The Night I Disappeared in Costa Rica

The Peru Chronicles | Season 1 | Part 1

Tangled roots.

A plant-medicine ceremony followed me home.

Read the series in order here: The Peru Chronicles.

Before we get into Peru, I need to start in Costa Rica. This begins with the night that changed the trajectory of everything that came after. Peru was the attempt to fix what that night sped up.

One thing up front. I’ve sat with this medicine many times since. This isn’t about ayahuasca being “bad.” It’s about one ceremony in a setting that didn’t feel safe, and what it set in motion for me. This is also just my experience. I know some people love this style of ceremony and feel held by it. I didn’t.

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The first time I drank ayahuasca, there was nowhere to hide.

It was 2018, in Costa Rica, in a huge open-air maloca, packed with people in white linen. I’d heard all the usual things people say about these ceremonies: darkness, quiet, introspection, surrender.

This wasn’t that.

The lights were bright. Like, bright bright. No shadows to disappear into. Just full exposure.

We weren’t seated like you’d expect, either. I wasn’t on a mat tucked into a corner. I was on the floor on a towel laid over hard stone. To my right was a long line of men stretched toward the wall. Cade, my husband, was about ten spots down. Close enough that I could see him, but far enough that I couldn’t reach him if I needed to.

And the vibe in the room… it didn’t feel gentle.

They separated men and women, on opposite sides, facing each other. The women seemed calm, swaying softly, almost like they were in a trance. The men were something else. They were jumping and stomping, this loud masculine energy that kept escalating. It made my whole body tighten. I didn’t feel held by the room. I felt pinned inside it.

And I should say something clearly here.

This wasn’t an indigenous-led ceremony. This wasn’t a lineage I was stepping into with reverence and trust. This was mostly westerners following a guy with a beard as their leader.

There wasn’t a shaman the way people usually mean when they talk about ayahuasca. There was a group of people who were elevated somehow, seated in the inner circle, leading the ceremony like an exclusive club.

I didn’t have the language for it back then, but my body knew something was off. It didn’t feel grounded. It didn’t feel protected. It felt like a performance pretending to be something older and wiser than it actually was.

And then there were the kids.

There were teenagers drinking the medicine. Two boys directly in front of me, who couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen, drank it. There were other children there too, not drinking, but present. Even little ones. They had places set up around the perimeter where kids could sleep, because the ceremony runs til the sun comes up.

I’m not telling you how to feel about any of that. I’m telling you how I felt.

It didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel safe. And I didn’t know what was going to happen next.

So when the cup came around, I took it, but I didn’t exhale. I didn’t soften. I didn’t surrender.

I stayed on high alert.

The medicine was thick, earthy and bitter, like old roots and fermented wine. And once it started to take hold, the room shifted fast.

My hands began to throb. My face burned. My chest tightened.

Men around me were shouting and jumping like they were having the time of their lives. The singing and the music weren’t soothing. They weren’t guiding people inward. They were driving the room forward, louder and louder, like something was building.

And then the man seated directly next to me collapsed. His face contorted, and his body went rigid. It looked like a full-on seizure.

Panic shot through me so fast it was like being dunked in ice water. I looked around for help, expecting staff to rush in.

Instead, they calmly smiled and said, “He is safe.”

And then they added, like this was comforting: “He is likely having the most amazing experience.”

I remember looking at him, then looking back at the smiling guides, and my brain just… couldn’t make those two images fit together.

If that was an amazing experience, I wanted no part of it.

So I fought.

I fought the medicine with everything I had. I locked my eyes on Cade down the row, terrified that if I looked away he would wander off into the jungle and disappear, because that’s what my brain does when it’s scared. It tries to control the uncontrollable.

And the thing is… Cade actually did disappear a couple of times. Not spiritually. Literally. He’d get up and be gone.

We’d been explicitly told not to go looking for someone if they left the maloca. “Don’t follow them,” they said, like that was a normal thing to say to a room full of people on a powerful hallucinogen.

Once the medicine hit, I couldn’t rationalize anything. I could barely move. My brain went straight to: Someone took him.

Of course, he’d just gone to the bathroom. But in that moment, it wasn’t “of course.” It was fear.

Then came the warmth. I could smell it. A sudden damp heat spreading underneath me.

The shame hit immediately.

My body had purged in the least pleasant way. Under those bright lights, in that room full of strangers, I felt completely exposed, like there was nowhere to go that didn’t feel humiliating.

I managed to stumble outside to the toilets, my coordination gone. A man rushed over and wrapped me in a blanket, and he handed me a pair of pants.

“You’re going to need these,” he said gently. “Don’t worry. You’re safe.”

He was kind. But he was wrong. I wasn’t safe.

Not inside that room.
Not inside my own body.
Not inside my own mind.

I had opened a door I didn’t know how to close.

— R. Michael

If you have thoughts or questions, I’d really love to hear from you in the comments. I read every one.

Want to keep going? The Peru Chronicles.

Quick note for context, since this topic can bring out a lot of strong opinions.

Everything I’m sharing here is just my personal experience, from inside my own body and nervous system. I’m not speaking for the medicine, for a tradition, or for anyone else’s ceremony. I also know firsthand that people can sit in the exact same setting and walk away with completely different experiences.

My goal with this series isn’t to make a claim or start a debate. It’s to tell the truth about what happened to me, and what it changed for me, as honestly as I can.