The Bankrupt Ayahuasca Church Where Negligence Led to Death (2024)

At the Soul Quest Ayahuasca Church of Mother Earth retreat center, on the opposite side of Orlando to Disney World Florida, guests are promised a “profound journey of spiritual discovery.” But in 2018, 22-year-old Brandon Begley died there after drinking ayahuasca. A court later found that the people who were supposed to be taking care of Begley while he drank the powerful Amazonian psychedelic were at fault for his death.

On Easter weekend in April 2018, Begley participated in three ayahuasca ceremonies and one ritual involving kambo—the non-psychoactive secretions from a frog that are purported to have detoxifying effects—in less than two days. It was a grueling psychedelic regimen that some experts would recommend against. Begley drank far too much water and was found unresponsive on Easter Sunday—yet an ambulance was not called until more than three hours later, once he had experienced a catastrophic seizure.In May, following a long legal process, a jury at the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court in Orange County, Florida ruled that Soul Quest and its owner Chris Young—a self-described “medicine man [and] purveyor of tribal medicine”—were guilty of negligence. Soul Quest has served ayahuasca to more than 20,000 people since 2014, many of whom paid in excess of $500 for a weekend retreat, according to one former retreat board member, all while fighting an unsuccessful, lengthy, and costly battle with the Drug Enforcement Agency to gain a legal exemption to use ayahuasca legally (the potion contains the federally prohibited drug DMT). But Soul Quest and Young recently claimed they were unable to compensate the Begleys and filed for bankruptcy, court documents reviewed by VICE show.

Pictured: Brandon Begley. (Photos courtesy of the Begley family via William Chapman Esq)​

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On July 30, Soul Quest had its motion to declare bankruptcy rejected by a Florida court because it continues to supply ayahuasca to its members; a whole slate of ayahuasca retreats are still planned to take place before the end of the year. During the bankruptcy proceedings, Soul Quest revealed it had income of almost $7.5 million from 2022 to July 2024, with Young taking home annual pay of almost $320,000. Young’s personal bank accounts, however, contain a little over $20,000, with possessions including a bunch of giant umbrellas, bongos, and more than 100 chairs valued at another $5,000. He also owns a Chrystler van and a live-in trailer worth $20,000.“Although we anticipated that Soul Quest was generating large earnings, seeing these numbers is still rather shocking, especially where I was told over and over again by Soul Quest’s and Mr. Young’s counsel that they have no money to resolve Brandon’s wrongful death claim,” William Chapman Esq, the Begley family lawyer, told VICE. “Although there is legal validation in Soul Quest’s financial capitulation for Brandon’s death, Soul Quest’s financial collapse pales in comparison to the devastating emotional loss which Soul Quest and Mr Young have imposed upon Brandon’s mother and father for the remainder of their lives.”

During the civil court case, questions over book-keeping at the retreat center were raised by Dr Scott Irwin, a former director who was also a senior minister in charge of group counseling sessions. “There’s never been any financial transparency,” he told the court, according to a transcript of the 2022 deposition. “There’s never been any disclosure of any accounting records of any kind […] All that was done by Christopher Young exclusively.” After raising his concerns, Irwin said that he was told it was not “anybody’s business.”

After the alleged punch, he and Young’s wife Verena were banished from Soul Quest—known for its ‘free love’ atmosphere—for starting a relationship. “Chris was playing dirty with Verena,” Irwin told the court, “and I was receiving, for probably six months or so, death threats.” However, the pair were beckoned back to the church after Begley’s passing in 2018. At the time, Young was in crisis management mode. In an interview for (Un)Well—a Netflix documentary about ayahuasca featuring Soul Quest—he falsely suggested Begley was to blame for his demise and had concealed a history of seizures.

An unnamed witness told the court that others at the center had advocated calling an ambulance long before Begley’s seizure, but Young decided to follow the shaman’s advice and give him sugar waterinstead.“Everybody seemed to trust [that] Chris knew what they heck he was doing,” they said during the depositions. “They just gave, like, a very small amount of the sugar water to him, and then I remember things seemed to take a turn for the worse, and he started convulsing.”Rob Heffernan, an independent psychedelics researcher and activist, told VICE that the Soul Quest story “illustrates the danger of combining a grandiose mission with a business model marketing medicine retreats.” Heffernan issued a stark warning to future visitors to certain psychedelic retreats: “Authentic spiritual practice and integrity can take a second seat to filling seats, operating a center and generating income. In this case, it resulted in tragedy for the Begley family and disillusionment for those who trusted in Chris Young and Soul Quest.”Soul Quest did not respond to requests made to their attorneys for comment.Follow @matthabusby on Twitter