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At the age of 74, risk capitalist George Sarlo may not have seemed an obvious candidate for an ayahuasca experience. Sarlo, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who arrived in the United States in 1956, has had great professional success as a co-founder of Walden Venture Capital. He lives in an upscale neighborhood of San Francisco, in a large house with an unobstructed view of the Golden Gate Bridge.
And yet something was always missing. Sarlo’s father had disappeared from their home in Budapest in 1942. He was set up in a forced labor battalion, an experience he did not survive. At the age of 4, George had told himself that it was because he was “a naughty boy” that his father had left that day early in the morning without saying goodbye. He believes he has never recovered from that early loss.
Sarlo’s close friend, a doctor, told him about ayahuasca, a psychedelic brew made from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine from the Amazon. Ayahuasca has been used for centuries in sacred healing traditions in Central and South America and is now gaining popularity around the world, seen in recent headlines about Silicon Valley customs, although N, N-Dimethyltryptamine or DMT, the active ingredient in an ayahuasca trip, is usually illegal in the United States (there are a few exceptions, based on religious exemption). Tourism in Ayahuasca is flourishing, with more and more people flying thousands of miles to participate in week-long ceremonies in Peruvian jungles or to look up more luxurious contexts, such as a four-star resort that comes complete with masseuses, swimming pools and -the -art fitness centers. And in particular, the increasing popularity of ayahuasca knows no age limits: many of those who are now showing interest are square in Sarlo’s own demography.
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Sarlo himself was initially skeptical. Taking ayahuasca would entail a potentially painful night of hallucinations and all kinds of secretions, especially vomiting. One of the most notorious aspects of an ayahuasca journey is the violent cleansing. But he still decided to go to Yelapa, a small village in Mexico, and to swallow the bitter brew.
That night he saw a series of “old-fashioned photos of soldiers in Hungarian uniforms,” he said, and black-and-white film footage. But he was scared and sick, and swore that if he came out of the hallucination, he would never come back. The next day, exhausted and incomprehensible, he told the shaman that he was disappointed that he had not found his father. The shaman told him to try again the following night: on the Mexican day of the dead.
Sarlo decided it was worth a try. He drank again. Very quickly he saw a forest covered with snow. “There were dead bodies everywhere,” he said. “One skeleton hung from the snow. And somehow I knew it was my father.
“I don’t know exactly how we communicated because I didn’t see anyone alive, but I heard his voice. He came to me and I asked him a very important question,” Why didn’t you say goodbye? ” He said he thought he could get out and be back the same day, so why would you wake up little George?
“I asked a second question:” Did you love me? “He pointed to the skeleton sticking out of the snow.” The mouth of the skeleton hung open. “He said,” Look at me. That is my last breath. And with my last breath I blessed you, and I promised to protect you all your life. “”
Sarlo said something shifted afterwards. He realized that his life had been “absolutely full of miracles,” he said. “It has completely changed my life.”
Grandma goes on a journey
Scientific data about older people using ayahuasca are elusive, but anecdotal evidence is growing.
At Rythmia, a high-end retreat offering ayahuasca ceremonies in Costa Rica, owner Gerry Powell carefully follows all guests who come for a week of plant medicine. Since opening in 2016, Powell said, around 6,000 people had stayed in Rythmia; more than 15% of that number is 65 or older. Every week, he said, there is at least one person in their late 70s who participates in ayahuasca, if not their 80s.
Powell said that the motivation to try ayahuasca differs, as one would expect, according to age. It is the younger guests, 35 to 55, who tend to come because of problems they have, tense relationships, blocked careers. But for people over 65, the question is often closer to “What is my goal?”
Wendy Portnuff, 75, who attended Rythmia, first went to Costa Rica three years ago with her husband, Tom Lorch, 82. Portnuff, who lives in San Francisco, is a former IBM manager who heard about ayahuasca from a friend who is a naturopath.
Her husband was not interested in drinking Ayahuasca, but came to Costa Rica to support her. When they arrived, he became curious about the experience, but was unable to participate due to heart problems. (At Rythmia, all guests are screened in a medical intake both before and upon arrival.) It happened that both men and women had in-depth experiences that week. Portnuff, who participated in the nocturnal ayahuasca ceremonies, had an insight into the first night that, as she said, “I had denied my soul.” And my soul tried to talk to me. It tried to say, “I’m OK.”
Her husband went to a breathing workshop and had a transformation: years of anger and dissatisfaction with the world melting away. The two said their 49-year-old marriage changed dramatically that week. Three years later they are still on their “second honeymoon”.
People can be shocked by the image of someone old enough to be their grandparents who would like to start a night full of hallucinations and vomiting. But Sophia Rokhlin, co-author of the new book about Ayahuasca, “When Plants Dream,” said that when it comes to the tradition of drinking Ayahuasca, nothing can be more natural. In countries like Ecuador, for example, among tribes who practice healing traditions with ayahuasca, the dynamic Rokhlin is more often observed this: the elderly are increasingly the only ones drinking.
But in the United States, Rokhlin considers growing interest among the over-70s to be inevitable, for two main reasons: first, more and more scientific studies are being published that show that psychedelic drugs have potential in the treatment of persistent psychological complaints. In a small study of 17 adults, Ayahuasca helped relieve recurrent depression. She said scientifically supported research is more important for this older demography than trippy “kaleidoscopic articles in Vice” which praises the ayahuasca experience. But also, she said, for those who are “closer to the end than the beginning,” there is also an increasing sense that “there is nothing left to lose”.
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