This is a personal testimony about the shadow side of some plant medicine retreats, and the harm that can occur when powerful medicines are served without sufficient protection or integrity. Plants can offer profound healing; I know from repeated personal experience with psychedelics, including Iboga. But I also know that poorly held ceremonial spaces can leave participants vulnerable to spiritual, emotional, and psychological harm.
I am not against the use of plant medicines, nor is this a criticism of all practitioners who work with them. My concern is with the people who may be under-trained, psychologically unintegrated, spiritually inflated, or operating from ego rather than service to others.
Over the past seven years, I have witnessed troubling patterns in spiritual and plant medicine circles: exploitation, weak boundaries, manipulation, and narcissism. I have encountered issues that may put both the paying participants and those assisting at risk.
The danger is the unsafe container, not the plant medicine retreat
My first Iboga experience as a participant brought me dramatic physical, mental, and spiritual healing. The “wood”, as Iboga is sometimes called, is an intelligent plant; its Spirit assessed my needs and responded with a profound healing that I was ready to accept.
At that time, I had already done preparatory work on myself: I had been teetotal for over fifteen years, had completed ten years of daily meditation practice and five years of psychotherapy, and had spent twenty years studying nutrition and natural health in relation to optimising mental health. I believe this preparation is the main reason Iboga worked so well for me.
As a Shamanic Practitioner, now working with drumming rather than plant medicines, my understanding is that the power of Shamanic Healing is dependent on the practitioner having a direct, clear connection between Mother Earth and Father Sky to bring down and ground the energy for the client.
Looking back at my fifteen Iboga experiences, both as a participant and an assistant, I no longer believe that the healings came because of the healing capacity of those holding the ceremonial space. I believe the healing came due to the medicine itself and because I was ready. What I did not understand at the time was that while I had opened myself to deep healing, I had also opened myself to something darker.
In practical terms, I did not do what I would now advise others to do. The retreat was booked for me by my then-husband after he met someone connected with the ceremonies at a party. I did not properly research the practitioners, the lineage, the safety protocols, or the risks. I packed a bag and arrived in trust. That openness helped the medicine work, but it also left me vulnerable.
Financial exploitation
One of the clearest warning signs for a retreat is the use of unpaid assistants or “space holders” who work all weekend without payment, while the retreat leader charges large sums to those attending. The title sounds elevated, but in practice, the role includes general unpaid domestic labour, such as cleaning, dealing with vomit, and working in the kitchen.
Of the three practitioners I worked with, only one offered payment, and he was the one with the greatest integrity. Assistants were told they were receiving healing, gaining experience, or being of service. I have seen the same pattern in the spiritual festival circuit, where charisma and spiritual language can be used to extract unpaid labour for workshops and talks while the organisers profit financially.
This is where discernment is needed. Spiritual language should never be used to disguise exploitation. True service does not require people to override their instincts, accept poor treatment, or donate their labour to someone else’s profitable enterprise. In healing communities, we need to recover our spiritual sovereignty and the ability to say no without guilt. Sacred service should not become a mask for exploitation.
Boundaries and conduct
The patterns of exploitation I witnessed also had a darker aspect. I have witnessed vulnerable participants in search of healing becoming entangled in dynamics that, in my view, crossed ethical lines. Plant medicines can open a person very deeply, making them emotionally raw, psychically open, and highly impressionable. This is why retreat leaders must have strong boundaries, maturity, and integrity. Where these qualities are lacking, the ceremonial space itself can become spiritually unsafe.
A further concern is sexual and emotional boundary-crossing. In my experience, some vulnerable women became drawn into confusing personal or sexual dynamics. Where plant medicine has opened someone, the practitioner carries great responsibility to maintain impeccable boundaries. Any blurring of boundaries through inappropriate hands-on healing, romantic attraction, or spiritual authority should be treated as a serious warning sign.
Sadly, I have also repeatedly witnessed male healers and participants using retreats as a way of meeting women. In my opinion, the focus should always be on the healing, as sexual distractions can interfere with the participant’s healing process.
Additionally, I twice experienced fellow female retreat workers losing control and screaming at me in rage for something they considered I had done wrong. They later realised that I was working with the medicine for the benefit of the participant in both instances. But at the time, it was deeply upsetting to be in an open state and experience unprovoked verbal abuse.
My first experience: profound healing, followed by confusion
I have learned that confusion is always an early warning sign that a situation or person is out of alignment with me and my journey.
