How Ayahuasca Is Changing Leadership from the Inside Out

Here’s a question you may not have asked yourself, but should: How do your past wounds impact your leadership today?

Most leaders, if they haven’t done the work to heal them, are carrying core wounds from childhood into their professional life and not realizing their impact. Think about your colleague Bob. We all know Bob… He seems to fly off the handle anytime he feels someone is “keeping him out of the loop” at work. You may be working with Bob and not intentionally trying to keep information from him – I mean you can’t tell him about your every move. But Bob has a wound around being excluded in the background, so he’s more likely to see your actions through the lens of that pattern.

There are many ways to address those wounds.

Executives and Ayahuasca

Lately, I’ve been hearing about an intense curiosity from many executives regarding Ayahuasca, and whether it might help them achieve a breakthrough.

According to our guest, Ayahuasca enables executives to step outside themselves and develop empathy for those who’ve hurt them. Not only might Ayahuasca help with breakthroughs in one’s personal life, it might also help transform the ways in which they deal with workplace conflict and interpersonal relationships.

Given the curiosity, I decided to do an episode on Ayahuasca, and bring on a special guest who’ll remain anonymous (but we’ll refer to him as Dave).

Dave is a venture capitalist who’s been in Silicon Valley for 20+ years and holds an MBA from Stanford. He’ll describe his Ayahuasca experience and how it transformed both his personal relationships and also how he shows up as a leader. He’ll recount his fascinating journey, detail how it impacted him, and provide some “watch outs” for people considering going on their own retreat.

What is Ayahuasca exactly?

As Dave shares with us “Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew prepared from two vines found in the rainforest. A shaman who is experienced in working with this psychedelic guides you through your ‘journey,’ which lasts around 10–12 hours.”

Why might someone consider an Ayahuasca journey?

Dave was interested in developing a deeper level of self-awareness and breaking down self-created boundaries that created an upper-limit on his overall happiness. As he discovered, these boundaries were intertwined with past trauma, negative experience, and fear. Dave describes the Ayahuasca experience as “10 years of talk therapy in 10 hours.”

Dave walks us through the process of Ayahuasca: we learn how it’s made, details about his retreat with a shaman, and what to watch out for if you are considering this path for yourself.

Curious to learn more about Ayahuasca and the connection to development?

For plant medicine specifically in the U.S., Chacruna: Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines at https://chacruna.net/ is a great place to the history of psychedelics.

If you liked this episode, you may also benefit from hearing:

• Brandon Fong on how curiosity unlocks human connection and drives opportunity in leadership.

• Justin Breen explain why ego limits executive growth and how empathy boosts leadership innovation.

• Natalie Dattilo explain how understanding the neuroscience of change helps rewire behavior and strengthen resilience

Ready to Explore the Edges of Your Leadership?

If you’re curious about unlocking deeper self-awareness—without flying to the rainforest—our Leadership EDGE program offers powerful tools for transformation.

Episode Transcript

Susan Drumm: Hi, I’m Susan Drumm, and welcome to The Enlightened Executive, where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each episode we feature groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help you get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness, and a different dream office backdrop.

Susan Drumm: Today we are going to focus on ayahuasca, and we’re going to learn a bit more about what it is and how it can actually help you personally and professionally. And we’ve got a very special guest who shall remain anonymous — we’re going to call him Dave. He’s a very successful venture capitalist, been in Silicon Valley over 20 years, and holds an MBA from Stanford.

Susan Drumm: So Dave is with us today to describe a bit about his experience and how it’s helped him. And the reason I’m talking about this topic is because I’ve had an intense curiosity about it — people have asked me some questions about it, including very prominent executives, and I think more and more executives are learning about it. However, most of them need to go overseas in order to do a journey.

Susan Drumm: So let’s dive in, let’s find out a little bit more about it. And welcome, Dave — thanks so much for taking the time.

Dave: You know, glad to be here. Thank you.

Susan Drumm: Awesome. So tell us — for people who don’t know ayahuasca, or maybe you’ve just heard the name but you’re not quite sure what it is — what can you tell us more about what it is?

