My Ayahuasca Experience and How It Transformed My Life: A Journey to Inner Peace

John Glanvill, Author of The Calmness in Mind Process for Overcoming Anxiety, OCD, and Depression

I’m John Glanvill, author of The Calmness in Mind Process for Overcoming Anxiety, OCD, and Depression. In this article, I share my transformative Ayahuasca experience in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest and how it reshaped my approach to mental health, moving from a left-brain, drama-driven mindset to a calmer, right-brain perspective. This journey, which I call DDD – Don’t Do Drama, offers insights into reducing stress, embracing calmness, and unlocking personal growth.

Understanding Drama and Its Impact on Mental Health

It seems to me that most mental health issues are deeply ingrained in a left-brain (language-based) modality of thinking, worrying, guilt, shame, blame, catastrophising, doubt, control, paranoia, and fear. These ways of living often cause a person to unknowingly create a lot of drama for themselves and those around them.

By drama, I mean anything that disrupts calmness, increases interpersonal conflict, and raises emotional stress. For example, if person A says to person B, “Let’s go to the beach,” and person B responds, “That sounds like fun,” or, “You go without me as that’s not my thing!” the interaction has a calmness about it. There is no control or conflict, and each person does what is best for them.

However, if person B says, “Oh, it will be too busy, and there are never any parking spaces, and you know it’s so loud there, let’s stay home,” this may be their truth, but it creates drama for person A, who wants to go to the beach. One path avoids drama, leaving person A free to act as they desire, while the other guilts or manipulates them to minimise person B’s perceived discomfort.

I’m not naïve; I know this is a sensitive subject. However, if we are to find more calmness, reducing drama and letting go of control will be a significant component of this transition. In my experience, most anxious people are unaware they are creating drama; to them, it’s just normal.

A Real-Life Example of Avoiding Drama

I recently picked up a client from the train station, and throughout the drive, she kept saying, “Mind that cyclist, careful the lights might change, watch out that child might run into the road.” Because I try to avoid drama, I ignored her, remained silent, and focused on my driving.

As I mentioned in video 29, our ego feeds on scary stories and emotional fears like a parasite, and we aim to starve it. Suddenly, a car dangerously cut in front of me, and I had to react quickly to avoid a collision. Fortunately, I could because I was focused on driving, not distracted by her emotional drama. I responded to the situation and then calmly and silently let go of that moment. It was potentially dangerous, but nothing bad happened, there was no collision, and we were safe.

I drove on calmly and silently without commenting on what had happened. She then erupted into a rant about how dangerous it had been, how we could have been killed, and why people like that shouldn’t be on the road. I silently drove on, focusing on switching my triggered bodily fear response from sympathetic to parasympathetic as quickly as possible through my silent and relaxed state.

Once we arrived at my house, Jen made her a coffee and silently listened as she recounted the story of how we nearly died, once again creating drama and unknowingly stressing her own body. Jen said, “Oh dear, at least you are both safe,” and she too avoided joining in with her drama.

Later, while working with the lady, I asked if she was a driver. She said she’d passed her test many years ago but was now too anxious to drive. I asked, “How does your husband respond to all your fearful thinking and comments as he drives you around?” She replied, “He hates it, and we are always arguing!”

I asked, “Do you love him?” She said, “Yes.” I responded, “Then why would you do all that drama rather than just trust him? Wouldn’t that be more loving – and allow him to focus on driving to keep you safe?”

She thought for a few seconds, then said, “Why didn’t you get upset when that guy nearly crashed into us?” I replied, “Because he didn’t crash into us, I don’t need to know why he was driving like that; I don’t want to waste my time judging him, and my calmness was more important to me than anything else.”

I added, “I am happy for you to do drama around me, but just know that I’ll never join in.” She then said something interesting: “Because you didn’t get angry, I thought you hadn’t cared about my safety; that you hadn’t taken that attack on my security seriously.”

I responded, “Quite the opposite. Firstly, it wasn’t an attack on your safety; it was just an idiot driver. Secondly, because I was 100% focused on my driving and not listening to your anxious drama-based rhetoric, I was calm enough to respond well to keep you safe – which was indeed very caring.” I added that by letting her do her drama and accepting her as she was, this was also very caring.

Something must have clicked in her mind, and she said, “Oh my God, I do a lot of drama, just like my mother!” Later, as I drove her back to the station, I asked her to only look at trees, birds, the sky, fields, and anything beautiful and to silently let me drive, trusting me to look out for danger while she looked out for beauty. She silently looked out the window, and when she exited my car, she said, “It is much nicer without drama!” And we both smiled!

The Left-Brain vs. Right-Brain Approach to Life

Worry stems from the thinking process, which is mainly associated with the left side of the brain, whereas calmer people tend to adopt a more right-brained approach. They don’t do drama, they accept things as they are, and they look for the good in any moment, not the bad.

