As 30 guests drove through the gates of a hillside ranch in Temecula, California, one warm afternoon last August, Courtney Close, a loud woman wearing a wide-brimmed hat, stood in the field and welcomed the eager arrivals to their weekend-long spiritual retreat.
People then set up tents on dirt and grass shaded by large trees, signed safety forms, and mingled. A short walk away, just outside a house on the property, flamingo and unicorn floaties drifted slowly in a pool. Some young children ran about laughing as fenced-in goats and chickens watched curiously nearby.
A makeshift altar stood on a raised platform at one end of the pool. A table there displayed candles, flowers, an assortment of sacramental items, and a plastic measuring cup with a wooden spoon and dark brown liquid inside.
Newcomers were nervous. They had been told what to expect, what kinds of foods to avoid, and how to enter with useful intentions, but no amount of preparation could ever quash the nerves of taking part in a Hummingbird Church ceremony for the first time.
Hummingbird is a nonprofit church based in Southern California that hosts retreats across the country for people seeking spiritual connection and healing. Unlike most churches, however, Hummingbird does not stick to Scripture and homilies. Instead, the church utilizes a psychedelic brew made from chacruna leaves and caapi vines that Amazonian tribes, like the Achuar and Schuar peoples, have been using for millennia: ayahuasca.
Close founded Hummingbird in 2021, but her use of ayahuasca goes back more than half a decade, when she tried the “plant medicine” in the hope that it would help her manage severe depression and substance abuse. When that proved successful, she dedicated her life to spreading the word about its healing powers and started hosting private ceremonies with Taita Pedro Davila, a Colombian shaman she’d met at an ayahuasca event in Florida.
“We would do these very underground ayahuasca ceremonies for friends and family in Joshua Tree,” Close says. “Very word-of-mouth-type stuff, but it got to the point where I felt so many other people needed it that I told Taita I was willing to risk it and go public.”
After speaking with attorneys, Close filed legal paperwork and officially founded Hummingbird Church. She began advertising retreats on Instagram and was met with immediate success, selling out nearly every event.
People attend for all sorts of reasons. Some go for strictly spiritual experiences, but many are in search of much more. “We get all sorts of people looking to work on issues they have. Sex addicts, PTSD, repeat violent offenders—we’ve even had people come in because they have issues with pedophilia,” Close says. “Some people come because they were told it was a way to break the matrix and talk to aliens. During the ceremony, they realize that maybe the little green man that snuck into their room was really their uncle.”
Debilitating trauma is common for many who attend. In Temecula, some guests were hoping ayahuasca could relieve the pain they were living with, if only for a moment.
As daylight faded, Close and the rest of Hummingbird’s staff laid out sleeping mats around the pool, each with its own garbage pail in case participants got nauseated. Hand drums, acoustic guitars, and hanging chimes were set up near the altar so that musicians could score the evening’s psychedelic journey.
Close made her way around the pool area, where she offered participants sananga eye drops, a sacred medicine made from the roots and bark of an Amazonian shrub. Those who accepted it writhed and grunted in pain for several minutes, an alleged sign that the medicine, which is supposed to enhance one’s vision and clear pre-ceremony energy, was working.
Tony Dang, a young tattoo artist and member of the Hummingbird team, invited guests to try rapé, a potent snuff made of high-nicotine tobacco and ash often used in pre-ayahuasca rituals. Dang’s thickset build and tattoo sleeves juxtaposed his happy-go-lucky demeanor. Those brave enough to accept his offer placed a long pipe in each nostril and braced for Dang to blow the powder into their sinuses, causing an intense head rush and a burning pain believed to clear the mind.
Close and a crew of nearly 10 people ushered the guests toward their mats. The ceremony area was divided by gender to try to protect people with sexual traumas and guard against unwanted sexual advances made under the influence. Cell phones were collected to prevent people from firing off alarming messages to loved ones.
The heat of day had passed. The evening air had settled into the Temecula hillside, prompting participants to don their warmest clothes and wrap themselves in blankets provided by Hummingbird. Flickering torches around the pool lit nervous faces a dim red-orange.
It was time for the main event.
Davila, clad in a sleeveless tunic, an animal-tooth necklace, and a suede fedora, walked around the pool spraying floral water near the guests and then up to the altar. He blessed the ayahuasca with a bound collection of leaves and called for everyone to form a line. One by one, people shuffled toward the shaman, who stared deeply into their eyes, silently calculating what doses to dish out. He handed over a small red cup and watched as each person swallowed the dark, viscous liquid, which tasted like bitter earth.
Everyone returned to their mats and prepared for the night ahead.
It did not take long for the nausea to kick in.
