What Pants Might Ayahuasca Wear?

Photo by Denise Chan

Writing about psychedelic experience is swinging back into style. The taboo set down in the 70’s is lifting, in large part riding the wave of Michael Pollan’s recent book.

Taboos indicate dust swept under the cultural rug, an artificial cleanliness necessary for maintaining status quos. Lifting them is vital for progress, in any holistic sense of the term.

As Alan Watts notes:

“For there is always something taboo, something repressed, unadmitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one’s eye because a direct look is too unsettling.” (The Book)

The taboo on psychedelic experience is derivative of a larger secret — that consciousness is a vast, unexplored labyrinth with rooms whose dimly lit contents may threaten how we organize our lives, our societies, and even our-selves.

Ayahuasca & I

Following suit, the best way I can think to convey my recent experience with ayahuasca, which felt like a taste of what is known more generally by long-term meditators as ‘pure consciousness’, is through a crude metaphor involving unpleasantly tight pants.

Sometimes, when faced with a social function where my presentation is sure to be superficially scrutinized, I’ll put on a particular pair of light khaki corduroy pants. In these I…