra drink, your whole body is going to tell you:

“No, not today.“

If you feel the calling to sit with Ayahuasca, in a container held by Colombian shamans at a sacred temple in the middle of the mountain forests, please check:

www.ayahuascacolombia.com/retreats