Ayahuasca; From Demonic Possession to Unconditional Love

This is a long, personal account of a first week's Ayahuasca experience, with many facets to it, including personal, psychology based background perspectives, which I hope helps others to understand that for the vast majority of people who suffer anxiety, depression, addiction or other deeply negative life experiences, the root cause is most often trauma of some kind - physical/mental/emotional/spiritual - that can lead to varying levels of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD), causing many to seek relief in shamanic or indigenous plant medicine alternatives to western, business model based pharmaceuticals, that often don't cure the root cause for many people, but merely mask it at best or compound it at worst, as was the case with anti-depressants for me. I hope to convey some of the many reasons people may be drawn to seek help from shamanic based Plant Spirit Medicine in general, by including a more detailed picture of my personal and familial afflictions, hence the reasons I came to Peru on 5th Aug 2021, hoping for relief from most, if not all, my many problems. These reasons are those that led me to get the "calling" to receive healing from "Mama Ayahuasca" in the first place and to why the individuals involved - David (40s, camp facilitator), Bianca (27, Florence, Italy), Jack (25, London, UK) and myself (57, Cornwall, UK) found ourselves in the Amazon jungle, near Iquitos, Peru for this particular, bizarre week of rare, frightening yet revelatory, but intensely spiritual experiences. Why rare? That will be explained in good time…