Colorado Ayahuasca Shaman Accused of Abuse

• Former followers of Florissant, CO shaman Chris Douglas describe him as highly abusive and say he destroyed many romantic relationships.
• They claim he would spend hours tearing them down, screaming and cursing at them. He tried beating a demon out of one woman by open hand slapping her in the forehead repeatedly while speaking in tongues.
• Chris referred to one student as "that black bitch," used sexual language with her and called her a "whore" and a "cunt." She alleges he had sex with her in the astral spiritual plane.
• He would warn the world was ending and would instill paranoia that the government was out to get them.
• Kids as young as 11 or 12 were doing ayahuasca, San Pedro, mushrooms and marijuana in the community.
• Chris sells on average 10 pounds of mushrooms worth $10,000 every six weeks around the country to help fund his operation. He both mails it and drives it across state lines.
• Students say there has been a home, several yurts and another building built on Chris' property without permits and that didn't follow codes.

Be Scofield is a prominent cult reporter who exposed Love Has Won which led to the hit HBO series. She is the author of Hunting Lucifer: One Reporter's Search for Cults and Demons. Her work is cited by the NY Times, Rolling Stone, People, Netflix, and more. Please donate to support this work.

By BE SCOFIELD

July 24th, 2024

One of Ayahuasca shaman Chris Douglas' YouTube videos is titled, "Government Forces Don't Want You Reaching Higher States of Consciousness." He describes how one time CIA forces descended upon him and his guru Carlos Castaneda from two helicopters. "They have these little boxes and they are scanning the ground," Chris says. "They are there for five minutes and then go up their ropes and they fly away." Castaneda then told him, "When you go into those [spiritual] states they have equipment that can pick up on it and they can find you."

Before the government agents had arrived, Castaneda had glanced at Chris and put him into a state of higher consciousness. When they heard the helicopters, Castaneda grabbed Chris and flew with him through the air behind a rock. "I need you to disappear right now," Castaneda said to him. They then snapped out of their higher state of consciousness so as to not be detected by the government's energy reading machines.

For years Chris Douglas has used tales like these to impress his followers in Florissant, Colorado, a tiny mountain town west of Colorado Springs. Many have sought out Chris as an alternative source for healing trauma, addiction, disease and sexual abuse. Chris portrays himself as a divine shaman and authentic "Curandero" or healer.

Former students told me Chris claims to know and hear people's thoughts. He also claims to exercise demons from people and to have "hyper" spiritual abilities. Chris is known as a "special" or "Nagual" like Don Juan, the central character of Castaneda's books. "Chris looks at me in the eye and he dematerialized in front of me and all I could do was cry," an ex-student named Max told me. "I thought he was Jesus."

"It operated like a cult," a woman named Erica told me. "He positions himself as their savior. Chris says whoever follows him will know the truth. Many of his comments are of him being adjacent to god. He is the truth. He is ayahuasca. Being around him is like being on medicine." She said it was a lot of former addicts and vulnerable people. "He took them in and gave them food, housing and family. They became loyal to him," she said.

"It is time for me to share what Carlos Castaneda taught me," Chris wrote in a Facebook post in 2016. "We will begin by first having a home base that people can come to. We will have tesla energy lights, massage therapy, gong and singing bowl sessions, and shamanic trance journeys both with and without medicine."

Chris heavily bases his teachings on Castaneda's work and has created video lectures about them. He claims to have met him on the road in 1995 in Florissant and served as his apprentice. "The next two years I spent most of the time right next to him," he says in a video.

"He claims to be Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda and Don Genaro all in one," a former student named "Kyle" told me. He also claims to be a direct descendent of Robert the Bruce, the King of the Scots during William Wallace's (Braveheart) era. He says that family, the male line, made a pact with a demon for power. Chris says he fought off this demon and won.

Chris didn't study with the real Carlos Castaneda, however, according to his ex-students. They say he met a guy named Joseph who named himself Carlos Castaneda. The theory is that Joseph convinced Chris he was the real Castaneda, or Chris was just mythologizing him.

Castaneda himself is a mysterious figure shrouded in controversy. He was an anthropology student whose books document him achieving "great wisdom and supernatural powers through his apprenticeship with a Yaqui sorcerer" in the Mexican desert. Castaneda explored peyote and other psychedelics with his guru Don Juan who he is accused of fabricating. "There is now consensus among critics and scholars that the books are largely, if not completely, fictional," it is said about Castaneda.

