Ayahuasca Integration AllianceAyahuasca Integration
Brothers on the Vine
Brotherson theVine

Brotherson theVine

BY THE AYAHUASCA INTEGRATION ALLIANCE

An integration circle for gay men touched by the medicine path.

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Upcoming journey

Gay Ayahuasca Retreat

3 – 7 June 2027 · outside Madrid

A four-night ayahuasca integration retreat held exclusively for gay and queer men — deeper work, private rooms, and the same brotherhood you find here.

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Why this circle exists

A different landscape
of integration.

We created the Gay Integration Circle because gay men often face a different landscape of integration.

Our histories, relationships, expectations, and cultural conditioning carry their own particular colors. From intimacy, sexuality, and partnership to nightlife, chosen family, belonging, masculinity, and the search for community, we often arrive at plant medicine carrying experiences that are not fully understood in conventional healing and integration spaces.

Christian & David

Facilitators · Brothers on the Vine

HOW TO JOIN THE FREE GAY INTEGRATION CIRCLE

Apply
01

Apply

Share a bit about yourself and your journey. We read every application personally.

Pending in community
02

Pending in community

You'll enter the Alliance Campfire with a gentle pending seat inside this circle's room.

Welcomed in
03

Welcomed in

When accepted, the circle room opens fully and upcoming dates land in your calendar.

Facilitated by

AIA FACILITATORS

Christian Shappee

Christian Shappee

Integration Coach

Christian Shappee is the founder and initiator of the Gay Integration Circle. He leverages his background as a former pastor to help the integration process translate profound plant medicine insights into grounded, everyday life. He specializes in personal transformation by bridging the gap between spiritual states and embodied community connection.

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David Vox

David Vox

Founder AIA - Integration Coach

David brings a decade of experience working with ayahuasca. He is the host of the Ayahuasca Integration Podcast. He lives at an ayahuasca retreat center in Spain and is passionate about creating spaces where gay brothers can connect, share, and support one another on this journey.

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Upcoming circles

Spots are limited to honour intimacy and depth.

Your local start time

  • Madrid

    22:00

    Sunday

  • London

    21:00

    Sunday

  • New York

    16:00

    Sunday

  • Los Angeles

    13:00

    Sunday

  • Athens

    23:00

    Sunday

  • Melbourne

    06:00

    Monday

Times shown for the next session. Add it to your calendar so daylight-saving shifts take care of themselves.

Who this is for

Those seeking deeper connection through community and integration.

Those who have worked with ayahuasca and want support grounding the experience.

People ready for authentic circle work — not just another retreat.

Anyone committed to personal growth, healing, and showing up fully.

This space is inclusive, trauma-informed, and held with care. All bodies, all identities, all backgrounds are welcome.

Request membership

Ask to join Brothers on the Vine

Tell the facilitator a little about yourself. Requests are reviewed personally, and you'll hear back by email.

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Ready to take the next step?

Apply to join the circle.

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About Brothers on the Vine

A queer integration circle held by queer facilitators

Brothers on the Vine is a monthly integration circle for gay, bisexual, and queer men who work with plant medicine — or are thinking about it — and want a room where the conversation doesn't have to start from zero. Every facilitator in the circle is themselves a queer man who has sat with the medicine, held space for others, and lived through the specific integration questions that arise at the intersection of ceremony and queer identity.

We started this circle because the questions that come up in a mixed group are usually not the questions that come up here. Coming out through the medicine, chosen family, chemsex and healing, HIV status, grief for a generation, spirituality after church rejection, desire and shame, the difference between wounded and whole intimacy — these are the threads that need their own container.

Why this circle exists

Plant medicine reliably surfaces material that queer people have often had to keep hidden — from family, from institutions, from ourselves. When that material comes up in a room where you're also the only queer person, integration often stalls before it starts. In a room of brothers who share the terrain, the same material can move.

We aren't a therapy group and we aren't a support group in the clinical sense. We're a monthly gathering of men who take one another's inner lives seriously, hold confidentiality tightly, and know how to sit with the hard passages without needing to fix them.

Who it's for

You're welcome here whether you've sat with the medicine a hundred times or are still deciding whether it's for you at all. There's no experience requirement, no application form, no gatekeeping. If you identify as a gay, bi, or queer man and integration is alive for you right now, this circle is for you.

We ask two things of everyone in the room: confidentiality about what's shared, and a willingness to speak from your own experience rather than about anyone else's. Everything else, we figure out together.

What a session looks like

We open with an unhurried check-in — everyone gets time, no one is put on the spot. From there, whatever the room is carrying leads the shape of the sit: sometimes it's a focused conversation on one theme, sometimes it's a series of shorter shares, sometimes it's silence held together. Facilitators guide the container without directing the content.

Sessions run online for ninety minutes and close with a grounding practice so no one leaves the room in a raw state. The Zoom link, prep notes, and calendar are all inside the circle room once you've joined.

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.