What is Ayahuasca

Reading up on Ayahuasca on the Internet can be a hit and miss exercise.  Modern medicine and sites focusing on psychedelic substances from a chemical point of view try to express this experience in a very narrow and pragmatic way.  The truth of the experience is far more complex and to truly appreciate it, one must take this journey oneself.

How is it made

Ayahuasca is a mix of 2 different plants which grow in the Amazon jungle.  The first is the Ayahuasca Vine (Banisteriopsis caapi), and the Chacruna bush (Psychotria viridis).
The Vine is cut down and then beaten with a wooden mallet until it's fiber.  The plants are then boiled together over several days.
What's fascinating is that either plant on its own will not yield any medicinal journey.  With over 200,000 plant species in the Amazon, it begs the question, how did they know... apparently when asked this, they answered that the plants told them.  The original master teacher was Mapacho (tobacco) which is the most sacred of all the teachers and is found in ceremonial use by practically every indigenous nation in the world, despite never coming into contact with each other.

Who uses it / where does it come from

There are several indigenous nations all throughout South America that have been using Ayahuasca for thousands of years.  These tribes have been separated by vast expanses of jungle and yet the Ayahuasca has not merely been a common practice, but rather the defining source of wisdom and guidance for these people.  
The colonization of the world has led to a belief in many that these indigenous people are uncivilized and that their practices are ignorant or superstitious.  And yet it is us that are destroying everything.  And in many ways we are attempting to solve our problems via the same means that created the problems in the first place - by moving further away from spirit, rather than returning to it.
These people are masters of spirit, and we have a lot to learn from them.

Am I ready?

Are you ready to look at the parts of yourself that you'd rather ignore?
Can you embrace humility and be prepared to learn?
Do you have an open mind and heart?
Are you ready to work hard, and even struggle, if that's what it takes to evolve to the best version of you?
Can you be brave when you need to be?

What can I expect from the journey

Every journey is different and every person needs different healing, but there are some common things that are consistent enough that they can be taken for granted:
You are going to see the truth.  About yourself, about life, about spirit, about your place in the universe.  This can be difficult.  We make all sorts of excuses and justifications for the sake of protecting our coping mechanisms.  These mechanisms are there for a reason, they are the tools we needed as children to deal with the traumas that we experienced.  But there comes a time when that can be let go.  Now is a good time.
You may confront your fears.  We build up fear in so many things, and frankly our society often uses fear to keep us productive.  Fear is the only truly negative emotion.  Other painful emotions teach us if we let them.  Fear teaches us nothing.  Facing fear head on and overcoming it is the best gift you can give yourself if inner peace is what you seek.
Forgiveness of yourself and others.  Seeing past traumas through the eyes of compassion and love allow you to release yourself and others.  
You may have a spiritual connection that will most likely remove any doubt from your mind that such things are real.
You have no doubt heard that there is often a fair amount of purging that goes on in ceremony.  This is not always the case and not for every person.  But if you have stored up a lot of negative energy or trauma then the purge releases this physically.  It's hard to explain how profound this release is, but it's a very important part of restoring harmony in your energy system.

Addiction and Ayahuasca

This has been a very interesting topic which I have personally put a lot of energy into.  There is an unfortunate tendency of our society to put things in boxes.  And in that vein, Ayahuasca has been called a drug due to it's psychoactive nature.  But then so are many of our pharmaceuticals, especially antidepressants.  To best put this, someone once asked a Shaman in the Amazon if Ayahuasca was a drug.  His answer was "A drug is something that provides you temporary relief from your suffering.  It has no long-term benefit, and often either masks a problem or makes it worse.  A medicine is something that may cause you to suffer or struggle, but that cures you of what causes your suffering and provides healing which improves your life".  Ayahuasca is a medicine, not a drug.  Strangely enough, the vast majority of what we call medicine are actually drugs.  Take a headache tablet for instance, it does not even attempt to address the reason for your headache and offers no cure.  It only provides short term relief and can easily be abused.
Ayahuasca can be extremely effective at dealing with the root cause of addiction.  If you are in active addiction then I recommend you look into Iboga as it is an extremely effective treatment in that case.  If however you are in recovery then Ayahuasca can get the the root traumas that cause addiction and heal those parts of you.  Once this work is done, very often the daily struggle of recovery simply goes away.
If you would like to read more on this, I highly recommend you look at the work of Dr. Gabor Mate who is one of the leading experts on addiction and an advocate for Ayahuasca in dealing with trauma-based addiction.
That being said, it is essential that Ayahuasca be done in a ceremonial context according to the sacred technology of the curanderos.

The technology and the practice

This is very important.  The practice of facilitating Ayahuasca is sacred, and it is tough.  Please do not drink Ayahuasca with someone who has merely drunk the medicine before.  The role of the Maestro/Curandero/Paje is absolutely paramount to the safety and effectiveness of the medicine.  The initiation into Ayahuasca Curaderismo (shamanism) is a grueling path.  It is this way for a reason.  The person who holds space for you has to be stronger than the medicine, they have to have plant spirit allies (which they gain through doing dieta with the master teachers), and they need a spiritual lineage from which they practice this technology.

The maestro must use the Icaros (medicine songs) to channel the medicine and healing for you.  They keep you safe, they clean the energy and they guide you through the journey.