HEALTH | MENTAL HEALTH | PSYCHEDELICS
How Ayahuasca Retreats Gamble with Your Life: 13 Ways to Protect Yourself
Stay safe and survive the Wild-West of the plant medicine world.
Type in ayahuasca retreat, plant medicine journey, shaman or ayahuasca ceremony into Google and you’ll get hundreds of thousands of search results — whether located in the Amazonian rainforest of Brazil, the ‘Sacred’ Valley in Peru, someplace high in the Himalayas, the urban jungle of New York city, Euro-chic retreats in Ibiza or Portugal, somewhere unpronounceable in Timbucktu, or an underground ‘ceremonia’ held in someone’s living room — the question remains: is it safe?
Ayahuasca itself — an entheogenic plant medicine from the Amazon, which miraculously holds the mind-blowing capacity to reveal to you truths about yourself to which you were oblivious or shadow parts from which you were hiding — is safe.
No one has actually ever died from simply drinking the mixed-berry smoothie coloured brew. Yet, plenty have been maimed or severly harmed due to an inability by those facilitating — the retreat hosts, ‘shaman’ or ‘curandero’ serving the ‘medicine’ — to provide sufficient duty of care.
