Bundled in blankets, I sip my cup of truffles crushed in hot water that smells and tastes like mushroom soup, pull down my blindfold and lie prone on my mattress. About 15 minutes later, intricate mosaic-like patterns start playing against my eyelids. A kaleidoscopic roller coaster follows, slaloming through time and space, interspersed with comic interludes: can-can dancing foxes and ancient Egyptian beagles. Old family hurts arise for healing and tears pour down my face.
Is the most intrepid, life-changing trip the one we take inside our own heads? The mushroom boom has moved well beyond trippy giggling in festival fields: the aim now is the ultimate psycho-plunge, a chance to reset the brain in increasingly cosseting surroundings. Class A drugs on a retreat sounds paradoxical, but this is a natural progression. Retreats such as Path of Love and the Hoffman Process have been facilitating drug-free plummets into the psyche for decades. These are processes that can produce rapid and profound change, akin to a year’s therapy shoehorned into one intense week. Yet many participants still hit a wall, an internal barrier that prevents deeper healing. The subconscious builds up Pentagon-grade defences with inner Swat teams on alert to keep our pain held smack down on the floor. All the deep bodywork, cathartic yelling, family constellations and ritual release in the world can’t always break through. Yet, it has been found that mushrooms can.
The Beckley Foundation has been researching psychedelics since 1998 and its founder, Amanda Feilding, recently launched Beckley Retreats, running psilocybin getaways in The Netherlands and Jamaica. Psychotherapist and shamanic practitioner Lucyne Pearson has come on board. “Mushroom laws are changing and we are moving in the direction of legalisation worldwide,” she says. Deep in the Dutch countryside, the New Eden centre is a clean, clear, comforting space. Hammocks slouch on the veranda while deep sofas cluster around a huge fireplace inside. The bedrooms have a spartan, boarding-school vibe, but that’s a small gripe. Our band of psychonauts gather in a temple-esque loft: 16 participants from across the globe and eight facilitators. This is no hippy-dippy clan: our group includes high-flyers from the art, fashion and tech worlds and a smattering of ex-Special Forces military. Most of us are psychedelic newbies and many, myself included, are nervous. My only prior experience of psychedelics was a spiked drink in my teens which left me hallucinating about my grandmother as an aggressive lizard. However, the promise of a reset is beguiling: depression and anxiety have nipped my ankles for most of my life. While mushrooms are illegal in The Netherlands, psilocybin truffles (the underground clumps of mycelial strands) aren’t. It’s a curious loophole, but one that Beckley and other retreats are happy to exploit.
After decades in the wilderness, psychedelics are decidedly back, and their renaissance is well charted in Michael Pollan’s How to Change your Mind, now also a successful Netflix series. A new generation of scientists is aware of their “potential to heal mental illnesses, such as depression, anxiety, trauma, and addiction”, he writes. It’s heady stuff, but there’s just one problem: mushrooms are still illegal in most countries, except Jamaica, Nepal, Samoa, Brazil, the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands and certain parts of North America. Retreats also happen openly in Mexico and Costa Rica where they enjoy a more ambiguous status. Under-the-radar sessions are popping up all over the UK and elsewhere, but most spas and retreat centres are, understandably, waiting for the legal green light.
The psychedelics surge isn’t confined to psilocybin: ayahuasca, LSD, ketamine, ibogaine, MDMA, mescaline and toad venom (5-MeO-DMT) are all appearing on retreats. Beckley, however, is sticking with mushrooms and truffles, because, as Pearson says, they are gentler on the body, safe for most people and nonaddictive. Yes, they do create challenging experiences, but any monsters and demons we encounter tend to be our shadow selves, awaiting recognition and transmutation.
We’re eased in gently with early-morning yoga and meditation sessions. Walks in the surrounding forest are encouraged and the food is so light and bright you can almost feel your cells sing. “Set and setting” is a vital concept. The mindset you bring to the ceremony and the environment in which it takes place are carefully choreographed to minimise the possibility of a “bad” trip: we are looked after like kittens.
