There has been a surge of interest in the use of psychedelics as a tool to treat mental health disorders and for self improvement. Several retreats offering psilocybin ceremonies have sprung up in recent years to meet demand. 

Among them is Beckley Retreats, which runs programs in the Netherlands and Jamaica. It was co-founded by Amanda Fielding, a long-time advocate for psychedelic research and drug policy reform, and Neil Markey, a US army veteran who has used mindfulness and psychedelics to help treat his depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Mr Markey, who also serves as the company’s CEO, sat down with fDi to discuss his thoughts and concerns about the development of this emerging industry.

Q: How did you get into the psychedelic industry?

A: I was an officer in the US Army and was deployed in Iraq once and twice in Afghanistan. It was incredibly traumatic. We had three suicides in 90 days, which is unbelievable. This experience left some marks on me.

Then about ten years ago, I was fortunate enough to have some experience with meditation and psychedelics that put me on a completely different path. In the US, psychedelics for veteran healing is one of a few bipartisan issues. The world is changing and more people are becoming open to psychedelics. 

Q: Do you think that Jamaica is emerging as a leader in the psychedelic industry?

A: There’s this timely opportunity for Jamaica, because of their laws, to position themselves as a real standard bearer for this work. There is a lot of potential for that and they’re pretty close to North America. Americans and Europeans can learn a lot from the wisdom that is in Jamaica in terms of living a more connected life.

Q: Beckley Retreats runs programs in both Jamaica and the Netherlands. How do psychedelic retreats differ in the two countries?

A: In Jamaica, you can use natural mushrooms. In the Netherlands, you have to use truffles, which have the same active ingredient, but the preparation has to be different.

Culturally in the Netherlands, the local community is more open and aware of what is going on. In Jamaica, psychedelics are still a more developing area and people tend to be more conservative. The natural surroundings for our retreats in each country is different: the Netherlands is flatter, while Jamaica is lush and green. 

We’re non-medical. There is a lot to be learnt from indigenous and different spiritual traditions. In Jamaica, we have Jamaican facilitators, some of which have more Rastafarian ways of looking at spirituality. We try to bring that into the programme. Then in the Netherlands, because it’s more European facilitators, there’s different cultural, spiritual traditions.

Q: Psychedelic retreats are expensive. Do you plan to make Beckley Retreats more accessible in the future?

A: We’re a public benefit corporation with a dual mandate. We need to be sustainable, but it’s in our charters to figure out how to make these programmes more accessible. The two ways to do that is to either drastically reduce the service offering or keep the price high and put that additional margin back into the system. We have already issued 15 scholarships this year. We want to show that there is a way to be a sustainable company and to do it with heart.

We’re also at the beginning of this thing, right. There’s a lot of costs involved, such as legal and insurance. It’s not cheap to put these programmes on at the calibre that we’re doing now. I honestly don’t mind charging high-income people a premium price, if we know that we’re offering them something that is potentially life changing, so long as we’re doing good things with that margin. 

Q: What concerns you most about the development of the psychedelic industry?

A: People that are trying to make a buck quick, like they did with cannabis. When you do that, and you start thinking about throughput, the long-term well being of patients is not the top priority. Psychedelics need even more thoughtfulness, but there’s folks that do not have the right intention.

There’s also a risk of over-medicalisation, where we just treat psychedelics as another drug. As an organisation that’s offering these experiences, we need to teach people how to use these things mindfully and see them as a tool. You can’t take psychedelics and think they’re going to fix all your problems, because that’s just not how they work.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.