He apparently was running a sex cult in his last years. "Marketing extortionate workshops for a shamanic cult called Tensegrity, which simultaneously operated as a personal sex ring, he had become a cliché of the guru-as-tyrant — alternately fucking and abusing his acolytes for their own spiritual progress." Four of his inner circle "witches" disappeared when he died, leaving their deaths a mystery.

A Failed Utopia

What started as a noble mission of creating "heaven on earth" evolved into a chaotic, abusive and spiritually toxic environment according to former students. Chris allegedly routinely yelled and screamed at them, tore them down and broke up relationships. Some of the abuses occurred in plant medicine ceremonies.

"When we began we were hosting cannabis ceremonies," Max told me. He spent 12 years studying with Chris and they did their first ayahuasca ceremonies together. "Everyone would smoke as much weed as they possibly could and people would take shrooms and have releases."

Eventually they landed in Texas at a guy named Tomas Taber's ranch. "The goal was to find someone to do the work and bring all the money in," Max told me. "We found Tom with all this money in Texas. He was lost as anything else. And he became our benefactor."

The Texas community was called Nagual's Landing, named after a term from Castaneda's works. The Nagual is "the teacher who becomes the gateway, the doorway, the intermediate between the world of the 'seeker' or apprentice, and the world of the spirit." 

For two years they commuted between Texas and Colorado. In 2019 Tom sold his ranch and used the profit to purchase 50 acres about 30 minutes southwest of Florissant. They named the new property Montaña Sagrada. Tom lists himself as the co-founder of the community on LinkedIn.

Former students say Tom bankrolls Chris' operation. "He put Tom into tears in front of so many people but he keeps coming back and is paying for everything," Max said. "Tom pulled some shady shit with younger women. Chris allowed him to be that way because he was paying for everything."

Since 2020 the community has attracted an array of people from the Denver area and beyond interested in plant medicine and psychedelics. They host a monthly event called "Cosmosis" advertised as a potluck with sound healing, cacao and a bonfire. "Cacao is often code-word for psychedelics in many plant medicine spaces," a former student told me. "They microdose mushrooms at the Cosmosis events."

Chris also hosts a monthly ayahuasca ceremony at the Florissant based Montaña Sagrada. And few times a year Chris leads students deep into the Amazonian jungle near Honoria, Peru. They participate in ayahuasca ceremonies with a local shaman named Enrique. They have a retreat in Peru in October, 2024.

Max told me Chris' ayahuasca and plant medicine knowledge is mostly fabricated. "None of it is rooted in time spent training or learning or doing dietas," he said. "He's never done a dieta. He literally is a bullshitter. He's making it up as he goes."

"He doesn't even speak Spanish," Max said. "He makes up fake Icaros medicine songs. He makes noises and speaks gibberish and throws in some fake Spanish words. None of those are real songs. He knows zero songs. One of them is about Disney World."

"Anybody want the warrior song?" Chris would ask. "Donald Duck, Micky Mouse, Scooby Doo, we are all goofy too so what the fuck are you going to do," he'd sing in the ayahuasca ceremony.

"Chris' wife Angela sings Icaros songs off the internet," Max said. "They don't even speak Spanish. It's all a fucking show. It's fake."

"Chris said his work with Carlos years ago was his dieta," a former student named "Nick" told me.

In a dieta the participant eats a very strict diet and ingests a variety of plant medicines given to him by the Curandero or healer. They usually last a few weeks to a month or longer. They are considered foundational for people who lead ayahuasca ceremonies.

"If you don't do dietas you have no energy to call into the ayahuasca space," Kyle said.

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Verbal Assassination

"He's called me every name in the book," Max told me. "He came into the gym one morning and started screaming at me, 'You think you're fucking tough? You little bitch!'"

When Max tore his ACL he was laid up on Chris' couch for a month. He had recently broken up with his long term girlfriend. "Chris kept playing the video of the guy proposing to my ex-girlfriend. She was my dream girl. He was essentially trying to torture me. He played it over and over again. I couldn't move."

"I've seen him tear everybody apart," Max said. "The worst was in Peru when he open hand slapped this guy in his head. I was sitting right next to the guy when it happened."

