High returns: Why psychedelic retreats are becoming big business for burned-out leaders

Neither Jen Hawk nor her husband Ryan had experienced anything quite like it.

Both had attended Enfold, a week-long coaching intensive located on Bowen Island, which marries traditional personal development practices with the use of psychedelic medicine. Each came out of the experience… well, “refreshed” is putting it mildly.

“When I came back, I was like: everybody needs to experience this,” Jen says.

Ryan adds, “For me, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done for myself to date. Period.”

The decision to harness the power of psychedelics came after a long stretch of complex personal and professional strife. The couple, both in their early 40s, have owned and operated their own businesses for over 15 years. In 2017, they left Vancouver for the Okanagan and opened Wayne & Freda, a café that eventually evolved into a coffee roastery and retail store. Jen was facing the difficulties of putting her mother in a care home. Then there was the COVID-19 pandemic, during which Jen gave birth to the couple’s second child.

Meanwhile, Ryan was managing the launch and growth of the coffee shop, while also dealing with persistent mental health issues that were exacerbated by his adult ADHD. All of this was layered on top of the day-to-day challenges of operating a small business. It was, as Jen says, intense life stuff.

“There are only so many tools in our toolbox as humans to deal with it,” Ryan says.

So they went looking for solutions. Through a friend, Ryan met Steve Rio, co-founder of Enfold, which operates from a south-facing perch overlooking Howe Sound. While many psychedelic intensives use psilocybin—the active ingredient in magic mushrooms—Enfold works with 5-MeO-DMT, the most powerful psychedelic known to man.

Clients arrive on Monday and leave on Friday. There are no phones allowed, and caffeine is not permitted in order to limit the amount of stimulation on the nervous system. The entire property is designed to provide a sense of comfortable removal from society. The ocean views are fringed by large trees swaying in sylvan splendour. Plenty of time is afforded for walks on nearby forest trails, so clients can reflect and process. There’s a sauna and cold plunge. The lodging is five-star comfort and class—optimal for people doing some deeply uncomfortable psychological work.

The first day involves a lower dose of 5-MeO, with Tuesday centred on a “relational ceremony with a heart opening medicine,” says Rio. Wednesday is the main event: each client goes on their own psychedelic voyage, with several Enfold team members there to assist in the journey. The room is custom-built for such an experience—large windows; sunlight filtering through. The walls are painted in calming neutral tones, and the roof is peaked, providing a sense of calm and comfort. A playlist is curated specifically for each person the team is working with.

Anyone who tries 5-MeO is up for a confusing experience. Time becomes elastic when the medicine takes hold. It lasts only an hour, but for the client it can feel like an eternity—or like no time at all. It’s different from classic psychedelics like psilocybin or LSD, working instead on the nervous system and unlocking deep-seated emotional and psychological trauma the client may not even know is there (5-MeO is often referred to as the “God Molecule” due to the intense spiritual and mystical experiences users report, in addition to feelings of total ego dissolution).

“I’ve dropped things that I was not going there to tackle, that I was not going there with any intention to address,” Ryan says, noting that our interview is taking place only three weeks out from his time at Enfold.

“There’s a new set of tools you leave there with. It’s not just one thing. It’s a process that helps you identify a lot of things about yourself.”

The impact of psychedelics on any given person can be difficult to pin down—the benefits overlap various areas of one’s life. But Jen and Ryan agree it has had a positive impact on how they operate their business.

“Ultimately, we feel, as a couple and a business partnership, that we’re in a way better place to work together, to work on our business, and to lead our team,” Jen says.

The interest in psychedelic medicine has gained considerable attention over the past decade, thanks to several studies out of the U.S. that demonstrated significant mental health benefits with psilocybin and MDMA. Across the continent, and in B.C., this resulted in a “mushroom boom”— investment into startups trying to usher in a new age of medicine. As the benefits of psychedelics gained mainstream momentum, retreats and intensives like Enfold sprouted up across the province.

“The promise of psychedelics is: something’s going to change in your life, and it’s going to stick, you know—you’re hoping that it’s going to last, and we deliver that,” Rio tells BCBusiness.

Rio says pricing is in the thousands and is “at a high price point compared to the average.” (The Enfold website list $5,750 to $7,500 USD for a five-day experience with either shared or private accommodation.) Enfold targets a higher-end, professional clientele, with visitors from the U.S. along with clients from across Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Europe. Rio says business is kept intentionally small, targeting $1 million in revenue for 2025, with approximately 120 spots available for the whole calendar year.

“Our tagline is ‘We’re the most comfortable place in the world to do uncomfortable things,’” Rio says.

