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.

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.

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...

[Check out this Bloomberg podcast from 2018 featuring Rick Doblin bicyclying around Burning Man looking for millionaires and billionaires to raise funding. It features a brief clip of Flor wanting to introduce Rick to billionaire Guy Laliberte, founder of Cirque de Soleil].

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?

Antoine: I think you have such an imbalance in the distribution of resources. Let’s say you arrive with someone like this guy Flor absolutely wanted to serve Bufo, who is worth around $140 billion, and you make maybe $10,000 a month, but you barely survive because even with $20,000 a month in this social circle, because you have to spend so much on travel, hotels, outfits, etc. So you feel you’re going to provide them with an experience that is worth so much, a life-changing transformation, a one-on-one meeting with God, and you’re going to be paid at best a few thousands for it. I have a Mexican shaman friend, and I’ve seen him provide sessions for 500 euros for some of the richest people on the planet. I’ve seen the potential of those sessions - they could help people reaching transmissions and insights that will help them make hundreds of millions out of it. But at the same time they’re still negotiating the price of the session thinking that 500 euros is too expensive. And later on they’ll take the shaman to a restaurant and shamelessly spend 5000 euros on a bottle of wine. So yeah, there is this lack of balance when you’re serving these people, and it’s easy to feel that they don’t see or appreciate the value of your work. And if you don’t feel respected, ultimately you’re not going to respect them either.

Jules: Flor came into that world from Argentina, where I understand she was into politics and then studied therapy, and somehow she became part of the world of the mega-wealthy, through Burning Man I guess.

Antoine: She was positioning herself as someone who could facilitate access to these experiences. I first met her at Amanda Fielding’s, I came there with a friend, the son of a Russian oligarch, who was more into synthetic drugs, and Flor immediately introduced him to mushrooms. She was a bit like, how did you call it, the ‘bro shaman’. But the fact is, these people don’t really take you seriously. They can invite you on their super yacht and in their jet, or give you access to things, but at some level you’re just a fancy drug dealer to them.

Jules: Do you think she was drawn to that world because she wanted to find investment for her psychedelic facilitator business, Nana Heals?

Antoine: I’m not sure how real a business that was. From my perception it was probably more a way to finance a shamanic lifestyle. The business never launched as a public company, I believe it was all private ceremonies on the side. She definitely figured out that psychedelic ceremonies could offer her easy access very rich people. But that can also be a brutal world.

Jules: And I guess sometimes people die in accidents.

Antoine: Yes, but usually people are discreet about it. When Flor died, because she was a prominent figure in psychedelic culture, it brings light to a situation that had got out of control. I think Ibiza is probably the place on the planet where it’s the most out of control, equally to Burning Man, because it becomes like a commodity. It quickly becomes normal to drop LSD every week and go to these crazy parties where you lose connection to reality. Another guy died in an accident at an Ibiza villa party a few days before Flor - a British DJ. There’s also a doctor in Ibiza who gets his “patients” on an explosive 6 hours deep dive introspective trip including magic mushrooms, MDMA and ketamine IV. There have been some incidents there as well.

Jules: I guess it’s hard, if you’re having an incredible LSD experience in a magnificent villa surrounded by beautiful, interesting people, you’re going to want to repeat that experience and everything else will seem a bit ordinary.

Antoine: Haha yes for sure, you will want to do it every day and bring all share the word with all your beloved like a messiah. If you’re lucky and have a few million behind you, you can ride it out, good for you. But if you’re in business it’s going to be difficult to stay grounded and focus on your business with this kind of lifestyle. People with incredible gifts burn themselves out and become lost to a sort of spiritual addiction, because psychedelics give you this sense of meaning, like ‘I’m not just going to a party to take drugs, I’m saving the universe’. Each time you drop acid, you’re getting closer to God and saving the universe.

And you will talk about the future of humanity like Steve Jobs and all these great ideas will come spontaneously. But then maybe you won’t do any of them and you’ll just want to repeat the experience, desperately seeking for another confirmation from God before making the first step. Because… what if this is all real? The reality is that if you want to create the new iPhone, it will take some working time. I really doubt you will be able to manifest the next big tech revolution by taking LSD three times a week…

Jules: Can the Burning Man jet-set sometimes use beautiful women as commodities?