Kyle also witnessed this incident. He said Chris "verbally assassinated" the man. "You’re an ayahuasca pimp!" Chris shouted at him. "You're just a street rat and you have a long ways to go!" he yelled. "Chris then flicked a cigarette in his face," Kyle told me. "Chris shoved him down in the bushes and the guy got up. Then Chris shoved him back into the bushes."

Speaking about his time with Chris' Montaña Sagrada community, Kyle said it ruined him. "It left me on the brink of suicide," he said. He lived on the property for years. He had originally sought plant medicine for healing his alcoholism. "It had an effect like no other medications or treatments," he told me.

Cursing, screaming and yelling was constant according to former students. They said everyone would sit around the table in the Florissant house and listen to Chris tear people down for up to six hours.

"He referred to me as 'that black bitch,'" a woman named Audrey told me. She sought out Chris to heal childhood sexual abuse with plant medicine. She was in her early twenties at the time. "I’ve never had a grown man belittle me the way he did," she says. "I came out of the three day weekend and I couldn’t stop crying. He called me a bitch, cunt and whore. He'd call people a pussy a lot."

"He tried to measure me up," Audrey said. "He said nonsensical things just to put out the vibe he was in control. Me being too young, or getting into it for the wrong reasons, or saying I was a person who had ill intent with the medicine." 

"He referred to me as 'that black bitch.' I’ve never had a grown man belittle me the way he did."

"He breaks you down and builds himself up," Kyle said. Former students told me he'd search endlessly for every small thing to criticize and nit pick. “He’d instigate fights before and after ceremony," Audrey said.

"He severely mistreated Kyle," Alex told me. "Chris was screaming at him. Calling him a loser, piece of shit, arrogant. There have been so many times when he was just straight up mean to people. In Cusco Peru he threatened to throw his wife and kid out at a restaurant. 'I'll throw you and him out on the street,' he said to them."

Nick described an incident where he was verbally abused for merely thinking about foods he wasn't supposed to eat after his plant medicine dieta.

"He started yelling about me in front of this group of strangers in the jungle," Nick told me. "Nick broke his dieta! What the fuck is he doing? Who the fuck does he think he is?" He said the shouting and cursing continued for several minutes.

He once was subjected to a three hour tirade in Florissant. "I just want you to sit there and not say a fucking word," Chris yelled at him. "He went off on me and brought up any little thing in my actions that he deemed wrong," Nick said. "Me living out of my car. Not having any goals or aspirations, which was not true. He questioned my work ethic, and said I was unmotivated with no purpose. He said I wasn't as strong as I thought I was."

Nick said Chris went into his car without permission and found donuts under his seat which also spurred an abusive attack. "We ended the podcast at seven and he berated me until ten," he said.

"Nick used to get a lot of the berating," Audrey told me. "Chris called him a 'spa boy' who didn’t like to get his hands dirty. He’d get a group of people and say anything he could to tear him down," she said.

"Chris called the men 'panty boys,'" she told me. It meant men who were excessively feminine.

"He treated Nick like a whipping boy," a former student named Caleb said. "Never once did Chris take care of him. I've never heard him even thank him. "He has a compelling way to emotionally abuse people and to have them think they deserved it."

When Audrey asked Chris what he does for fun he replied, “I throw truth bombs at idiots.”

Tampering With Relationships

“He liked to destroy people’s relationships," Audrey told me. "There was a couple that came from Texas that were together four years. He told them individually each that they should break up. And they did break up.”

"I can think of six relationships that Chris tried to break up," Nick told me. "All of them broke up except for one."

Max echoed the same thing. "He tried to break me and my partner up by telling things about me to her that were false and vice versa."

Alex told me he "watched Chris try to break up people in front of him." "I sat there and watched Chris manipulate her into not being with him. Saying things like, 'Do you really want to be with that guy? You don't want to be with that guy. He's a loser.' And she was swayed."

He lured Leah in by selling her on the vision of the property."'This is where Titan's come. Where you're gonna get all your answers,' he told me," Leah said. "He knows how to work people and is a very compelling speaker." She described him as love bombing people when they first arrive.

"He's really good at triangulating people," Leah told me. "With every couple that goes up there he's really good at tearing couples apart. He'll take the male aside and say, 'she's a witch and controlling and fill his head with garbage.' And then he'll go to the female and say 'oh, he's bad for you.'"

Former students told me that anytime someone left the community Chris demonized and attacked them. He shared their deepest, darkest traumas and fears if he could.