Dave: Sure. Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew. It originates in South America, and it’s known as an entheogenic brew, meaning psychoactive. It’s actually brewed from two vines usually found in the rainforest of the jungle — the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and the Psychotria viridis shrub. They both come together for a specific reason.

Dave: One of the plants contains the psychoactive compound DMT, a naturally occurring substance often found in certain plants, supposedly produced by the pineal gland at the time of birth or death, or near-death experiences. And the other plant acts as a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, an MAO inhibitor. What happens with the magic of these two combined together is that DMT is usually quickly synthesized in the human body and doesn’t have the ongoing psychotropic effect, but the MAO inhibitor acts to prevent the breakdown and keeps the psychoactive effect going for several hours.

Dave: The two combined create a very potent brew, which you usually drink in the proper set and setting, guided by a shaman who has usually devoted his or her life toward working with these plants, knowing them intricately, and bringing their indigenous culture and indigenous wisdom into this type of setting. And so, like with all of these types of psychedelic tools, the set and setting, as they say, are really crucial — they’re to be done within certain containers, with people holding space for you, making sure you’re safe, making sure you’re not going off the rails.

Dave: And they’re kind of guiding the energy, the music, the setting, to provide the journey that each person needs, depending on what they’re working through when under the influence of this brew. Yeah, does that make sense?

Susan Drumm: Yeah, yeah, I mean mostly makes sense. I imagine some of the terms around what it is — you did a great job describing it and what’s happening. But tell me a little bit about what brought you to do ayahuasca.

Dave: It was primarily for the notion of self-introspection and growth. What ayahuasca is often known to be able to do is help each person go into the lineage and unpack patterns or loops, and especially epigenetic trauma. So the way I’ve described it is, imagine it wants to decompile you, so that you can step outside of yourself and even look back into your lineage, your ancestry, and kind of see — maybe from an outside perspective, not so stuck inside your own head and narrative — all the unresolved emotional baggage, the trauma, those things that were inherited to you by your parents and their parents before them, and on and on and on.

Dave: It can be really healing sometimes for dealing with that type of bloodline trauma and understanding your own loops, and if anything, just getting out of your own neurotic story sometimes. And what’s beautiful about that is, as you integrate, you realize you have this choice of — huh, okay, I see these little parts of me, where they come from. I have more empathy and forgiveness for my parents, their grandparents, etc., where that came from. Do I want to keep this little loop, this building block within me, as I continue to go on?

Susan Drumm: Tell me more what you mean by loop, and maybe you can explain this — so what did you get out of it?

Dave: I have a saying that to understand why any institution, organization, or business does what it does, simply look at where the money flows to study its business model — you’ll understand all the incentives and why it behaves the way it does. For an individual, all you have to do is look at his or her core wound. What is it that is their deepest unresolved trauma? And that will pretty much explain 99 percent of their behavior or choice in any moment. That’s all any of us is — it’s just a collection of these unresolved emotional baggage and core wounds we’re overcompensating for.

Dave: I think there’s a famous saying: we are most passionate about that which we are most denied. So ask any founder, ask any successful executive — there’s probably some sort of dysfunctional ambition behind it, to compensate for something. Daddy said you weren’t good enough, somebody picked on you and said you’ll never make it, whatever it is, right? We are often overcompensating in functional, dysfunctional ways. And it was really powerful for me to understand — why am I so driven, why am I a relentless machine trying to achieve, who am I trying to impress, deep down, where does that come from?

Dave: You know, what is the real motivation behind these things? There’s the surface motivations — do well, leave legacy, impress people — but there’s often a deeper why. And there’s only two cardinal questions really, at the end of the day. The first is: who are you, really? Peel away all the surface layers — I’m a VC, I’m a father, I’m a husband, I’m a son. You can always peel away and double-click one layer deeper, and for me, if you really go down that rabbit hole far enough, I came to answer, you know — I am nobody. I’m also everybody. I am also God, him or herself, as we all are.

