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Finding an ayahuasca ceremony near you

BySafe Ceremonies

Type “ayahuasca retreat near me” into a search engine and you’ll get a mix of retreat centers abroad, churches a few states away, event pages for weekend ceremonies and a lot of advertising. Very little of it tells you what you most need to know: whether the people running a ceremony will screen you properly, look after you on the night and still be there for you afterwards.

This guide is about finding a ceremony without letting distance make the decision for you. It covers the realistic options, how to search a directory by state, how to check that a group is what it says it is, and the warning signs that turn up most often with local groups.

What “near you” usually means

For most people in North America and Europe, the options fall into three groups.

A church or group in your state

Some ayahuasca ceremonies in the US are run by groups that describe themselves as churches, along with smaller circles that meet in homes or rented spaces. A local group can be easier to visit before you commit. You may be able to meet the leaders, talk to people who have sat with them, and go back for integration circles afterwards. Churches often ask you to fill in a membership form and to read a statement of their beliefs.

A traveling ceremony

Some facilitators move from city to city, renting a venue for a weekend and then moving on. This includes healers from South America who travel to the US and Europe, a pattern the Chacruna Institute’s guide on sexual abuse in ayahuasca settings describes as part of the globalization of ayahuasca. A traveling ceremony can be well run. The difficulty is that the team leaves when the weekend ends, so ask early who you can contact in the weeks after, and how.

A retreat center abroad

Many people travel to Peru, Colombia, Costa Rica or elsewhere for a retreat of several days. You get more time to prepare and more than one ceremony. You also take on the travel, and when you come home you’re a long way from the people who ran it.

The legal picture differs between countries, states and types of group, and it changes. We can’t give legal advice, but our guides on ayahuasca and US law and plant medicine laws around the world describe what the laws and court cases say.

Searching the directory by state

The Safe Ceremonies listings can be browsed by country and by US state. Each state has its own page, such as listings in Texas, and the search bar lets you type a keyword along with a place. You can sort results by rating. Each listing shows its category, such as ayahuasca or integration and aftercare, and how many reviews it has. Listings are free, and nobody pays to appear.

When you open a listing, read it the way you’d read a stranger’s introduction:

  • Check the category against what you want. A center listed for several practices may offer ayahuasca only some of the time.
  • Look at how many reviews there are and how recent they are. A listing with no reviews isn’t a bad sign by itself. It just means you have less to go on and need to ask more questions.
  • Read the reviews for specifics: how screening worked, how many staff were in the room, what happened when someone struggled, and whether anyone followed up afterwards.
  • Follow the link to the group’s own website and compare what it says with what reviewers describe.

Our guide on how to read ceremony reviews goes into this in more detail.

How to check that a group is real

Local groups range from long-established congregations to someone who started hosting last month. A few checks will tell you a lot.

It has its own website

A group with a website of its own has put its name to a set of public claims you can compare against reviews and against what you’re told on the phone. A group that exists only as a social media profile or an event page is harder to hold to anything. Look for names of the people who lead ceremonies, a description of screening, and a way to contact a person.

You can tell how long it has existed

Ask how long the group has been running ceremonies and how long its current leaders have been with it. You can check part of the answer yourself. A domain lookup such as ICANN Lookup shows when a website’s address was first registered. A site registered six weeks ago that talks about “decades of tradition” deserves a question.

Tax status tells you less than you might think. The IRS says churches that meet the requirements are automatically treated as tax exempt and don’t have to apply for recognition, so a church missing from an IRS search isn’t necessarily fake, and a church that is listed hasn’t been vetted for safety either.

Its reviews come from people who attended

The US Federal Trade Commission advises using more than one source of reviews, paying attention to dates, being wary of a sudden burst of reviews in a short time, and looking at a reviewer’s history. It also warns that fake reviews can be hard to spot. For ceremonies, the most useful reviews describe what happened in the room. If you can, ask the group to put you in touch with someone who has attended.

It answers questions well

Send a few plain questions before you book. Who leads the ceremony, and how long have they been doing it? How do you screen people, and who reads the answers? How many staff will be in the room, and are any of them sober throughout? What happens in a medical emergency? What support is there afterwards, and does it cost extra?

Good answers are specific and arrive without pressure. You’ll find a longer list in our guide to questions to ask before you book.

Why “near” matters less than screening and aftercare

Distance is easy to compare. Care is harder, and it varies a great deal. In a 2026 study published in JAMA Network Open, researchers interviewed 49 organizations advertising psychedelic retreats. All of them collected medical histories, and about three in four turned away people with certain conditions. Fewer than half worked with a licensed health care professional. All offered some kind of integration support, but only about six in ten built it into the program, and some charged extra for it.

What happens after a ceremony matters as much as the night itself. In the Global Ayahuasca Survey, which collected answers from more than 10,000 people, about 55% reported some kind of adverse psychological effect in the weeks or months after drinking ayahuasca. Most of them described it as part of a process of growth, and about 12% said they needed professional mental health support.

That is where a nearby group can genuinely help: you can go back for an integration circle, or phone someone who was in the room. A well-run group four hours away, or one abroad that follows up by video call, will still serve you better than a careless one around the corner. Whatever you choose, line up your own support at home before you go. Fireside Project’s free psychedelic peer support line, 62-FIRESIDE (623-473-7433), is open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Pacific time every day, and in the US the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline takes calls and texts at 988.

Red flags with local groups

  • There’s no health screening, or the form is so short it can’t catch anything. Nearly nine in ten retreats in the JAMA Network Open study required or recommended that people stop some medicines beforehand, which shows how much medicines matter here. A group that never asks about yours isn’t paying attention. (Don’t stop a prescribed medicine without the person who prescribed it; our guide on medications and health conditions explains why.)
  • You found the ceremony through a cold message, a public post inviting anyone, or a friend who gets a discount for bringing you.
  • The group seems more interested in growing than in who’s coming. A checklist from the International Cultic Studies Association lists being preoccupied with bringing in new members, and with making money, among the signs of a high-control group.
  • You’re pushed to decide quickly, with spaces “almost gone,” a discount that ends tonight, or a deposit due before anyone has read your health answers.
  • You’re asked to keep your plans from your family or your doctor.
  • Nobody will tell you who leads the ceremony, or the answer changes.
  • Staff can’t say what they’d do in a medical emergency, or say they wouldn’t call for help.
  • The leader claims a tradition or a teacher but can’t or won’t say anything about it.

Some things look odd and aren’t warning signs. Some groups share the address only after screening, for privacy. A group that asks a lot of questions, puts you on a waiting list, or tells you it isn’t the right fit is usually being careful. Our guides on red flags and leadership and cult warning signs cover more.

A short plan

  1. Decide which kind of setting suits you: a local church or circle, a traveling ceremony, or a retreat abroad.
  2. Search the listings for your state, or the country you’re considering, and shortlist a few groups with reviews you can read.
  3. Check each group’s website, how long it has existed and what reviewers say about screening and aftercare.
  4. Email your questions and compare the answers.
  5. Arrange support at home before you book: a friend who knows where you’ll be, and someone to talk to afterwards.

More guides

You can browse the Safe Ceremonies listings by state or country and read reviews from people who attended. Good starting points are the ayahuasca listings and, for support closer to home after a ceremony, integration and aftercare.

Sources

Photo: Road trip along the green mountains (Unsplash) by Paul Hermann, CC0 1.0.

Safe Ceremonies
Author: Safe Ceremonies

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