DMT on Mega-Yachts: Inside the Psychedelic Jet-Set

This is an interview with Antoine Sepulchre, an event and experience organizer who is also part of what could be called the ‘psychedelic jet-set’, a network of high-net-worth clients and entourages who organize and attend psychedelic parties in places like Ibiza, Tulum and Burning Man. Antoine and I connected on the topic of the tragic death of Florencia Bollini at one such party in Ibiza last year and had a conversation about the highs and lows of this lifestyle and what psychedelic culture could learn to become safer and wiser. The conversation made me think about how psychedelics are non-specific amplifiers, in Stan Grof’s phrase, and how they can amplify whatever is in the set and setting they’re taken - including sometimes amplifying the temptations of the luxury lifestyle around power, sex and money. Thanks to Antoine for his candid conversation. PS thank you for all the good wishes on my wedding tomorrow, and huge thank you to those readers who sent me donations for my honeymoon! I was very touched and will write proper thank-yous from our adventures next week.

Jules: Antoine, tell me about the concierge company you used to run, The Key.

Antoine: We would design mini-Burning Man gatherings, for those who are too impatient to only go to the desert once a year, and who wanted to have an experience like that more often. We would organize four days or so, in the most incredible places on earth - on a private island, in the Mexican jungle, wherever, and usually one person would pay for everything for 150 - 200 guests. We would create a mini Burning Man where everything is taken care of, door to door service, we send you a driver wherever you are, we fly you Business Class to the party. To give you an idea, one of the last ones I did was 200 guests, and we spent half a million dollars just on guest gifts. So you arrive full of joy and gratitude, and the only thing you want to do is give back with your good energy. You can imagine the magic. And of course often guests also took psychedelics like LSD, mushrooms, ketamine and so on.

Jules: How much would such an experience cost, all in?

Antoine: Between three and five millions for four days.

Jules: So I guess the clients would be ultra-wealthy founders, heirs etc?

Antoine: Yes, one of the last ones was the founder of Minecraft, and he wanted us to organize the most amazing birthday party, but he only had 20 close friends, and that would be have been a bit sad with just 20 people dancing in front of a DJ. So he agreed that we would invite 160 friends from my Burning Man community, and I believe he had the time of his life. That was in Tulum - we privatized out the whole of Casa Malca for five days.

From a Travel and Leisure profile of Antoine, a few years back, by Gisele Williams:

Sepulchre, who was born and raised in Belgium, got his start at his uncle’s high-end event company. In 2008, he struck out on his own with the Key, which orchestrates bespoke trips and events, like a three-day party in remote northwestern Russia for which guests were flown in by private jet and a glass-topped tent was built so the whole group could watch the northern lights. Or special access to Burning Man in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. For a fee that runs into the tens of thousands of dollars, Sepulchre will set up clients at one of the festival’s luxury camps, which come equipped with a kitchen and private chefs. Though Sepulchre is very discreet about the people he works with and their itineraries, he did explain that for one family, he organized a yearlong Buddhist odyssey that involved over 200 handlers and experts, culminating in a guided trek through Tibet. For a high-powered couple in the fashion industry, he flew in a shaman from the Peruvian Amazon to lead them through an ayahuasca ceremony. Their experience turned out to be so revelatory that they decided to improve the working conditions of their thousands of employees.

Antoine (right)

Jules: How did you get more involved with psychedelic culture?

Antoine: I had been in the business of organizing life-changing experiences for a very long time and slowly shifted to spirituality and psychedelic ceremonies after one of my clients asked me to arrange an ayahusca ceremony for her and her husband. I was not especially interested in ayahuasca or Bufo but I always like to try experiences for myself before referring clients, so I tried aya and it was really life-changing, the beginning of my entheogen experience. Later, I was introduced to Bufo by Flor Bollini in Los Angeles [a well-known ‘shaman entrepreneur’ who tragically died last year, in a psychedelics-related accident].