Kyle told me about a time Chris gave a guy named "Logan" a heavy dose of ayahuasca. He said Logan was not handling it well. And Chris had already been tampering with Logan and his wife Beth's marriage. "He then says to Logan, 'Come up and take another cup' and Logan was like 'No, no, no!" Chris insisted. "Logan, I'm not asking you!" He refused again. "If you don't take another cup then we are done with you," Chris told him. "You will leave the community. Beth will leave." Logan couldn't stomach the idea of doing more ayahuasca. "We'll drag you up here. Evan go get him!" Chris shouted.

At this point Tom intervened and brought a cup of ayahuasca to Logan. He was still resistant. "If you want to work things out you're gonna drink this cup!" Chris yelled. "If you want your relationship to work then drink!" Reluctantly and under great pressure Logan took another heavy dose of ayahuasca.

The next day Logan was confused and a mess. "I need to talk to Chris," he mumbled to Kyle. "Why is he meddling in between our marriage?"

Logan found Chris and asked if he could talk. "No," Chris replied. "We're done fucking talking. Go sit your ass down." Chris begged and pleaded with him. "Get out of my fucking face!" Chris yelled. "Please," Logan begged. Chris then cocked his fist back and said, "I'm giving you one more chance."

Chris told him to sit. Kyle told me Logan sat in the same spot for six hours straight. He was demoralized, lost, broken and feeling like he was losing his mind. The first night of the ceremony Chris had split him and his wife up in the yurt and gave him a heavy ayahuasca dose. Then he was berated and abused. He had nothing left.

"Chris took Logan's wife Beth and packed up her things," Kyle told me. "He drove her up to the mountain in Florissant from Texas. She divorced Logan and still lives there in the community today."

Ceremonial Abuse

Despite being a supposedly sacred container Chris didn't hold back during ayahuasca ceremonies. "He went after this guy in front of his wife while in ceremony," Kyle said. "I know you're sitting at home watching porn!" he yelled at him.

Alex witnessed this incident. "Chris tore into him in the middle of ceremony," Alex said. "He ripped into him. His energy is dominant and he won't let people speak. If he starts screaming at you, you can't get a word in."

"He would attack people in the middle of the ceremony," Alex told me. "I saw him just completely tear into Tom and threaten to kick him out screaming at him."

“A guy had just got back from the jungle," Audrey said. "Chris lays into him for two hours, going until 1:30 in the morning. He was cussing in ceremony at this man. 'You’re not prepared to go into medicine! You’re thinking about this woman!'"

"Caleb" told me Chris was "highly abusive in the ceremony space." He said he'd "berate the people and talk shit about them." He said Chris "feels like he has the right to demean people and talk shit about them or expose them or twist a truth."

"This one guy who was really nice had too much of a dose and was struggling," Leah told me. "Chris picked him up off the floor, threw him over his shoulders, took him out and sat him on the ground. He told him he wasn't welcome back until his 'mind was right.'"

Kyle once volunteered to be an assistant during a ceremony in Peru. Chris shouted at him in front of the group. "You’re no help to anybody! What? You want to fight me? I’ll drown you in the boiling river."

Chris' shaman Enrique in Peru witnessed his tirades and went along with it Kyle told me. "We found Enrique through the famous painter Maro," Max told me. "He told us Enrique was in it for the money." Another source I spoke with said they know people who live in the area of Peru where Enrique is. Their source also alleges Enrique is in it for the money and Chris generated him substantial amounts of money.

"When we naively elevate shamans and see them as pure and benevolent, we repeat the mistake that American and European seekers made a generation ago, when they blindly followed orange-robed Hindu or Caucasian mystics who sometimes turned out to be sociopaths or sex addicts," write Daniel Pinchbeck and Sophia Roklhin in their book When Plants Dream: Ayahuasca, Amazonian Shamanism and the Global Psychedelic Renaissance. They say we often we lack the "discernment required to fathom the depth dimensions of Amazonian shamanism, which encompasses light, dark, shadow, penumbra, ambiguity, phosphorescence, truth and illusion."

Apocalyptic Paranoia

Former students describe Chris Douglas as a highly aggressive testosterone-taking conspiracy theorist. “They are just going to take it all away," he would claim. "They will destroy this place." He told followers the world was ending and believed in bizarre predictions about the future from the Simpsons show.

