Questions
Frequently asked
The things people write in and ask, answered plainly.
No. We publish information and, increasingly, a directory of legal retreat centres. We do not sell substances, source them, or tell anyone where to. Messages asking us to will not get a reply.
Because wild peyote grows slowly and is assessed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, and it is the sacrament of the Native American Church. In 2020 the National Council of Native American Churches and the Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative asked that decriminalisation efforts leave peyote out, and Colorado's natural medicine law excludes peyote by name. We point that demand toward cultivated San Pedro instead, never wild plants, which carries the same primary alkaloid. Our position page cites every source.
It depends enormously on where that is, and the answer changes. Psilocybin is licensed in Oregon, unscheduled in Jamaica, decriminalised for personal possession in Portugal and prescribed only by authorised psychiatrists in Australia. Check our cited legal status table as a starting point, then confirm with a qualified local source before acting.
Usually not safely, and with ayahuasca the combination can be fatal, because it contains MAOIs, and combining those with an SSRI or SNRI can cause serotonin syndrome. Lithium plus a classic psychedelic has been linked to seizures. Tapering off a psychiatric medication is itself medically risky. This is a conversation for a clinician, not a retreat's intake form.
By the law and the enforcement record where a centre operates. We list centres where the medicine they serve is licensed, unscheduled, unregulated or tolerated, and, under a separate label, "Illegal but tolerated in practice", where national law prohibits it but retreats operate openly and a dated news search found no reported prosecution of a retreat. That label means participants and operators carry real legal risk, and it can change without notice. Every listing states the law in its place, including where the medicine is illegal, and a centre is listed only while it is verifiably operating. Peyote is never listed, whatever the law, for conservation and sovereignty reasons. Profiles are built from state licence registers, the centre's own website and independent sources, each cited and dated. We have not inspected any centre, and every profile says so and shows any public record, such as a reported death or a regulator action. Paying us will not buy a listing or remove or change a record. Featured placement is labelled and puts a centre first in its lists. A centre can also pay $295 a year for Verified checks: we check its licences and its physicians' registrations ourselves, and the profile shows only the checks that passed, each with where and when we checked. A check that fails is simply not shown, and Verified checks do not change a centre's place in any list, its reviews, its safety notes or its legal status.
Four ways, all listed on the disclosure page (/Disclosure). Paid featured placement ($149 a month per centre, labelled "Featured"; it never hides or changes a centre's public record). Verified checks ($295 a year per centre): we check a centre's licences on official registers and show only what we confirmed, and the fee is charged whether or not a check passes. Referral commissions: some retreat centres outside the United States may pay us a commission when a reader books after finding them here, and each is labelled "Peyote.com may earn a commission if you book"; a commission never changes the order of any list, the reviews or the record. We take no referral money from US treatment providers, recovery residences, labs or clinics (ketamine and Spravato clinics included), from clinical-trial sponsors, or from Oregon and Colorado licensed psilocybin centres, and our condition pages carry no commission links. And the Amazon links to our book, Occasioned, earn a small commission as an Amazon Associate. We do not sell leads or your personal data, and an enquiry reaches a centre only if you tick the box asking us to share it with that one centre. We don't run programmatic advertising.
No. It's educational. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a prescription, or a recommendation to use any substance. Psychedelics carry genuine psychiatric and cardiac risks, and those risks are not evenly distributed across people.
Yes to both, and corrections especially. If something here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we'll fix it and say that we did.
Something we haven't covered? Ask us directly.