Choosing a psilocybin retreat comes down to twelve questions and the quality of the answers. Ask who stays in the room during a session and what happens if the hour turns hard. Compassion Retreats screens every guest before confirming a booking and runs sessions of six to eight hours with a facilitator present throughout. The questions below work against any operator, ours included.
This piece sits in our writing on psilocybin and psychedelic work.
1. Who is in the room during the session, and for how long?
A good answer names people and names hours. At Compassion Retreats one facilitator is present from the first hour of a session until the guest is settled at night, and a session day commonly runs six to eight hours.
Ask whether the facilitator leaves the room and who takes over if they do. Ask what happens if two people sit at the same time and only one facilitator is working. This is the question that separates operators, because the room is where everything you paid for either holds you or does not.
2. What does your screening involve?
A good answer describes a conversation and a written intake, in that order. Compassion Retreats runs a call before anything is confirmed and a confidential intake per person covering medical and psychological background, with a preparation call before travel.
Screening protects you and it protects the house. A booking form is not screening. Ask who reads the intake and what they do with what they read, and expect an answer that sounds like a person rather than a system.
3. What rules a person out of a session?
A good answer names the exclusions without softening them. Acute psychiatric crisis and a personal or family history of psychosis rule the session out at Compassion Retreats, and the screening call is where this is worked out.
A facilitator who will not name exclusions has not sat with the people who should not sit. Ask about current medication as well and expect a direct answer about which ones mean waiting. Plain refusal is a better sign than vagueness.
4. How do you set the dose?
A good answer says the dose is set per person and says what it depends on. Compassion Retreats sets doses per person, and two people in one room take two doses rather than one shared one.
Expect the answer to weigh body weight, what you have eaten, medication and your own history. Ask what happens on the day if you want less than planned. The right to take less must be yours and it must not cost you the week.
5. What happens if the session goes badly?
A good answer describes a plan rather than promising a good time. Ask what the facilitator does when someone is frightened or when speech stops and the body curls inward.
The answer to this question is the one to weigh most heavily. At Compassion Retreats the facilitator stays from the first hour until the guest is settled at night, so nobody is left alone with what is rising. Ask what happens after a hard session that evening and the next morning as well.
6. How many people will be in the house at one time?
A good answer gives a number and says whether parties are mixed. Compassion Retreats takes one party at a time. One person or one couple can arrive, up to four by agreement, and parties are never mixed. There are no strangers in the house.
Group size shapes everything from the noise at breakfast to who holds your session. Ask for the maximum number rather than the average. Then ask who else is on the property that week, including staff and other guests.
7. Is the medicine inside the price or paid separately?
A good answer gives two numbers and writes both of them down. The psilocybin session at Compassion Retreats is optional and paid separately. It is quoted on the call and never inside a platform booking.
Ask what else sits outside the figure and what the figure covers in full. Meals and transfers sit inside the price at Compassion Retreats, and so do the practices. Flights and travel insurance sit outside it, and so do the paid extras.
8. What are your cancellation terms?
A good answer gives the deposit figure with the grace window beside it. It also states the rule for moving dates. Compassion Retreats takes a 30% deposit, non-refundable after a 72 hour grace window, with the balance due seven days before arrival. Changes of date are allowed.
Terms show how a business behaves under pressure, and pressure is what a cancellation brings. Ask what happens if screening rules you out after you have paid, and ask for the answer in writing before any money moves.
9. Who holds the work, and what have they trained in?
A good answer gives names first and then gives years. Ask who taught them and how many session days they have sat through as the person holding the room rather than as a guest.
Compassion Retreats is run by Olga Kukharenko and Lena Kurganska, with nearly four decades between them practising and teaching. Specifics can be checked and vague experience cannot. Ask the question early and note whether the answer arrives in names and years.
10. What integration do you offer, and for how long?
A good answer names a format and a length of time. Compassion Retreats includes two integration calls by video inside the first month after you go home.
Integration is where the session becomes something you can carry, and it is the part most often cut when a programme is trimmed. Ask whether the calls are with the person who held your session. Ask what happens when the month is over.
11. What happens when I get home?
A good answer covers the first weeks in plain terms. Ask who you contact in week one and what the plan is when something from the session surfaces at your kitchen table three weeks later.
The days after the retreat are when most people need help and find nobody. Compassion Retreats answers this with the two calls already inside the price. Ask for whatever the offer is in writing before you travel.
12. What is the legal position of psilocybin in Mexico?
A good answer is a plain one. Psilocybin sits in a legal grey area in Mexico, so the answer should be careful and it should name the risk rather than wave it away.
Ask how the house works inside that grey area and what it tells guests about travel and borders. The exposure lands on you as the traveller, so the answer should be careful rather than casual.
The facts
| Screening | A call before anything is confirmed, then a confidential intake per person, then a preparation call before travel |
| Contraindications | Acute psychiatric crisis, personal or family history of psychosis |
| Group size | One party at a time. One person or one couple, with up to four arriving together |
| Session day | One facilitator from the first hour until the guest is settled at night. Commonly six to eight hours |
| Doses | Set per person |
| Integration | Two video calls inside the first month |
| Price, one person | US$1,999 for three days |
| Price, couple | US$2,999 for three days, sharing one villa |
| Deposit | 30%, non-refundable after a 72 hour grace window. Balance due seven days before arrival |
| Medicine | Optional and paid separately |
| Touch | Non-sexual and inside boundaries you set first. Any part of it can be declined without explanation |
Where this work happens
Psychedelic integration runs three to five days for one party at a time, with the screening described above and the two integration calls after you go home.
Sources for this article
- 10 Warning Signs When Selecting a Psychedelic Facilitator - Fireside Project
- Nine Questions for Choosing a Psychedelic Retreat - Spirit Pharmacist
- Integration Station - Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies - MAPS
- Psilocybin for the Treatment of Depression - PMC - PubMed Central
- Psychedelic therapy in the treatment of addiction: the past, present and future - Frontiers
- Artículos 244 al 256 [Substancias Psicotrópicas] - Ley General de Salud (LGS) - Justia México
- Psychedelics in Mexico - Blossom Analysis
Write the twelve questions down before you contact anyone, and book only when the answers come back in specific words. If you are comparing any kind of house rather than a psilocybin one, how to choose a retreat safely carries the same questions in a general form. If you want to ask them of us first, write to us and we will set up the screening call. The wider picture sits in the psilocybin and psychedelic work hub.
