Ron White's Ayahuasca Experience

Well, do you want me to tell you about the ayahuasca experience? Oh, yeah, sure. How much do you remember? Well, you know, I remember how I found out about it, which is weird because it was a friend of mine's wife, but I'd heard that ayahuasca word before and so I knew a very, very little bit about it. So then I started kind of researching it. What is it? Where does it come from? It's a strong hallucinogen, which I've always had a tendency to like anyway, so I thought it sounded like it was right up my alley. But for a long time, you had to get on a canoe and go down and find a corrugated tin shack and sleep on a dead floor. And so it wasn't very appealing to a lot of people. So the guy that opened the place, he had money and he said he bought part of a like a JW Marriott Beach Resort, where he bought their overflow area, which was not on the beach, but in the jungle with a big fence. Fucking howler monkeys, the most useless animal in the world. They scream at the top of their lungs. Other monkeys must just hate them. You know, can you tone it down a little bit? How, how, how. So I thought, well, I'm signing up for that. And I'll use that to get off liquor because a lot of people do come away from there with a different perspective, right? Which I did. And, but then they, I was honest with them about how much I drank and they go, oh no, you can't come here. You, we don't want you to come in here and getting into DTs. That's not where we're not a detox facility and we're not set up for it. So you have to have 14 days of sobriety before you come here. And I'm like, fuck, right? I don't know if I could do that or not. Because I was drinking so much. And then I knew about this guy that was a hypnotist in Marina del Rey, I think is kind of where's, that's not it. It's whatever one of the coastal towns down there. And my assistant Anthony had a worked for a guy that had a lot of problems and went to this guy and quit all of them. And so I'm like, well, I could go over there and see how that works. So I went over there and his office was in his garage. He was the least impressive human being I've ever met. And they had a Brown wig that was on crooked. And I don't know if that was part of it that you get focused on, dude, what's up with your wig? And that maybe got you off beat a little bit. And then he had a tall glass of water with no ice in it. And he took these little tiny sips out of it. Now, I don't know if that was part of the setup or not. But the garage thing was like a velour recliner that had to have been 30 years old and it wasn't well kept or anything. And so I sat in there and then he just talked about, you know, kind of what was going on with my body and all this liquor that I was pouring into it and kind of like how your heart and your lungs and your kidney like to work together to keep you living. And I've had an all out assault on all three of them for 50 years and then, you know, whatever. And so he got through with the first session and he would put me under and I would go under that's for sure. And because he'd have to snap me out of it. And I was just sitting there conscious of everything he was saying, but in whatever hypnotic state for sure. So he was good at that. And obviously, it was kind of weird because he said, imagine you're on the 22nd floor of a building and you're getting on the elevator. And it's kind of weird because I live on the 22nd floor of a building. He didn't know that, but odd. And so I finished the first session. He says, okay, don't quit drinking. I'm like, great, great. I like this program. So I came back and I thought maybe it was four sessions over a period of a month. And so, but after the second one, I quit drinking and I was just waiting for the shoe to fall, you know, I was waiting to start getting sick off of not drinking and, and it didn't happen. And it really didn't bother me not to drink. And it was set up for as soon as I was finished with that, I'd go straight to, to South or whatever. Whatever that pill I took, Costa Rica. And, and I checked into this place and it was really, really nice. You can go, you can, where you can share a room with somebody, which they recommend that experience with somebody you don't know. But I didn't want to do that. So you can also get your own room and it's not overly expensive compared to rehab in Malibu, you know, which I reprised at a hundred grand for 30 days. What? A hundred grand, three grand a night. And they recommended a minimum of 30 days. And, and that was on the street I lived on in Beverly Hills up at the top of it. And so this is like, you could do this for like, if you share a room with somebody for like, like 1800 bucks for a week. And mine was like five grand, but I had a nice room and it was, you know, really nice place. They cooked all your food and it was healthy, but it was really good. You know, it was a no soda pop, no alcohol, no, you know, a lot of shit I wouldn't advertise if I was trying to get people to go down there. And, but, you know, pineapple juice and coconut water, fucking great. And so the, you get down there and you had a group of about 50 people, I think was in our group that were, and they, everybody has their own room, but then there's this one space where everybody gets together for this experience of Vyahuasca. So there's 50 mattresses on the floor that have, you know, really nice sheets and pillows and blankets and they're on the floor. And it's very ceremonial in that, you know, there's a guy, a shaman that looks like a shaman, feathers and shit. And you stand in line with your little cup and he gives you a cup of this mud, awful taste and stuff. And I did mine and I just talked to him like his regular person. And I said, so what do you do? And he says, well, outside there was a bunch of hammocks. It was beautiful space really couldn't have been any better. And the hammocks all around. He goes, go out there and sit in a hammock and whenever you need to, when it's time, you just come back in. I said, how do I know when it's time? He goes, oh, you'll know. I was like, okay. All right. So I took my Vyahuasca and went out there and I'm like, oh, it's kind of like mushrooms a little bit. I felt myself coming onto it. And then, and then I opened my mouth and the entire forest poured into it. And I'm like, that's probably the signal right there that it's time to go in. I think I get it. So I went in and I laid down on my bunk. Now some people throw up on it. So you have a puke bucket too, but some