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<\/a><\/p>\nWhen I arrived in Mexico for my first three ayahuasca ceremonies, I had a checklist of questions to address: What repressed childhood memories were shaping who I was? Why did I hate my mother so much? Could I stop lying? What was wrong with lying if I didn\u2019t get caught? So, I was surprised that after my first sip sunk in, the face to appear in my mind\u2019s eye belonged not to my partner or my mother or my father but Dutch, the publicist for Houston\u2019s <\/span>Day for Night<\/span><\/a> music and art festival. And accompanying his image was the message: Receive love and you\u2019ll learn to give it<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n Three months prior, I broke it to Dutch that after two years of covering Day for Night, I\u2019d have to miss it. My ayahuasca retreat overlapped with the first two days. But he wouldn\u2019t take \u201cno\u201d for an answer. He said he\u2019d convince the shamans to hold a special, non-overlapping retreat just for me. He asked for the website so he could contact them. He was actually serious. <\/span><\/p>\n His idea was absurd, but it was also full of love. Love I couldn\u2019t feel. I could only feel guilt for not coming. Yet another obligation. I hated being tied to others. <\/span><\/p>\n A few weeks later, he apologized for making me feel guilty. It wasn’t about the press coverage \u2014 he just wanted to see me. So, I asked if he could fly me there even if I missed the first half. He pulled some strings and got me credentialed. And when I didn\u2019t like the flights he proposed, he pulled more strings and got different ones. I\u2019d come in time for the second night, stay for the third day and a few extra days, then fly to Boston to make a meeting. <\/span><\/p>\n They say ayahuasca stays in your system for as long as you follow the \u201cdieta,\u201d a sugar-free, salt-free, alcohol-free, dairy-free, caffeine-free diet aimed at bringing out the medicine\u2019s effects. But I wouldn\u2019t know. The moment I got off the water taxi from the retreat, I ordered an iced cappuccino with extra milk. Fuck the dieta<\/em>, I thought. Fuck rules.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Yet I swear that as I flew to Houston, the insights kept streaming. \u201cDutch, you\u2019ve done it again,\u201d I thought as I entered my five-star hotel room. The love in his actions sunk in. Maybe being tied to others wasn’t so bad.<\/span><\/p>\n I barely felt the ayahuasca my first two ceremonies. The shamans kept me at a lower dose than others; it was their intuition. During the third ceremony, I got fed up with feeling nothing, and in the dark, when the shaman offering seconds (to everyone but me) said “who’s this?” I said the name of the woman next to me.<\/p>\n This time, I felt it, and my body came alive. I realized how dead I’d been, how checked out. My goal from then on: to check in to life. <\/span><\/p>\n After that, the people on the retreat told me I was looking them in the eye for the first time. I had no idea I wasn\u2019t before. But as I walked through Day for Night’s festival grounds, it became clear something had changed. I was holding people\u2019s gazes. I wasn\u2019t spacing out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One man who met my eyes followed me to the art installations upstairs. \u201cI just had to say I think you\u2019re gorgeous,\u201d he said. I was careful not to mention my boyfriend as we flirted and left the festival for a drink. As it turns out, ayahuasca is not a magic p<\/span>otion that cleans up your behavior. <\/span><\/p>\n The irony of doing what you love for work is that once it becomes work, you start to love it less. In 2015, Day for Night became the first music festival I covered. Wandering its six acres of art installations, I felt like a child in a funhouse. But then, festivals became exhausting. An obligation. <\/span><\/p>\n Despite reaching for a new, hyper-connected way of being, I felt numb to the festival’s excitement. I tried checking in to The Album Leaf\u2019s show. I heard drums and a guitar and a violin, but still no emotion. Thoughts like \u201cYou should see Solange; she\u2019s Beyonce\u2019s sister\u201d filled my head. I keenly felt the joylessness in these statements. I remembered why I\u2019d begun taking MDMA at festivals. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n