How a Legal Loophole Made Jamaica a Magic Mushroom Paradise

My first ever ice-cold face cloth heralds the beginning of a luxurious retreat experience culminating with the ceremonial consumption of magic mushrooms sat alongside some two dozen Americans, aged from 38- to 86-years-old. Most of them have never tripped before and had spotted sponsored Google ads from Beckley Retreats inviting them to come and “find your spiritual awakening” at the aptly-named Good Hope estate.

Tourists traditionally come to the land of Bob Marley and Usain Bolt for three reasons: to visit the stunning beaches, smoke ganja, and check out the music scene. But after it dawned on the Jamaican government that the country could be uniquely poised to profit from the shroom boom, it has increasingly welcomed mushroom ceremony providers and industrial-scale cultivators. One based on a 235-acre estate claims to be able to produce 150kg of “psilocybin mushroom biomass” per month for export and domestic sale to retreats. It touts itself as the largest legal psilocybin producer on the planet.

The company, Rose Hill, was behind the first legal export from Jamaica – to Canada – but there’s plenty of local demand too, mostly from North American mushroom seekers coming in their hundreds for high-end retreats that charge about $6,000 per person. It could prove a smart, if costly, investment. Here at the Good Hope estate, an hour from Jamaica’s second-largest city Montego Bay, my fellow participants hope the mushrooms will help them lift clouds of depression, connect more with their inner selves and spiritually prepare for death. 

Unlike most other countries, Jamaica never outlawed trip-inducing fungi, and locally-picked shrooms have long been discretely sold to tourists during the fruiting season. A decade ago, one retreat provider picked up on the loophole and began hosting events, initially under the radar. When they were left to their own devices, confidence grew and others started staging events about five years ago. Now, politicians are bigging up the “huge potential of spiritual health as a tourist product”.

The island, a British colony until 1962 but of which King Charles remains the head of state, has unexpectedly become the prime western hemisphere mushroom haven. Nowhere else has cultivation been explicitly declared legal by a nation state government, outside of nearby island chain St Vincent and Grenadine.  

“I don’t know if we’ve become a magic mushroom hub as much as we are being made a hub,” muses yoga teacher Nadine McNeil, who works at psilocybin retreats. “Taking mushrooms isn’t much of a Jamaican experience, only in the esoteric community. I know many mainstream Jamaicans who would smoke a joint but would not take anything psychedelic.”

She laments the high levels of mental health issues in Jamaica –  where the public psychiatry treatment sector is forward-thinking but, like elsewhere, seriously under-resourced amid stark inequalities and poverty. “There are so many disturbed people walking the streets, but we dehumanise them and do not work to heal them. Most Jamaicans have no idea of the work we’re doing: I might as well be living on a different planet.”

In 2022, McNeil says, homicide rates on this island of three million people were the highest across the Caribbean and Latin America. “Everyone knows someone first hand who has been murdered,” she adds. Experts widely regard these inequalities and poverty as being linked to British colonialism and slavery: It’s the same deplorable and deep-rooted history that means colonial mansions can be rented for Americans to trip while being waited on by Jamaicans.

Guests at Good Hope, which is being rented by Beckley for its 18 retreats this year, are inexplicably greeted in their rooms by sugar-coated histories of the land, glorifying the achievements made on the back of subjugated workers. A tour guide book celebrates how the property served as the bedrock of “one of the largest sugar fortunes made in Jamaica” without making any mention of the slaves who were snatched from West Africa at the barrel of a gun. 

“Social and cultural forces … have conspired to create a wall of silence around the period of enslavement, colonialism and its harmful legacies,” writes Ahmed Reid, a visiting professor at the Centre for Reparation Research at the University of West Indies. “They have shown the direct link between historical injustices and underdevelopment throughout the region.”

