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.
A bitter legal fight is now underway for the $15 million that the court ordered Soul Quest and its owner to pay Begley’s family, who say they will use it for charitable good. It’s all a far cry from what you’d think psychedelic medicine is supposed to be about.
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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.
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.”
Irwin declined to be interviewed by VICE in July of this year, stating he “didn’t want to get into a big legal battle with Chris” over his comments. He died that same month in Ecuador following a longstanding illness.
Nonetheless, Irwin had earlier claimed that attorneys representing Soul Quest had threatened him with litigation after he posted a video on YouTube explaining his reasons for suddenly leaving the church. Irwin recalled how he was once allegedly punched in the face by Young while Young’s daughter was on Irwin’s shoulders at her third birthday party. According to a police statement, given by Irwin to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office on May 20, 2017, and reviewed by VICE: “Chris Young attacked me. Hitting me on the left side of the head with his fist while I had a three-year-old girl on my shoulders at a birthday party. He threatened to kill me. Tried to attack me again and [the] crowd held him back.”
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.
“Everyone here knew that there was nothing we did wrong,” Young claimed in the documentary, which aired in August 2020 and is still online despite the court ruling. “We found out, shortly thereafter, he had a history of seizures […] We understand you want healing, but you can’t lie to us. If you lie, you die.”
During the civil case, circuit judge Eric Netcher rejected any suggestion that Begley had epilepsy. “There’s no competent evidence of a prior medical condition or prior medication that [Begley] failed to disclose,” he wrote. Soul Quest and Young’s defense failed “to create a genuine dispute of material fact.”
The details of Begley’s death are grim. The retreat’s shaman and musician, both of whom refused to give evidence in court, used spiritual tools such as reiki, prayed, and sang to try to “ground” Begley on the grass but their efforts to save him were unsuccessful. Begley suffered convulsions that were so intense they caused skin to tear from his arm and face as his body writhed against the ground. Eventually, a blanket was brought outside so he wasn’t in direct contact with the earth.
After initially flitting between lethargy, screaming, and unresponsiveness, Chapman says Begley was given sugar water tea, but this did nothing to hold off the lengthy seizure that followed. “We want to take him to the hospital, but currently right now it might just be best for you guys to come here instead of us taking him,” Young then told 911 responders. “He’s unresponsive.” Begley was admitted to hospital comatose more than three hours after he was first found ill and died on April 4 from complications of acute hyponatremia.
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 water instead. “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.
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