Inside a Psychedelic Retreat for the Corporate Elite
Marisa Meltzer
October 17, 2023·12 min read
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The vibe at the ketamine ceremony is more business casual than Burning Man. Of the 20 or so people gathered at the airy loft in New York City, there’s an even split of women and men, most of them white, ranging in age from their 20s to their 70s. They all look professional, like they could be minor characters on Succession, with their quarter-zip sweaters and Prada sweatpants.
Everyone has congregated for “an evening of self-discovery.” Which means five hours of sound healing, breathwork, Qigong, guided meditation, acupuncture, and intention setting. But the most anticipated part of the evening is the ketamine journey.
When the time arrives to partake, it’s dark outside. There’s some small talk as everyone settles onto plastic sleep mats arranged in a circle; to the side of each one is a journal, a face mask, and 400 ml of ketamine in the form of a pink lozenge.
One participant, Lisa Evia, a blonde-haired, 48-year-old venture capitalist, was in town from Chicago and had some previous experience with ketamine. She’d come away from prior experiences that altered some of her personal relationships, like with her mother, for the better. That evening, as she placed the lozenge on her tongue, she had a different set of intentions: She wanted to be a different kind of leader at work. Someone more compassionate, less intense. How could she bring empathy and connectivity into leadership?
That many in the room have work on their mind makes sense. The workplace is in crisis, with employee malaise hovering like a cloud over everyone’s cubicles. It’s even spawned movements: Quiet Quitting. The Great Resignation. The Anti-Ambition Era. At one point, there was something about a “quitagion.” Which speaking of, an estimated 25 million people left their jobs at the end of 2021; about 50 million quit in 2022. Unconvinced that traditional solutions can help, some business leaders are looking for the type of wide-open thinking that psychedelic substances can provide.
Psychedelics slipped into our collective consciousness as of late through the mainstream. Perhaps it began with Michael Pollan’s bestseller How to Change Your Mind about the benefits of psychedelics or when psilocybin retreats were covered by everyone from Anderson Cooper to Goop or when mushroom-laced chocolates began popping up in Insta ads. Whatever it was, somewhere along the way, psychedelics began to be seen as not quite a drug, but as something more powerful—a kind of ritualized path to understanding oneself in a deeper way; a gateway to thinking and seeing things differently.
But psychedelics aren’t new. Indigenous communities have found incredible healing and connection to plant medicine long before Western culture came around to them (even if only after criminalizing the substances, which disproportionately affected people of color). What is new is a demographic of people who are psychedelic-curious: business leaders.
“For executives, when you’re under a lot of pressure, you can pass down your feelings of anxiety, fear, and frustration to your employees,” says Sandra Statz, 47, the founder and CEO of A.P. Chem, a skincare line, and one of the ketamine ceremony participants. “I don’t think it’s always about being more creative. Rather, it’s about being less risk averse and more open-minded—maybe even more daring with the strategy and tactics you wouldn't otherwise have the confidence to pursue to help you achieve your business goals.”
A certain progressive slice of the corporate world, especially the tech-y type, has always been obsessed with psychedelics. Steve Jobs said that taking LSD was a “profound experience” and had a professional breakthrough while on it around creating great things instead of merely making money. More recently, Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps have started to offer their employees the benefit of ketamine-assisted therapy.
The idea that psychedelics can not just heal the corporate crowd but open them up to new ideas and maximize their potential has trickled into more conservative business spaces, too. Last year, at the World Economic Forum's annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland, Energia Holdings Incorporated, a venture capital firm that invests in alternative health companies, hosted a “medical psychedelic series” guiding executives through, “sessions curated to engage all six senses and give an unforgettable heart-opening, mind-stimulating, experience of human connection through sound meditation, breathwork, and conscious leadership workshop.” Some attendees dubbed it The Psychedelic House.
To meet the growing interest, there has been a rise in psychedelic retreats aimed at executives. Some retreats, like the one I attended, last just a few hours and are mostly hosted in big cities. They offer ketamine, which is legal in the United States (although use of it for anxiety, depression, and hopefully for some big professional insights is considered off-label).