The Amsterdam-based psychedelic retreat and practitioner training provider Synthesis Institute has filed for bankruptcy in the Netherlands, Willamette Week reported this week, leaving almost 300 students enrolled in its psilocybin facilitator training course in Oregon with an uncertain future.
Founded in the Netherlands in 2018 by Myles Katz and Martijn Schirp, Synthesis Institute sought to bridge the gap between clinical and more wellness-oriented psychedelic therapies, which are used to help tackle depression and anxiety and has shown promise to help treat other mental health ailments. Its flagship center just outside of Amsterdam offered three- or five-day retreats at roughly $1,000 per day. The company started expanding to the North American market in 2021, and Synthesis planned to establish a psilocybin service center and facilitator training program. It secured $7.25 million in Series A funding in September 2021, with an unusual company structure in the form of a Steward-Ownership organization.
However, the expansion project did not come together as expected. In June 2021, a company owned by Katz bought Buckhorn Springs, a 124-acre property in Jackson County, Oregon, for $3.6 million. The intention was to use Buckhorn Springs as a psilocybin service center, but it fell foul of Jackson County’s zoning regulations. As Buckhorn Springs sits in a resource zone, not a commercial zone, the county’s Land Development Ordinance deemed that it couldn’t be used as a psilocybin service center. This came after a 2022 vote in Jackson County that could have prevented companies from establishing psilocybin centers in the jurisdiction.
While the retreat might have met with bureaucratic roadblocks, Synthesis’ psychedelic practitioner training program was one of the first approved by the state of Oregon. The first students to embark on the Psychedelic Practitioner Core Training program did so in November 2022. The course was due to take 13 months and had an upfront cost of just under $10,000.
Companies fail every day, for myriad reasons. Whether it’s a centuries-old and well-respected department store, a tech startup or a psilocybin facilitator training and retreat organization, bad management, bad trading conditions, bad decisions or just bad luck can take a business under. But in the case of Synthesis, the ramifications of its collapse could have a destabilizing impact on the nascent commercial psychedelics community as a whole.
At the beginning of 2023, Synthesis faced a coalescence of financial problems, including a fall in retreat bookings in the Netherlands, fewer students than expected signing up for the practitioner training program and being served a letter of default by Return to Nature LLC, the company that had provided the loan to purchase Buckhorn Springs. An email from Rachel Aidan, Synthesis’ CEO (although she has now resigned) to students on March 1 notifying them that the education program was indefinitely suspended, also detailed that a potential buyer for Synthesis had backed out of the sale. It filed for bankruptcy on Feb. 27.
Students left stranded
What comes next for the roughly 290 students who had embarked on Synthesis’ psilocybin facilitator training course? Bookings for the course had been handled by Canada-based Retreat Guru, a payments facilitator that then passed on the course fees to Synthesis. Retreat Guru is now having to handle hundreds of refund requests from disappointed students; as a consequence, it’s facing a financial crisis itself.
Synthesis was a recognized and certificated psilocybin facilitator training provider. Those who were enrolled in the course are facing uncertainty, but it extends beyond them. Synthesis’ demise has also reduced the training provider base for those considering a facilitator qualification. But there’s also the possibility of a deeper impact on training: This collapse may prove a shot across the bow for facilitator training in Oregon in general.
Outside of a fairly small group of people, the general response to psychedelic therapies ranges from ignorance to disdain, taking in misunderstood and skeptical along the way. Consequently, when the “gold standard” provider of psychedelic retreats and training collapses, it harms the legitimacy of the therapy.
For those people who do regard it as a potential source of medical relief, Synthesis’ collapse not only reduces the choice of where to seek psilocybin therapy but calls into question the legitimacy of other providers. If this is how a supposedly top-of-the-range provider did business, it’s fair to question what’s happening at the budget end of the field.
The biggest risk is that all of the above might signal to investors that psychedelic therapy is a less viable opportunity for financiers. If this collapse is the harbinger of falling public confidence in such a nascent and up-in-the-air field, it could set the overall industry back significantly.
For the potential of psychedelic therapies to be realized and for the general public to embrace it — aside from further academic research to enable its use in the orthodox medical community — any business or organization embarking on a psychedelics journey needs to move with extreme caution. That doesn’t mean to say that it can’t be done, but the road for anyone who’s interested in developing and delivering shrooms as medicine just got a lot longer and harder.