I’m asking you to consider DDD – Don’t Do Drama. Acknowledge where you are creating drama and stop it. Recognise that gossip, complaining, worrying about things that haven’t happened yet, or moaning about things that have already passed are forms of drama that cause stress. When others around you are doing drama, can you silently detach, let them do their drama, but not be part of it? Don’t try to reassure them. You might say, “I can see you are a little upset right now, I’ll just pop out for a walk and give you some space to process your thoughts – I’ll see you shortly.”

Another aspect of unknowingly creating drama is how we respond when old emotions arise or from the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. For example, when someone causes you to feel angry or anxious, rather than trying to control their behaviour or avoid them, focus on resolving the emotional baggage within yourself that is being triggered. If a person believes everything they do will fail, they may experience difficulty trying new things, leading to dramatic behaviours like panic attacks or arguing with those who wish to help.

To find more calmness, one powerful technique is to transition from a language-based, logical, left-brained approach to life to a more imaginative, creative, less logical, and non-verbal right-brained mindset. Some of the calmest, happiest, and most creative people I know don’t do drama. They seem to spend much of their day with their right brain engaged. When you ask, “What are you thinking about?” they might say, “Nothing, I was looking at that cloud because it looks like a rabbit,” or, “I was imagining which colour to paint the kitchen,” or, “I was thinking of my friend Sarah, I might give her a call and ask her out for dinner.”

In contrast, if you ask a left-brain anxious person, “Shall we go to that barbecue on Sunday?” they might respond with drama: “Who’ll be there? What’s the weather forecast? What should I wear? What food will they be cooking?” A right-brain person might simply say, “Yes, that sounds fun.” Their egos don’t analyse everything, allowing them to try new things and explore new perspectives without needing data or proof. They discover experientially if something is true for them through their inner subjective experience of taking action. Anxious left-brain thinkers, however, seek data and proof before deciding, often leading to procrastination or being stuck in familiar behaviour loops.

My Right-Brain Adventure: Ayahuasca in the Peruvian Rainforest

I’d like to share one of my right-brain adventures, an experience I would never have undertaken twenty years ago during my anxiety-ridden, left-brain phase of needing proof. What I learned changed my life in ways my left-brain logic and reason could never have anticipated.

Why Mental Health Recovery Needs a Holistic Approach

Why is it that despite advancements in medical, pharmaceutical, and psychological research, mental health problems are increasing, and full recovery remains uncommon? I suggest it’s because we require bodily wellness, mental wellness, and spiritual wellness. Mainstream health often ignores that we are energetic life forms living in an intelligent environment called nature, with a right-brain need to be creative within that domain. Please keep an open mind as I share my experience of becoming more courageous and trying new things without my ego needing to analyse everything or require proof.

My Ayahuasca Journey in 2016

By popular request, I’ll share details of Jen and my Ayahuasca experience from 2016, where we spent two weeks in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, participating in eight Ayahuasca ceremonies hosted by five Shipibo Shamans. For those unfamiliar, Ayahuasca is a naturally occurring compound used by indigenous cultures in South America to treat physical and mental illnesses and connect deeply with nature. It is legal in Peru but classified in many other countries.

The ‘medicine’ is brewed from the leaves and bark of two plants, creating a psychedelic tea containing the hallucinogenic compound DMT (dimethyltryptamine). DMT is said to occur naturally in humans, possibly secreted during birth and death, facilitating a connection to nature or divinity, earning it the label ‘God molecule’ or ‘Spirit molecule’.

I’m not recommending drug use, but it’s worth noting that mainstream science and psychiatry are now investigating the potential benefits of substances like MDMA, mushrooms, ketamine, DMT, and LSD for managing anxiety, depression, and trauma. Leading medical universities and research centres worldwide are finding promising results. If there’s interest, I could share my thoughts and experiences with these substances to help you stay safe while learning from my experimentations – let me know.

My Personal Struggles with Anger and Depression

Reflecting on my early life, aside from anxiety and OCD, two factors negatively affected me: bouts of anger and rage that dominated my childhood, and numbing depression that began around age 13. Although I learned to minimise these as an adult, they occasionally resurfaced. It was only after my Ayahuasca experience at age 50 that the depression left me completely.

My anger started at a very young age, around 2 or 3. I have vague memories of exploding with anger, shouting, screaming, throwing things, punching walls, smashing glasses, slamming doors, or storming off. It would come on suddenly, consume me, and then vanish. I moved from conscious control to unconscious hijack, then back to conscious dismay, dealing with guilt and embarrassment over my unconscious behaviours.

