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“The only way out is through” - Robert Frost||5/25/25||I’m on a plane bound for Liberia, Costa Rica, and my heart is a tangle of anticipation and dread. This morning, I nearly didn’t board. The urge to back out gripped me - not because of the journey itself, but because of what lies at its core: a confrontation with the deepest parts of myself. What will I find when I peer into the abyss of my own soul? Demons? Failures? Disappointments? The uncertainty gnaws at me, and yet, here I am, committed to this path, to whatever truths ayahuasca might reveal.||||Michael Pollan’s, How to Change Your Mind, fueled my decision to pursue ayahuasca. His exploration of psychedelics; LSD, DMT, psilocybin revealed their power to rewire the brain, expand perspectives, and break the chains of addiction, PTSD, even the existential weight of terminal illness. Pollan frames these substances not as drugs but as medicine, healing not just the body but the mind and soul. Yet, the irony struck me: to access ayahuasca’s transformative potential (at the Rythmia Life Advancement Center), I had to get clean first. A requirement of Rythmia, but really a suggestion, as they are not piss testing guests as they enter. How would an alcoholic, mired in dependency, cross that threshold to reach the medicine that might save them? It forced me to confront my own habits, not just vices, but patterns of thought and behavior I’ve carried for decades.||||The retreat “required” me to arrive clean - no alcohol, no cannabis, no chewing tobacco for at least two weeks. For some, that might be a hurdle; for me, it meant a deeper commitment. I’m a black and white person, moderation has never been my strength. Fasting for 72 hours? Easy. Dieting with its endless calibrations? A rollercoaster I struggle to navigate. So, I extended the cleanse to two nearly months, cutting out all three vices entirely. Honestly, it’s the first time since I was 15 that I’ve been free of them all, and the clarity is startling. My energy surged; I’m productive at all hours, thriving on five or six hours of sleep. Do I miss those habits? Sure, they cross my mind. But need them? Want them? No. The act of letting go has been liberating, a revelation of willpower I didn’t fully know I possessed.||||There was a decade in my life; a reckless, turbulent stretch, where I danced dangerously close to the edge of existence. I wasn’t trying to die, but I wasn’t exactly clinging to life either. I sought out moments that forced me to stare mortality in the face, to feel its weight. One time, fear overwhelmed me so completely that it poured out in the most primal way. While in Fiji, I lost control and pissed myself, diving in open water with a 16-foot tiger shark bearing down on me. Another time just outside of Greeley, Colorado, being thrown from a bull left me temporarily deaf, my senses short-circuiting under the trauma, like something you’d see in a movie. Those were physical battles, tests of nerve and survival. But this, this journey to Costa Rica is different. It’s not my body on the line; it’s my mind, my spirit. And that, I think, is what terrifies me most.||||At 58, I’m forced to confront a question: Why am I the way I am? I’m not “right” by any conventional measure. My passions burn hot, often too hot, flaring into quick anger or relentless intensity that gets me into trouble. My emotions swing wildly - one moment, I’m raging over something trivial; the next, I’m choking back tears while saying grace with my family, undone by the smallest gesture of connection. I know these are just the surface ripples of deeper currents. There are things I’ve buried, truths I’ve hidden; not just from others, but from myself. Why? I’m not sure anymore. Maybe that’s why I’m going: to unearth those secrets, to face the parts of me I’ve kept in the shadows.||||I’ve always been a product of my environment; my childhood, my upbringing, the crucible of experiences that forged me. But at 58, how long can I point to the past as the architect of my present? The time for excuses has run out. I want to be a better man, not just for myself, but for those I love. To me, that means tempering the fire of my anger, lengthening the fuse that sparks so quickly. It means understanding why I’m moved to tears by the mundane, why my heart feels so raw at times. I believe ayahuasca will strip away the layers, revealing the roots of these contradictions. I hope it will help me return home transformed; thinking differently, living differently, loving differently.||||Commitment has always defined me, for better or worse. I think back to when I was 11, delivering the Suburban Trends newspaper to my North Jersey neighbors every Wednesday and Sunday. One Sunday, I overslept, and my mother didn’t hold back. As I ate the eggs and bacon she’d prepared, she asked me if I knew the difference between involvement and commitment. I didn’t. “The chicken,” she said, “was involved in your breakfast. The pig was committed.” That lesson stuck with me: half-measures don’t cut it. You go all in, or you don’t go at all.