Original subtitles

I am the Shaman.

I can't tell you the reason,

or even the day I knew something was wrong.

Was it stress? A few genes on a strand of my DNA?

A virus? Was it all of those things? None of them?

You hate yourself.

And you hate yourself for hating so much.

It's very difficult for me to accept that this is where I am.

I feel like I need to create some sort of meaning out of it.

I want to love and be loved. I just miss the emotional capacity.

I want to feel again.

I grew up in a small, affluent town outside of Boston.

When I first arrived at a school like this,

I thought I was on the brink of making it.

I thought I was on the brink of finding it with a capital "I,"

because I was going to the best school in the country.

And that to be a guarantee that I was on the right track.

That's what I thought in my head. Uh, the reality was very different.

The school has a motto, which is Non Sibi which is "not for one's self,"

and that's a motto I truly believe in.

But in practice, despite the prestige and the wealth that is here,

we're acting like animals. Even if it is with a bow-tie.

Kids are under a lot more pressure, um, than they used to be.

Uh, I don't think that their role in life is as clear.

If you were to ask me what pushed him over the edge, I would say

he needed to perform at the highest level, that he needed to get the academic degrees

in order to consider himself successful.

When I started feeling terrible, I started pushing myself

in ways that my body and mind couldn't sustain.

I did what society told me to do, I did what my parents told me to do,

and by age 21, 22...

uh... I was dead.

Just parking the car up to the side of this bridge

and looking down at these railroad tracks, and uh...

Just thinking, you know...

just actually, just finding great relief in... in the idea that, you know,

I could, like, end the pain of what I've gone through.

I remember... I remember thinking two thoughts.

One was, "Thank God you can buy guns at Wal-Mart in America."

And the other one was, "I think if I did it I'd put my neck on..."

"On the railroad tracks."

The greatest concern was that he might be so depressed that he'd hurt himself.

Kill himself. And so psychiatrists at M.G.A. decided it would be

appropriate for him to be admitted to McLean's.

I'm so convinced my life is over,

I actually elected to have electro-convulsive therapy...

um, which actually happens right over here.

A metal rod attached to your head and they give you a shock

and you get a seizure, and, uh...

it can lift depressive symptoms or even schizophrenic symptoms.

It's one of the methods of last resort.

Essentially is like rebooting your computer

when you can't get it to work, it's stuck.

And you just turn everything off and you reboot it, and...

at times in the human brain when you do that

you can actually effectively recover from a severe depression.

If you've experienced depression, you know, I'm not just a little bit sad.

I wake up every day, you know,

just feeling like, just hell.

Non-drug therapy seem to engage him in any way.

Cognitive behavioral therapies and the group interactions,

uh, he just wasn't interested or felt they weren't productive at all.

James at one point really turned around

and felt that the whole psychiatric institution

had harmed him.

That the drugs had given him might have permanently damaged him.

I'm not prepared to feel this way for the rest of my life, and, uh...

You know, I just hope maybe I can...

I can find a way to...

you know crawl my way or begin to crawl my way out of it.

So I give myself ten months.

And, if nothing's changed after that,

I kind of feel like...

you know, I have a right to kill myself.

I've... I'll give myself a license to... to kill myself.

911. Do you need fire, medical or police?

We have a code yellow here, missing patient known as James Freeman,

his parents have been informed, how should we proceed?

I just got out of the hospital. Um, I'm not going back.

I just don't feel like anything that's going on in there is helping me.

I read about ayahuasca in National Geographic

I heard it has helped people with depression.

I just decided to come to Iquitos

and start looking for someone who can help me out.

A center or a shaman,

an individual or just anyone who knows what they're doing

and who I think is well-intentioned, someone I can trust.

The shamans down here have been using ayahuasca for thousands of years.

I'm skeptical about shamanism and spirit and keeping my fingers crossed.

Take a sip.

Come out. Would you like ayahuasca, man?

Ayahuasca, many visions. It's OK, it will clean your life.

If you want to change. Ayahuasca, good price, my man.