“He watched a lot of TikTok," Audrey told me. "That’s where a lot of his conspiracy views came from." Kyle also said Chris would wake up and scroll through TikTok and rehash all the conspiracies he saw.

"He'd say, 'I heard this today and we have to prepare for it,'" Audrey told me. “He was very apocalyptic and said to not trust anyone. The world is soon gonna be ending. It had to do with the government. They’d look at meteor showers or anything like power outages as signs."

Chris was also obsessed with Bitcoin. "Sometimes he'd end ayahuasca ceremonies by pushing Bitcoin," a former student said. Co-founder Tom Taber was even quoted in a recent articled in Forbes called "The Converging Interest Between Psychedelic Therapy And Bitcoin."

Nick joined the group in August of 2020 during the height of the pandemic. His father had died three weeks prior from Covid. "I was sitting at the table and Chris and the guys are all talking about covid being fake. He said only weak and old people die from Covid. He also said the moon landing is fake."

“He was very apocalyptic and said to not trust anyone. The world is soon gonna be ending."

Former students told me Chris identifies a bear. "One time he got on all fours and started to make bear noises," Audrey said. "He says he turns into a giant bear and eats and kills demons."

“I’m a strange one," Chris would say. "I’m Native American at heart. Inside I’m Native American.”

The Darkness

"I felt the darkest energy I have ever felt in my entire life," Nick told me. He felt this dark being come in the room with Chris a few days after a retreat. He said Chris had a demon that he calls "this thing." "I've got it on a leash," Chris told him. "I have control over it."

Audrey says Chris had sex with her in the astral realm. "I felt this strange feeling in my womb area, then started convulsing, then huge purge and I’m in this dark space," she said. "Then the astral plane started and in this space Chris is having sex with me. I can’t get out of it. It’s having extreme effects on my body. I then had a huge rush of sexual energy and then massive orgasm. And then I just start sobbing."

She claims he walked over to her right after this in ceremony. "He stood in front of me and said, 'I need you to be quiet.'" The next day he made strange comments to her. "He said to me, 'Did you enjoy last night? Wasn’t that fun? You don’t even understand the medicine.'”

"Chris said dark shamans can sleep with women in their dream states if they want," Max told me. "So he knew."

After this incident everything changed Audrey said. "I felt my body was now wanting him. That’s when I felt like my initiation had been over. These weird things have been placed in me. 'You now like this man.' That’s when the sexual tension increased." 

“His comments began to get very sexual with me," she said. "I wish my wife wasn’t white," he told her. "I don’t know why I feel this way around you. I love you."

Audrey said Chris' wife Angela made strange comments right after this sexual astral experience. "His wife said to me 'I like it when you are here because our sex is better. He really likes you. You make it spicy.'" She said she believes the wife "was in on the energetic feeding process."

"He definitely knew why I was coming there," Audrey told me. "Purging childhood trauma related to childhood sexual abuse. He still made these comments. Him and his wife have this weird 'kink' type of lifestyle they live. I was very scared of him. I didn’t want to be around him anymore.”

"His wife said to me 'I like it when you are here because our sex is better. He really likes you. You make it spicy.'"

“He’s dangerous from the spiritual sense," Nick told me. "He does have power there. I’ve seen it. He can talk inside your head. Multiple people have had this happen. He knows how to move energy very well but he manipulates people with it."

Nick also said Chris is unpredictable. "I've looked people who have killed other human beings in the eye," he told me. "He has it in him. There is no limit to what he'd do."

"Samantha" helped organize an ayahuasca ceremony in Maine that Chris hosted. She told me Chris was "very arrogant" from the start. "He looked at us like we were competition," she said due to them having experience with plant medicine. "I had a really bad feeling in my heart and gut."

She said Chris was accusing two of the women of doing witchcraft or black magic on him which Samantha said wasn't happening. "He said there's always gonna be some sort of attack and he talked about demons," she told me.

Erica attended the retreat in Maine. She said Chris would rant and ramble on during ceremonies. "He said, 'Empathy is bullshit, compassion is bullshit, you don’t need friends. You should distrust everyone but me and I will liberate you.'" She said he "primes and programs" people. "People come out brainwashed. My partner said he didn’t recognize me and he kicked me out."

“He told us in ceremony he beat up his wife’s 8 year old kid because he pushed her," Erica told me. "He said, ‘I had to punch him and show him how it feels. I had to punch him to the ground.’ We were all just like 'what the fuck is happening?'"