Definitely! A beautiful girl flies to Ibiza for a specific villa party hosted by a millionaire, she arrives dressed in her most attractive outfit at the villa with her suitcase, and she asks if she can stay in the house, because she has no plan, or she fakes an excuse to justify her situation. This is so common that someone came with this not-very-nice phrase - ‘suitcase bitches’. And if the host doesn’t give them a room, they will find a guest at the party where they can stay in their villa for a couple of days. And they will travel like this for the entire summer, and the Holy Grail is to get the golden ticket to get invited to Burning Man by a generous sponsor. Often the transaction involves drugs and sex, and then after a while they’re ejected from the house and the next one arrives. Those girls often end up destroyed. There’s so much drugs involved sometimes, if you’re young and immature it can be very radical. I was at a party in Ibiza a couple of months ago, and the staff were going round with silver plates with LSD, mushrooms, whatever you wanted.

Jules: What happened with the start-up you launched after smoking Bufo?

Antoine: As I mentioned earlier, I first smoked Bufo in 2018. I became sure that God was guiding me on a mission. As I was surrounded by some of the founders of the biggest tech company in the world, I envisioned my own solution to “elevate the consciousness of the world”. The plan was a sort of AirBnB for alternative health and complementary medicine, to bring spiritual awakenings to the people. It was called Noös, inspired by noetic science. I wanted it for the entire world. But my blind spot was that I couldn’t appreciate that the entire world wasn’t especially interested or ready to go through spiritual awakening, so I was already playing the saviour. That’s a big bias I’ve seen with many people going through psychedelic experiences. Your material ambitions wear spiritual masks.

One of my closest friends had been trying to sell his Eu65 million holiday home in Ibiza for over three years. That summer he offered me a contract: if I found a buyer, I’d receive a one million euro commission. 36 hours later, I hosted a dinner. I had no intention of discussing the house, but one of the guests, a friend tech billionaire, spontaneously decided to buy it. I saw it as a cosmic sign, a green light from the universe. I was convinced my billionaire friend would honor the contract, so I didn’t wait, I invested all my personal savings into my startup. And then I couldn’t find people to invest in the project. I shared it with my high-net-worth network, thinking that as they have no problem spending millions on a weekend, a little investment on the future 500 billion startup that would save the world would be nothing for them. But when I approached them to see if they would invest at least $100,000 in my start-up, they were like, ‘oh no, no, no’. I felt like I had this mission and no one was understanding its importance, and I became more and more isolated, frustrated and angry. Someone later explained that it’s not worth their time to invest less than $5 million as they need to get their family office involved and so on.

So my confidence began to collapse. I kept on injecting more and more Bufo to make sure I was on the right path. I held on for three years and then finally, I had to let it go. I lost my savings, my home. From flying in private jets, I ended up living in my car. Today I can see and appreciate the depth of the gift behind this collapse, but at the time it broke me. Not because the vision was wrong, but because the intention wasn’t clean, I had no preparation, no integration, no support, just spiritual highs, a strong saviour complex and a burning desire to be seen. That’s why I speak a lot about integration and practical spirituality today, not escapism and ego dressed as light.

Jules: Why do you think so many people, especially after consuming powerful psychedelics like 5-MeO-DMT or ayahuasca, fall into what could be called a “Messiah syndrome”, believing they’ve been chosen to save the world?

Antoine: I’ve seen this countless times and I’ve gone through it myself. I believe there are several layers to it. First, the energetic shock of certain medicines like 5-MeO-DMT or Ayahuasca can catapult you into states of consciousness that are usually only reached by monks after decades of disciplined spiritual practice. I remember Catherine Henry Plessier, a wise woman I met, telling me the problem is with these substances we reach levels of consciousness usually only accessible to Buddhist monks who spend their entire lives meditating : “You’re like kids thrown into a Formula One car. You don’t have the containment, the wisdom, or the training. So what begins as revelation often ends as inflation.”

These substances are not new-age thrill rides, they are divine technologies. And without a razor-sharp intentional field, the ego reclaims the experience and uses it to elevate itself. You think you’ve met God. But more often, you’ve just been overwhelmed by your own unconscious mythology.