The path is closed, but we can open it for you.

I did a treatment for three and a half months.

In 115 days I cured AIDS.

Christ presented himself twice

during ceremony and told me...

"What you are drinking, I drank at the Last Supper."

People are trying to sell me all sorts of things, plants, medicine.

And they're telling me they can cure whatever.

There's definitely a business side to what's going on down here.

I'm not looking for God, I'm not looking for spirit,

I'm not looking for any of that.

I feel like it's going to take something miraculous to heal me.

Everyone I meet is really enamored with Guillermo,

singing his praises, this is the best shaman.

You know, here's this magical man that's going to save your life.

I demonstrate what love,

tranquility and interior peace is.

I make human beings love

and value themselves.

Ayahuasca is a medium.

Not only to discover the light,

not only to discover the disease, but many other things.

Going to my first ayahuasca ceremony tonight.

I won't be able to drink it because I'm still weaning off my medication

and it could interact with the ayahuasca and that could be really dangerous.

Possibly even fatal.

Apparently the shamans can still do work on you

even if you're not drinking the medicine.

They use their songs, which they call icaros.

What exactly they are doing, I'm not entirely sure.

May Mother Ayahuasca guide your journey,

give you power, protection, wisdom,

discipline, and love.

He was going through something extraordinarily intense.

...became so strong that there should have been an intervention.

I searched for my flashlight.

I was curious to see what was actually happening.

It might have had something to do with the medicine he was taking.

Man, this... This is something else.

Someone should be checking.

He's beating himself.

Somebody please do something.

The was something going wrong. He had blood in his mouth.

Cause of death: Lung failure, brain failure.

Death by suffocation... that led

to cardiac arrest.

I'm all right, here it's always relaxed.

He insisted on getting ayahuasca

even though I told him not to drink it,

so I gave it to him.

I was sitting closest to him.

I walked by his dead body. I smelled what a dead body smells like.

I've never had anything like that happen to me in my life.

I was... I was incensed. You know, I was furious, that

the... people here had been negligent

in caring for the safety of this man.

This is supposed to be the perfect place,

Guillermo, the big shaman, the big healer.

Pretty shocked about what happened, and I've only been here a couple weeks.

Back to trying to find someone else.

In 64 years of Shamanism,

I haven't had one death.

I was not aware that somebody died in the ceremony next to James.

Who are these shaman, and are they legitimate or are they charlatans?

And who are the good ones and who are the bad ones?

Who are these people that we have never met

we... they have no credentials,

we have no way of finding anything out about them.

And they're giving our son

hallucinogenic drugs out away from civilization.

Any parent wonders what could we have done differently.

It is a black cloud that hangs over your head

every minute of every day.

You feel like you've damaged somebody you deeply love.

And you remember all the things you did that you wish now you'd done differently.

I ran in to some foreigners in town

who suggested that I check out an American.

I speak a little Spanish,

but having someone who speaks English might be really helpful.

So this is my treasure chest.

With this closet, plum full of bottles of ayahuasca,

it will have a value of almost, somewhere around $250,000.

The Ayahuasceros flood here.

This is like the gold mine of ayahuasca.

Many Ayahuasceros around this town that use their powers in very wrong ways.

People are much more concerned about making a dollar than helping someone.

The healing, the true healers are out there, but they're hard to find.

And the true healers don't... don't charge.

Every one of us foreigners living here are guilty

of exploiting these people, myself included.

Compared to what I pay for the medicine and what I sell it for,

I make very good money.

I've been a drug addict. I've had my problems with alcohol.

I spent seven months in prison.

I'm a high school dropout.

I get college professors.

Come and want to work with me and learn from me.

You know, I'm down here in the jungle with an ex-con who's a shaman,

who's been down here for 13 years.

He fights roosters on, you know, on the weekend.

A lot of people come and they see, "Ron, you fight roosters?"

And "You work with ayahuasca?"

"You're a shaman and you fight roosters?"

And I've told them, "Well, I'm also a spiritual warrior".

