Written By | Babylonia Aivaz

Estimated Read Time | 10 minutes

At the age of 27, I began attending ayahuasca ceremonies as a means of healing my long and difficult battle with depression. Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic plant medicine from the Amazon that is administered in a group setting with the help of a shaman and is considered by some to be the best cure for depression in the world. Ayahuasca led me to see the most frightening psychedelic visions and took me on a rollercoaster of uncomfortable intense emotions, but little did I know how profoundly it would impact me later on in life. 

Over the course of two years, the repeated ayahuasca that was administered to me, not only did nothing to heal my depression but gave me a constant feeling of anxiety overtaking the next dose–not to mention the thousands of dollars I had to spend out of my savings account. 

At the age of 29, I became a born-again Christian and believed Jesus wanted me to stop doing ayahuasca. Coming to faith in Jesus healed me of a life-long battle with depression. I was full of joy, optimism, hope and felt the presence of God with me wherever I went. I even started dating a boy I really liked, named Timothy. Timothy was kind and gentle–qualities I found particularly special because I had previously succumbed to abusive relationships. Life had become something very enjoyable–like nothing I had ever experienced. I kept close to Jesus and felt I had a very special relationship with him. 

After a year of being a Christian, I began to see apparitions of Jesus everywhere I went. I saw bright and very real visions of him in Zumba class at the gym, at Chuck E. Cheese for my cousin’s birthday party, and all around my house. I thought Jesus appeared all over the place in order to give me a message. I tried to figure out what he was telling me. At this time, I had a sense that my world was different from other people’s world but I assumed that this was because I was very special. However, I also felt incredibly distressed and anxious because I couldn’t figure out what all of this meant. I stopped eating–thinking that seeing visions of Jesus meant I should be more ascetic. I told my mom that I kept seeing visions of Jesus! That’s when she went on alert and began to read books about schizophrenia. I was so hurt that she would think my spiritual experiences with Jesus were a mental illness. I thought, no, she just didn’t understand how special my relationship with Jesus was! At this time, Timothy broke off the relationship with me because I was too religious. He told my friend, “too much holy water puts out the fire.” This was devastating as I was so in love with Timothy. 

One day,  I started seeing lips moving on the faces of still pictures. I remember seeing the lips move in a clown painting in the guest bathroom. I was so shocked. Of course, it was Jesus again trying to give me a message. The message was about a “mission” to get Timothy back.  I would sit in front of the clown painting and receive messages from him. The clown told me that the only way out of my self-judgments was to “go see Timothy.” When the clown told me I had to go see Timothy, I was scared to get rejected by him. But I could never disobey Jesus’s commands! So, to accomplish the mission, I started inviting myself to Timothy’s house, paying for pizza deliveries for him, demanding that I see him because an angel had told me to do so. One day Timothy told me he had started to see someone else. My world crumbled, but because of the clown messages, I didn’t stop pursuing him. Eventually, Timothy told me to never talk to him again. My heart broke into a million pieces. I became deathly depressed. I had lost the mission. That’s when the clown painting stopped talking. I kept thinking, why would God choose to speak to me this way if he knew I would lose my mission?

I loved the clown, but it was apparent that he had abandoned me. This was a very stressful and chaotic period for me. I would walk outside and walk hours upon hours every day and fatigue myself–mentally and physically. All I thought about was how to get Timothy back. This was my life focus. 

During this time, my mother, who kept constant watch over me, was distraught but determined to help me. Because I didn’t want to disrespect Jesus, I stopped eating. My mother would leave food for me by the door of the guest bathroom, where I spent the majority of my days. My parents started giving me a medication called Abilify. The clown told me to take it so I did in order to be peaceful and Christ-like, but I didn’t like taking the medication. After some months, I finally stopped sitting in front of the clown paint because he was unresponsive to me. But the heaviness associated with losing Timothy and my mission didn’t leave my mind. I became suicidal because I disobeyed God as I failed my mission. However, I didn’t tell anyone about wanting to kill myself. I talked to Jesus during prayers and told him I wanted to die. 

