Plant medicine retreats promise to elevate your consciousness and optimise performance, while biotech firms are exploring psychedelics for mental health therapy. Here’s what you need to know
Jonathan de Potter was working long hours in consulting in Hong Kong, chasing big deals and managing a team of 120. He says he was also quick to get frustrated, impatient, even angry. He wondered why and what might be missing in his life.
In search of answers, de Potter attended a plant medicine retreat in Peru about five years ago and tried ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew of vines and shrubs traditionally used in the Amazon. It set him on a transformational personal journey—and a new career path.
In March 2020, de Potter launched Behold Retreats, his own luxury plant medicine company and a “life accelerator” catering to leaders, executives and entrepreneurs. Retreats take place in countries where it’s legal to consume ayahuasca or psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, and an individual executive programme is available on a case-by-case basis.
“It’s actually a supply problem: there are so few people on this planet that can do this work at a high enough level that we would feel comfortable,” says de Potter on facilitating private plant medicine treatments.
The next small-group event kicks off May 29 at Costa Rica’s Cocoterra Permaculture farm, where ethnobotanist Jonathon Miller Weisberger grows and brews his own ayahuasca. His team, including a 102-year-old maestro, leads ceremonies, along with art therapy sessions, daily yoga, medicinal flower baths and jungle walks.
Behold Retreats is riding a wave of interest in psychedelics that’s sweeping Silicon Valley types, the medical community and venture capital firms. The substances have come a long way from the 1960s counterculture movements and the hippie backpacker scene. Pop culture has helped reduce the stigma—with psychedelics popping up on Billions, The Goop Lab and documentary Have a Good Trip—as has interest in anything natural and plant based.
When asked what he would say to a plant medicine sceptic, de Potter grins: “I haven’t spoken with one,” he replies. “What I do hear a lot of is ‘I’ve tried everything,’ and then what I’m very happy to tell those people is, wait until you try this.”