So this helps keep me in contact with my warrior spirit.

People don't have a real clear view on the whole spectrum of life and nature.

This is not someone who, five years ago, I would have taken seriously at all

because of my academic background.

You know, he was not successful by the standards that I define success.

Am I happy? I'm sick, dude. I'm really fucking sick.

It has nothing... It's not like, this is so frustrating.

Like, people can't understand this.

I look at a beautiful woman and I feel nothing.

I look at a sunset, I feel nothing.

I have no ambition. I have no desire other than to feel human again.

You know?

They plant their garden in the jungle, it's cut and slash.

So, before they can plant their garden,

you have to cultivate, you have to clear it first.

So they look at the human body the same way.

Before you can teach it, or before you can heal it,

first you have to clean it.

So, Ohey is a very strong purgative.

Pushes all the bad energy out of you.

But when it does that, you sort of, like, experience...

all that badness before it leaves.

And so the day you take it, it's just like,

it makes me feel like I'm back at step one.

And it's gotten a little bit easier, but, it's just... it's hard.

So I told James, I said, "It's not some place to come"

with a bedside manner, where I sit

and tell you everything's gonna be fine.

I talk to you all day. I tuck you in at night.

It's not this cushy-cushy stuff you're looking for.

"It's you do the work."

The real work is with the patient

and the medicine that they're working with.

In our western society, we are creating a lot of problems with these pills.

That we, and everybody is looking for the one pill.

I can just take this one pill and everything's fine.

It doesn't exist.

With our natural medicines, these things don't happen.

All the medication seemed to represent to me was,

was symptom management.

Was a... a kind of "go back to sleep, James, and get back into the game".

My husband and I, being physicians, um, had the privilege

to really know enough about the system to see what the flaws were.

The psychiatry division here is ranked the best in the United States. OK?

So, when I go and talk to the colleagues,

the chairman of the department and ask for a recommendation,

I'm expecting to get somebody

who's really, exceedingly confident in this field.

I had helped start a company, that was from a Rockefeller University scientist,

one's a Nobel Laureate, one's probably the leading neurobiologist in the country.

And I went to one of our board meetings

when James was at probably one of his really low points

and the Nobel Laureate for neuroscience, who started this company with me,

said, "Mason, you have to understand,

psychiatrists have no real understanding of how the brain works."

OK? And, he said,

"Our weapons, our tools, our therapies, they're so primitive,

because of our fundamental lack of understanding

of how the human brain works."

When these drugs came out, it gave psychiatry a sense

that they were like the other doctors that had good medicines.

And so they prescribe them a lot.

How many people do you know who've been on an anti-depressant for a year

who can come off it and stay off it?

The desire to do that is fueled by time, money, and the pharmaceutical industry.

There's no question that that is the case.

In the plant kingdom, when we take plant medicines for an illness,

it's not any one thing in that plant that heals the illness.

It's the combination of everything working together.

There is no magic bullet.

Just behind my family, my getting sick was hardest on Kate.

He was so funny and witty and outgoing.

But so smart and sensitive and intellectually curious

at the same time.

And... there was just... there was an instant connection between us.

He just... he made everyone around him a better person.

And he cared so deeply about the people in his life.

When we broke up, it was really hard for me.

She was the biggest person in my life.

I miss the person that I knew, and...

the way he made me feel, and...

now it's like sometimes talking to... like, a... a wall.

For somebody to just start dieting

and be able to jump in and do a diet for a month is very impressionable.

But he's very sincere in his work in wanting to get well.

I'm finally gonna give ayahuasca a go.

I've been cleaning my body.

I hope the medicine and the ceremony can help me understand

what's going on inside of me.

In the name of the Father, the Son

and the Holy Ghost, that always guides me.

Thank you, Dear Lord, for this day, for this night.

For the people who arrive to drink ayahuasca.

Thank you for all you give us Lord, amen.

I love James.

Medications... medications... medications...

I want to be healthy.

I feel nothing... I feel nothing...

...to feel human again.