Robert Valencia, a stocky 54-year-old contractor and professional surfer, was one of the first to receive ayahuasca after newcomers received their portions, as is standard at Hummingbird ceremonies. He vomited within minutes. This was his second retreat; he was trying desperately to grapple with losing his son to an overdose.
Soon, the sounds of hacking and the contents of people’s stomachs falling into garbage pails came from all directions. For a time, the retching drowned out the icaros—traditional shamanic songs—and Josh Groban covers that a bearded, long-haired, bandanna-wearing musician was performing, broadcast over loudspeakers.
Beverly Reyes, a retired grandmother who had never done drugs in her life, was convinced she was dying. She rolled and squirmed and jerked so violently that facilitators moved her into a separate area they had prepared for such a reaction. They placed Reyes on her stomach, sat on her legs, and stayed with her until the hallucinations wore off.
Soon, the sound of purging was overtaken by wailing. Some were muttering strings of words to themselves or screaming indiscriminately. Ed Carreon, a silver-haired photographer from Los Angeles, let out maniacal bursts of laughter. Carreon had been molested by the priest who babysat him and his brother, a memory he’d repressed until starting MDMA therapy in 2019. The trauma had left him with debilitating insomnia, violent nightmares, and episodes of rage. This was his second retreat.
Ayahuasca newcomer Faith Klinger had worn a smile from the moment she arrived at the ranch. A single mother who had been raised by an abusive pastor in “cultlike” churches and who had been sexually assaulted by superior officers while in the Marines, the 36-year-old was looking to work through a number of challenges. Above all, she wanted to build a better relationship with her mother. Now she was lying on her mat having one of the tamer reactions to the psychoactive brew.
Some hours in, Davila offered participants the coveted “second cup,” an extra dose given to those who wanted to go further down the rabbit hole. In ayahuasca circles, extra doses are a point of pride; some of the Hummingbird team were even wearing shirts with the phrase SecondCuuup printed across the chest in a style parodying street-wear brand Supreme.
As each person fell deeper into their internal world of psychedelic delusion, Close and the Hummingbird team walked the poolside, making sure everyone had enough water, blankets, and relative peace of mind.
Goats and roosters welcomed the morning with baaing and crowing, which shook participants out of their slumber. Close provided everyone with a breakfast of soup and water.
Many recounted the vivid dreamscapes they had entered and the ethereal beings they had met on their psychedelic journeys. Valencia spoke of coming face-to-face with a crying whale in the surf and of overwhelming grief. “The level of pain was about the same as when I got the phone call my son passed away,” he said.
Carreon had relived the sexual abuse he’d endured as a child. Klinger described a geometric light show that had enveloped her sky and an alien planet she had been transported to. Reyes, the grandmother who had been restrained during the ceremony, was relieved the night was over. She told of a goddess veiled in impossible colors and of an unbearable sense of death and terror.
“Every fiber of my being was dying,” Reyes said. “I’ve never been afraid of death, but now I am.”
Though the hallucinations had faded, there was much left to do. Hummingbird had planned events throughout the day to optimize the aftereffects of ayahuasca. There was Reiki instruction, another rapé circle, and scraping bodywork, which involved a rounded metal tool being dug into participants’ backs, leaving them with deep red bruises.
The most recommended activity was integration with Brian Cantalupi, a Hummingbird Church cofounder and former professional mixed martial arts fighter. Intense psychedelic experiences often leave people confused, even those folks who enjoy their trips. According to facilitators and hallucination experts, integration, the intentional process of analyzing and internalizing lessons learned during alternate states of consciousness, is crucial to carrying the benefits of psychedelics into sober life.
“As Taita teaches, the medicine does 2 percent of the work,” Cantalupi said. “Integration is 98 percent.”
Anticipation built as the day went on and participants readied themselves for another night of ceremony. Reyes was initially unsure whether she would partake again, but she was persuaded to give it another go by Hummingbird facilitators. Valencia, who had also had a difficult first night, grew anxious as dusk approached.
“I am so not looking forward to this,” he said. “They say ayahuasca gives you what you need, not what you want. I just hope I don’t need another night like last night.”
Another night of ceremony came to pass.
In the morning, Klinger shared that she’d had a deep realization about religion and her mother before ingesting ayahuasca, thanks to a breath work session. “I always perceived my mom as weak, that she didn’t do anything to overcome her trauma,” she said. “But that isn’t true. She used Jesus and the church to heal. I’ve discredited that for so long because the church did nothing but hurt me.”