Unlike mushrooms, ayahuasca and other psychedelic medicines used for healing, 5-MeO-DMT is not scheduled under Canada’s Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and has a more limited history of Indigenous use. As a result, Rio says, Enfold is on the “bleeding edge” of its use in a therapeutic setting: they start with psychological and spiritual practice and then layer in the psychedelic.

“There are very few people doing this at a high level. It’s a pretty new medicine and we’re in a niche category of psychedelics,” Rio says.

In some ways, psychedelics are about as niche a product as it gets, and investors seem to have figured that out. The mushroom boom has all but collapsed. In B.C., Numinus—once touted as the leader in legal psychedelic-assisted therapy—missed two recent filings, leading to a cease trade order. (Numinus’s CEO indicated a move toward a “leaner operating model” in their Q3 results in the fall.) Field Trip Health and Wellness, once the most promising brand in psychedelic-assisted therapy, no longer exists as a corporation.

Meanwhile, the push to legalize certain drugs for therapeutic use—including psilocybin, MDMA and ketamine—has stalled now that the new federal government has established more pressing priorities. The promise of a booming psychedelics industry in B.C. and elsewhere has evaporated like vapour from a DMT pen. Public interest in psychedelics hasn’t waned in the same way, however—Rio says grey-market mushroom dispensaries in Vancouver are “probably the only ones making money” off psychedelics right now.

Rio adds that running psychedelic retreats in the province is hard business. Competition is stiff and, with the current state of the economy, travel of all kinds has slowed down.

But, as in any industry, the cream rises up, and the ones offering something valuable are making it work. The Journeymen Collective, based in Kelowna, has seen steady business since launching in 2018. Founded by partners Rob Grover and Gary Logan, the Collective specializes in psilocybin retreats for executives, entrepreneurs and other professionals. While they don’t publicly disclose the cost of the experience, Grover describes the retreat as a boutique wellness centre in a five-star setting with five-star guides.

“If we change the way that people do business—which is one of the biggest drivers of human activity—then we can change the planet,” Grover says. “Instead of working from the bottom up, we work with the leaders, the people who are at the top of their game but have reached a glass ceiling within themselves… They may have been given the idea of what success looks like. And they have all the things they have, but they’re silently struggling with depression, anxiety, grief, overwhelm, stress or burnout.”

Grover claims that it’s not the intoxicating effects of the mushrooms that heals their clients. Like Enfold, the Collective blends psychology, spirituality and psychedelic practices in the goal of helping people achieve their full potential.

It’s a radical approach to healing in a corporatized society.

“Healing in a pharmaceutical sense has always been based on the idea that people take something chronically, and that’s how a lot of pharmaceutical companies have made obscene amounts of money,” says Michael Oliver, founder of Vancouver’s Flying Sage, which he describes as a healing community that incorporates breathwork, movement, sound and psychedelics. “Whereas psychedelics are actually not like that.”

Flying Sage events, which are typically three hours long, have an atmosphere akin to an extended yoga class. Up to 20 participants lie down in rows, with microdoses of psilocybin available to anyone who’s interested (though it’s not mandatory). At the end, participants form an integration circle to work through what they experienced.   

Then there’s Lumio, which Oliver describes as an “alternative nightlife experience”: monthly, alcohol-free dance parties where breathwork is practiced for one hour before the evening transitions into two DJ sets, followed by a soundbath—all designed for ecstatic release and altered states.

Both events provide a space for people who may not have the means to attend a week-long retreat or who are looking for an entry-level experience to “dip their toes” in the world of psychedelics before going on a potentially daunting inward journey.

More than anything, Oliver says, people just want to be around other people.

“It’s like people are really craving connection and community in general these days,” he says. “One of the things that I’ve seen with Flying Sage is that, yes, we are focused on psychedelics, but it’s not really about that. It’s about people coming together in community and being vulnerable and authentic with one another.”

That vulnerability is fundamentally what shaped the experience for the Hawks, both of whom are still feeling the effects.

“I’m not living everyday like I’m a monk, or that I have everything figured out, but I have the tools now,” Jen says.

“There’s a lighthouse within me. I’ve been to that lighthouse. When I’m at peace and when everything’s in flow—when I’m in that space—I know the path to get to that lighthouse because it’s all lit up. I know how to get back there.”   

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story referred to Field Trip Health as having “gone bust.” The reference was to Field Trip Health & Wellness, the original corporate entity, which no longer exists after its assets were sold. In Canada, those assets were acquired by the Canadian Centre for Psychedelic Healing, which continues to operate clinics under the Field Trip name.