After many months, the Virgin Mary image on one of the candles in my room began to talk to me. It wanted to give me a second chance with Timothy and told me just to be peaceful and that I would get an opportunity to be with him again. I felt I was back on track towards my mission. So I would stare at the moving lips on the candle for 8 hours a day as it repeated its messages to me. I would pray for hours to be with Timothy again. That’s when I think I became so distressed by the cycle I was in that I started having intrusive thoughts–I kept cursing Jesus. 

I became even more disturbed because I thought insulting Jesus would lead him to end my second chance. That’s when the Virgin Mary image on the candle stopped moving its lips, and I knew I had lost my mission again. I was so close. I became very depressed again. I grew chaotic. Blasphemous thoughts and images tormented me in my mind and I couldn’t sit still. I felt I had to walk around the block constantly in order to fight my mind. I also began long-distance running to gain endorphins because the blasphemous thoughts were so painful. 

One day, three figures in a| painting in my sister’s room began to talk to me, and I knew Jesus had given me another chance. Around this time, when I turned on the shower, I began to hear voices outside of my mind telling me that God would open the doors to Timothy’s house once again, that we were meant to go to India together, and that if I didn’t achieve my mission, I would be in danger. The voices were very loud and strong, but only appeared when I turned on the shower so I began taking many showers a day just to hear benevolent messages that made me so hopeful. After a while, the messages in the shower told me that God had opened the doors to Timothy’s house and that Jesus had forgiven me for all the blasphemous thoughts. The voices told me my blasphemous thoughts were present because I was under spiritual attack by Satan. I started driving to Timothy’s house and appearing at his doorstep out of the blue. For reasons I still don’t understand, he let me into his house. I showed up at his house three days in a row, and each time stayed a long time. He kicked me out the third day. I came back home very depressed. 

That’s when a voice from the shower started speaking to me at all times and in all places. It told me that I had to pursue Timothy and try to love him no matter how he behaved towards me. I started sending Timothy dozens of emails, texts, letters, and money in the mail. I tried to win him over. He eventually blocked my phone number and stopped responding to me. The voice also had me doing other bizarre things like trying to go to Hawaii because Jesus was waiting for me at the airport. I began seeing visions of Jesus that were trying to get me to escape my house. I tried to escape my mother all the time and get into strangers’ cars so they could take me to the airport to be with Jesus. When I ran, my mother would run after me. Over and over. My mom was so shaken. I would walk around outside in the neighborhood at 2 AM naked because the voice told me to. I thought the voice was Archangel Michael–Jesus’ highest commanding angel. 

Eventually, because of all my behaviors, my mom took me to a new psychiatrist, and he put me on a new antipsychotic called Invega. After some time, the voices stopped, and the hallucinations went away. I went back to normal. I even was able to repair things with Timothy, and he is my friend now.

I discovered a stronger and more grounded self. I left the other world of mental anguish and disharmony, and I began living a normal life. I now have great friends. I am getting my Master’s degree and plan to get my Ph.D. in Psychology from a Christian University so I can become a Christian counselor. I use fitness and exercise as my outlet for all the hurt emotions that I feel from being diagnosed with schizophrenia. I have trouble accepting my diagnosis, but Jesus is so good that he visits my dad in dreams and tells him that I have a condition and need to take my medications. I know it’s the real Jesus because he knows stuff about me that no one could know. I have hope for the future. I know that with God’s strength, I can conquer any negative self-image with God’s strength and overcome all the odds and help others win their mental health battles. I believe there is no such thing as a hopeless soul or a lost cause. We all have the ability to recover from whatever we struggle within our minds. I believe God is good and that he has a plan for my life. One of my goals is to teach about schizophrenia at universities and to audiences all over the world so that we can finally de-stigmatize this condition. I hope to help families with members who are diagnosed with this disease. I will always be grateful to my mom for never giving up on the real Jesus and me for carrying me through a dark time. Lastly, I would caution people not to do ayahuasca because I think the hallucinogenic nature of the medicine triggered my schizophrenia. 

My mom packed away the Virgin Mary candle and the clown painting, so they’re no longer in the house. I now think of clowns as funny green-haired entertainers who make me laugh and candles as instruments that light my way in the path of life.