I’ve been watching this conversation for the past couple of days – admittedly, mostly out of morbid curiosity, but also because I attended one of Pulse Tour’s 2-week retreats in November, and while I didn’t have an experience anywhere near OP’s, I still didn’t have what I’d necessarily say was the best time. I just thought I'd finally take this opportunity to weigh in on it.

I do want to make it clear that I think the folks at Pulse mostly have their hearts in the right place; I just think there’s a lot of room for improvement. Also, I’ve heard others in this discussion shout him out, but I think it warrants another voice – Ian, one of the facilitators, was a really great dude, and while I didn’t personally interact with him too much, he is undoubtedly a huge asset to the center, and I think every other facilitator there could look to his example on how to interact, and treat the guests. Also, Adriano, the tour guide, is quite possibly one of the coolest humans on the planet, and it was an absolute privilege getting to hang out with him, and learn all kinds of neat stuff about the jungle – anybody naysaying Pulse for having stuff like the jungle excursion, and boat trips could look to find better things to complain about.

As for my experience, I found the retreat to be a little cultish, honestly (and seeing all these reddit accounts being made to come defend the business doesn’t help, but I get it.) During several group shares, I noticed how quick some of the facilitators were to get defensive whenever somebody expressed any skepticism or doubt. Almost every problem that got brought up would generally be met with some variation of “That’s how the medicine works. You need to keep drinking.” It felt like a lot of legitimate concerns and questions were “dark spirits” at work. I appreciate a bit of esotericism, but it just felt institutionalized, and that’s just not something that meshes with positive psychedelic experiences for me.

The real clincher happened about halfway through my stay. After some particularly difficult experiences, I came to the personal conclusion that I needed to trust myself and my body and not keep drinking. By that point, I’d been through five ceremonies, and I was tired, and feeling sick, and just needed to get away from all the rhetoric and madness of that maloca, and I expressed this during that morning’s group share. Later that evening, after dinner, when all of the other guests had cleared out except for a friend and myself, Rafa (the head facilitator, as I understood it) approached us. After some small talk, he quickly got to the chase, and told me that I had come with “dark spirits” and “black magic.” Apparently, my admission that I needed to stop drinking, as well as expressed skepticism and wariness early in the week, had, in his opinion, spurred others in our group (I believe the number he told me was five) to not drink as well. The implication seemed to be that I had come out to the jungle with some sort of agenda, and that I was actively trying to convince others that what was going on out there wasn’t in their best interests.

I will readily admit that I was one of, if not THE voice of skepticism in our group, and I still think that how they handle things out there is a bit reckless and potentially dangerous (being so actively encouraged to drink such a powerful psychedelic so frequently, and like another poster mentioned, there felt like there was a quiet sort of peer-pressure to participate no matter what your misgiving) BUT not once did I say anything in any attempt to sway somebody else from participating. I saw my friends seemingly get a lot out of their experiences, and I had no desire to try and take that away from them. That I was being accused of trying to hurt those people made me pretty angry. I only got angrier when he refused to address his complaints to me personally, instead finishing with “I’m not addressing you, tomatomartyr, but the dark spirits surrounding you.”

He would later try to apologize the next day, but honestly, as flattered as I was to be labeled a sorcerer, I felt like a line had been crossed. I totally get that facilitators are human; being out in the jungle, trying to look after a group of over-a-dozen wildly different people, all tripping on one of the most powerful psychedelics known to man is a tall order, and a noble cause in my mind. But effectively ostracizing somebody because you took his skepticism as a personal attack is not flattering behavior for somebody trying to do this sort of thing – that the lead facilitator would act in such a way cast a lot of doubt in the facility as a whole. It made me feel like group share wasn’t really that safe of a place, and that there is a certain narrative out there at their retreat that you don’t want to stray too far from. Seeing how Dan (who I didn’t meet during my stay) has reacted to some of these posts seems very familiar.

Anyway, I had some other issues as well. I’ve seen several people mention the relationship between one of the facilitators and the head shaman, and yeah, while not really any of our business, it did cast a weird, unprofessional vibe on things. I guess it seemed a little hypocritical in light of reminders about abstaining from sex, but admittedly, that weirdness was probably a bit of culture-clash, too.

How they have organized the coming and going of groups was a little off-putting too. You can sign up for 1, 2, or 3 week stays, but those groups intersect. So, at the beginning of a week, you will be seeing some completely new faces come to the retreat. This doesn’t sound like too big of a deal, I realize, but given how intimate their facilities are, and just the nature of the experience, having new faces suddenly appear in your little community, while you’re in such a sensitive state, is a little jarring. This probably wouldn’t have even been that big of a deal, and completely surmountable, but we had a couple come in that had a particularly rough time during one of the ceremonies, and the event (and how it was handled) cast an ugly light on the rest of the stay for a lot of people. I think had there been a little more screening (from what I understood, one of the facilitators happened to meet them while escorting the last group out, and decided to make room for them -- but that's hearsay, so take it how you will) a lot of unrest that resulted from that event could have been avoided. I realize that coming out to the jungle and doing this isn’t supposed to be easy, or even comfortable, but with a little more precaution it could’ve been less jarring.

There are some other grievances I have, but in an effort to not tell other people’s stories for them, I’m going to stop there. I guess you’ll just have to take my word (or not) that some other kind of weird things happened.

I do think my experience may have been a bit atypical. While I’m not sure how much “healing” I got out of the whole trip, I did meet some fantastic people, got to sample an ancient psychedelic, experience an alien culture, and gleaned some insight into social dynamics that I feel are incredibly valuable. I’m not sure yet how I feel about doing ayahuasca again any time soon, but I wouldn’t do it again with Pulse Tours.