Medications.

I didn't want to take the pills... I didn't want to take the pills...

...some traditional American medications.

I saw moments in my life...

as if there was just some mirror. Things I'd completely forgotten about.

Everything I've gone through has left an imprint somewhere inside of me.

I never had self-love.

I didn't know the source of love.

I didn't know how to find that wholeness.

That fulfillment, that completeness,

that feeling of well-being, of internal love.

The answers that society provided for me was that comes from a woman,

or that comes from being rich,

or that comes from being famous and liked by people and being popular.

I don't think those answers are true.

I've had to tell James I'm buying a new piece of land.

I'm going to be building a new camp.

I'm going to be very busy with this.

I'm not going to be able to give you the service that I've been giving you.

My parents used to call me sentimental.

I remember as child, even as a teenager,

feeling very connected to the people around

and emotions and music and all of these things.

I want all of those experiences back.

It's being human. I want to feel again.

Am I ever going to see my son again?

Could he disappear off into the Amazon?

Or kill himself,

or decide that he never wanted to come back to this country again?

I grew up in a military family.

My dad was an admiral in the Navy.

And, uh, the style of parenting was, "set the bar really high

and then be critical when it's not achieved".

I think James struggled with that,

because he was disorganized a bit as a kid.

I think, you know, he used to play soccer and he was the goalie

and he'd watch the butterflies go over and the ball would go by him sometimes.

I mean, he... He didn't focus on the tasks in front of him

in a way that Western society schools, other things, require you to do

to be successful by that criteria.

And, I always thought he just wasn't trying hard enough to do it.

I was driving him into seeing the world the way I saw the world

and he wasn't willing or able

or interested in seeing the world that way.

He had an idea of how it should go, how it is, how it will be.

And I think I was, I wasn't working in that... in that idea.

And instead of letting that idea bend, I think I ended up breaking.

And, instead of looking somewhere else...

You know, I...

Instead of...

Forgiveness is not something you just logically understand

and flip a switch.

You get hurt and it takes work to come out of.

But when that depression and that hurt and that anger,

that whole fucking thing goes so deep

that you can't even feel your own body any more, man...

I read books, I tried to understand why this happened.

I go. I go to therapy, I meditate, I try to do good things,

and I say, I tell my parents I love them, I swallow it even when I don't want to.

I do every single fucking thing! Every single thing.

I heard back at Guillermo's that there is

a Shipibo community living deeper in the forest.

And in that community, they have

many shamans who still practice without this business side of things,

where they heal because it's a calling.

I'd be working with Pepe.

I feel proud of my community.

I was born here and my family lives here.

People recognize me as a healer,

I'm happy to try and heal people from all their sufferings.

When I started to diet to become a shaman, I was also very sick.

Then one night, the spirit of ayahuasca visited me.

She told me I would become a shaman.

Until now we never trusted foreigners

because of fear.

Now we open the doors of our community.

We prepare the flower bath

by extracting the different medicinal plants.

The energy of the plants penetrates and affects the deepest cells of the body.

It cleans it from anxiety, tension or any bad energy.

According to them, this bath is...

going to revitalize me and clean me of bad energy.

And provide nourishment on some level to my nervous system.

I've walked around really thinking I know a lot,

and if any of what they are saying is true down here,

then maybe I know really, really little.

I'm just trying to keep an open mind and not be judging any of this.

And... I think there's a part of me that maybe

believes that that itself is healing.

For me, James has good insight,

he understands everything we talk about.

They're brewing ayahuasca today.

I've been told by Pepe it's actually the plants that approached them

and communicated to them how to make this brew.

The fact that these two plants in a jungle that has

tens if not hundreds of thousands of different species of plants

have been selected and put together is amazing.

We head in to the Maloka, which is the ceremonial space

and we are presented with a cup of ayahuasca

and it is just the foulest tasting thing I've ever had.

The shamans have a pipe in hand, which they light.

And inside that pipe is tobacco, called Mapacho.

