How much does the average psychedelic retreat charge for an overnight stay? What is the best guide to psychedelic safety in Australia? Why does the philosophy section have no philosophy this week?

For answers to these questions, plus a bonus resource all the cool kids are downloading, read on!

I had not planned on talking about research much for this issue, but a paper caught my eye and I fell down that rabbit hole (thereby running out of time to write my hard-hitting analysis on why Cybin is a meme stock.)

In A landscape analysis of psychedelic retreat organizations advertising online the authors seek to “characterize a broad range of organizations offering psychedelic retreats and marketing to English-speaking consumers.” There’s so much that’s interesting in this article, from research, business and harm-reduction perspectives.

Is the methodology perfect? No. The authors admit it couldn’t capture fully underground activities. (And only one retreat active in Oceania? LOL, I think not.) Nonetheless, it gives a fascinating snapshot of the business of psychedelic retreats around the world.

There were 440 retreats active during their data collection period of July 2023 to December 2023. Most retreats were in North America, concentrated particularly in the Western US. This was closely followed by South America. It’s also worth noting that a large number of US-based organisations offered retreat experiences abroad (unsurprisingly, in South America.) That the concentration of retreats in the US seems disproportionate to the rest of the world may not be so notable, though. The paper only considers website & material in English. So these particular figures may be a function of that, rather than an indication that the US is the gravitational centre of the psychedelic retreat industry.

Also interesting was the numerical dominance of retreats falling into the broad category of ‘wellness.’ The religious aspect is worth digging into as well, with ‘religious’ retreats being overwhelmingly more common within the US than anywhere else.

One set of figures that really baked my noodle was cost. The ranges described were enormous. Average price for a one-day (no overnight) experience was $668 USD, but the range was $20 to $3,625. At the upper end of retreat lengths, listed prices for ‘greater than 2 weeks’ were between $850 and $150,000, with an average of a bit over $7000. If you think $150k for a retreat experience, even a lengthy one, is a lot, the authors also note that they eliminated an outlier that apparently charged $500,000 for a long stay!

It’s easy to get distracted by the higher prices, and they are important. But the bottom end will have a story too. If you’re shelling out $80 for 2 days and night at a psychedelic retreat, you have to ask what you’re getting for that and, more importantly, what the people providing the service are being paid.

The limitations on this paper are disappointing. While I understand limiting themselves to only English-language websites etc. I feel this gives a potentially inaccurate impression of the reality of the retreat industry. If nothing else, future work needs to better integrate results from sites like Retreat Guru, which currently lists over 4,000 retreat experiences worldwide.

Limitations aside, this paper is definitely worth a read and raises a number of important questions, about ecological sustainability, harm-reduction, and colonial extraction. (Also: how do I pitch my services to somewhere that charges its clients $3k per day?)

New(ish) paper: The effect of psychedelic microdosing on animal behavior: A review with recommendations for the field indicates that animal (mostly mouse & rat) models don’t support the efficacy of microdosing. The authors also had something to say about the general quality of research they reviewed:

More importantly, most studies also failed to clearly articulate a hypothesis – an essential component of rigorous scientific inquiry. The absence of hypotheses leaves the findings susceptible to post-hoc interpretations instead of the clear demarcation between theories developed before and after data collection.

Ouch!

Better luck next time, I guess.

Want to help upgrade my budget from ‘buys rice at Aldi’ to ‘buys noodles at Coles’? Support me via Buy Me a Coffee.

This issue, I chose to write from experience, with less than usual of my over-thinking. A day that happened is my recollection of a special day that happened in my life. Rather than being analytical, it’s phenomenological - a study in psychedelic experience as it subjectively appeared and felt to me.

While analysis and picking over precise language is important, we can miss a lot if we don’t wade into the messiness of how things seem to us when they’re happening. Depending on who you believe, more often than not, our thinking overcomplicates real life. Sometimes, as Wittgenstein wrote in Philosophical Investigations, the best approach is: “Don’t think, but look!”

He was being at least a little facetious. When you look you always come back to thinking at some point. But it’s definitely the case that we can be better observers if we leave the thinking until later. I will circle back to the analysis in due course. I particularly want to think about what it was that made this space psychologically and physically safe. My gut feeing is that this grounds in deeply shared sub-subcultural experiences, norms, and connection to place, in ways that are probably hard to inorganically replicate.

Read More!

Until recently, there has been a relative lack of reliable publications on psychedelic safety written by Australians for Australians. Stepping up to fill this important role, the enigmatic Thurston Katt and a team of community experts have released How to Be Psychedelically Aware: The Essential Harm Reduction Guide to Psychedelic Use in Australia.

This book is amazingly comprehensive for something that, were it any smaller, could fit in you pocket. The list of topics covered includes preparation and integration, serotonin syndrome, guruism and some excellent advice for psychedelic newbies. But there are also some resources that more experienced travellers, as well as facilitators and guides could make good use of. This includes a list of red flags, a code of practice for psychedelic practitioners and a risk assessment checklist.

As I say in the forward to this edition, that I was deeply honoured to write, this is the book I wish I had when I started my own psychedelic journey, so many years ago.

How To Be Psychedelically Aware is available for purchase through Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions. If you are around Sydney on May 24, you can attend the launch, hosted by The Australian Psychedelic Society’s Sydney chapter, for a relaxed Q & A with the lead author - details here: PATCH Book Launch APS-Sydney

Writing mountains of psychedelic content week after week is a tough gig. Running newsletters and keeping those cash cows, I mean, real people with hopes and dreams heading down your funnel so you can extract a meagre living as you crouch in the ruins of late-capitalism, is even tougher.

Fear not, brave participant in the totally functioning economy! With ideas as engaging as ‘How To Get Started With Ego Death So You Can Invest in Bitcoin’ and fascinating as the ‘30 Day Planner To Help You Plan And Achieve Spiritual Bypass', you’ll be raking in the cold hard cash quicker than you can say: ‘I should have listened to my uncle and become a plumber!’

(Click the image to download. Or don’t, I’m not your shaman.)

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, I may earn a tiny commission at no extra cost to you. I rarely recommend products or services, and when I do it’s only those I genuinely trust or use myself.

If you made it this far, thank you (again) for reading!

As always, all feedback and suggestions are welcome, and I promise* to not talk shit about you to the Council of Wizards

*Unless I find out you bought a Psychedelics Anonymous NFT.

PS: If you still want me to put a joke all the way down here where only 3 of you will read it, please let me know.

Written on Worimi lands. Sovereignty was never ceded.

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