Psychedelic Travel Experiences Are More Popular Than Ever

17.04.2024 - 18:35 / cntraveler.com

In a mountain town about three hours outside of Mexico City, I sat on the floor of a thatched-roof palapa with blankets wrapped around me as a facilitator (both a researcher and medicine woman) sang soothing chants. A few hours earlier, I had declared my intention for our ayahuasca journey—that I want to live a big, meaningful, impactful life and am willing to release anything that does not serve that vision. By the end of the ceremony, where I took about three cups of the brew during the six hours between sunset and dawn, the message I received was that life is meaningless—that I might as well do whatever I want while I’m here.

To say that I was a little confused and discouraged by that would be an understatement. But eight months later, in a ceremony centered around a different substance—5-meO-DMT, more often called bufo, a substance derived from the parotoid glands of the Bufo Alvarius toad and widely regarded as the most powerful psychedelic in the world—in Tandava Retreats in Tepotzlán, I received the other half of that message. By way of what can only be described as full and total ego death, I came out of the hour-long ceremony with what felt like temporary enlightenment: That we are all given this chance to be human only once, and that we are born from the same place and will return to that place. Even if we can’t rationalize the meaning of life, we might as well live it to the fullest.

According to experts, I’m not alone in my interest in psychedelic retreats. Tommaso Barba—a Ph.D. candidate at Imperial College who has collected survey data from people who have participated in psychedelic retreats and ceremonies—says psychedelic retreats are becoming increasingly popular. Why now? Because a growing body of research into the therapeutic benefits of long-illegal psychedelic compounds is becoming widely available, making their therapeutic use less stigmatized for the first time.

“For most participants, psychedelics aren’t accessible where they live, which makes psychedelic retreats enticing, especially in countries where each substance is either legal or operates in a gray area,” says Barba.

According to his research, the most popular psychedelic retreats are psilocybin (hallucinogenic mushroom) experiences, offered in South America and the Netherlands, where the drug is legal; ayahuasca (a plant containing the powerful psychoactive DMT) ceremonies in South America, where it is considered an indigenous medicine; and bufo in Mexico, where the substance may be consumed. (As of now, there are no countries where LSD- and MDMA-assisted therapeutic retreats are legal, but according to MAPS, the non-profit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, that may soon change.)

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