Second, there’s something deeper in our cultural coding. The Messiah archetype is engraved in the Western psyche, especially through the Judeo-Christian lens. We are raised on stories of the chosen one, the savior, the sacrifice that will redeem the world. And in today's landscape, with climate collapse, social breakdown, war, collective spiritual void, if that story doesn’t resonate, what will?

In Ibiza two years ago, I was with a crypto billionaire friend who had run for the US presidency. He told me he believed he was “the tip of the sword that would pierce the sky and bring the light back to Earth.” And honestly, I thought great. If you're running for president, I want you to believe your mission matters that much. But here's the nuance: we should all believe we hold the most important piece. Because we do. The problem isn’t the belief in one's importance, it’s the lack of belief in everyone else’s.

To reach that level of collective dignity, we’d need to radically rethink our systems. A nurse, a garbage collector, a farmer, they’d all need to be seen and supported as holders of essential pieces in humanity’s puzzle. Not just praised symbolically, but honored materially, with abundance, with respect, so that their gift isn’t something they perform to survive, but something they offer to serve. In India alone, over 11,000 farmers and agricultural laborers died by suicide in 2022, a stark reminder that without those who feed us, we will all starve, no matter how enlightened we believe ourselves to be. To me, this is what a sustainable, integrated psychedelic future looks like. Not individual salvation. But collective sovereignty.

Jules: Why do you think psychedelics today so often lead to ego-centric experiences, especially among those exploring them in elite circles?

Antoine: If we compare this to the first psychedelic revolution in the 1960s, the contrast is striking. Back then, there was a deep sense of collective spirit. The experience was shared, raw, communal, often humble. Psychedelics were part of a broader counter-cultural awakening, anchored in music, resistance, and togetherness.

Today, especially in places like Ibiza or Silicon Valley, psychedelics are often consumed in contexts where the ego still dominates the space. I’ve seen people drop acid at a private party and within minutes they’re back on their phones, taking selfies, recording videos, already thinking about how this moment will look on Instagram. That’s not presence, that’s projection. One of the keys to any true psychedelic experience is total presence. But our minds are already in the future, constructing how the moment will be sold back to the world. That tells you a lot.

When we organize our experiences, we always ban phones. At first, there is resistance, some discomfort, even anxiety for some. But within less than an hour, people would begin to drop in. Something shifts. A deeper connection emerges, to each other, to themselves, to the space. That’s the magic of removing distraction. Phones are not just devices, in a psychedelic context, they’re potent ego extensions. They pull you out of the now. And when the ego is still running the show, even the most powerful substance can become another tool for validation, status, and identity. That’s why so many experiences today feel inflated, rather than integrated.

And there’s another layer: when you go on Instagram during a psychedelic trip, you’re exposing yourself to the energetic frequency of what you’re consuming. And let’s be honest, most of what we scroll through on Instagram isn’t exactly the kind of vibration we want to infuse into a sacred journey. You’re letting in fragments of a collective unconscious obsessed with comparison, perfection, and projection. That’s energetic pollution. And in an altered state, it penetrates you much more deeply than you realize.

Jules: To end on a positive note, do you have a positive vision for the future of psychedelics and their role in society?

Antoine: I don’t believe we will stop the elite from using psychedelics. But we can educate them and show them another way.

My work is about reclaiming these medicines as divine technologies, not commodities. And for those who feel the call, I offer a different path: not to escape the world, but to return to it, deeply transformed. That’s why today I decided to devote myself to building ritual first experiences where grounded set and settings define the direction and the vibration.

I love to guide high-integrity spiritual pilgrimages that integrate psychedelic medicine in sacred settings. We use silence, nature, deep bodywork, and conscious group dynamics to ensure the experience is anchored, not just expanded. These sacred journeys are inspired by the ancient traditions that knew how to hold these states with reverence: the Mysteries of Eleusis, the Egyptian initiations, the Essene brotherhoods. In all these lineages, altered states were never casual: they were woven into myth, community, ritual, and long-term integration.

It’s about remembering. Slowly.

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