I had quite low expectations but it was an extremely powerful experience. It was the first time I really freaked out by taking a substance because I thought I was dying. I just had the time to think ‘What did I do!” and of my son. I tried to grab her but I was already out of my body. I felt like I sat with God and received some messages about how I could be in service to humanity and the universe and it felt very real. But there was a no preparation nor integration. The next day I flew back to Europe, and was left alone with my experience. It quickly turned into spiritual narcissism, like I was the saviour of the world, one of the few chosen ones, like Neo when he visits the Oracle. I felt so entitled by the vision and my mission that anyone who didn’t understand it became almost like an enemy to the best interest of humanity. A month later, I saw Flor again in Ibiza. She offered another session, which only amplified the split between my soul and the human experience. For years, I felt like an alien to those around me, except for a handful of Bufo adepts who mirrored the same kind of bypassing.

Jules: You suggested in a LinkedIn post that Adam Neumann [founder of WeWork] was another example of psychedelic-induced ego-inflation.

Antoine: We all know what happened - he went around saying he was the chosen one to ‘elevate the world’s consciousness’. Another example is the founder of one of the world’s most iconic brands, which he sold for over a billion dollars. He now smokes Bufo daily mixed with pure cocaine. And he’s started dressing up like a frog and his house is completely decorated with frogs…He lost tens of millions on his latest venture also trying to elevate the world consciousness.

I recently heard a talk by Ram Dass, who said most of his friends think Bufo was the most powerful psychedelic experience they’ve had, and they’re still integrating experiences from 30 years before. But in my case, I must have done Bufo 100 times between 2017 and 2022, sometimes I was doing it two times a week. I felt like It was reinforcing my feeling of being divinely guided, but it was isolating me more than supporting me. Especially that at this stage, often people going through the same kind of spiritual narcissism are as convinced as we are that their mission is the most important, so communication becomes more and more difficult.

Jules: Has high-net-worth society got more into psychedelics? Or was it always into it?

Antoine: As we have seen in recent books (Stealing Fire, The Immortality Key), some forms of high society were probably into mind-altering substances long ago… But I don’t think it was so strong before. As a mirror of the world, there’s a deep lack of sacredness in today’s approach to psychedelics, it’s often more recreational than real spiritual work. You said it very well in your article - the lack of ritual and the surrounding of psychedelics with power, money and sex radically influences the experience. And of course, when you have beautiful women around, it easily inflates the ego… Now I’m super-focused on the preparation and integration part to support my clients in real transformation and inner work. Because otherwise people with so much potential keep using psychedelics without properly aligned intentions, and it’s so easy to just end up lost. I’ve seen it for myself, especially in Ibiza. You have heard of this tech entrepreneur who spent the last couple years setting up a global spiritual community? I was part of it at its beginning, but he was doing way too much on ayahuasca without integration, and he ended up losing it and setting fire to his house in Ibiza.

High-Net-Worth spirituality and elite shamanification

Jules: Tell me about Flor, what do you remember of her?

Antoine: When I met her 10 years ago, she was just beginning to get into Bufo. Two years later when we were in Ibiza she was a completely different person, on a mission, with the sense that her mission was more important than anything else in the world, and if you don’t get it, you’re in some way the enemy, because I’m God’s messenger.

Jules: What was her mission?

Antoine: From what I understood, to bring psychedelics to the world. But there was some ego mixed in. I invited her to a friend’s house and she stayed on his yacht, then she woke up all the staff on the boat at 3am because she wanted to go to the yacht of another multi billionaire to serve him Bufo. She was so dramatic about it because she felt it could help make the world a better place, and I understand because I also was in touch with some very powerful people thinking that I could influence them to do good things for humanity. But when you have this thing that you believe you can influence people’s destiny through their psychedelic journey…that is manipulation?

[For a tribute to Flor from some of her friends, read this].

When there’s an unconscious agenda (whether it’s recognition, power, validation, sex or money) it infiltrates the field. It colors the experience. And it can cause lasting confusion, especially in altered states where we are most open and suggestible…There were times when I myself used the power of 5meoDMT not just as medicine, but as a way to be seen as special (and especially with women). I admit at that time I appreciated being seen as a kind of magician, someone who could open doors to the divine. And while my intentions weren’t malicious, there was still ego involved. A part of me fed on the admiration, the mystique, the reverence...

Jules: In the relationship between a psychedelic facilitator and a high-net-worth ‘whale’, who is exploiting who? Can it be a symbiotic, equal and respectful relationship?