Sitting on his mat and wiping sleep from his eyes, Carreon let out the booming laughs that had become his trademark. After processing his night, he announced that this was the happiest day of his life since the birth of his daughter two decades earlier. The ayahuasca had helped him exactly how he’d hoped it would. “I came looking to kill a priest, and it looks like it worked,” he said. “This is the first time I’ve had any relief. I don’t feel that misery any longer.”
Valencia sat nearby, shaking his head in disbelief and smiling wide for the first time all weekend, maybe the first time in months. His thousand-yard stare was gone, replaced with a kind of light and life, as if he’d been woken up from a long waking dream. “I had a major breakthrough last night,” he said. “I feel so much better. I washed the old me off. I came in with tears of sadness and despair and pain and sorrow, but the tears I have now are of joy and hope.”
Months after the retreat, Valencia still could not bring himself to put photos of his son up in his apartment. His grief had not gone away, though he had never truly expected that it would. The ceremony, however, did make his pain somewhat bearable. “Ayahuasca taught me that when I’m having some fucked-up feelings, I don’t have to become those feelings,” he said. “I think it changed me for the better. Maybe there will come a point where I’ve been feeling good for so long that I won’t have to go to those ceremonies anymore.”
Klinger had come away from the retreat feeling electrified and with a sense of child-like joy, but the more she thought about her experience, the more her opinions soured. “I’m a little mad at the ayahuasca,” she said. “I felt so much joy leaving the weekend, but now, those rose-colored glasses are off, and I’m seeing the world as it is. I wake up to everything around me being terrible. It could be fixed, but it won’t be. Ayahuasca drives people to be complacent in a false vision of hope.”
Sitting at a coffee shop near his home in Highland Park, Carreon held on to a 12-year-old Chihuahua mix he’d started fostering sometime after the retreat. He spoke of sleeping well again, a pleasure he hadn’t known in years. And that was just one of the benefits. His suicidality, anxiety, violent nightmares, and rage had also mostly disappeared. But Carreon emphasized repeatedly that even though ayahuasca helped him in those struggles, much more went into living a better life than downing a bitter drink. “People new to psychedelics think they’ll stop being depressed if they do MDMA or ayahuasca,” he said. “That’s misguided. Psychedelics are not a miracle cure. For most of us, the better place we arrive at takes a lot of fucking work. The medicine just shows us the path to get there.”
As for Reyes, the immediate horror of dying had passed. In fact, she looks back on the retreat somewhat fondly. “I’m still processing my experience,” she said. “But I do feel like I’ve been pointed in a direction. I don’t know where I’m going, but it’s all about the journey.”
Since the August 2022 retreat in Temecula, Close and the rest of Hummingbird Church have hosted more events across the country. As a growing number of Americans dip their toes into psychedelic waters, churches like these act as spaces of communal knowledge that can guide newcomers through potentially turbulent experiences.
But questions remain regarding safety. Because Hummingbird and institutions like it operate in legal limbo thanks to the constitutional protection of religious freedom, there is little to no regulatory oversight guiding their drug-induced rituals—a shortcoming some critics say is crucial to address. This also makes it nearly impossible to determine how many churches like Hummingbird exist, as many wish to remain underground. And because Hummingbird’s activities involve an illicit substance, Close makes no promises that participants are legally protected. “A lot of the people that attend our retreats are so desperate that they don’t care about the law,” Close says.
The legal status of psychedelics is changing, however. In 2020, Oregon voted to legalize psilocybin mushrooms, and Colorado recently voted to decriminalize the personal use and possession of many hallucinogenic plants and fungi. California cities like Oakland, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco have passed similar legislation, and efforts like state senator Scott Wiener’s Senate Bill 58 aim to decriminalize certain hallucinogenic substances statewide.
Hummingbird’s retreats are not for the faint of heart. They are not easy or fun; they are not the romanticized image of acid trips in the ’60s and ’70s. While some participants attend for spiritual awakening, others brave the storm as a long, difficult last resort in their healing journeys.
“Being in Southern California, we get people that come saying, ‘I have a YouTube channel,’ thinking it’s a wellness thing,” Close says. “I have to be like, ‘You’re at the wrong party. This is not that. This is a healing, spiritual ceremony. It’s not LSD; it’s not shrooms. It’s not a cool way to crack the code and talk to aliens or instantly become Buddha.’ It is very hard work to be on the mat and go through this.”
In late August, Hummingbird Church will return to Temecula. Close will once again place sleeping mats around the pool, set up the makeshift altar, and welcome guests as they embark on a weekend of ayahuasca, rituals, and, possibly, healing.•
Jeremy Lindenfeld is a Venezuelan American multimedia journalist based in Los Angeles. His work focuses on climate, psychedelics, and politics.
