Beyond the Rational Mind: Healing from Asthma and Eczema with Ayahuasca

Image: Wikimedia Foundation | Christoph Bock, Max Planck Institute for Informatics

After his first encounter with Ayahuasca, 39-year-old Richard Doyle felt a slight but noticeable lifting of the severe asthma he had suffered from childhood. He could still hear the haunting icaros or medicinal songs that Norma, the Shipibo shaman, had sung while he lay dissected under the gaze of Mother Aya over much of the previous night. And he could clearly recall his emotionally draining encounter with his deceased brother and mother. A tenured professor of English and Information Science at Penn State University with an interdisciplinary PhD, Rich had come down to the Peruvian Amazon to make a documentary on Ayahuasca. He had come prepared to try Ayahuasca as part of that project, but he wasn’t prepared to have the ground cut from underneath his feet.

Rich wanted time to process his experience, but he wasn’t going to get it. The next day, Norma had told him in no uncertain terms “tonight, you must take Ayahuasca again”. When he hesitated, she added “your breathing …..it will be healed”. How did she know about his asthma?

As Rich embarked on his second Ayahuasca session two days later, he set an intent: “please heal me of my asthma”, “please help me integrate the experience into my life in N America”, and finally “please show me some joy”. A repeat of the dark experience of the night before would have been a little too much to handle. As the brew took effect, his surroundings morphed. Rich found himself in a cheap medical clinic. A blue jay entity sat over him, pulling the DNA out of his body like a skein of yarn and passing a feather-like wand over it in repeated motions. He could see genes being turned on and off, his DNA being reprogrammed in front of his eyes. “Breathe into your diaphragm” commanded the blue jay. Rich could now feel the entire universe breathing through him. In the background, he was deeply aware of Norma weeping and singing her icaros, bidding goodbye to the asthma. Suddenly, the bird spoke up “North America? I’ll tell you about North America: You can mourn all of my dead” At these words, Rich experienced a vision of thousands, millions of First Peoples, victims of the European settlement of the Americas, with all their collective pain and suffering. “There is no way I can understand that infinite mourning”, he responded, overwhelmed. “In your book, will you share that you were healed by an ancient Indian technology?”, asked the bird. Rich nodded. The blue jay seemed satisfied, as if Rich had passed a test. “Ok, now for some joy”, it said.

As day broke over the Peruvian jungle, Rich felt probably for the first time in his life that he could breathe freely. Later that day, he tossed his inhaler into the trash. Rich had come down to the Amazon to make a documentary, to satisfy his intellectual curiosity, but he had instead been healed of the asthma that he’d suffered since the age of 5, with its constant visits to the hospital.

Rich suffered what he calls an ontological shock – a complete shake up of his world view - in the aftermath of his Ayahuasca sessions. In the western reductionist model that Rich subscribed to, the dead simply weren’t. He’d had psychedelic mushrooms multiple times before and had even encountered the Virgin Mary on one those occasions, but being a hardcore rationalist, had dismissed that experience as a confabulation of his mind. And as if interacting with departed souls wasn’t enough, he had seen his DNA repaired by a sentient, talking bird. And before you dismiss Rich’s experience as fantasy, consider that almost every left-brained rationalist who has seriously explored psychedelics has come away questioning their understanding of reality.

The full healing took place over another 6 months, and his lung function continues to improve to this day. Whereas Rich could not so much as cross the pool earlier, he eventually worked up to swimming a mile in 35 mins. When I ask if it was all the Ayahuasca, Rich pauses for thought. “I had a daily ZaZen practice for over 5 years, combined with Heart Sutra mantra chanting and japa before I tried Aya”, he says. “Aya was not the beginning of my journey, but it was a crucial part of it”.

Following his healing, Rich shouted from the rooftops about Ayahuasca, in scholarly journals and other forums, and found that reactions were not always what he expected. It is still taboo to talk about psychedelic experiences, though it shouldn’t be. As the blue jay said, plant medicines are a First Nations spiritual tradition, every bit worthy of our respect as old-world religions and healing traditions. Western mis-categorizations of native medicines as “drugs” are heaping insult on top of injury.

