A Note I Sent Someone Who Was Feeling Very Very Down

Someone contacted me via a website I occasionally post on and asked if they thought ayahuasca could help them. Their problem: They've overused drugs, are lost, feel worthless and think they've lost their soul.
     I told them there was no promise that ayahuasca was going to heal them, but that a trip to real jungle and drinking the medicine were very often a fantastic way to begin healing.
     They wrote back to say they were in the jungle and drank medicine and then, when they were at the point of ascending out of this plane, they smoked marijuana and ruined everything: They lost their soul, they lost all hope, they lost it all.
     This is what I wrote, and I hope it helps them. Or one of you. Or me. Yeah, it's probably me that needs more help than anyone!
Dear X: Hmmmm....neither ayahuasca nor marijuana are drugs, so I'm not sure what you mean when you say you did ayahuasca and then did another drug by smoking pot. You mixed medicines, that's all. Ayahuasca was never going to let you ascend to the next world: That is your fantasy maybe, but not what ayahuasca does. She leaves you just where you started only with a little more insight and hopefully having purged some of the nonsense from your life. But no ascensions. And no soul loss.
    I am not a big fan of mixing medicines, but there really was no damage done to you. You might feel guilty, might feel badly, but let that go. It's meaningless. What's important is that if you do feel badly from mixing the medicines you should perhaps learn not to do that again. Personally, I used to drink gin--a lot--and it made me very angry. I thought I was funny but the people close to me were afraid of my temper. So I felt guilty, reached the bottom and then quit drinking gin.
    If you don't like yourself when you use marijuana or other things, just stop. You might go through a dark few days but the light at the end of the tunnel is not very far away. And you still have a soul--it just may have been beaten up by you a little. Start treating it nicely, shine it up, bring it back to health. This is going to sound silly but one way to do that is to start looking at nature: Go to a botanical garden and smell flowers for hours. Sit down on grass underneath a shade tree and lean against the tree. Let it's strength work its way into you. You won't feel it directly, but it will do its work. Just like smelling flowers will do theirs. Or riding a horse or just petting one. Or a dog--sit with one for an hour, let yourself slow down to the animal's rhythm and you will begin to heal and polish up that battered soul.
    A lot of us have been to the bottom of the bottom. It takes work to climb back up and out of that hole but it is not impossible and doesn't take years. It's just changing some of what we do that's keeping us there which will permit us to get out.
    I can't really tell you how to heal more than that. But I can tell you that holding on to a fear that there is no hope or holding on to a fear that you have no soul are definitely two things that will keep you hurting. Let them go--just don't think about them, hard as that might seem--let them go and you will already begin to heal.