David Vox

David Vox is the founder of the Ayahuasca Integration Alliance, a global community and resource hub for people walking the path of integration after working with ayahuasca and other plant medicines.

He has spent more than a decade sitting with the medicine, training with facilitators across lineages, and holding integration circles online and in person. His work centers on what happens *after* the ceremony — the slow, honest, often unglamorous work of letting the medicine actually change a life.

David hosts the Ayahuasca Integration Podcast, teaches on the Alliance's Facilitator Training, and leads the yearly Ayahuasca Integration Retreat. He writes and teaches with one commitment: integrity over hype.

Writing and voice

Every piece on this site is written by someone in the Alliance — a coach, facilitator, teacher, or long-time practitioner. We publish under real names because trust matters in this work, and because a byline is a form of accountability.

The essays and answers on this page come from a single author's ongoing work with clients, students, and community. They are not academic papers; they are field notes from someone still practising.

How our authors work

Everyone who writes for the Ayahuasca Integration Alliance comes from lived practice — not just theory. Our authors are facilitators, therapists, coaches, and long-time sitters who have spent years quietly walking alongside people through preparation, ceremony, and the slow work of integration that follows.

We don't publish trend pieces. We publish the questions people actually bring us — the ones asked at 2 a.m. after a hard night, or six months after a retreat when the shine has worn off and the real work begins.

What you'll find on an author page

Each author page collects their long-form articles, published Q&A answers, and podcast conversations in one place. If a question they've written about maps to a specific stage of the integration journey — preparing, in ceremony, integrating, or long-term practice — you'll find those cross-links right here so you can trace the thread all the way through.

We also list credentials, professional links, and where to reach the author for one-on-one work when that's on offer. Nothing published here is a substitute for personal support: it's context, framing, and lived experience meant to help you make your own next best decision.

About the Alliance

How the Ayahuasca Integration Alliance thinks about this work

The Alliance is a member-led community of facilitators, integration coaches, therapists, and long-time practitioners built around one plain idea: the ceremony is not the work. The work is what you do with the ceremony afterwards — over the weeks, months, and years in which insight either becomes a lived life or slowly evaporates. Everything we publish, every circle we hold, and every training we run is designed with that continuity in mind.

We started the Alliance because too much of the public conversation about ayahuasca stops at the door of the maloka. There are thousands of accounts of what happens inside ceremony and very little honest, sustained writing about what happens in the weeks after — the difficult passages, the ordinary aftermath, the way old patterns reassert themselves and how the people we know who actually change stay close to the material until it holds.

That's the gap this whole site tries to fill: a living map of the integration journey written by people who have walked it, reviewed by peers with clinical and lived experience, and organized so you can find the exact answer to the exact question you're carrying at whatever stage of the path you're currently on.

What integration actually looks like in practice

For most people, integration is unglamorous. It's a short morning practice — sitting, breathing, journaling — repeated on days you don't feel like it. It's one honest conversation a week with a person who can hear you without needing to fix you. It's noticing a body sensation before it becomes a mood, a mood before it becomes a story, a story before it becomes an action you'll regret. It's slow, and it's ordinary, and it works.

The people we see integrate ceremony most deeply are almost never the ones who had the most spectacular visions. They are the ones who stayed in relationship with the material during the ninety-day window when neuroplasticity is still open and old patterns haven't yet fully reasserted themselves — usually inside a community, usually with at least one trained third party, usually with practices small enough that a bad week doesn't derail them.

Everything we build — the circles, the guide, the Q&A library, the podcast, the professional directory — is designed to give you that combination of community, structure, and practice without gatekeeping or hype. You can use as much or as little of it as fits the life you're actually living.

How to use the rest of this site

If you're new here, the Integration Guide is the natural entry point. It's organized by the five stages we see most often — curious, preparing, in ceremony, integrating, and long-term practice — and each stage links out to the topic hubs, articles, Q&A answers, and podcast episodes that engage with the questions people usually bring us at that moment.

If you already know what you're looking for, the topic library and the Q&A living index are the fastest way in. Both are cross-linked to the journey stages, so you can follow a single theme — mental health, trauma, difficult experiences, relationships, ethics — sideways across every part of the map. And if you'd rather sit in a room with other people who understand the terrain, the Integration Circles page collects every recurring gathering we host, most of them free and drop-in.

For structured one-on-one support, our directory of vetted integration specialists is a good next step. For ongoing membership in the community — including access to members-only resources, private circles, and direct conversation with facilitators — the Alliance itself is where that lives. Whatever you use, please treat what you read here as context and framing, not as a substitute for personal support.

About the Alliance — common questions

Who is the Ayahuasca Integration Alliance?: A member-led community of facilitators, integration coaches, licensed therapists, and long-time practitioners. Everyone who publishes, hosts a circle, or supports members here has direct lived and professional experience of the terrain they're writing about, and every published piece is reviewed by at least one peer.
Is anything on this site medical or psychiatric advice?: No. Everything published is educational context and lived experience meant to help you make your own next best decision. If you're in crisis, working with medication interactions, or navigating serious mental-health considerations, please talk to a qualified clinician alongside anything you read here.
How can I get personal support?: Start with our free open integration circle if you'd like a low-friction way to meet the community. For structured one-on-one work, browse the directory of integration specialists. For deeper ongoing support, joining the Alliance membership gives you access to private circles, resources, and direct conversation with facilitators.

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Written by David Vox