Antioquia, Colombia

If you’ve ever wondered what happened to drug lord Pablo Escobar’s enormous cocaine and occasional execution palace, as featured in the Netflix series Narcos, I can tell you. These days – following the violent death of Escobar in 1993 and the consequent escape of his pet hippos from his private zoo – the estate is now a garish, plasticky, hippo-themed children’s waterpark called Hacienda Nápoles. I have just driven past it.

I am deep in the Colombian province of Antioquia. Until about six years ago this hilly, jungly, notably remote region – halfway between the capital Bogotá and the once-murderous cartel citadel of Medellin – was strictly off limits, thanks to Escobar and friends, alongside revolutionary guerrilla outfits, militias and kidnapping gangs.

This time around I had way more hallucinations, yet maybe not so many chats with God

Happily, much of that violence has receded, even as Pablo’s feral coke hippos have multiplied (they are now regarded as a pest, and sometimes wander into local towns). This means tourism has returned, via guest houses and quaint resorts – and boho-delic lodges dedicated to the legal ingestion of the Amazonian drug known as ‘ayahuasca’, ‘yage’, or ‘the sacred vine’. Ayahuasca is the most powerful psychedelic found in nature: it is known for making you puke, sob, howl and crap yourself. That’s if it doesn’t send you into a delusional spiritual meltdown, culminating in psychosis or even death (never mix it with SSRIs like Prozac).

So why do it? Because the best ayahuasca induces wild spiritual revelations, accompanied by exquisite visual hallucinations. That’s why people from across the world come to take it in its Amazonian homeland.

That is why I am here and why I have been joined by a motley but compelling crew of American tech bros, a notable neuroscientist, amusing Hackney artists, inquisitive local coffee barons, beautiful girls from Seoul and Berlin, a New York computer wizard, two Anglo-Danish film-makers, a guy in a feathered Sikh turban, and the granddaughter of a famous Spanish novelist. Plus a brace of Eurasian high priestesses who seem to serve the whims of the main man, the tribal shaman, the ayahuasquero.

The ayahuasquero is an important figure, and our guy is one of the best. He is simultaneously the conductor, wizard and medicine man – he’s the one who will sense if we are about to go schizo and salvage us with a waft of burning sage or a mouthful of mambe (a green powder of coca leaves which tastes like vile dry flour but is ‘oddly’ addictive). Alternatively, if he detects that one of us is not getting the buzz, he will offer a more potent dish of ’huasca, then some San Pedro mescaline, then several hours in a sweat lodge.

I’ve done ayahuasca once before, so I am not signed on for the whole deal. I know how challenging it can be. One dose will easily be enough. Indeed, I’m quite scared. Everyone is scared before they take ayahuasca.

The ceremony, in a wooden hilltop pyramid, begins after nightfall. The fire is set. Songs are sung. We drink the cup of bittersweet yage and settle back in slightly uncomfortable chairs around the psycho-nautical pyramid. After 30 minutes of vague warbling and silent fire-gazing, I check my watch and wonder if the drugs are duds (it happens). After another hour of nothing, I think ‘This is pointless’ and look at my watch again and realise that, in reality, only a minute has passed. Temporal dilation is one of the first symptoms of ayahuasca intoxication.

Now the yage kicks in. My hands suddenly seem to be made of tungsten. Also, they are emitting yellow and violet sparks and a lattice of crimson Incan motifs is forming to my left. When I look at the burning fire, I notice it is levitating up to the ceiling. A delicately luminous moth alights on my arm – and smirks at me. My lepidopterology is rusty, but smirking seems unusual.

At this point the guilt comes knocking. This is a traditional part of the ayahuasca trip, when you go over your lifelong litany of failures, doubts and cruelties, and it often leads to a terrible self-reckoning. But just as I am sinking into remorse, I look down and realise I’m floating over an Aztec temple, made of hexagonal sapphires. The hallucinations are back, but they are so intense I can barely take notes. At one point I wonder why I am yawning so much. At another, I write down the important lesson: ‘Whoah that looks weird. Don’t look at it’, which is possibly a good motto for life. Later on I write: ‘At least I haven’t shat myself…. YET.’ Another handy lifetime motto. Finally – and with relief, tinged with regret – I realise the hallucinations are ebbing away. The spiralling vortices of light have become sparkles of receding stars. The enigmatic moth has gone.

It’s been brilliant, scary, wonderful – and I never want to do it again. Probably. All I desire is to go back to my room and drink Malbec, if only I could walk. But I’m too wobbly. A nice chap guides me down the moonlit hill to my jungly room which overlooks a rainforest cascade.

As I go, I realise I’ve had another extra-ordinary ayahuasca experience, but it’s been different to last time. Tonight I had way more hallucinations, yet maybe not so many chats with God. Of those I had, you probably wouldn’t want to hear them – it’s like listening to other people’s dreams. All I can say is that He is surprisingly unfussed by climate change. Nonetheless I have learned one quite important thing.

Everything is funny. Even death – however sad, tragic, or cruel – is funny. This might sound heartless, and you should generally not laugh aloud, but it is also importantly true. Death is maybe especially funny, because it makes a poetic and comedic mockery of us all. And if I need proof of that, I can walk ten minutes up the dappled forest path to the one-time home of Pablo Escobar, who became the richest man on Earth and the most feared man in Colombia, and whose sole memorial is a gaudy kiddies’ waterpark, complete with hippo-shaped coffee shacks.