Before his death at a festival where he consumed a psychedelic substance made from boiling plants and had secretions of a frog administered to his skin, Jarrad Antonovich was “gentle, kind, never aggressive, a talented musician”, an inquest has heard.
Antonovich died in October 2021, at the age of 46, while attending the Dreaming Arts festival, a six-day retreat at Arcoora near Kyogle in northern New South Wales.
An inquest into his death, being heard in Lismore, was told that at the festival he had consumed ayahuasca and participated in a “Kambo” ceremony, involving secretions harvested from an Amazonian tree frog. Ayahuasca is a psychedelic substance made from boiling plants that is used in ritualistic ceremonies in the Amazon basin.
Antonovich died from a perforated oesophagus from vomiting, the inquest heard. When paramedics arrived they found him unresponsive and blue in colour, while people continued a healing ceremony nearby.
The inquest heard that ayahuasca had been offered at the festival during sacred spirit music ceremonies run by self-described spiritual guide and healer Lore Solaris. The ceremonies ended at sunrise.
The dead man’s emotional father, Glen Antonovich, told the inquest his son was “totally vulnerable”.
After a car accident in 1997 from which he had to learn to walk and talk again, he was left with lasting impediments, the inquest heard.
Glen Antonovich said his son was a “searcher” and “was always talking about alternative medicines and psychology”.
“He would talk about astral travel, we would agree to disagree,” he told the inquest.
Antonovich had travelled to South America in 2003 and become interested in shamanic rituals, and had previously attended Solaris’s ayahuasca ceremonies.
Laara Cooper told the inquest that she is a former “Kambo practitioner” who arrived at the festival at sunset on 16 October 2021.
She said the frog secretions are applied externally on the skin, causing blood pressure to rise, the heart to race and the body to purge by vomiting or “going to the toilet” in a process of detoxification and purification.
When she arrived, she said she could see Jarrad “was in discomfort”.
“I could see that he couldn’t get comfortable,” Cooper told the inquest. “I noticed that his face and neck were swollen. He was breathing quite heavily as if exerting himself. He was moaning and groaning, panting a bit.”
When she returned 20 minutes later, she told the inquest, Antonovich “was complaining of nausea”.
“He was spirited, lucid, complaining of pain in his back,” she said. “Kambo can dislodge kidney stones. I asked if he should go to hospital. He was adamant that he didn’t want to go.”
She told the inquest there were no medical personnel at the festival.
At 8pm Antonovich was brought into the main hall to participate in the ceremony.
“He needed assistance walking,” Cooper said. “He was very weak. He was sitting in the back on a mattress, propped up on some pillows. He was surrounded by people; there was care for him.”
Solaris was leading the ceremony, the inquest heard.
She said that, half an hour later, Antonovich told her “the pain was moving from his lower back into his abdominal area and into his chest”.
“I talked to him again about going to hospital, he was adamant that he didn’t want to go. He said, ‘This is a spiritual test that I need to pass.’”
She told the inquest she felt “frustrated and concerned” at the time, and then saw “two men were holding him and he was starting to lose consciousness, having difficulty breathing”.
“I found someone who had a phone and called the ambulance.”
Counsel assisting the crown, Dr Peggy Dwyer, told the court an ambulance was not called until 11.30pm and took an hour to arrive because of the remote location.
The inquest heard that one ambulance officer reported that a female told them to “move away from Jarrad because it was affecting his aura”. Another woman was massaging his feet. No one told them he had consumed Kambo.
Ambulance officers Brett Murray and Phillipa Vallard were the first to arrive and were taken inside a large hall, where they found Antonovich just inside the doorway lying on his back.
In a statement to the inquest Murray said he had seen people at the other end of the hall “chatting and carrying on with whatever they were doing … preoccupied with some sort of alternative ceremony”.
Antonovich was “blue in the face and clearly deceased”, he said, adding “it was difficult to get information from the crowd about who Jarrad was and what happened to him”.
His father Glen told the court that the people he spoke to after his son’s death had “collective amnesia”.
The inquest continues.
