It Was Not Childhood Bullying, It Was Attempted Murder.

And an Ayahuasca ceremony helped me remember it.

11 min readNov 28, 2020

It was during the last Ayahuasca journey that I remembered the terror from my childhood bullying experience.

Before that, I only remembered the “fact” of it. Kind of like how I know Mars exists, but I don’t know what life on Mars feels like. Likewise, I didn’t remember what it felt like to be almost choked to death.

I retained some memory of the before — me, in my new dress, hoping to make friends at a new school. Innocent child words were said, but I don’t remember what they were. Then there was him, a 9-year-old boy fueled by rage and hatred as he lunged and wrapped his fingers around my neck.

I also remembered the after, me with my head buried in my arms, watching tears and snot gather on my elementary school desk.

Somewhere between the before and after was the actual choking. But up until now, I hadn’t remembered what it felt like or whether I’d been conscious.

I do know that everything changed in me from that day forward. Whoever I’d been before was blown away like a Tibetan sand mandala, built and destroyed in a short time.

I also know who I became after the incident — unfocused, day-dreamer, unmotivated, false. I carried this false self forward to junior high then high school, where any number of personas could fit. As a teenager, I landed on whatever false persona that pleased the adults around me.

But of course, in my 30’s, my false self fell apart, as they always do. Somewhere buried in there was the girl I’d been before the trauma, and she needed to be seen, heard, and validated. So I embarked on a journey to find her again, which led me to Ayahuasca.

Many have said that they’ve cured themselves with Ayahuasca. And indeed, after almost 50 ceremonies, I found some insight, quit drinking alcohol, and reduced my depression from a raging fire to smoldering coal. But in all that time, I still hadn’t remembered those moments during the choking.

That was until I came to Colombia and worked with a prominent indigenous curandero (healer). This ceremony felt different from the beginning. It was something in the eyes of the curandero; like he had one foot in this reality and the other in some unseen world.

Until then, I’d only done ceremonies with a western curandero. And unfortunately, for all his 15 years of training, he could never grasp the depth of the ancestral knowledge one needs to traverse such terrifying psychic territory.

This ceremony also differed because we sat on top of sacred ancient terraces once used for prayer and reverence by the long-lost Tayronas of a pre-conquered Colombia. All of it sent chills up my spine, and I knew I was in for it.

When it was time to drink, I explained to the curandero that I was particularly sensitive to the medicine, so I didn’t need a big dose. He nodded and proceeded to fill my cup to the top of the rim. I shuddered — but then his eyes — something in me decided to trust.

It was only 20 minutes or so before the medicine hit my bloodstream, and a barrage of nonsensical objects came flooding into my view. Then, I felt something break, and the visions became dark and overwhelming.

Suffocating.

Before I knew it, I was curled in a ball, struggling to breathe and calling out for help. Two people came to sit by me; they felt like angels coming to my rescue. I held their hand, needing to be assured I wouldn’t fall off some unseen cliff.

Then, I saw the curandero’s eyes in the surrounding jungle amongst a sea of human and animal shapes. It was like he had an army of ancestors and spirit guides helping him. In turn, they were helping me. Then I heard a voice, “let it happen; this needs to come out of your body.”

I purged in every way one can purge — vomit, tears, sweating, near-screams, uncontrollable shaking.

My throat — was it swollen or bleeding? I wasn’t sure. But I felt that my lungs were struggling to take in oxygen. My angel friends, who held my hands, told me I was okay; I was breathing fine, but I felt sure I was about to die.

With Ayahuasca, the lines between what’s real and what isn’t can often become blurred. In my psychedelic mind, I gasped like someone on their deathbed, cheyne-stoking my way through what seemed like an hour.

The terror was overwhelming, but the thing is, it wasn’t new to me. Because in those death-defying hours of ceremony, I relived the nightmare of that boy’s hands around my throat.

Photo by Charl Folscher on Unsplash

The choking had indeed gone far enough to render me unconscious. And during those blacked out moments, I experienced the primal desire to survive and the utter sadness of losing control of that. At 9 years old, I experienced the animalistic horror of being hunted and killed.