Dave: And the second question is: what do you really, really want in this life? Really. And again, start from the surface answers — I want to matter, I want to fit in, I want to prove I’m good enough, I want to be successful, I want to leave legacy. But if you ask the question why underneath each of these layers, peel them away, peel them away, at the bottom of the onion — at least for me, I found the simple first answer was, I just want to stop wanting, stop chasing, stop that craving.

Dave: And that set me free to think about, okay, well, if you’re not craving or chasing or striving, what is there left to do but live your life like a work of art? And within art, your job is to find your medium, your canvas, your paintbrush, your form of play. And that’s steered me more toward having a north star of understanding — oh, actually, none of this is about me, I’m here to serve, I’m here to help others heal, enable others to play, bring about the thriving of all beings. And that’s a profound shift, I think, in the lens you take in everything you do — at the office, at home, with your friends, in your community.

Susan Drumm: Absolutely, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, what I noticed — and it’s really the foundation for my book — is people, leaders, just keep living out their childhood wounds over and over in the workplace. Getting triggered by something someone said, it has nothing to do with what’s going on, it has everything to do with what their mother said to them, right?

Susan Drumm: And so in order to help them grow, to look at — wow, how do we unwind these childhood wounds and how do we get conscious — and this is one modality to do that, and that’s why it’s been fascinating. And you know, I love this phrase: you can’t read the label from inside the jar.

Dave: Yes, exactly right.

Susan Drumm: So my sense is, this helps you step outside yourself to read the label, so you get greater clarity and you’re at choice now, not to be run by the wounds.

Dave: It’s true, that’s absolutely right, Susan. Sometimes many of us hard-working, ambitious, A-type executives — we are masters at saying the right things, compartmentalizing, rationalizing, deflecting, deceiving ourselves. And some of us need a non-linear event that really kicks our ass, so to speak, and puts us outside of our head where our stories are so tightly constructed, to step outside of our stories and view it outside in.

Dave: Like you said, when you’re outside of the jar and you can read the label, you’re like, whoa, I didn’t know I had that. And then for me, where that went was — man, as cliché as it sounds — it all stems from childhood. And that’s kind of the stereotypical thing, like, oh, mommy and daddy did me wrong. But it’s more also having empathy for them, and then, yes, you work through your anger on those childhood wounds, but then you can also develop tremendous compassion, empathy, forgiveness, love for your parents, when you realize, man, they were just doing the best they could, and they themselves inherited that epigenetic baggage from their parents, and on and on and on. And it’s a beautiful resolution within, to be able to start to heal that sort of lineage wounding.

Susan Drumm: Yeah, yeah, phenomenal. So thank you for a little bit more depth on why one would want to engage in this. Could you share a little bit about what the experience is like, or what should people know? I mean, obviously sometimes you don’t want to give away all the experience, but what can you share with people in terms of what happened to you?

Dave: Sure. My first experience was word of mouth. Just as a word of advice for folks — if you ever see a quote-unquote shaman marketing their services, Instagram ads, trying to be an influencer, run the opposite direction. I would say true medicine workers have devoted their life to this practice, and in places where it is not legal, like the United States, they’re risking life and limb to do so. So it’s typically word of mouth referral to folks who are really serious about the work, and they are not promotional about it — they’re often very, very humble.

Dave: That said, ayahuasca has reached sort of mass awareness now. It’s been featured in TV shows like Billions, right, where the hedge fund manager does it and decides he’s even more determined to rule the world. Typically with a shaman, they’ll have it in a very quiet setting, usually in and around nature, usually with a very small, well-curated group. I think a good shaman will often take maybe even a full day to help each person figure out their intention — what is it they want to explore.

Dave: Interestingly, what you go in with — the question you seek to ask — will help shape your experience. And even forming the right questions is an important part of it. I remember once going in and forming the question of, how come I always, or why don’t I ever — and I remember the shaman pointing out, does that question really serve you? Meaning, what are the assumptions and biases in that question, what doors can that question open? If you phrase it like, how come I never, there’s already so much assumption and weight buried into that. So even refining your intention or question is a key part of that inquiry.

