Date: September 12, 2016

"'Ayahuasca takes you to the swampland of your soul,' my friend Tony, a photographer in his late fifties, told me."

— Levy, Ariel (b. 1974)

Date: September 12, 2016

"Her boyfriend added, 'Consciousness is its own economy.'"

— Levy, Ariel (b. 1974)

Date: September 12, 2016

"'I thought I had completely fried my motherboard,' he continued. 'I remember saying, ''I will never do this again.''"

— Levy, Ariel (b. 1974)

Date: September 12, 2016

"'Indigenous prophesies point to an imminent polar reversal that will wipe our hard drives clean,' Daniel Pinchbeck wrote in his exploration of ayahuasca, technology, and Mayan millennialism, '2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl.'"

— Levy, Ariel (b. 1974)

Date: September 12, 2016

"I was going to visit the swampland of my soul, make peace with death, and become one with the universe."

— Levy, Ariel (b. 1974)

Date: September 12, 2016

"Any second now, I would be descending into the pit of my being, seeing serpents, experiencing my own death or birth--or something--and I did not necessarily want that to happen in a windowless vomitorium while a millennial in crazy pants had her first psychotic episode."

— Levy, Ariel (b. 1974)