As a participant at a retreat for the first time, I had a strong inner experience that I could not then explain. I felt as though something was trying to persuade me to leave my husband and draw me towards the ceremony leader. I remember feeling tormented, yet inwardly very clear: I am married. I do not want this.
It felt as though I was under some kind of spell. Later, I became intuitively aware of nightly attempts at psychic connection by one of the retreat support workers. I later discovered that she was a kitchen sink witch. I believe that I was under spiritual attack, and that work was being done in the spiritual realm with the intention of influencing my behaviour in the physical world.
In the months that followed, my life began to unravel in ways that shocked me. I left my husband of nineteen years, becoming a broke single parent with a serious illness that required major surgery.
I found myself drawn into a confusing, emotional and energetic dynamic connected to the man involved in these ceremonies. I later met a woman who had also been a participant in one of his ceremonies and who had become entangled in an emotionally abusive relationship with him for four years.
Space-holding failure
Further serious concerns emerged when, due to my psychic skills, I was invited by the same practitioner to act as an unpaid “space holder”. On one occasion, there were ten participants in the room, and I was left alone to hold the space without either the retreat leader or the others being present. I now understand that this was dangerous. I had natural psychic sensitivity, but I had not been trained to hold that kind of field, and I should never have been placed in that position.
A medicine as powerful as Iboga requires a tightly held and protected ceremonial container, not only for participants but for those assisting. To leave a novice assistant alone is not a minor lapse; it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of ceremonial responsibility.
That night, I felt a dark energy enter the space, and I believe it entered me. Afterwards, something in me felt blocked, as though I was no longer moving forward with my healing. At the time, I could not fully explain it, but I knew something was wrong.
After-effects and confirmation
The first confirmation came when I later went to another shamanic practitioner, someone who worked without plant medicine and used traditional methods, including drumming and extraction work. He found a dark energy in me and removed it.
What struck me most was that he said the energetic imprint of what he found in me was the same as he had found in another woman I knew who had also worked for the same Iboga practitioner. He had also encountered a similar energy in another client who had attended one of those retreats. For me, this was deeply significant. It suggested that what I had experienced was neither random nor imagined.
The clearest confirmation came later with a second healer, again someone working without plant medicine, using hypnosis techniques to work on the subconscious. During a weekend retreat, his partner was working with me on deep trauma, but she could not get through. She found I was blocked in an unusual way. She had successfully used the same method with others, so the issue was not a lack of skill on her part. The problem was something inside me.
She called in her partner, who was a more experienced healer. He worked on me and then said he was getting an image of someone and described, very precisely, the Iboga practitioner I had been involved with. His perception was that this man had placed a block on my healing.
This was a profound and shocking moment. This healer identified the man exactly, without prompting, and recognised that something had been done energetically to obstruct my progress. Whether that blockage had been placed consciously, as a means of control, or unconsciously through darker forces working through him, I cannot say with certainty.
From that point onward, a great deal made sense. It explained why I had felt confused, why my healing had stalled, and why some people in his circle, even after years around such a powerful medicine, still appeared to be operating from ego and denial rather than genuine transformation and heart-centred care.
It felt as though something had deliberately obstructed my spiritual development to prevent me from moving forward. But it also felt as though the universe stepped in, leading me to practitioners who were able to recognise and correct the problem.
After that blockage was removed, my healing deepened, I grew stronger, and stopped taking plant medicines. I continued my training and my own shamanic healing work using drumming. I went through a process of observing my behaviour, identifying the underlying trauma, extracting anything that shouldn’t be there, carrying out soul retrievals, and changing the beliefs and patterns that had previously led me into harmful dynamics.
Shamanic healing enabled me to make significant progress in a gentle and manageable way that naturally unfolded. It smoothed dramatic shifts and created subtle changes that were much less disruptive to my daily life, but just as effective for my healing journey.
No aftercare
The biggest issue with weekend plant medicine retreats is the total lack of aftercare for the participants. If they have fully surrendered to the medicine and allowed it to work, they may be hit with the realisation that many aspects of their lives have been a lie. They may suddenly find that their job is unfulfilling, they don’t truly love their romantic partner, or dislike the place where they live.
Finding one’s true self is a beautiful gift, but it can be disconcerting to realise the extent to which one’s life may be out of alignment with one’s soul purpose. In my experience, follow-up counselling or integration support is rarely provided after weekend plant medicine retreats, and counsellors in local communities may not always understand the spiritual, emotional, and psychological aftermath of these experiences. At such a vulnerable time, participants need support from someone with appropriate experience, whether that is a practitioner familiar with plant medicine, a trauma-informed counsellor, or someone trained in psychedelic integration.