Dave: There’s also something known as the dieta, which is usually about ten days of preparation beforehand, where you start to cut out elements from your diet, including alcohol, salt, sugar, abstaining from sex, things like that, as you clear your body energetically and chemically for this journey you’re eager to undertake, so that your body’s maximally sensitive to this new kind of sensory input you’ll get.

Dave: And so when the time comes, usually around early evening — as this is a nighttime, inward experience — you are in the ceremony setting. The shaman will have the brew already prepared, will usually open the container, say some prayers, and set the spiritual container of it, even with indigenous practices — has a variety of traditional instruments. And then each person is called up to sit and drink a cup full of this brew, which is not the best tasting in the world.

Dave: It’s very, very earthy — some people don’t mind it, some people find it triggering their gag reflex, but it’s very earthy, it’s roots, it’s vines, right? So it might taste like really harsh, say, herbal Chinese medicine or something. But you force it down, and you go back and you sit, and from there the shaman will usually start to sing traditional songs and chants and prayers with traditional instruments, and you close your eyes.

Dave: And it usually kicks in after about 45 minutes or 60 minutes or so. It is often an 8 to 12 hour ride, and during that time you may experience waves of nausea. It is really common to purge, or vomit, and you usually have a bucket next to your mat. And I know that sounds really nasty, but interestingly, I found the purge is a key part of the process — it’s symbolic of letting go of stuck energy, stuck stories, stuck loops. It’s actually an important part of that experience, and you may be sort of throwing up multiple times through the night, but there’s an energetic part of this process that goes with that.

Dave: Usually deep into late night, probably 3, 4 a.m., ceremony may close out when people are kind of complete with their journey. Then you go back and sleep, and some people stay up and journal. But it’s advised that you take a good day or two, maybe a week, after to integrate — which is, don’t go right back to work. Also, don’t make big life decisions, don’t go quit your job, don’t go declaring you need a divorce or whatever, don’t go make some major purchase.

Dave: You might feel wide open and have deep revelations of, like, oh my gosh, I’ve been living my life all wrong, I need to do this, that, or the other — those aren’t necessarily directives, they are questions and clues for you to go meditate on after. But usually it’s quite a reflective experience for that week after, as you really look into it and integrate those lessons.

Dave: And so that’s a term people use a lot — integration — which is taking those questions, prompts, visions, realizations during that journey, and figuring out how do I work that into my default life after. And that’s where the real work begins. So I like to say, these molecules are just the doorway — the real medicine is the ongoing integration and the lifestyle changes you make thereafter.

Susan Drumm: Absolutely, absolutely. And so, thank you for that explanation about what the experience is like — I think it’s super helpful. What would you say to — I don’t want to use the word skeptics, but let’s just say some people who maybe are a little concerned — is this dangerous, is this healthy, will it have lasting effects?

Dave: Well, obviously you want some lasting effects, because that’s why you’re doing it. But just kind of health-wise, what should someone think about, be concerned about — is it okay for any constitution, are there certain people that shouldn’t do it? It’s not a silver bullet, it’s not for everyone. The intake process by a skilled shaman — they will go through your medical history, they’ll ask, do you have a history of mental health issues, particularly schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, things like that, as psychoactive compounds — psychedelics — with certain mental health states are risky, they could trigger psychotic breaks, and so they’ll be carefully looking for that.

Dave: They’ll also carefully ask, do you already take MAO inhibitors, SSRIs, antidepressants, etc. Those would not make sense to take, because if you’re doubling down on another MAO inhibitor on top of other ones you’re taking, that could pose serious health threats. So a skilled shaman will walk you through all the preconditions in the intake process. So no, it’s not for everybody.

Dave: It’s also, I’d say, emotionally speaking, you want to be ready to do this work. If somebody’s dragging you into this kicking and screaming, and you’re doing it because all the cool kids are doing it, it’s not the right reason. You want to come in curious and ready to do some work. This is not a psychedelic joyride — this is, man, this is like SoulCycle for real, it’s a soul workout. I would even argue it’s like ten years of talk therapy in ten hours. Talk therapy, you can get so far, but we’re so good — especially charming executives who are intellectually brilliant — you can talk your way around anything, even to yourself.

