During the trip, a medic loiters in the living room, but she’s there more for reassurance than necessity. Those keen to experience higher doses under guidance are increasingly travelling to retreats held in countries such as Jamaica, Costa Rica, Peru and the Netherlands.Īt Synthesis, guests are encouraged to bring three intentions, which might be issues or conflicts that need attention, or, as in my case, a scientific curiosity to explore a different state of consciousness. It’s perhaps unsurprising that the trend for micro dosing on psychedelics is edging closer to social acceptability, despite its widespread illegality. It’s being developed by UK-based Compass Pathways, which hopes it will be available on the pharmaceutical market within five years. The US Food and Drug Administration recently designated a new psilocybin drug a “breakthrough therapy”. There is an abundance of studies, following a pioneering one by Imperial College in 2016, that have examined the therapeutic effects of magic mushrooms on severe depression. They go through the underground or try to join one of the academic studies.” Studies show magic mushrooms have an effect on depression Most people are still not aware that retreats like this exist. As Schirp explains: “We introduce psychedelics to people who can benefit from them, but who wouldn’t normally feel safe or be open to them. Synthesis charges £1,640 for a three-day programme aimed at beginners. Its prices for a four-day retreat range from £600 to £1,400, depending on your income. Schirp estimates there are a dozen or so legal mushroom retreats in the Netherlands, including events also run in the country by the UK-based Psychedelic Society. There is no governing body for psychedelic retreats nor are there official figures for the number of retreats around the world, with many held illegally.
His entrepreneurial mind saw that what was missing was a retreat with “medical supervision, private one-to-one coaching and professional standards in a modern context”. I felt this huge self-critical voice lift off me.” He believes he’d still be estranged from his father if it wasn’t for the perspective psychedelics have given him.
“I was walking through this forest and it was so peaceful, it was like a fairy tale. “I had my first mushroom trip nine years ago and that changed my life,” he says. It was co-founded by Martijn Schirp, a former poker player who found salvation through psychedelics. Synthesis opened its doors in April 2018. Welcome to the age of the psychedelic retreat. We’re not taking recreational drugs, but rather using psychedelics as self-exploratory and therapeutic “plant medicine”. Consuming the truffle parts of magic mushrooms is permitted in the Netherlands and my nine fellow guests and I will be eating a variety called Dragon’s Dynamite. There is soft, celestial music playing and I’m sipping fresh herbal tea while discussing my hopes and fears for tomorrow’s “ceremony”, which is retreat parlance for a psychedelic trip. I ’m at a weekend retreat in a converted church near Amsterdam.