So then we wait for maybe a half an hour

until we start to feel the effects seeping in.

So the shamans say that these Icaros, these songs that they're singing

have actually been taught to them by the plants

which they have dieted in isolation drinking these plants.

It's from them that the source of the healing comes.

And... the songs are the way of transferring that healing.

It felt like I was in a dream and at moments was experiencing dread

and in others, like I was feeling uplifted and encouraged

and if not well, then at least on a journey to finding that.

There's some life coming through me, I think it's the plants.

But also seeing how the society down here works.

How these Shipibo people raise their kids,

it doesn't seem that there's the same amount of pressure

to become something down here.

I loved playing soccer as a kid. Yeah, I was a goalkeeper.

At some point, you know, I just thought I was, like, too busy to play soccer.

I didn't have time to play sports anymore. I had to be working.

You know, I had to be doing something serious.

And by the time I got to college,

how does this relate to my getting the best grades I possibly can? And, uh...

and soccer unfortunately didn't really fit in to that.

Some of Guillermo's apprentices

who've started a non-government organization, an NGO,

are coming to Santa Rosa de Dinamarca...

intending to start something like a center down here.

I will train the gringos

in preparing medicinal plants and become shamans.

It's strange to me to see Guillermo after what happened

at his center back outside of Iquitos with the death...

and to see him coming here, carrying on business as usual.

Our grandfathers were people

that worked for the benefit of the community.

Now that has changed

because of the ayahuasca business.

Pepe is getting worried that all of this

is going to create a very different atmosphere down here.

And there's going to be jealousy,

and the issues of money are going to start affecting everyone here.

Thanks to the tourists, we have the funds

to see the whole community prospering soon.

The project of our NGO is to cure the Shipibo people.

And it's through the medicine that we'll find a solution

to educate people and change their mentality.

All this business, everything that's going on here around ayahuasca

is very stressful to me.

Your first diet will be tobacco and your pipe.

The shamans have something called a Dieta,

which consists of living in isolation and ingesting plants.

I'm going to be starting with Mapacho tobacco

and eating only rice and fish.

I'll be doing that for the next four months,

alone with my mind.

It's really hard sucking down tobacco.

You're trying to get stuff out and you're probably going to vomit.

From the moment I vomited,

it started to pour rain.

These plants are extremely powerful.

More fevers, more cramps, sweat, nightmares.

You know, there's not anyone around right now, there's no speaking.

You know, just you... the sounds of the jungle...

and the mental clock just tick,

tick, tick, tick.

Since I've been here, I've dieted five, six plants, mucura, aioscha...

It's hard work.

There was this, like, feeling of a vacuum, like a dark, nasty energy.

It felt like I was having surgery.

Oh, my God.

I cannot describe what just happened to me.

The spirit of Chiric Sanango...

came and visited me.

Threw me on the bed, went right in to my left side,

ripping out stuff.

Reprogramming my brain, sapping, I was just powerless.

Paralyzed.

But I knew this was good.

I don't have this, like, ambition, this drive to prove myself,

to prove that I'm intelligent, to prove that I'm successful.

I... I don't have this, like, inferiority complex anymore.

I don't have this... this anger towards, you know, my father in particular.

You know, it's just...

it's just being all stripped and I have no attachment to my previous way of life.

I've just had, like, the most horrifying nightmares.

People I love dying...

- No. - ...sick, killing each other.

Speaking like a demonic language.

And having, like, an exorcism performed on me.

And the plant just makes me feel like hell.

I hate it, but I love it.

I don't know if it's the devil himself, it might have been my soul.

Put it in to the back of my head.

Um... I really don't know what this is going to do, if this really could be it.

I had a vision, like I said, three... three days ago...

where I was spoken to by presumably...

Ayahuasca herself, and she told me that I was going to be born again, and...

that, uh... this is a new life coming, and...

I think, uh, really nervous about the possibility of what might not happen.

And, and, what could happen, and...

'cause, you know, on the one hand, there's no reason given,

everything I've experienced out here, these incredible visions

experiences I've had in my room here, in my bed, in ceremony,

uh, to think that this isn't going to do anything.