Dave: This type of medicine, which is experiential, goes past that — it’s post-verbal. It can trigger so-called ego death, and done well, done right, it will take you beyond your reasoning and the words that you often dance around.

Susan Drumm: Yes, yes. Everyone that I’ve talked to that has done it has had a good experience and would recommend it. I’m curious to know if you’ve experienced anyone who did not, or had some impact that they didn’t want to have.

Dave: Yeah, multiple experiences. In general it can be great, it can also be terrifying, it can be a nightmare too. A few specific examples — if you do decide to try this out of country or in country, again, try to do some due diligence on the background of the shaman. If they are Instagram influencers, a sudden guru who decided they took ayahuasca and want to be a shaman now, you might want to think twice, because they might not really know what they’re doing.

Dave: If they market it heavily and meet you at the airport saying, I’ve got a retreat on sale, that might not be the right one either — that’s happening, there is such a thing as ayahuasca tourism in certain places. Again, watch out for those, try to get word of mouth referrals. If you see that they’re doing a huge group of 50 people in one sitting, it might not make sense — you know, not to sound too woo, but other people’s energy, their experience, will affect yours, and a shaman can only tend to so many people at once.

Dave: All my experiences were done in really small groups, usually six people or less, because the shaman spends time with each person, trying to figure out the right sort of journey and space to hold for the different things that people are facing. So look, I’m not a big fan of large groups, not a fan of heavily commercialized versions of this. So look out for those, and beware of the fake guru shamans — it’s become so popular now, and spirituality’s the new hipsterism, so there’s going to be a lot of shaman wannabes. So if they’re a trustafarian 26-year-old from Orange County who decided they’ve got a new shaman name and are doing these things and Instagramming it, that’s probably not the right energy as well.

Susan Drumm: Yeah, yeah, have you done it — it sounds like you’ve done it several times. Is it sort of an onion that you keep peeling? Is there a point where you’re doing too many, where you become sort of that type of retreat junkie? Tell me about that.

Dave: Thank you for bringing that up — that’s very much a dragon people chase sometimes, and it’s because they get addicted to the vehicle, not the lessons and the integration, which, again, that’s the harder work. Oftentimes an intensive retreat might have you drinking two, three, four times in a row, and it’s because sometimes the first night is just the opening, getting your body used to it, kind of cracking you open. In the second night you go in a little bit deeper to investigate issues more broadly, and your system is more ready to kind of drop in more quickly.

Dave: So I would recommend, if you have the chance, to do a sitting where you do two or three sessions of the medicine consecutively — that can help you go really deep. A retreat I went on that was very effective was one day of preparation, forming the inquiry, then the sitting, then a full day of integration and journaling, and preparing the inquiry for the next sitting, and then a sitting the day after, followed by another day off. So it was a full week, but it allowed some time for integration and refining of that question to explore for the next session. So I found that pretty powerful. It’s okay if you just do one sitting, but if you have the chance and can do the multi-day one, you can have the opportunity to do some really deep work.

Susan Drumm: How many times have you done that type of experience?

Dave: You know, three, four times, I think, of multiple sessions. Each time was different. And boy, the lesson I learned — I have a funny story for you. I went in the first one thinking, like, I’m experienced, I love therapy and self-work, and I’m not afraid of facing my demons, and I’m going to ace this, right — like many of us always think we’re going to do greater things.

Dave: It was just so humbling and painful, and then I just came out of there like, okay, okay, don’t go in with so many expectations. And the next time I came in just humbly saying, show me what you will, and it turned out to be a beautiful experience — the whole rainbows and unicorns and all that kind of thing. And so I guess the lesson for me was just going in curious and without expectation or agenda. And that’s hard, because many of us who are successful, we always have this kind of, I’m gonna crush it, type of feeling, and this is not that. It often will give you what you need, not what you think — you go in with expectations, and it’ll show you.

Susan Drumm: So how would — I mean, given most of these are happening outside the country, is that accurate?