people get the shits. I got the shits. Vomiting is way better because you can vomit from your bed. But if you got the shits, you got to get up and find some place. There's bathrooms, a lot of them. So, but I never thought I'd see people throwing up in a bucket and go, lucky. I wish I was throwing up, but I've now got the shits. And so I laid down and I tripped so hard and it was really dark and they said, lean towards the dark side. So if there's a rainbow and a unicorn, and then there's a guy you don't understand in your yard, go that, go towards the dark guy in the yard. Don't hop on the unicorn and jump over the rainbow. Go the other way and don't fight it. Just let it happen. But I think I just struggled with it the first night. And I was getting really distorted images of people's faces when they got close to me. And I was tripping so hard that it was like my head was itching and I just couldn't figure it out, you know, how to make my head stop itching. And I thought about scratching it, but I wasn't exactly sure how to use my hands anymore. And somebody walked by and I asked him to scratch my head and they're like, yeah, sure. Like this. Oh, that's it. That's it. That's good. And I really thought towards the end of that, that I wouldn't do it again because I just didn't see the benefit of it. You know, it scared me. It didn't scare me, but it wasn't pleasant at all. You know, like it went like mushrooms and it wasn't like acid to me. It wasn't. And you could almost see somebody's skull when they were too close to you. And it was, I just wanted to be over. And the beautiful thing about ayahuasca is it is over. I mean, it only goes for like two hours. And when it, when it's done, it's done. And so they time it so you can do more. You could do all you want, but not past a certain point. And then it's at one point, they turn on the lights and go good morning. And it's over. You know, you can't just go home, go back to your room and go to sleep real fast, but it's over. All those things are gone. It gets out of your system completely so fast. And then there's, you know, there's music, there's a live band or, you know, people in congos and guitars and shit. So it's funky. And some people are, even while I was in my wildest point of this trip, they were up just dancing around the room. I'm like, Jesus Christ, how are you doing this? I don't understand. And so I thought, and I think that's about enough, right? And then the next, by the next day, once I got out of it, and then people would kind of sit around and share their experiences and whatever. And I was into the whole thing. And I was really trying to surrender myself to the experience, you know, I was trying to do what they were asking me to do and get the whole ride, you know. And so the next night I went in and he gave me, it was a different shaman every night. And he gave me about half a cup. And I said, the other person gave me a whole cup of this. And he said, yeah, the mother Ayahuasca said to give you the night off and tone it down for you. And he, I don't know if he talked to the other guy, I don't know why he said that. But so I took that dose and I went outside and I sat for, and I noticed it had been a while, a while and it started coming on to me. And, and, and I just felt this over pouring of love. I mean, it was just amazing for everything. I felt it just filling my body with just love and happiness. And so that night I was really just digging on the music, got up and danced. Everybody wears white. And I thought it, I didn't know why at first, but that's so they can't see you. They can see you sneaking off to your room to get some smokes. Because they busted me doing that the first night. I was like trying to creep away. I didn't know you could smoke out here. But so the, that was great. And afterwards, I really felt a just deep connection to the whole place. You know, it felt like this was, you know, a journey that was, you know, designed for me, you know, because I just felt wonderful about myself, about decisions I was making, about the direction I was headed in my life and all this stuff. And then the next night was a bigger dose. And I went back and got a bigger dose and went back and got another dose and just rode it out and fucking loved it. And it was really just that first. And he said that the first night was kind of a death and the second night was kind of a rebirth. And I'm like, okay, whatever. So the last night, you started at like seven, I think, and it's over at 1230. That experience. And then the last night, you start at five and it goes till 10 o'clock the next day. So you do smaller doses, but you do them all night long. And that was really groovy for me. But this one chick completely wigged out. And I mean, kicking, screaming, yelling, really unpleasant. And they had to take her outside and tie her up before she hurt somebody. And I thought, why aren't these guys wigging out over this? Because I am, you know, because it looked like she was going to hurt somebody or hurt herself and they were having a hard time controlling her. And she didn't even know that it was an Ayahuasca place. She thought it was a yoga place and her husband signed her up for it. Now she had done Ayahuasca three other nights and was fine, but this time she just fucking lost it. And so they took her outside and they just bound her up and they stayed with her. And, but here's the thing. When it's over, it's over. And even though everybody was really concerned about her, she came back in with the biggest smile on her face. And she had some demons and she needed to work through it. And it was horrible. And I know what it was that happened to her because they told me and it was awful, awful, awful. So some stuff from her past. Some stuff from her past. Horrible, I wouldn't say. And so she went from, who knows what and what place she was in to the biggest smile I've ever seen. And she worked through whatever it was. And so, and then I met some friends down there. They got married the next morning. We'd been up all night and you know, some ceremony thing, but I was just into it, you know. And then Jeannie, my girlfriend came out and then I was going to stay for two weeks and I decided not to. So I'm going to go back another week and do it again. When are you going to go back? I don't know. I haven't decided. My schedule is so packed now. I can't even find a spot for it. And then I'm going to do stand up for one more year and then I'm going to retire. Watch the entire episode for free only on Spotify.