Could the shroom boom help raise the standard of living in Jamaica? With no shortage of well-heeled visitors – from CNN correspondents to tech executives – attending the dozens of retreats each year, it may depend on how much locals working in the industry are paid. If all retreats follow the example of Beckley – which remunerates Jamaican facilitators to the tune of between $500 to $1,000 a day – then it could be a start.

In 2022, it awarded 15 scholarships to individuals from historically marginalised communities, including Jamaican locals, so they could attend an 11-week programme covering prep, two shroom ceremonies and structured integration therapy. Fully funded Jamaican-only retreats are also planned for next year. “Our vision is more than just showing up to do the [medicine] work on this land and then popping out and leaving,” says Vian Morales, SVP of operations. “It's an opportunity for us to learn from the Jamaican community, and really integrate ourselves within the community. We're trying to identify as many ways as possible to not be a transactional business, and more one that's relational.”

Psilocybin, the active psychedelic ingredient within shrooms, can bring about a series of benefits that are increasingly being borne out in clinical trials which are confirming indigenous knowledge. A few Rastas may have indulged in mushroom tea from time to time, but the vast majority of Jamaicans remain blissfully unaware of the rapidly growing mushroom industry in the conservative, largely Christian nation. Its true nature is sometimes warped by a ganja-smoking liberal Rastafari veneer created by the approximately one-in-five who smoke weed. 

In any case, McNeil says that what is crucial is the widespread establishment of basic pillars of good education, healthcare and economic stability to create a healthier society. And there are fears among certain sections of society in Jamaica that, like cannabis, magic mushrooms might also bring issues of their own and not be the panacea they are sometimes made out to be.

“I don’t want to get too high and lose control. Just like with ganja cake, people get so high they don’t come back for days,” says Althea Logan, owner of Blends & More smoothie bar in Negril. “We had no idea that people were coming from so far away to take mushrooms here: Jamaicans would say mushrooms are for tourists.” Still, while she is not keen to test it out for herself, she is considering getting involved in the industry: “It’s good for business. I myself might have to get in on it and start selling some mushroom tea.”

Others are seeking to turn people onto the nascent psychedelic subculture on a larger scale. “Our vision is to create access to mushrooms for the general Jamaican and at the same time to help destigmatise the view of mushrooms,” say the American founders of Vibey Caps, psilocybin containing capsules sold in a dozen stores, mostly medicinal cannabis dispensaries, across the island. Three caps, retailing at the relatively expensive price of $15 for almost 1.2g of psilocybin, promise a so-called “laughter dose”. 

The founders did not want to be named as they are currently in discussions with regulators amid suggestions that shrooms may not be legal if subject to preparation. “We're trying to change a culture here. So it's not like, ‘Oh my God, we're selling out everywhere’. We’re doing well in some areas and in other areas we are working with people to help them understand what it's about.”

Jamaica could be at a formative stage of an inevitable awakening to psychedelics that is inexorably sweeping the globe. “People in the US and Canada have been exposed and had access to psychedelics for a longer period of time,” says psychedelic facilitator Micah Tafari, who works with Beckley in Jamaica.  “They would naturally be more willing and enthusiastic to go on a retreat – compare that to the average person here who is having a hard time getting by.”

Public advocates of hallucinogens are only growing in number on the iconic island. The Caribbean Psychedelics Association was recently founded in Jamaica in association with five of the largest – mostly foreign-owned – retreat providers to advance the case for the medical use of psychedelics while, presumably, making a nice profit in the process. The Marley family has even created the first celebrity-branded psychedelic mushroom line in partnership with a US company, which is expected to soon launch amid uncertainty of the legality of over the counter sales. (Don’t worry, be happy, I guess.)

“My family, we always use our platform for positive change and mushrooms have been used for centuries in Jamaica, the rest of the world actually, for their healing properties,” Cedella Marley told BET. Her father, she believes, would “be happy that we're bringing this to consumers and we're actually trying to talk about the benefits”.

