How a Rasta Village Reclaimed Psychedelics on Its Own Terms

If you’ve ever done a team-building activity at work, you might’ve gone to a theme park, listened to a motivational speaker, or snacked on a catered lunch while daydreaming during a brainstorm. April Arrasate, the founder and CEO of Seed, a Boston-based cannabis business, had something different in mind when she decided to organize a company offsite for some of her employees last year. 

In April, right around the 4/20 cannabis holiday, Arrasate flew with her nine-year-old son, four managers, and an investor to Montego Bay, Jamaica, where they attended a retreat hosted at a rural community called the Rastafari Indigenous Village. Surrounded by fruit and bamboo trees and a rushing river, they spent a week connecting to nature and learning the ways of Rastafari livity. All of their meals were Ital vegan, made with produce grown on the property and other locally sourced ingredients. Their hosts offered lessons on Indigenous herbs, handmade soaps, and traditional healing practices. A drum-maker named King Toto showed the visitors how to build drums from hollowed-out tree trunks and goat skins. 

Smoking ganja is a sacramental practice in Rastafari culture, and of course a giant bag of buds was available for the adults to enjoy. The Rastafari Indigenous Village is also known for organizing ceremonies that center around the use of psilocybin, ayahuasca, and other plant medicines. And so, on one night of the retreat, Arrasate pulled on an eye mask, laid down on a yoga mat decorated in a colorful African print, and took off on a mental journey in which “luminescent rainbow cogs of the universe” flickered before her closed eyes. 

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