Phuket Shuts Down Rawai ‘Magic Mushroom Temple’ Ahead of Festivals

An unassuming rental home in Rawai, long popular with digital nomads and wintering Europeans, has reminded Thailand this week that the country’s psychedelic prohibitions remain firmly in place. Police say the property doubled as a wellness retreat for high-paying tourists looking for a "spiritual reset" — until a dawn raid revealed 10 kg of psilocybin-laden mushrooms packed for sale.

Quick takeaways

• Two Russian nationals arrested; a third suspect on the run

• Officers seized 140 vacuum-sealed bags of so-called "magic mushrooms"

• The group branded the venue the "Mushroom Temple" and offered stress-relief sessions to foreigners

• Psilocybin is a Category 5 narcotic in Thailand; penalties run up to 15 years in jail for commercial dealing

• Provincial police fear copy-cat operations during Phuket’s upcoming international music festivals

A beachside "temple" with hallucinogenic offerings

Neighbours told investigators they had noticed a steady stream of rental cars and motorbikes stopping at the single-storey house a few lanes off Soi Sai-yuan. Inside, officers say they found low-lighting, ambient music, incense burners and laminated price lists promising "deep healing" for everything from burn-out to post-break-up anxiety. Clients were allegedly charged a base fee of THB 7,500 for a guided trip, with "premium mind-expansion" upgrades costing double.

Pol Col Jongserm Pricha, the regional chief investigator, said two men — Rinat, 32, and Aleksandr, 34 — were arrested while preparing micro-dose capsules. A woman identified as Landysh fled moments before the raid, leaving her passport behind. The officers also collected a tablet computer containing booking records that list more than 60 foreign customers over the past two months.

Why Phuket authorities are nervous

The island’s economic rebound depends heavily on high-spending tourists from Russia, China and Europe. While most come for beaches and golf, police note an uptick in Telegram and WeChat ads offering "plant medicines" and "legal highs". Officials worry the image of Phuket as a safe family destination could be dented if viral social media videos show backpackers tripping on mushrooms at the forthcoming Sunset Soundwave and Bay Beats festivals. Local hoteliers have quietly pressed police to act quickly, arguing that memories of the 2020 drug-related death of a British tourist in Chiang Mai still linger among travel agents.

Mushroom myths meet Thai law

Thailand’s Narcotics Code groups psilocybin and psilocin with kratom and cannabis extracts that exceed permitted THC limits. Anyone caught with more than 100 g faces presumptions of intent to sell; crossing the 5 kg threshold pushes sentencing guidelines toward the maximum. Since 2020, courts have issued at least a dozen convictions involving online mushroom vendors, including a 24-year-old architect in Nonthaburi who was jailed for 4 years despite cooperating with prosecutors.

What the science actually says

Internationally, interest in psychedelics has exploded. Peer-reviewed trials from Johns Hopkins, Imperial College and CIMH Mannheim suggest a few carefully dosed sessions can yield long-lasting drops in treatment-resistant depression, end-of-life anxiety and even healthcare-worker burn-out. Yet the same studies flag short-lived hypertension, challenges in maintaining double-blind protocols, and concerns over unsupervised use. Regulators in Oregon and Colorado now allow clinic-based psilocybin therapy; Germany and Switzerland are running compassionate-use programmes. The U.S. FDA, however, recently rejected MDMA therapy for PTSD, signalling that psilocybin’s medical pathway will face intense scrutiny.

The road ahead for Thailand

Public-health officials concede there is genuine therapeutic promise, but they insist any policy change must wait for large-scale trials and a framework as rigorous as that used for medical cannabis. Until then, psilocybin remains off-limits, and police say more undercover stings are imminent, particularly in tourist hubs such as Koh Phangan and Pai where social media chatter hints at similar "eco-healing" retreats.

Phuket’s governor has ordered district chiefs to visit guesthouses, yoga studios and detox spas to remind operators — in Russian, Chinese and English — that "wellness" is welcome, but psychedelic tourism is not. "We recovered swiftly once; we can’t risk another dent to confidence," one tourism-official said, echoing the sentiment of many island businesses.