"The men were eating it up," Erica said. "His thing was as a man you have to show that you are a man and be devoid of emotion. It's beyond stoicism. You have to have discipline and get rid of attachments. It was a very physical, domineering style."

"I had just had a miscarriage and my partner was talking to Chris. He was trying to drive a wedge between people’s relationships." After the retreat her boyfriend was acting strange and broke up with her. "He tampered with this one couple's relationship. He left his wife of 17 years and I lost my partner."

During the ceremony Chris berated Erica in front of the group. “He said there was a black entity in the house because I had released a witch into the house that was manipulating people. Then he went into a speech about how I wanted to get rich off of Kambo, who do I think I am, that I was trying to take over his role as a leader, that I’m trying to stop him, that I’m a brujo (witch) layer. He said there have been witches and sorcerers who have tried to throw darts at him."

Samantha watched all of this unfold. She said Erica was having an intense ayahuasca trip but instead of helping Chris abused her. "He began screaming at her," she said. "I've had enough of this fucking shit! You need to have fucking respect. You want to serve this medicine? You need to get your shit together."

"He kept mocking me," Erica said. “You think you know how to sit with medicine, you don’t! He was attacking my character." 

Chris then walked over to Erica and started speaking in tongues. "He said, 'leave me alone witch!'" Erica told me. "He started smacking me in the forehead hard. He was hurting me. He was trying to beat the demon out of me. Open palm to the forehead as he’s expelling the demon and speaking in gibberish. He hit me so hard that I bounced back and I reached forward to find something to hold on to."

"It was probably one of the most traumatic things I’ve ever experienced in my whole life," Erica said. "The way he abuses his power is disgusting."

"Chris started smacking me in the forehead hard. He was hurting me. He was trying to beat the demon out of me."

Erica went into the bathroom and Chris then yelled at Samantha and two other women. "If any of you women say you want to do medicine work you better get in the bathroom and help Erica," he shouted. "I was in pain," Samantha said. "My brain was in pain because he was screaming and swearing. I couldn't really move well. It felt like I had no control over my faculties. He was mocking us the whole time we were in the bathroom."

The few days after the retreat where chaotic. "We were all having dreams of a dark sorcerer with a hood and we'd have them on the same night," Samantha said. "We then got super sick. I was puking up black."

"I would never want to work with somebody who abuses women and the medicine and doesn't understand their own energy," she said.

“Tyler” was so upset with what he was witnessing during an ayahuasca ceremony in Florissant that he stood up and chewed out Chris and his team. "Who is this ceremony for?" he asked. "Is it for Chris and his team? This has consequences. None of this for the people in the room." He said it was "scary" to speak out like he did. "Chris walked over to me and demeaned me and suggested that I had negative energy in me."

He said Chris was endlessly talking and monologuing. It seemed that they didn't want people to experience the depth of the ayahuasca and instead remain focused on Chris. “His goal was to get us into an impressionable state and keep our attention on him from start to finish,” he told me. He said the entire experience felt like Chris harvesting people's attention. Ayahuasca can lead to vocal expressions and emotional releases. Chris shut this down, however. "It was like 'I need to make sure people are not expressing themselves at all. Harvest their intention and focus by monologuing and playing sounds.' You’re impressionable and confused."

Tyler says ayahuasca helped save him from suicide. He also brought a vulnerable friend to the ceremony who was struggling. "It's important to not distract people from their intentions because there is a good chance that people will be able to address their issues during ceremony," he said. "You could save someone’s life if you don’t get in the way. It has saved people."

Caleb was at the Maine retreat. "I had a crushing blow in Maine," Caleb told me. "I felt like I was attacked in the ceremony. It hit me so hard and it scared me so bad I didn't know if I was going to cover from it. It did a lot of damage to me emotionally, and physically." He struggled afterwards. "It was the darkest six months after this," Caleb said. "If I wasn't strong enough I would have taken my own life."

"For the next couple months I thought Chris had planted thoughts in my mind," Tyler said. "I had some of his personal philosophies become part of my default mode. I had to extract them. You get brainwashed and it stays."

After Max's last ceremony in 2022 he said something was never the same. "I feel like I've had a demon attached to me for three years. Someone said to me 'From that moment on you were different, your eyes were different, you spoke differently." He said it was like he was possessed. "I lost everything. My home, my business, my partner. Whatever latched onto me was dark."