Dave: There are underground ceremonies that happen, again, word of mouth, in the U.S. — it’s becoming more and more common now. You know, it is still in the legal gray zone, but we’re having more decriminalization of natural plant medicines. So I wouldn’t be surprised if you go to certain cities and states — say, Denver and Colorado, or the State of Oregon has decrimed, or come to the Bay Area, where Oakland has also had decriminalization — you can go to some excellent places, like the Sage Institute, to look into plant medicine therapy.

Dave: Outside of the country there’s some wonderful places — there’s Blue Spirit in Costa Rica, there’s more and more resort and healing centers that do offer plant medicine programs and usually do a good job curating qualified shamans or providers.

Susan Drumm: Okay, got it. Yes. Did this originate only from Peru — do I have that right — or is it just more broadly South America?

Dave: Indigenous from Peru, because of the relationship with the jungle in that area. And, Susan, what’s interesting — almost every indigenous culture has had some form of this type of spiritual ritual using their environment. It depends — the Lakota Native Americans, they had the Sun Dance, so they used sun dancing, as well as sweat lodges. Other regions had other types of psychoactive plant medicines around them and would concoct similar preparations.

Dave: But it’s almost like humans, since time immemorial, have been looking for ways to reconnect with source, or kind of go deeper, with elements from their environment — whatever was around them, whether it was plants, or the sun, or other things.

Susan Drumm: Yeah, absolutely. So a long history of this. And I understand there’s some societies in the U.S. that you could get connected with to learn more — maybe you could share some information about that for listeners.

Dave: For sure. For plant medicine specifically, chacruna.net — that’s C-H-A-C-R-U-N-A dot N-E-T — is a great place to learn about these sacred plants and psychedelic science, and probably a great place to network, to find providers, and learn about the backdrop of it, including the rich history — as many of these have been used indigenously, and today it’s gotten to the mainstream, so we are kind of appropriating the other culture. So I would say it’s really important to learn the context and history of where these come from.

Susan Drumm: Yeah, fantastic. Well, really appreciate you sharing your journey, your experience — this has been fascinating. Anything you would leave our listeners with, who are curious, or maybe already done it, or contemplating — any advice you would share, besides what you’ve already given?

Dave: Yeah, for what it’s worth, just to share a bit of my story — this work was important for me to start with myself and just understand my why. And over time, the integration made my meditation practice much deeper. Before plant medicines I tried meditation, honestly, and I would sit and fall asleep, or I’d just be thinking, and this kind of was a movie preview of what’s possible to tap into, just in meditation. So it turbocharged my meditation practice in many ways.

Dave: That’s been what’s really beautiful — is then finding ways to tap into that source consciousness state without taking anything. And what’s mind-blowing is, it’s always there — it’s just, you sit and pay attention, and it’s kind of this interesting cosmic joke that that depth, that bliss, that joy, that connection, it’s always been within you, if you just remember to pay attention.

Dave: And so, with that, it’s really helped that meditation practice, and then shifting more toward healthier eating and healthier lifestyle and more loving relationships and everything else in life — that’s affected, I’d say, my quality of life, from me to we — so the people around me, people I work with, friends, family, etc. And that’s really shifted my mission in life, on what I want to work on — which is the healing of the world, which really needs it, and up-leveling capitalism and democracy itself, and looking at the ways we could create a better, more loving world. And that affects how I do my work and why I do my work now.

Dave: So that extends to all — this journey is typically from me, within, that shapes how you work with others — the we — to the all. And I like to say that, as within, so expressed without — so this work is your work. If you get right within yourself, it will pervade and exude out and do everything you do.

Susan Drumm: Absolutely, and this is the whole reason for this channel — you couldn’t have said it better. The Enlightened Executive, that’s what we’re here — that’s what we’re here to do, and here to help people along the journey of awakening. All right, so thank you for your time and your wisdom, really appreciate what you had to share today.

Dave: Great, thank you so much. Thanks.

Susan Drumm: Hope you enjoyed today’s episode, and I’d like to point you to the next important step — hit the subscribe button and the bell to get notified when we release new content. I’ll see you on the next episode of The Enlightened Executive.