Psilocybin, the psychedelic compound produced by more than 200 species of mushrooms around the world, temporarily stands down the critical, judgmental, highly defended parts of the ego brain. Under this armistice, old memories surface; repressed parts of the psyche bob up for healing; and the mind expands beyond the confines of the body and into a wider, let’s say it, cosmic consciousness. The brain can liberate itself from the stranglehold of negativ- ity and new neural pathways are formed, a process known as neuroplasticity.
Mushrooms have been used globally in shamanic ceremonies for millennia. But a deluge of clinical studies show that they might prove key in treating mental health issues, including depression, anxiety and PTSD. In the US, the FDA has designated psilocybin a “breakthrough therapy” for depression, speeding up research development. Meanwhile, the UK has introduced a fast-track pathway to licensing. Last year the Global Wellness Institute launched The Psychedelics & Healing Initiative, gathering researchers, physicians, business innovators, policymakers and investors to chart the rising hallucinogenic waters.
The five-day programme at Beckley includes two psilocybin ceremonies: six-hour inner journeys bookended by shamanic rituals of protection, gratitude and sharing. The first is the intricate kaleidoscope that purges a combination of detritus from the farthest reaches of my brain – the can-can dancing foxes – and old family hurts.
The second ceremony is a different beast: the psilocybin reveals the wasteland of my depression: a stark, cynical, lonely and alienated landscape. Everything and everyone annoys me. The only choice is to let go, surrender and be torn apart – literally, by a giant spider – so I can be gently reassembled. It’s brutal but I emerge feeling as if a rucksack laden with bricks has been taken off my back. “There are fewer places to hide with the fungi,” says Pearson, with a smile the size of a planet. “It will reveal blocks and, if you are ready and willing, it can help you transmute them with compassion and love.”
Back home, I find myself thinking, “Is this what it feels like not to be depressed?” and I’m terrified the feeling will fade. But Beckley doesn’t leave you high and dry. A six-week post-retreat integration programme includes weekly Zoom calls, a commitment to daily breathwork and visualisation practices to reinforce the new, positive neural pathways formed, and there’s a supportive WhatsApp group. “It’s not a magic bullet,” says Pearson. “The ceremonies have started the process, but you have to put in the work to rewire the brain.”
I’ve undertaken many deep psycho-logical retreats. They helped me under- stand my past and my pain on a cognitive level, but the black dog still snarled. Could psilocybin be the missing link? So far, four weeks post-retreat, I feel calmer and clearer, my mood noticeably lighter – it’s as if a surgeon has excised a swamp from my brain. Life-changing? Very probably. Certainly, we need caution and care as we open the doors of perception, but open them we should, I believe. The benefits to ourselves and the wider society could be seismic.
A four-night Beckley Foundation retreat in The Netherlands costs from £3,100. A scholarship programme is available. beckleyretreats.com
Fungi explanation
Watch Fantastic Fungi, directed by Louie Schwartzberg, on Prime, Apple TV and Google Play.
Read How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan (Penguin) – now also a Netflix documentary.
Dive deeper Beckley Foundation, beckleyfoundation.org. Maps (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), maps.org
Spike your coffee The Duchess of Sussex is just one of the celebs using functional mushrooms (the health not hallucinatory variety). Try adding Dirtea’s range of fungi superstars to your brew. dirteaworld.com
Where to trip
Retreats tend to follow the same four-or five-day format, with two ceremonies separated by integration days.
The Buena Vida Psilocybin Retreats are held in private villas or centres in Mexico and combine mushroom ceremonies with sound healing, somatic movement, yoga and breathwork. From £2,805; thebuenavida.net
Silo Wellness in Jamaica and Oregon includes microdosing alongside two ceremonies led by local Rastafarians. From £3,185; silowellness.com
Alalaho runs men’s, women’s and mixed retreats in The Netherlands in a comfortable, homely setting. From £1,865; alalaho.org
The Journeymen Collective offers “six-star-plus” luxe retreats in British Columbia that include Alexander Technique lessons, hiking and soaking in salt-water pools. From £10,000; thejourneymencollective.com