An Ayahuasca Odyssey
My Seven-Year Journey with Grandmother to Heal Depression
by Silvia Remkins

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The first time Silvia Remkins drank ayahuasca, a psychotropic medicine sacred to the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon, she was hoping to experience mystical union with nature and the cosmos. The reality, however, was nothing like it. The deeply disturbing visual and auditory hallucinations she experienced were accompanied by extreme physical discomfort and nausea. After drinking the brew a second time, she learned that she wouldn’t enjoy ayahuasca’s more agreeable effects until the psychological trauma that had caused her decades of depression was healed. Ayahuasca’s primary purpose is to heal spiritual malaise. Despite the rigours of drinking ayahuasca, and repeated vows that she would never do so again, Remkins continued to participate in ayahuasca ceremonies numerous times, because she felt the incessant pull of “Grandmother,” the spirit of the ayahuasca plant. Over many months and thousands of miles, and in the form of extraordinary synchronicities and signs, Grandmother kept summoning Remkins to return to the Amazon to finish healing. It would take seven years and thirteen ceremonies before Remkins finally had her demons purged. An Ayahuasca Odyssey is the story of how Remkins healed a lifetime of depression with ayahuasca, and its guiding spirit known as Grandmother.

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"Beginning in her sixties, Silvia Remkins undertakes a journey most would never dare. In An Ayahuasca Odyssey, she confronts the shadows of her past with astonishing courage, returning again and again to face what rises within her. This is a powerful, deeply human story of resilience, healing, and the profound transformations still possible later in life." —Laurie Gough, author of Stolen Child; Kiss the Sunset Pig, and Kite Strings of the Southern Cross: A Woman's Travel Odyssey

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Silvia Remkins is a writer, storyteller, and once-upon-a-time actress. She has an M.A. in Drama from the University of Toronto and is a certified yoga instructor. Her alter ego, Gossamer Penwyche, is the author of The World of Fairies and The World of Angels. Remkins is a spinster and lives in Stratford, Ontario.

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Silvia Remkins