Julia my guess is it is fairly rare for there to be a “response to a response” — but in you touched on a passionate opinion I have about “the average American public”.

We know our bodies are one of the most sophisticated pharmacies on the face of the earth. This is a unarguable fact of science — we can connect a human volunteer to research blood analysis equipment and measure a plethora of physiological and psychoactive drugs that will be produced based on stimuli. I’ve never taken Ayahuasca but my guess this is one of the ways it “works with each individual”. I’m not discounting the mystical or spiritual component just postulating at the rudimentary science level that each person brings their own unique chemical signature.

What is my point in this, where am I going with this line of reasoning? My conviction is that we, the American public, are drug addicts regardless of whether or not we ingest “foriegn” substances. When politicians, social media, podcast producers, media in general, religious zealots, radio talk show hosts or Hollywood (etc.) “punch buttons” of fear, outrage, satisfaction, optimism, control, patriotism, injustice, respect for authority, nostalgia, pride, affection (on and on, the whole range) there is a psychological action going on that is a weak shadow of the Ayahuasca experience. As Americans we are so addicted and so unreflective that we don’t even do the 5 minutes of breathing exercises to observe our addictions (and I am not immune). Absent something like you have walked through, what William James would call a “Spiritual Experience” we are clueless wandering around in dark houses of consciousness and unconsciousness without even a candle.

I believe your article and shared experience, along with as you say thousands more, is our hope of making progress as contrasted with a dystopian spiral descent into a self induced haze of irrational and untethered soulless dark abyss.