He also tried to leave at various times. "I've left in the middle of the night feeling like demons were around me, trying to prevent me from leaving."

Only recently, in the last month, was he able to remove the darkness. He went to an energy healer. "Yahweh entered me and what we pulled out of you was Satan," the healer told him. "There was black sludge on the ground after the healing," Max said.

One student told Max he too has been experiencing the darkness lately. "He reached out to me recently and said he saw a lot of dark things up there and he's been being tortured by demons in his sleep," he told me.

A Dangerous Game

One of the reasons Max originally left the community is because young kids were doing heavy psychedelics and plant medicine, including Chris' step son. "These two kids in Texas were heavily addicted to Hapé, both were doing mushrooms, ayahuasca, San Pedro and more. One was 11 or 12 the other was 14."

During a ceremony in Black Hawk, Colorado Chris told the group there would be kids also participating. "One guy freaked out and said he didn't want to see kids on drugs," Max told me. "He went to Child Protective Services. He was on a head full of mushrooms and called CPS."

After this incident Chris pulled the kids outside and said, "no one is gonna be doing any of this anymore." It didn't change anything. "That same weekend the kids were on San Pedro," Max said. "I stepped away." When the CPS showed up Chris smooth talked them. "He bragged about how good of a job he did," Nick said.

Like many people involved in the community, Max got sucked back in. Many felt trapped for financial reasons or were pulled by Chris' charisma and love bombing. Many were broken, lost, or healing from addictions and abuse.

When Max finally left for good in 2022 he went to the authorities. Chris is selling on average ten pounds of psychedelic mushrooms every six weeks. It's worth $10,000.

"I told them everything," he said. "I went to the FBI office in Colorado Springs, the post office, the police," he said. "I told them Chris was selling mushrooms nationally, that he was carrying pounds of mushrooms across state lines, large amounts of cash, mailing mushrooms across the country. I told them about the kids, the ayahuasca, San Pedro, the drugs."

To his surprise the FBI told him they didn't care. "They said unless they see $100,000 transfers it's not worth their time."

Max also contacted Child Protective Services on Chris. But they called en route and said they couldn't find the property and gave up.

"Chris was paranoid that Google maps would reveal his illegal buildings," Kyle told me. The two yurts, a new house and another building were not built with permits nor did they follow codes he said.

Ayahuasca can be dangerous. People have died. There can be psychotic breaks. Sexual abuse both in the Amazon and abroad is rampant.

Several former students said Chris and the Montaña Sagrada community were negligent in their ayahuasca ceremonies. They didn't screen people for medications that could have deadly contraindications or other issues. Chris allowed Tom to be predatorial with young women. People did not receive the support they needed.

"There was no medical kit or supplies up there," Kyle told me. He described how one guy was in rough shape during ceremony. "I suspected his kidney's were shutting down from being on some type of psych drugs." He finally convinced Chris that the guy needed to go to the hospital. Once there it was confirmed his kidney's were shutting down. And he had been taking anti-depressants and hadn't been screened by Chris or the group.

On another occasion Kyle assisted a woman who's blood pressure was dropping rapidly. He was able to restore her by giving her electrolytes and slowly nursing her back to health. The property is in a remote location in the mountains and over an hour from a hospital.

"It was until the fire chief came up for fire assessment that they got a medical kit," Kyle told me. "And then they wanted to give it to me when I left the community."

"How many people are coming out for ceremony?" people would ask Chris. "Don't know," he'd reply. "Whoever shows up shows up." Kyle said they'd have no idea who was coming, nor would they be screened for medications or mental health issues.

Despite Chris having never done a dieta Kyle has heard they are starting to offer them on the Florissant property. "Chris was eating the plant Chiric Sanango in Florissant and got really sick," Kyle said. "Others will get sick."

"I'm going to other ayahuasca ceremonies now and I'm seeing the difference," Alex told me. I asked him what the differences were. "Safety, comfort, genuineness, kindness, fulfillment, non-judgment," he told me. People giving each other hugs, being friendly. It's a well held container. There's zero gossip. Just people being people."

During a drive one time Nick challenged Chris about not becoming a cult. "We're a community not a cult," Chris told him. "Have you heard of this cult here in Colorado?" Chris asked him. He then played 20-minutes of a podcast about the Love Has Won cult which I was the first to expose in 2020. "Wild stuff, eh?"

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