Travel Companion Hub-Cassanie Mckenzie

This is your time to get unplugged and rediscover the joy of living this gift of life. The sweet spot here is you’re doing it your own unique way. Group retreats are a great way to connect to others in a unifying healing journey but our privately curated experiences take into consideration the questions YOU want answered and what the healed version of you looks and feels like.

So, would you spend £10,000 on a psychedelic retreat?

Psychedelic tourism is experiencing a boom with retreats around the world offering to help us reset our mental health and realign with our higher purpose — for a price. But are they effective or even safe?

The descent into chaos happens quickly. Anyone who’s read about psychedelic ceremonies will have heard the stories (“I puked for twelve hours, then I saw God”) so it doesn’t come as a huge surprise when across the clearing an anguished sob ripples out of the darkness. I am on a retreat run by the psychedelic company Silo Wellness. I briefly recall a conversation I had with one of my retreat mates yesterday, the day we arrived. She — going through a break-up — told me that she is “here to get through the rage as quickly and efficiently as possible.” Some sobbing is to be expected.

Fifteen of us have decamped to the lush hills of Trelawny, in the middle of Jamaica, for five days of group therapy, yoga and psychedelic ‘ceremonies’ guided by four local women who’re experienced in shamanic healing. We are all here for different reasons; on the first night, we sat in a circle and declared our intention for this ‘journey’: getting over break-ups, break-downs, life-changing career decisions, some of us are feeling ‘stuck’, overlooked or overwhelmed. 73-year-old retiree Alice* summed it up: “I just want to feel better about myself and about life. I want to know who I am, finally.” She explained that she had recently lost her husband after a long battle with…