Psychedelic Tourism: An Interview with the Founder & CEO of Atman Retreat Stream of Consciousness

In this episode, we interview Aaron Nesmith-Beck, the Founder and CEO of Atman Retreat. Our conversation serves as a deep dive into the broader psychedelic tourism industry and we cover a variety of topics ranging from fundraising to effective altruism, academic research to legislative landscapes, and Gwyneth Paltrow through to Peter Thiel. We recommend listening through the whole episode chronologically but the major discussion points are as follows:

00:00: Psychedelic tourism industry overview
03:49: Aaron’s background and early psychedelic experiences
07:45: Digital nomad life working on Freedom & Fulfillment. Articles he recommended include:

Psychedelic Research Review
Mystical Experience & Psychedelics: Meaningful, Measurable, Life Changing
The Practical Benefits of Meditation 

10:45: How Aaron helped MAPS raise over a million dollars in Bitcoin donations
16:23: Psychedelics and Effective Altruism: Psychedelic Research as a Potential EA Cause Area 
24:00: What is Atman Retreat?
27:30: A description of the end-to-end retreat process
32:10: Customer demographics and initial reception
41:34: Facilitators supply and demand dynamics, see facilitator bios here
46:16: Initial funding and current fundraising
50:07: Data sharing with academic institutions
51:38: Profitability and new offerings
54:50: Balancing the tension of scaling without sacrificing quality
59:23: Legislative landscape and legal due diligence
63:30: Reactions to the Goop episode on psychedelic retreats
68:34: Discussions of broader controversies in the psychedelic tourism industry
73:40: Safety and risk mitigation considerations
78:30: What excites him about the industry’s future

As always, we’d love to hear your feedback and answer any questions by email (hello@psychedelicmemos.com) or via Twitter (@arminkhaya & @colinrball).