What does a person do when they’re almost murdered as a child? How do they go on? Thankfully, to protect me from such life-shattering trauma, my mind blocked the whole thing out.

I had always labeled this event — childhood bullying — instead of the assault and attempted murder that it was. After all, we were children. How can a child almost murder a child?

But because I was so young and my nervous system was more pliable, I could package it as innocent bullying, put it on the shelf, and move on.

Of course, there are always unforeseen costs for this kind of event. We don’t stay pliable — we age, become more rigid. And unfortunately, trauma doesn’t stay on the shelf forever. In our adult years, traumas fester and bubble up like lava. Then they pour into whatever cracks seem loose or weak, like the delicate fibers of nerve cells, bone and muscle, large intestine, blood, and brains.

The trauma returned in my neck — quite fitting, I’d say. Those fingers are still there, choking off my carotids, which are now twisted by a disease called fibromuscular dysplasia.

Those fingers, still crushing my neck bones with arthritis. The surrounding muscles, so tense with a primal survival instinct, that they feel indistinguishable from bone.

Those fingers, still squeezing out the life force, pushing blood up into my head as I suffer over and over with profound life-altering migraines.

These are not just headaches. These are neurological events so confusing that they make me remember the psychedelic imagery of that ceremony. Colored lights, fingers zagging across my vision, shadows moving in the corner of my room. Shadows that lunge across an elementary classroom with the intent to kill.

They call it a prolonged migraine aura as I live with it every single day. Sometimes I look for patterns and messages in the lights and shadows. Maybe I’m clairvoyant, or perhaps I’m just hallucinating, and he’s still there lurking in the shadows of my mind.

These days, I’m no longer aware of the pain in my head, just like I wasn’t aware of the terror of almost dying. Our nervous systems are so adept at making the unbearable — bearable. There’s a reason we forget these things.

Except that the body never forgets.

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

And I wonder how the costs of this attempted murder have added up. Certainly, my medical bills are substantial. But then I wonder about the core of me, the essence of self left on that school desk with my tears and snot.

Who could I have been if the creation of me wasn’t blown away on that day? Who have I hurt in the process of living with such a thing? And how many years of life were lost to addiction and all the ways my body tried to forget? I’ll never know.

But as a child, I learned something that takes most people their whole lifetime to learn — nothing is certain. That may sound gloomy, but I assure you, this was the only gift I received from this event.

Because when the shit hits the fan (especially in 2020), I remember that certainty was never promised to any of us. In fact, trying to avoid and fix moments of uncertainty may be our worst quality as humans. It’s what makes us irritable and angry. At best we become stoic in our pain. At worst, we unleash it on ourselves and others.

We want everything to be light, love, and endless abundance. We chase and pursue until we’re so damn frustrated that we blow up. Like children who can’t get what they want, so they do things like — choke another person.

Let’s not forget how children are always watching.

I’d like to forgive that kid as well as the other kids who did nothing. I’d also like to forgive a world in which these kinds of things happen. It’s amazing how we humans are prone to feeding off the hyped energy of abuse and violence. We do love a good gladiator fight, don’t we? Especially when the victim dares to speak up about the pain.

So while I don’t know about forgiveness, I’m grateful that I can accept uncertainty. Because thankfully, even though you can’t rely on good things remaining forever, you also can’t count on bad things remaining either.

Nothing — not the good or the bad — is absolute.

In fact, you can count on uncertainty more than anything else in this world. And every time I reflect on this truth, my body softens, and the fingers loosen somewhat.

These days, as I integrate the new memories, I notice that I’m taking deep breaths more often. I’m doing it even now — feeling my rib cage expand, massaging all the muscles of my throat, stomach, and torso. Breathing up into my pounding head. It feels like life flowing in my vessels. My body is reminded that we are in the ‘here and now’ and not in that classroom.

It feels like healing.

It Was Not Childhood Bullying, It Was Attempted Murder.

And an Ayahuasca ceremony helped me remember it.

Written by Sokinabanu