The Algorithm Ate My Grief, So I Ate a Plant

An algorithm betrayed me. A plant rebuilt me. And 700 notifications proved I never needed any of it.

I posted a list of 15 names on Memorial Day.

Fifteen men I served with who didn’t come home.

Then I sat there and watched LinkedIn’s algorithm decide that only 1,200 of my 16,000 followers were “worthy” of seeing it.

The platform wanted engagement bait. It wanted me to dress up grief into something algorithm-friendly. I looked at that number - 1,200 out of 16,000 - and I realized I was done.

I wasn’t burned out. I was fucking fed up.

I’d spent months pouring my heart and soul into building things people told me they wanted. I built a $300 course because people asked for it. They waitlisted for it. Then, when it launched, only seven people actually bought it - and practically none of them are doing the training.

I was sick of building for a void. I was sick of the “dick-measuring contest” LinkedIn has become. I was sick of my energy being a free resource for an algorithm that doesn’t care about the fallen.

So on June 2nd, I got on a plane. I arrived in Tarapoto on the 3rd, and on the 4th, I went into the jungle.

I didn’t come back until June 23rd. Twenty-one days total.

Here is what that actually looked like.

The work opened with two ceremonies on June 6th and 7th. On June 9th, after the third ceremony, I entered the tambo - a simple wood hut on a hill with a concrete pad and a bed.

Then the dry fast began.

For four days, I had zero water. The only liquid that touched my lips was Ajo Sacha. I had a bottle for the day: a fourth for breakfast, a fourth for lunch, a fourth for dinner, and the final fourth right before bed. The only “real” water I touched was just enough to brush my teeth. That was it.

After the fourth day, I was allowed real water, but the diet remained the same: No salt. No sugar. No oil. No seasoning. Just bland survival.

It rained the entire time I was in the tambo. It wasn’t a “spiritual retreat”; it was a damp, miserable, physical trial. Everything stayed wet. My clothes, my bedding, the air itself.

One night, I woke up at 3:40 AM. It felt like a literal rewrite was happening inside my skull. It wasn’t a dream. It was a physical sensation of wires being pulled and soldered - a feeling that lasted for the next 24 hours, even while I was wide awake.

I sat in that hut, and all I wanted to do was go home. All I could do was loop on the things I had zero control over. My business. My relationships. The world I’d left behind. You’re stuck there, sitting in the damp silence with nothing but your thoughts and the plant.

Ajo Sacha is “Sinchi Medicina” - war medicine. It is a master plant used by the Shipibo to burn “panema.” Panema is the heavy, stagnant sludge of energy you absorb from the world. It’s the energy of other people’s demands, the weight of your own patterns, and the exhaustion of carrying a load that isn’t yours.

Physiologically, it’s a massive purge. It cleans the blood and the gut. Energetically, it’s for people who struggle with boundaries - people who let their life force be harvested by everyone else.

I didn’t choose it. It chose me.

On June 23rd, I landed in Miami at 5:00 AM and turned my phone on.

Over 700 notifications were waiting. 248 texts. 184 social pings. 400 emails.

I never told my public audience I was going off-grid. I just stopped. So for five weeks, the world kept screaming for my attention, assuming I was just... not answering.

And the breakdown of those 700 pings confirmed why I’d left.

About 10% were people genuinely checking in. People who cared if I was alive. The other 90%? People who wanted something. Clients with “urgent” questions. Leads. Pitch decks. Automated systems.

I hadn’t posted in over a month. I hadn’t liked a post. I hadn’t replied to an email. And yet, the businesses were still running. The AI agents were still working. The world had not stopped spinning just because I wasn’t there to watch it.

The only thing that changed was my perspective.

I’ve been home for seven days. I spent that time reintegrating. I ate salt. I went to the gym. I felt the iron in my hands and remembered who I am when I’m not being harvested by a feed.

I’m back now, but I’m not playing by the old rules.

I’m done bleeding for a platform that treats grief as “content.” I’m done treating my attention like free real estate. I’m done building things for people who say they want them but aren’t willing to do the work.

The funny thing? While I was completely dark - no posts, no emails, no signal at all - two people found the Substack and paid for it anyway. That tells me the value isn’t in the volume. It’s in the signal.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be unpacking the specific lessons the jungle forced me to look at. The things I had to let go of. The new way I’m building.

This is the first chapter.

I’m still Adam Peters, and I’m still here to unfuck the transition.

But the way I do it just changed.

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What happened today. How it changes things starts later this week. Subscribe to follow the rebuild.

P.S. I’m not writing long-form every day. That’s a recipe for burnout and garbage. I’ll drop short Notes daily, and the deep stuff - the rebuild, the lessons, the mechanics - will hit your inbox when I have something worth saying. Quality over volume. The old model is dead.