For Rich, a second serious medical condition lingered. It had not been magically banished with a wave of the Ayahuasca wand. From childhood, Rich had suffered from eczema so severe that his body was covered with fissures that would bleed frequently. In his own words “it was painful, horrifying and stigmatizing”. As he lectured to students in the sylvan setting of rural Pennsylvania, he would cover up the deep cracks coursing his neck and the length of his forearms covered with long-sleeved shirts and a high collar. Steroidal creams, with their own side effects, were his only recourse against the constant and severe itching and redness.

It would take another psychedelic experience to heal Rich of his severe eczema. A few months after his experience in Peru, Rich found himself journeying yet again into the shamanic realm. Once again, he went into the session with the intent “to heal” and tried to remain aware of this intent. When he emerged from the many-hour marathon, he noticed that the itching in his scalp and back was greatly diminished. He felt “better than after any prednisone shot he’d ever had”. Over the next few weeks or so, the cuts and deep fissures that pervaded most of his body simply disappeared. To convince a skeptic friend who accused him of delusionary thinking, he simply rolled up his sleeves and showed him his forearms.

As I interview Rich for this post in January of 2022, it’s been 15 plus years since his experiences in the Amazonian jungle and Pennsylvania backwoods. His asthma and eczema have vanished for good, hopefully never to return.

Out of curiosity, I do an online search for psychedelics and eczema and come across this two-year old thread on Reddit. While it involves another psychedelic, it sounds uncannily like Rich’s experience: Eczema and LSD : LSD (reddit.com)

Posted by

u/Sophie_Mojo

2 years ago

Eczema and LSD

Ok this is random but mind blowing to me. I have severe eczema on my hands which prevents me from working (just lost my favorite job because of it) but I have noticed that when I take LSD, my hands actually look and feel normal. I did it yesterday and my hands are completely healed today other than being a little dry. I can actually bend my fingers and that is absolutely insane to me. All the meds I have been prescribed burn like hell and make me cry for hours but this is crazy. Anyone else experience something like this?

SerotoninSunset

·2 yr. ago

It has to do with the fact that drugs that stimulate the 5ht2 receptors downregulate aTNF which causes inflammation. LSD is currently being looked at for its potential use in treating autoimmune disorders because of this.

And then this other thread: Eczema/Allergies and LSD : LSD (reddit.com):

Posted by

u/aciddust

1 year ago

Eczema/Allergies and LSD

So, I have a question for my fellow trippers who have eczema and/or allergies (which affect their skin, e.g. getting welts, itchiness, etc). Do you find that your eczema and thus the need to itch is virtually completely non-existent while tripping? Because I tripped a few days ago and I found that I didn’t itch the entire trip, nor did I feel the need to, and I even played with my friend’s cat for a couple of hours - which would normally make me REALLY itchy - and yet I had no reaction whatsoever. Just curious to see what other people have experienced.

While Ayauhasca has a reputation as a plant medicine and being above taint by virtue of its “indigenous and shamanic” origins, LSD is a different kind of beast. LSD’s origins are unabashedly corporate, synthetic and chemical. Synthesized by Albert Hoffman in the laboratories of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Sandoz in 1943 as a possible treatment for epilepsy, LSD had been widely and successfully used in therapeutic settings in the 1950s to treat anxiety and depression and is currently the subject of renewed academic and scientific research for these conditions. And now these contemporary anecdotal accounts on Reddit claiming that LSD was relieving users of their symptoms of eczema.

In hearing the stories of Rich and others like him, the question that rises is this: are psychedelics a wonder drug that can heal any ailment? What to make of all the stories of people whose cancer has gone into remission or whose heart problems are a thing of the past after a psychedelic session? Millions of people have taken LSD and ever-increasing thousands now tread a path to Peru to add Ayahuasca to their list of meaningful life experiences, but clearly not everyone is magically healed of their ills as this other thread on Reddit makes clear. It makes one wonder what roles the shaman and the patient’s intent itself play in the healing process. Rich himself insists that it was Norma and the spirit of Ayahuasca who healed him, both of his asthma and his eczema.

