The final push I needed to take the leap into the unknown and start my writing career came from an unlikely source – my dead father. 

In April 2014, I found myself in a small cabin on the fringe of the Amazon rainforest in Peru. I was already half-way through a whirlwind South America backpacking trip, when a buddy decided that it would be a good idea to pause what was a hedonistic lifestyle up until that point. His suggestion was that we retreat to the jungle and try a hallucinogenic brew called ayahuasca.

Believed by the natives over thousands of years to be a portal to another dimension, as well as a potent medicine to cure a range of ailments from colds to cancer, my own justification for trying the psychedelic potion was to gain some clarity about my life’s path. Thirty-two years old at the time, I had harboured a dream of…