Welcome to Tripper Advisor, a biweekly article from the Mycopreneur and Beard Bros Pharms focusing on psychedelic tourism and entheogenic adventures around the world. 

Psychedelic tourism is booming. While clinical stage biopharma companies and academic researchers noodle over functional unblinding challenges and pending FDA-approval of psychedelics, a number of destinations around the planet already offer fully operational turnkey psychedelic tourism programs and psychedelic compounds for sale legally in their jurisdictions.

Some regions have bonafide legal industries established on this front; the psilocybin mushroom tourism industry in Jamaica and the psilocybin truffle retreats and smartshops in The Netherlands are examples of this. 

Other parts of the world have a generally lax approach to regulation of psychedelic tourism, opening the door to 5-MeO-DMT retreats and Ibogaine clinics in Mexico or resort-style ayahuasca centers in Costa Rica. 

Further, there are many retreats and psychedelic tourism hotspots across various parts of the globe where homegrown psychedelic tourism industries are thriving openly and with the complicity of local authorities regardless of the substances themselves being strictly prohibited according to official law – anyone who’s ever had a magic mushroom milkshake in Bali or Thailand at one of the full moon parties is familiar with this scenario.

The first large-scale form of psychedelic tourism took shape in the 1960’s when hippies from the west descended upon the Hashish Trail in Istanbul and on across the Silk Road to Kathmandu via Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. 

LSD and various other mind-altering molecules spread throughout the various towns and villages of the route, leading to the formation of psychedelic hotspots like Goa, India and Kathmandu, Nepal that continue today to harbor a legacy of psychedelic tourism. 

Some travelers flocked down to experience a psilocybin mushroom ‘Velada’ with Maria Sabina after word got out about the intact psilocybin mushroom ritual existing in the remote interior of the Sierra Mazatec mountain range around the same time. 

This particular example is an unfortunate illustration of unsustainable psychedelic tourism with deleterious effects on the local town; the famous mushroom town of Huautla de Jimenez in Oaxaca was totally unequipped to handle the influx of hippies coming to seek out a magic mushroom ritual, and ultimately foreigners were expelled entirely from the town and the Mexican military was put at the base of the mountain to block entrance to any new arrivals. 

In the process, the home of Maria Sabina was burned down after locals blamed her for the onslaught of foreigners and for defiling the sanctity of the sacred Mazatec mushroom tradition.

Psychedelic tourism found a foothold in Amsterdam with the establishment of “Coffeeshops” in 1972. While most other nations set about criminalizing cannabis and psilocybin  mushrooms on the heels of the 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic substances and the establishment of the Controlled Substances Act in the United States the year prior in 1970, liberal Dutch drug laws created a loophole of sorts that opportunistic entrepreneurs capitalized upon by opening cannabis and psychedelic cafes and consumption lounges that openly sold weed and other plants and compounds despite the trade not being strictly legal according to Dutch law. 

“Mellow Yellow” opened in 1972 and became one of more than 200 coffeeshops in the region. Many still operate today and though psilocybin mushrooms were technically outlawed in 2008 after a series of tragic incidents involving tourists under the influence of mushrooms, the lower-potency psilocybin truffles and many other psychoactive plants and compounds are still widely available today.

The current era of global psychedelic tourism as we know it mainly developed around Ayahuasca Retreats in the Peruvian Amazon circa 2000 with the establishment of various retreat centers designed to host foreigners interested in experiencing the mysterious and profoundly psychoactive DMT-containing ayahuasca entheogen.

By 2006, Ayahuasca had landed on the front page of National Geographic Traveler in an article written by Kira Salak about her intense and ultimately therapeutic experience with it while attending a retreat at the Blue Morpho ayahuasca center near Iquitos, Peru. This naturally drove throngs of seekers deep into the jungle to see if they could find God or alleviate the afflictions of modernity by learning the archaic techniques of ecstasy. 

With the rise in profile from the National Geographic Traveler cover story, a tourism boom found its foothold in the remote Peruvian Amazon basin in rubber baron built towns like Iquitos and downriver in Pucalpa, as well as the Sacred Valley in the Peruvian Andes.

The consumption of the highly psychoactive DMT-containing Ayahuasca brew is legally protected in traditional and ceremonial contexts under Peruvian law, owing to the custom of visionary plant use by indigenous groups such as the Shipibo in the region.

Hundreds of ayahuasca retreat centers opened up over the next two decades, and many still serve a never-ending stream of clients coming in from places like New York City, Dubai, Tokyo and everywhere in between in search of personal healing and visionary psychedelic exploration. 

A more recent boom in psychedelic tourism has taken shape on the Caribbean island nation of Jamaica over the past few years. Psilocybin mushrooms were never explicitly outlawed in Jamaica and grow naturally on the island. With the arrival of the ‘Shroom Boom’ circa 2020 and widespread media attention and scientific investigation into psilocybin, an industry for mushroom retreats began to come to prominence on the island. 

Today, there are dozens of magic mushroom retreats on the island and homegrown psilocybin Consumer Packaged Goods brands available for delivery or purchase from boutique stores and trendy resorts across the island. 

As the Founder of Mycopreneur and a Gonzo Style journalist, I invite you to join me on this expedition into the heart of psychedelic tourism around the world. 

Each week we’ll visit different destinations and meet the proprietors, travelers, and entrepreneurs at the center of the psychedelic tourism sector. 

We’ll drop in on luxury psychedelic travel retreats, visit iconic locations catering to the psychedelic tourism crowd, and experience off-the-beaten path places full of frontier characters and colorful legacies.

Alrighty then, thanks for joining along on this trip together with Beard Bros Media and I – all aboard the Tripper Advisor Express!