||||So here I sit in 7D, all in, hurtling toward an experience that promises to be as wild and untamed as any I’ve faced. This isn’t about wrestling sharks or bulls; it’s about wrestling with myself. I’m committed to whatever ayahuasca reveals - the beauty, the pain, the truths I’ve long avoided. I’m committed to emerging from this journey a better man, not because I’ve conquered the unknown, but because I’ve had the courage to face it. ||||"Love is the only thing that's ever saved my life." - Sturgill Simpson, Turtles All the Way Down||8/31/25||Preface: I was convinced from the beginning that I wouldn’t share my journey, ayahuasca is a deeply personal path. Now though months later, I feel it would be selfish not to speak about my experience possibly inspiring others to explore their own miracles.||||I’m at my Hunting property. First thing in the morning. No one‘s up and I build a big fire in the outdoor pit I built, grab a cup of coffee and sit down to write. What is it about staring into a fire that gives one such pause for reflection? I think back to my days in Costa Rica. So very hard, but what a magical experience. I’m so happy I went, I am immensely grateful.||||Those days reshaped me and I feel reborn. Not through any cosmic visions, but through a profound reckoning with my soul. I emerged happier, my relationships with my wife and children transformed, my heart opened, anew.||||I arrived at Rythmia expecting a psychedelic odyssey, perhaps a kaleidoscope of visions or a Hunter S. Thompson-esque plunge into the surreal. Instead, Mother Ayahuasca offered something far greater: a mirror to my essence, reflecting both its wounds and its worth. The retreat, with its glass-walled “Moloka”, was a sanctuary of transformation. Sixty-five of us, lay on beds, buckets at our feet for purging, awaiting the medicine’s revelations. ||The Rythmia way is a blend of ancient wisdom and modern healing; yoga, breathwork, colonics, life coaching, and Shaman led ceremonies under medical oversight; cradled us through the chaos. The schedule was relentless: sunrise yoga, cold plunges - classes from dawn to dusk, designed, I believe, to break us open, to make us porous to truth.||||The medicine, a reddish and somewhat rancid brew of cherry and chocolate taste, worked not by dazzling me with visions but by cleansing me - physically, emotionally, spiritually. The first three nights of ceremony, I purged only once each night. The fourth night, under the potent Yagé guided by Taita, a revered Colombian shaman, I purged fifteen to twenty times, seemingly a gallon of black bile. My body expelling volumes that defied logic, as if decades of buried pain were being released, the medicine scouring my soul. Across the Moloka, others wrestled with their own journeys. One cried, “I’m dead! I’m dead!” another screamed, “Medical, medical, medical!” for an hour. One spoke of a half-horse, half-man cutting a black snake from his heart; another fled from a visionary panther. These were not mere hallucinations but rebirths, raw and real.||||My breakthrough came on Tuesday night. Another’s disruptive behavior; loud wails, “noble silence” broken, stoked a familiar rage in me. I stormed outside, rocking with anger, teetering on the edge of violence. Then an instructor, herself on the medicine, sat beside me by the fire pit. Her presence, a wave of kindness, stilled me. I remembered her words from class: those who trigger us show us who we’ve become. In that moment, I forgave him. And in forgiving him, I forgave myself - for my failures as a husband, father, friend, for the baggage I’ve carried since childhood. I walked barefoot onto the grass, looked to the stars, and spoke to God for nearly an hour. He didn’t speak back, but I knew He heard me. I sobbed, released, and felt my heart heal. I danced, smiled, and became the happiest I’ve been in thirty years, a happiness that endures today, a gratitude that anchors me.||||Sobriety, now over five months strong, is a quiet and tertiary miracle. Was I an alcoholic? The label matters less than the truth: I leaned on substances too long. Now, when my mind craves a drink, my heart says no, and I laugh at the debate. I wonder often though, has sobriety dulled my creative edge? My writing, once fueled by my vices. Time will tell... But the deeper gift is my transformed relationships. My wife and children see a softer, more present me. I’m no longer my mother’s anger or disappointments, no longer carrying the baggage of others’. I’ve told my younger self: you’re not broken, you’re good, I forgive you, I love you. And I believe it.||||Rythmia’s promise; a 96%+ “life-changing miracle” rate, felt audacious at first. Yet, witnessing strangers confront their pain, forgive, and emerge lighter, I understood. The staff; shamans, doctors, coaches, all wove a safety net of care. The founder, Gerry, present at meals and even a ceremony participant one night, embodied commitment, eating his own “dog food.” The retreat’s 5-star amenities; organic meals, private rooms, saltwater pool, grounded the intensity with comfort.||||I had concerns the experience might distance me from God. On the contrary, I feel closer to Him than ever.||||As you would imagine this is far from the full story, those depths await for my book - which I’m committed to producing by May 2026. This is however a testament to what’s possible when you surrender to truth.