My parents would ask, “Why did you do that? What’s making you angry? Why did you say those horrible words? What’s wrong with you?” I could never give a reason because there was none – it just happened. Something within me was triggered, and anger expressed itself. Blaming others or myself was easy, which fuelled my anxiety and damaged my self-esteem.

As a teenager, the frequency of outbursts reduced, but they lingered in the background. I now see I had a repressed dominant warrior aspect and a playful nomad that never learned to play. I developed a false identity as a settler, a ‘good boy’ who followed rules and tried to be nice. My anger stemmed from the frustration of pretending to be good while my warrior wanted control and my nomad wanted freedom. As I mentioned in video 12, ‘nice people’ often have repressed anger from doing things they don’t want, fuelling psychosomatic conditions like chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, IBS, hypochondria, headaches, migraines, skin complaints, insomnia, back pain, sciatica, inflammation, and stiffness.

My anger surfaced mainly around those I loved, perhaps because it was safer than with strangers. Growing up as the eldest of two boys, I felt separated from my family. I knew they loved me, but I didn’t feel lovable. My younger brother had a closer relationship with our parents, which confused me, as we grew up in the same environment with my father working and my mother raising us until my brother started school.

I also had a tempestuous relationship with my grandmother, my mother’s mother, a nomadic, carefree character with a drinking problem who drove my anxious mother crazy with her reckless behaviour. At four years old, I have a memory of her babysitting us, holding my 18-month-old brother, then locking themselves in the bathroom, singing and playing games while I sat in the hallway feeling rejected. When my parents returned, they dismissed my complaints, increasing my anger and sense of rejection.

When I was thirteen, my grandmother was murdered, and I have no recollection of the months that followed. I was cold and detached, believing she hadn’t liked me, which made me feel something was wrong with me. This is relevant later in the story.

From age 36, working with my therapist and myself, I learned to let go of anger, manage depression, forgive others and myself, and release my repressed warrior and nomad. I did well, but every few months, anger would resurface, scaring those I loved, and depression lingered, waiting for an excuse to re-emerge. There was more to it than my logical left brain understood.

The Decision to Try Ayahuasca

In 2016, after Jen’s mother passed away, she inherited a small sum and suggested using it for Ayahuasca ceremonies in Peru to address my anger issues. She felt that while I had made progress, something deeper needed addressing. She had watched documentaries about Ayahuasca and shamanic healing, believing it could release trapped traumas, hidden memories, or ancestral issues. She saw it as a fitting way to honour her mother’s love for holidays with an adventure into the Amazon.

Initially, I was sceptical but decided to keep an open mind and take action. The idea of living in a wooden shack in the rainforest, surrounded by creatures, was daunting enough without the prospect of a powerful psychedelic. Yet, once in the jungle, the environment felt natural and vibrant. I realised the creatures were as scared of me as I was of them, and there was incredible beauty in the interconnected ecosystem.

On the boat to our camp, a huge spider fell between me and a Norwegian psychologist. I instinctively crushed it with my rucksack, an unconscious safety reaction. We kept it quiet to avoid alarming others, but when I lifted my bag, the spider was gone, unharmed. This taught me that sometimes it’s better not to overthink, to trust what is, and respond naturally without left-brain stories.

The Ayahuasca Experience at The Temple of the Way of Light

We attended The Temple of the Way of Light, chosen by Jen’s intuition and inspired by documentaries featuring Bruce Parry and Dr Gabor Maté. With five shamans, a resident psychologist, and a medical team for 22 attendees, it felt safe. The plan was eight ceremonies over two weeks, with increasing dosages based on courage to face inner demons.

Ceremonies began at 8:00 PM in a round wooden hut with mosquito nets, feeling both inside and outside the jungle. We lay on mattresses in a circle, with shamans in the centre. One by one, we approached, considered what we wanted to change, received a blessing, drank the foul-tasting Ayahuasca, and returned to our mattress to wait.

Having tried mushrooms and LSD before, I knew how it felt when the left brain and ego turned off, revealing the right brain’s imaginative, creative, non-verbal state. My first LSD experience showed me a monkey running around my room, which I found intriguing, not scary, as I knew it was my imagination. I could influence it, like a lucid dream, reinforcing that our brain creates what we see, as discussed in video 17.

The First Ceremony: Uncovering Hidden Truths

After about twenty minutes, the Ayahuasca kicked in. My body vibrated, I had to lie down, and my mind entered another realm. I separated from my body, becoming an energy form, an observer moving through time and space, experiencing what it might feel like to be a formless soul.

In my first vision, I flew through the jungle in a clear jelly-like medium, hovering without falling. The trees and plants seemed aware of me, trying to communicate. It felt as real as any waking experience. After a time, I reoriented back into my body, surprised to remember I had one.