But the question of decolonising psychedelics will always be heightened in a former slave colony. Nearly one million Africans were trafficked to Jamaica between 1655 and 1807 to work on plantations like Good Hope, the former seat of the largest sugar empire in Jamaica. Uncomfortable echoes of imperialism are inescapable when wealthy white westerners flock to consume psychedelics as part of experiences far beyond the reach of the average Jamaican, who earns an average of $5,000 a year and could not afford a single retreat with their annual wage. 

The five-day Beckley getaway was facilitated by a majority of Jamaicans, though it still managed to have an aristocratic vibe at times. Nevertheless, the local ceremony leaders and tripsitters say they are pleased to be part of transforming the history of the land, including on the grounds of the former plantation. “Jamaica is a genuinely beautiful and welcoming place that has good karma in the world. These mushrooms grow wild in Jamaica, especially in the west,” says Tafari. “Formalised organisations have started to offer [retreats], but it's always been part of the culture [here].”

Some, not least the US-based company putting on this consciousness-expanding sojourn, are seeking to use their platform to help improve Jamaican life. And while there may be difficult issues to be faced – especially when some monied retreat attendees’ ancestors could have conceivably played a role in perpetrating the crimes of empire – Jamaica appears to be benefitting from the mushrooming shroom boom.

“It's providing a higher vibration,” says Sita Ji, who also works as a psychedelic facilitator for Beckley. “More people are becoming interested in it and collectively they're all creating a better earth and better relationships with each other.”

Beckley is also working with the owners of the property, a group of Jamaican investors, to help educate visitors about the real history of the land. “There's an opportunity here to confront some of these topics and have these conversations,” says Morales. Despite one or two necessary but uncomfortable moments where the retreat staff sought to indirectly address the awful past of the land, the weight lifted from many of the participants following the two ceremonies was palpable. 

Stephen, an 86-year-old retired investment advisor from Kansas, US, attended the retreat with his 80-year-old wife Marcia for their first ever psychedelic experiences. It seems they came not a moment too soon. “It has changed our lives for the better and we consider the retreat one of the foremost experiences of our lives,” Stephen tells VICE.

Three months after drinking the chocolatey mushroom tea, they are still “enjoying the revelations” it induced and have continued the retreat’s daily yoga and meditation practice. 

They have also carried on with the preparation regime in refraining from drinking. “We have made the decision to stop using alcohol,” he adds, explaining they once drank a cocktail followed by wine during dinner every day. “To our surprise we began sleeping much, much better. I am also now in the process of reconnecting with old friends which has been highly rewarding.”

Still, the group felt oversized, leading the indoor second ceremony to feel more like a night on a hospital ward as participants were crammed next to each other like sardines. A few complained that the mushrooms had little effect — which could be down to dosing, since people on antidepressants are understood to require more substantial amounts of psilocybin to “break through”.

“I feel like I was a little misled,” says Darby, a 46-year-old events director from California. “There was no special protocol for someone who had been on SSRIs. I just felt like I was really neglected: No one was asking me anything during the ceremonies. It made me feel like I can't trust a retreat center to give me a proper dose.”

Most, however, waxed lyrical about breaking free from states of suffering, having new leases of life and feeling an urge to dance that they had not experienced in years. That week, the Jamaican staff at Good Hope who cooked food and cleaned rooms received generous tips. They may soon wish to get a slice of fungi-induced pain and ecstasy through the scholarships or attend one of the community events run by Jamaicans nearby for locals.

According to Tafari, that’s what this is all about: more than just servicing struggling westerners seeking spiritual growth, magic mushrooms could help Jamaica’s pressing mental health crisis. “Jamaicans consider their healing as a priority,” declares Tafari. “There are groups in Jamaica making this accessible to people. We have been doing this for years upon years, with the aim of becoming better people and healing the earth.”

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Beckley awarded 20 scholarships to Jamaicans. The correct figure is 15, and the awardees included some non-Jamaicans. We regret the error.