The Beckley Retreat: a trip of a lifetime?

I’m sitting under tent canvas, eye-mask on, swaddled like a newborn in a linen blanket. There is a woman singing a Jamaican folk song somewhere in the distance and the air is perfumed with sage and incense. Time and space are abstract concepts and I’m overwhelmed by a deep feeling of surrender. I think I might be sobbing.

Welcome to Jamaica’s Good Hope Estate, a 200-acre former plantation which is now also the home to the Beckley Foundation’s psilocybin retreats. Contrary to what my editors think, I’m not here for a Caribbean jolly but rather to experience firsthand the work they are doing to discover the therapeutic benefits of magic mushrooms.

The Beckley Foundation has long been a pioneer in the field. When the rest of the world was experimenting and LSD in the Sixties, Beckley’s founder, eccentric aristocrat , recognised the powerful benefits of psychedelics for healing trauma, creative blocks and treating depression — a potent natural alternative to the sometimes-lazy prescription of SSRIs in modern medicine.