The second cycle took me back to age four, standing before my grandmother holding my brother. I was in an angry rage, throwing toys at them. She locked them in the bathroom to protect themselves from me. In that moment, I realised my ego had hidden the truth, making me believe she rejected me. I had been blaming her for my actions.

Shocked, I sat up, vomiting the trapped trauma of forty-six years of anger into a bucket. The shamans sang, and each time, more energy erupted from me. This continued for thirty minutes until I collapsed, exhausted. In another cycle, I recalled trapping my mother behind a sofa in a similar rage, vomiting out that trauma too. Releasing the stuck energy, not just remembering the stories, was key.

By 4:00 AM, the effects wore off, and I trudged back to my shack. The jungle felt less threatening, as if nature was working with me if I trusted it, letting go of my left-brain need for answers.

Processing the Revelations

The next day, we shared experiences with the shamans and psychologist. Many had similar revelations. Realising I had been horrible to my grandmother, not vice versa, was shocking. My ego had driven beliefs of being unlovable, but my family loved me despite my behaviour. My need for perfection stemmed from wanting their respect, though they loved me regardless.

I still didn’t know why I was an angry child, unlike my brother. Over the next five ceremonies, I revisited forgotten school, job, and relationship traumas. One memory revealed a relationship I thought ended amicably was a painful rejection, with my ego hiding that my ex-partner attempted suicide weeks later. My ego repressed these events to protect me, but they fuelled my atomic battery of trauma.

In another ceremony, a childhood trauma surfaced, clearing a sinus problem I’d had since that event. This aligned with TMS (Tension Myositis Syndrome) from video 12, where the brain causes physical pain to distract from traumatic memories. Everything was connected, and left-brain logic alone was limiting.

The Penultimate Ceremony: Releasing Depression

After six ceremonies, I felt like Truman from The Truman Show, bumping into the dome of my imagined reality. My self-stories were based on ego-driven errors, and I felt lighter, happier, and less afraid. My unwarranted anger episodes ceased, as the held-down anger was released.

On the penultimate ceremony, I felt something big was coming. I took a larger dose and surrendered fully. I found myself in a tall building, descending floor by floor, as if scanning my body or life for something hidden. On the ground floor, my body grew agitated. In the underground car park, intense energy surged, and I vomited streams of invisible energy, like noodles, making guttural sounds.

The shamans encouraged me, laughing and saying, “Good, good, more, more!” They sang, blew smoke, and pulled energy from above my head. This continued for what felt like an hour until a final rush of energy left me. I felt different and said, “It’s gone, it’s left me!” They nodded, smiling, “Yes, gone.”

Since then, my depression has vanished. It felt like an energy feeding on my negativity was released, possibly linked to my grandmother’s murder, as if her darkness became trapped in me. My relationship with alcohol also improved drastically.

The Final Ceremony: Connecting with Nature and Divinity

In the final ceremony, I hoped for a positive experience. My soul floated through the jungle, feeling part of everything – a butterfly, a snake, all in perfect harmony. It was overwhelming; I laughed and cried, feeling integrated into nature, filled with love and connection.

Then, my awareness expanded rapidly, beyond the room, jungle, Peru, Earth, galaxy, and universe. I felt I was the source of all creation, understanding everything in a way words can’t capture. Knowledge downloaded into me, and I kept saying, “Of course it works that way! That makes sense!” The guy next to me laughed at my excitement.

The next day, I felt amazing. My doubting left brain, which needed proof of God, was convinced. The knowledge resides in my intuition, guiding me in silent, creative flow states. Some might think I’ve gone mad, but this calm, creative, right-brain existence is more productive and loving than my old anxious, controlling left-brain life.

The Lasting Impact and a Surprising Revelation

Jen and I returned transformed – lighter, happier, and believing in nature or God, something we never thought possible. My course teaches ways to find ego cover stories, hidden realisations, and release trauma without compounds. Escaping anxiety and depression isn’t about clinging to past beliefs or seeking why things happened. Some things are unprovable but no less true. Calmness comes from releasing trauma, recharging your emotional battery, and finding courage. Purpose comes from creative outlets – teaching, gardening, writing, painting, or helping others.

Three years ago, my mother revealed she had to work full-time when I was born, leaving me with a childminder until my brother’s birth. This explained my feelings of separation, anger, and hyper-vigilance, but she hadn’t told me earlier. This shows you may never know why you are the way you are. Stop looking, process the pain, change your story, and become who you wish to be.

Conclusion: Embrace a Drama-Free, Right-Brain Life

Thank you for your support. I hope this story offers new perspectives on finding calmness through a right-brain approach. Please comment or ask questions, and visit www.calmnessinmind.com for more resources on overcoming anxiety, depression, and OCD.