Ego and charisma
Discernment is essential when it comes to any healing retreat, particularly those involving powerful plant medicines. A practitioner may appear charismatic, psychic, spiritually knowledgeable, or confident, and still be deeply compromised by ego, narcissism, or darker distortions. In my experience, unsafe practitioners are a real danger in all healing communities.
Over time, I came to question how teachings are transmitted, particularly where Westerners travel abroad for initiations before bringing that work back into Western retreat settings. A person may undergo powerful initiatory experiences, meet guides, open psychic perception, and then return believing themselves ready to hold space for others. But if their trauma, ego, sexuality, and need for status remain unintegrated, what they transmit may be distorted. The medicine may be sacred, and the tradition itself may carry deep ancestral wisdom, but the human vessel through which that medicine is served still matters.
Another thing I learned is that plant medicines do not always work on everyone in the same way. They may reveal, cleanse, and deeply heal trauma where there is willingness, humility, and readiness. But where there is denial, spiritual pride, or refusal to examine one’s own behaviour, the medicine may not produce any transformation. This is why psychic ability or repeated exposure to plant medicine should never be confused with spiritual wisdom.
I also believe that in the modern West, many people are approaching plant medicines too early, before they have done enough foundational inner work. Traditionally, plant medicines were often held within strong initiatory and cultural containers. There was preparation, humility, training, accountability, and community. They were not simply offered to anyone able to pay as a means of earning an income.
In Britain, much of our own indigenous healing wisdom was broken long ago. Our traditions were attacked, suppressed, absorbed, and driven underground through successive waves of religious, political, and cultural control. That loss has consequences. Many Western seekers now look elsewhere for healing, but without enough grounding, context, or discernment. At the same time, we live in a culture saturated with ego, image, consumerism, and narcissism. Under those conditions, powerful medicines can easily become entangled with spiritual inflation rather than true service to others.
Advice to readers
I still believe Iboga is an extraordinary medicine that can bring profound change. But because it is so powerful, it must be approached with great care. Surrendering to the medicine should not mean surrendering your discernment.
Participants need a properly held ceremonial space, professional aftercare, and retreat organisers who are ethically sound, spiritually mature, and psychologically integrated.
My advice to anyone considering such a retreat is to find personal recommendations and ask questions. Find out how the practitioner was trained, how long they have been practising, how they handle safety, what support they provide, and whether their clients truly trust them. Do not place anyone on a pedestal simply because they appear spiritually gifted or wear an impressive outfit.
Build your own grounding first. For me, this meant cutting out alcohol, focusing on nutrition, daily meditation, regular contact with the earth, and honest self-observation.
There are ethical healers with humility, grounded experience, and strong boundaries. I know this because I have worked alongside one and seen the difference firsthand. My journey has left me deeply grateful for the profound, life-changing healing I received, but also sobered by the behaviour I encountered. This is not a condemnation of the medicine, nor of everyone who serves it; it is a call for discernment.
The medicine is powerful, but those who serve it must do so with integrity.
About Rose
Rose is a Shamanic Practitioner trained in traditional shamanism. She is a member of the Federation of Holistic Therapists and is fully insured for in-person and distance Shamanic Healing sessions, as well as Shamanic Life Coaching. She specialises in supporting people recovering from narcissistic abuse and those who are unsettled following plant medicine experiences.
Rose works without hallucinogenic or psychedelic plant medicines. Instead, she uses an ancient drumming method to access this altered state of consciousness. A session may include a tailored combination of Power Animal Retrieval, Divination, Soul Retrieval, Energy Body Healing, Psychopomp, and Extraction to remove negative energy and blockages.
Each session with me includes Shamanic Subconscious Repatterning. A powerful system that changes the subconscious programmes that drive unwanted behaviour. This method heals trauma at its source, removes the self-limiting programme, and then rewrites a new way of being.
Shamanic Healing can be accessed face-to-face in the Rose Healing Room, Petersfield, East Hampshire or remotely through Distance Healing Sessions. Because the work is carried out in the Spirit Realm with the support of Rose’s Spirit Guides, the client does not need to be physically present in the same room. Distance sessions are narrated in real time, and clients receive an audio recording by email afterwards.
For further information about Shamanic Healing, go to: https://www.roseautumn.com/shamanic-healing/