Western medicine mostly stands by as a bemused onlooker, unable to reconcile the unpredictable, seemingly inconsistent yet undeniable healing power of psychedelics into its rational worldview. Of course, reputable institutions like Harvard and Johns Hopkins are conducting pioneering FDA-approved trials of psychedelics as a cure for depression, anxiety, PTSD, substance addiction and more, hoping to provide much needed validation to these claims using scientific and statistical methods. But don’t expect your GP to prescribe a trip to Peru to heal you of your ailments, not just yet.

While we wait for science to validate the healing power of psychedelics, my recent conversation with school psychologist turned author Candice Sanderson may provide some clues as regards the underlying mechanisms at play. Some years ago, Candice had to undergo a bilateral thyroidectomy on her throat, where part of the thyroid organ was removed. Three months later she still couldn’t talk in more than a hoarse whisper and was diagnosed with a paralyzed right vocal cord. This situation prevailed until, quite by chance, she attended a week-long retreat at The Monroe Institute in Virginia, whose stated mission is to “help people create more meaningful and joyful lives through the guided exploration of expanded consciousness”. Using specially designed soundtracks that shift one into specific meditative, trance and dream-like states, Monroe’s multi-day retreats enable participants to achieve deep relaxation, spiritual insights, healing, and even travel out of body!

In Candice’s very first day at the retreat, as she went deep into meditation, none less than the Buddha appeared to her, saying “be absolutely silent for 24 hours and you will be healed”. Candice took this injunction to heart, refraining from even her now habitual whisper for the next day. On day 3, Candice found she could talk normally again. She had abruptly regained her normal tone and volume. As for her encounter with the Buddha, Candice has this to say “Monroe’s sound technology puts you in a space you can’t be in otherwise”. I suspect Rich would say the same about his blue jay friend and Ayahuasca.

What’s common to Rich and Candice’s healing experiences? Three major factors seem to have played a role:

· Quieting of the rational mind: For one, they both entered deeply meditative or trance-like states, one with the help of psychedelics, the other using Monroe’s binaural beat tracks. In such states the activity of our rational mind is inhibited, allowing access to the depths of our subconscious minds. In the language of neuroscience, the activity of a set of brain areas called the Default Mode Network (DMN) subsides, while that of the Left Frontal Parietal Network (LFPN) increases, as shown in fMRI scans of Buddhist monks performed at western research institutions

· Reprogramming of the sub-conscious mind: Equally important, both Rich and Candice at some point in their inward journeys set a strong intent to heal. Such intent setting, common to many meditative techniques, can reprogram deeply held subconscious beliefs especially when the rational mind – “the chattering monkey mind” as Rich calls it – doesn’t get in the way with its usual skepticism, nay saying and denial. It is plausible that at some deep level, this reprogramming works on the mind-body connection that is a component of so many health issues.

· The Wildcard factor: Both Rich and Candice were in a supportive setting during their respective experiences. In the unfamiliar surroundings of the Peruvian jungle, Rich had to put his faith in Norma, the shaman. In indigenous medicine, the role of the shaman goes beyond emotional support. While he can’t put words to it, Rich knows in his bones that a large part of his healing is due to Norma and the blue jay. And while the Monroe Institute is a far more familiar space to many of us than the Amazon and provides an environment where retreat participants feel safe and cared for, the Buddha himself was the catalyst for Candice’s remarkable recovery.

While science will take years to unravel the mechanisms of such healing, it makes sense that just as the body can manifest disease in response to chronic mental stress, it can also heal itself when one is able to tap deep into the subconscious mind. Rich believes that in addition to the genetic components to his asthma and eczema, he was in part “thinking himself into inflammation”. Will science ever be able to make sense of Rich’s encounter with the blue jay? Or Candice’s encounter with the Buddha? As Rich puts it, people can’t want psychedelic medicine without a psychedelic worldview. And as unsatisfactory as that response is to the rational mind, it may be the best answer we have for now.