Adriana Giafardino traveled from Florida to Transcend Clinic in Cancún for ibogaine, hoping it would give her relief from a 21-year addiction to opioids. But first, she said, a doctor suggested she smoke 5-MeO-DMT.
So on a sunny day in January, Ms. Giafardino said, she settled onto a mattress and inhaled from a glass pipe, and then drifted in and out of consciousness. “The next time I came to, he was completely naked, and he was over me,” she recalled in an interview.
After employees barged into the treatment room, the doctor fled the clinic and was later arrested, according to the Mexican authorities. He is in custody and has been charged with rape. His lawyer could not be reached for comment.
Ms. Giafardino, 35, plans to file suit against Transcend, whose employees, she said, discouraged her from going to the hospital after the episode. “They started pumping me full of psych meds because of the panic attacks that I was having to the point where I was like a zombie,” she said.
In a statement to The Times, the clinic acknowledged “the incident” and said that staff members had intervened and reported it to a prosecutor, adding that “the criminal process is underway.”
In addition, the doctor violated the clinic’s protocols by giving 5-MeO-DMT to Ms. Giafardino, the clinic said. “Transcend was founded for one reason: to bring a real medical standard of care to a field that badly needs one,” a spokesman said in an email.
Fernanda Baraybar, co-founder of the Spiritual Emergency Response Team, a nonprofit based in Peru that provides support to those who have been harmed at psychedelic retreats, said the organization annually handled about eight to 10 cases involving visitors to the Sacred Valley, a Peruvian region near Cusco that has become a global draw for those seeking psychedelic experiences in an Indigenous setting.
The abuse, she said, often involves practitioners who take advantage of clients when they are incapacitated or in a vulnerable state. Her organization helps guide victims through the Peruvian justice system, but for many victims, Ms. Baraybar said, there is little legal recourse.
“This is not something you want to see happen in a spiritual community, because in the end everyone is harmed,” she said.
Advocates for psychedelic medicine fear that the rise in adverse events at overseas clinics could prompt a backlash that could stymie the field’s overall trajectory.
Jesús Alonso Olamendi, a legal consultant at the International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research and Service, a nonprofit that promotes the wider use of psychedelic medicine, said many people who travel to retreats outside the United States have positive, life-changing experiences.
But, he said, the boom in unregulated businesses and the mounting reports of harm threaten the future of the field. “The substance is not the problem,” he said. “It’s the misuse of substances and the unethical ways of treating patients when they are under the influence.”
Ricardo Hernández Ruiz contributed reporting from Mexico City.
