The seedy retreat where a 'shaman' charges £800 to get high on hallucinogenic ... trends now

With its crumbling walls, concrete floor and grubby mattresses, blankets and pillows, the old stone outhouse looks more like a seedy squat than a wellness retreat.

Ominously, several buckets and a toilet roll are placed on the floor. And for the next three days, a group of 20 people – each paying £800 for the privilege – will vomit, wail and hallucinate here for up to 15 hours at a time after indulging in the latest craze for the South American psychedelic drug ayahuasca.

In this nondescript farm building on the outskirts of the historic mill village of Compstall, near Stockport, hundreds of people have already flocked to try the drug, tempted by claims that it can help to alleviate addiction, depression and anxiety.

Prince Harry told last week how taking it had helped him to cope with the death of his mother.

Ayahuasca is illegal in the UK because it contains the powerful Class A hallucinogenic drug dimethyltryptamine, or DMT.

Yet an undercover investigation by The Mail on Sunday has found that it is being provided at this retreat, run by self-styled ‘shaman’ Chris Hargreaves and his yoga teacher girlfriend, Rebecca Stewart.

It is not the only one. We have evidence of similar illicit retreats in London, North Wales and Brighton.

Some, such as the one being run by Hargreaves and Stewart, are so brazen that they operate as limited companies.

The couple’s records show they have assets of more than £80,000, and they are clearly in demand. When I tried to book a place in their Sacred Nature retreat at the start of this year, I was told that the next available one was not until late February.

That’s how I found myself in the Compstall outhouse last month among a group of mostly middle-class professionals – including a mother with a baby who was still being breastfed.

With me were a management consultant and a tennis coach, a couple from Scotland who had taken a ferry and driven eight hours to get there, and a young woman who had made the five-and-a-half-hour journey north from Bournemouth by car.

The mother of the four-month-old baby also had her eight-year-old with her, and was accompanied by her 22-year-old son who, she excitedly told everyone, would be taking ayahuasca with her for the first time.

In contrast, almost everyone else had drank the hallucinogen before – one man revealed that he attended the retreat every month.

All claimed that when under the influence of ayahuasca they had seen ‘Mother Ayahuasca’, also known as ‘Aya’, the female spirit associated with the hallucinogen.

This spirit, they claimed, could heal past trauma. Most also admitted they sought help for a mental health condition. Several said they wanted to treat addiction to alcohol or drugs. All were seemingly oblivious to the potential risks to mental health among vulnerable people.

Yet Hargreaves and Stewart, who run their own website and a private Facebook group with 1,200 members, sought to reassure attendees of the drug’s safety by describing it as a ‘medicine’.

Hargreaves, 40, revealed he had ‘administered’ ayahuasca to 10,000 people in the UK and the Amazon region, adding: ‘I don’t class it as a psychedelic, I class it as a medicine.

‘It gives you answers and healing from yourself.’

Stewart, 30, was busy preparing the ‘ceremony room’ with her two helpers. ‘It might not look like much,’ she said, as she set up heaters and speakers in the dingy outhouse, ‘but after two cups of ayahuasca…’

Our introduction to the drug had come with instructions. Anyone on antidepressants or who had a history of psychotic episodes were advised not to take it, while in the run-up to the retreat it was recommended that we follow a strict diet to ensure our bodies were ‘clean’ for the experience – this meant avoiding alcohol, red meat, sugar and excessively spicy or salty foods.