Is this considered experimental treatment?

The individual therapies described here — regenerative IV protocols, and where clinically appropriate, natural plant medicines — are administered under full physician oversight and sit within a growing body of peer-reviewed clinical research, some of it now backed by major pharmaceutical investment. That is different from being FDA-approved for general use in the United States. Sanctuary Tulum operates legally in Mexico under its own licensing, and does not represent any protocol as a substitute for FDA-approved treatment where that treatment is already working for you.

Do I need a referral from my current psychiatrist?

No referral is required, but continuity of care matters. Our clinical team will ask about your current prescribing psychiatrist or therapist during intake, and we encourage maintaining that relationship rather than replacing it. Any medication changes are coordinated, not made unilaterally.

How is this different from simply being prescribed a new antidepressant?

A prescription changes your biochemistry from the outside on an ongoing basis. The protocol described here is a supervised, in-person clinical intervention with a physician present, delivered over a defined program rather than an indefinite daily medication. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive, and for some clients one is more appropriate than the other.

Why is the research described here not about Sanctuary Tulum's own results?

Because that would be a claim we can't substantiate. The Eli Lilly, Johns Hopkins, and MDMA-assisted therapy research cited in this article comes from independent, peer-reviewed trials conducted by outside institutions on related compounds and modalities — it establishes that the category of medicine is being taken seriously at a high level, not that our specific program has produced these specific results.

Is Sanctuary Tulum licensed?

Yes. Sanctuary Tulum has operated as a licensed healing center in Tulum, Mexico since 2011, under a Federal License of Operation for Hospital & Clinic issued by Mexico's federal health authority.

Executive Rehab: A Different Approach

Most executive rehab programs sell the same thing with better sheets. Private rooms, a chef, a golf simulator, a name-brand certificate on the wall — and underneath it, the same structure every general rehab uses: group meetings built on the 12-step model, individual talk therapy, and a prescription pad. For a lot of people, that combination works. For a specific kind of client — someone who has already tried it, someone whose depression didn't move despite years of medication and therapy, someone who cannot risk being recognized in a group circle — it doesn't.

That's the population this piece is actually about: high-profile, high-responsibility individuals for whom conventional treatment has been tried and has not been enough, and who are looking for something built differently — not louder amenities, a different clinical model entirely.

Conventional Executive Rehab vs. This Model

Element	Conventional executive rehab	Sanctuary Tulum
Care model	Group therapy, 12-step programming	One-on-one, every session
Medication approach	Standard psychiatric protocol	Regenerative therapies, plant medicine where clinically appropriate
Client capacity	Institutional cohort	Maximum five clients at a time
Setting	Varies, often clinical	Private, oceanfront, Tulum Beach, Mexico

What "Different" Actually Means Here

Clinical standards and physician-supervised care environment at Sanctuary Tulum's executive rehab program

Sanctuary Tulum's program does not run on Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings, group talk therapy, or a standard psychiatric medication protocol. Care is one-on-one — every session, every day of the program — built around a medically supervised protocol refined over more than fifteen years, combining regenerative medical therapies with, where clinically appropriate, natural plant medicines administered under full physician oversight.

That one-on-one structure is a deliberate design choice, not an improvised one — it's the clinical model behind our executive rehab program, and the reason it looks different from a conventional program is explained in full on our Pouyan Method page.

This isn't a rejection of medicine. It's a different branch of it — one that a growing body of published, peer-reviewed research is now taking seriously at the highest levels of pharmaceutical investment and academic study.

The Research Behind This Class of Medicine

None of what follows is a claim about Sanctuary Tulum's own outcomes. It's a summary of what independent researchers and, increasingly, major pharmaceutical companies have already published about this category of treatment.

In July 2026, Eli Lilly — the world's largest pharmaceutical company — agreed to acquire AtaiBeckley for up to $3.8 billion (approximately $2.8 billion upfront, plus a contingent value right worth up to roughly $1 billion tied to development and regulatory milestones), the largest deal in the history of psychedelic medicine. AtaiBeckley's lead compound, BPL-003, is a synthetic, intranasal form of 5-MeO-DMT being developed for treatment-resistant depression, now in Phase 3 trials. Sanctuary Tulum has worked with the natural form of this same compound, under medical supervision, for more than fifteen years.

At Johns Hopkins, home to the country's leading Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, a randomized clinical trial of psilocybin-assisted therapy for major depressive disorder found a clinically significant response in 71% of participants at four weeks, with 54% in remission. A five-year follow-up study published in 2025 found 67% of participants who completed follow-up were still in remission.

Regenerative IV therapy protocol administered as part of Sanctuary Tulum's executive rehab program

On trauma specifically, a multi-site Phase 3 trial of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD found that 67% of participants no longer met clinical criteria for PTSD after treatment, compared with 32% of those who received therapy alone.

This is the research context Sanctuary Tulum's protocol sits inside — not proof of its own results, but evidence that the broader category of medicine it works within is being taken seriously by researchers at Johns Hopkins and by a company the size of Eli Lilly, not dismissed as fringe.

Why This Matters for a High-Profile Client Specifically

Two things conventional executive rehab structurally cannot offer: complete privacy during treatment itself, and a clinical model built around people for whom standard depression and addiction treatment already failed. Group therapy requires disclosing your presence to a room of strangers. Standard psychiatric medication protocols are, for some people, exactly what they've already tried without success. A one-on-one, medically supervised model addresses both — privacy by design, and a genuinely different clinical approach for the subset of people conventional treatment hasn't reached.

How This Fits Into a Full Program

The regenerative therapies referenced above don't run in isolation. Guests in the executive rehab program often combine this protocol with Brain Repair IV for nervous-system support during acute stabilization, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy to support tissue oxygenation and recovery — sequenced individually by the clinical team rather than issued as a fixed package.

What This Program Is Not

It is not a replacement for psychiatric care for everyone, and it is not positioned as a substitute for FDA-approved treatment where that treatment is working. It is a medically supervised, physician-overseen alternative for people who have already been through the conventional path and need something built differently — delivered in a private, oceanfront setting in Tulum Beach, Mexico. Learn more about the full executive rehab program.