The Denver Post published an Associated Press health piece on the booming business of psychedelic retreats, where people pay for multiday drug-assisted experiences advertised as healing, personal growth, and psychological breakthrough. The headline itself tells the story: booming business, few safety guardrails. Which is a tidy little phrase for “we built a market around mind-altering drugs and then acted surprised when the adults were not in the room.”
The article says no psychedelic drugs have been federally approved in the United States, and virtually all drugs commonly offered at retreats, including magic mushrooms, ayahuasca, MDMA, and LSD, remain illegal under federal law. Even so, the industry is growing, with retreats operating across the world and companies making all kinds of claims about healing while safety procedures, staff credentials, screening, and follow-up care vary wildly.
The Bullet Point Brief
- The article describes psychedelic retreats as a booming business built around drug-assisted experiences that claim to promote healing and personal growth. Because apparently “wellness” now means lighting a candle, taking illegal drugs, and hoping the brochure was honest.
- Researchers surveyed retreats and warned they carry potential for physical, psychological, and interpersonal harms. That is academic language for “this can go sideways fast, and the incense will not save you.”
- Psychedelic retreats are currently illegal in the U.S. under federal law, with very limited religious exemptions. Naturally, that has not stopped the sales pitch. Nothing says public health like a gray-market spiritual Airbnb with liability concerns.
- The article says there are no industrywide standards for how participants are screened, prepared, or monitored afterward. So the same crowd that lectures us about “evidence-based policy” is apparently fine with self-reported medical history and vibes.
- Nearly 90% of surveyed retreats require or recommend attendees stop certain medications, including antidepressants, before using psychedelics. Medical experts say tapering those medications can take weeks and requires professional supervision. But sure, let’s call it healing and print the invoice.
My Bottom Line
Here is yet another sign of Colorado’s continued societal rot. We are no longer just debating policy. We are watching people try to launder drug culture through the language of wellness, therapy, trauma, spirituality, and self-discovery. Same snake oil. Better branding.
Elected officials are sworn to uphold the health, safety, and welfare of their constituents. Please explain to me how this filth does that. How does pushing people toward mind-altering substances, shaky screening, vague credentials, and “few safety guardrails” serve the public good? How does encouraging vulnerable people to chase a psychedelic breakthrough while possibly stopping prescribed medication make a community healthier?
This is what happens when a culture decides boundaries are mean, consequences are outdated, and every bad idea becomes “innovative” once someone builds a business model around it. We are told not to judge. We are told it is healing. We are told the old rules are backward. Then, buried in the article, we learn the obvious: there are risks, oversight is thin, standards are inconsistent, and desperate people may not be honest about medical issues if honesty keeps them out of the retreat.
Colorado needs leaders who remember government’s first job is not to chase every fashionable experiment coming out of the drug-policy carnival. It is to protect people, especially the vulnerable. If your public-health strategy looks like a campout for illegal hallucinogens with a payment processor, maybe the problem is not that critics are uptight. Maybe the problem is that common sense got left in the sweat lodge with the waiver forms.
Source: The Denver Post
Share your thoughts...