How beautiful. Thank you.

When you sing like this, it feels

as if you are a plant, it's not human,

it's a very different sound.

You have listened to me, now I wish to hear you sing.

No... OK.

I feel like Pepe is just here to help people, and heal people.

And there's no image he's trying to cultivate or project.

And there's something very real about him.

Yesterday, they threw Pepe out of the village.

I don't even know where he is, if he's in Pucallpa now

but he's no longer here in Dinamarca.

I heard it was money issues between the NGO and the shamans.

There's a lot of hype and fanaticism and fanfare surrounding this whole project

that's going on down here, but, uh...

I think there's something very naive

and something not quite right, either.

The NGO accused me of conducting

private ceremonies for the tourists,

they said I need to leave my village.

I'm becoming much stronger

and in a way that I didn't even believe was possible or necessary.

And it's amazing.

I've been told by someone in the village

that Pepe was going to be back after a couple of weeks.

It's been at least that long and I've heard nothing.

He was humble and he was kind and invested in my care,

and to have him be dismissed is...

I just don't understand how something like this happens.

I feel like we've switched positions,

we've... traded places, and yet as long as I can pay that I get to stay.

And it just doesn't make sense to me.

And I feel quite alone all of a sudden here.

As a teacher I think it's horrible

that they treat our medicine as if

you were prostituting yourself.

I am the Shaman.

Ayahuasca too is better, Ayahuasca. The Ayahuasca is better, my friend.

Little by little, the essence of the plants is being lost.

My time in Peru is over.

No one knows where Pepe is. I don't get to say goodbye.

I feel sad about it.

I'm grateful that I can feel the sadness.

I wish he knew how highly I think of him.

Pepe is the last shaman I'll work with.

I now understand what James was suffering from.

His sense of loneliness and desperation, the feeling of being dead inside.

James could have become a great Shaman.

I think a shaman is someone who looks...

at the world and doesn't see... matter devoid of spirit.

He sees life in everything,

he sees an intelligence that weaves its way through our body,

through the rocks, through the trees,

through the sky, through the entire cosmos.

And it's an intelligence that is far greater than anything

man can understand or comprehend.

I'll have to go home and integrate what I've learned here

to make amends with the places I come from.

I'm not here to rule the world. I'm not here to be somebody big.

I'm here to be a very small part of something much larger than myself,

and that's extremely liberating.

I had found...

a place of peace inside

that I think the longer I can learn to live in that center of peace,

I believe everything else is going to come back.

I had to stop reacting and responding to their programming, their mind.

You know, their plan for James, because that was not working.

But what kept me going was their hearts.

Because I knew it would destroy them, and that they really did care about me.

The greatest thing I've taken from James's journey

is to be really proud of his courage...

to do something that was such an unknown

and was potentially incredibly dangerous and just sticking to his guns.

I don't think ayahuasca is to be worshiped.

I don't think ayahuasca gives you anything that you don't already have in yourself.

And that was a message given to me from the plant spirits.

That I hold the key in myself

to whatever it is I need to do in order to get well.

I'm doing OK. Yeah, I'm doing all right. Still alive.

That's all we could ask for, huh?

Didn't think it was going to happen, but here we are.

Still in the woods, can't get out of the woods.

We're tryin'.

I think we all wish

we'd had better, closer relationships with our own fathers.

I think most men feel that way.

I don't feel he's ready to do that.

On the other hand, he called me up on Father's Day

and he came home for the weekend

and we talked for an hour and a half on the back porch

and he talked about the people around him and what he did

and that was the best conversation we've ever had, ever, I mean...

you know.

I just wish his journey hadn't been so hard on him.

You know, I... he's...

An absolutely spectacular human being.

Though I wasn't necessarily cured,

I feel like I came back with a will to live.

One day maybe move towards medicine

and try to contribute in any way possible to helping other people

who have found their self in a similar position as my own.

I'm just taking it a day at a time.