Complaint Review: Kambo Healing Me - Los Angeles

My experience with Kambo Healing Me turned into Kambo Killing Me, figuratively for myself and quite literally for one.

I signed up with eleven other people for Kambo Healing Me’s level 1 November 2018 Kambo Practitioner training program.

It was supposed to be a 2-week training in Peru which would cost between $2,400-2,600 (depending on when you signed up) and another $900 for a recommended dieta at a retreat center the owner was building with a shaman named Maestro Don Guido Nolberto Rimachi Vilchez.

I initially paid a $600 deposit through PayPal. The owner requested in writing to send it “Family and Friends” so he didn’t have to pay taxes to PayPal.

Then he sent out an e-mail that we had to pay $900 through Western Union to the shaman, which I did.

Finally, he wanted us to bring the rest in cash. I did so and paid an additional $1,800 that way.

The first night in the city of Iquitos went all right but then things took a sharp turn for the worse.

The next morning – Bryce Draper (the owner of the company and head trainer) – made a comment during the morning meeting that he wanted to kill himself. A lady in our group questioned him about this; he responded that he was taking on too much lately and admitted he shouldn’t have said it.

Then when it came time to go to the Matses village, we took motorcars to our guide’s old apartment. While waiting there someone suggested they get something to eat. Bryce agreed but said they had to make it back quickly and told them the place to go to. I was the only one who stayed behind.

A short while later, Bryce and his wife came back and said no one showed up to the restaurant. We waited and waited and waited. About a couple hours later, people started to trickle back. Then a random person showed up and introduced himself to everyone. No one knew him, but he joined our group anyway.

When the last person came back, we made our way through a muddy road to a boat with a tiny motor that seemed to be in disrepair. What we were told was going to be a 6-hour boat ride turned into a 14-hour one (we left around 5pm and got there around 7am). The boat driver was awful and kept hitting the river banks. A tree was downed across the river at one point and due to the height of the boat we were stuck. So we stayed in someone’s open hut who wasn’t home at the time -- without permission -- while a few group members walked to the village then came back with a smaller boat hours later.

On this trip Bryce had revealed he did Iboga (the world’s strongest psychedelic) twice recently and was currently microdosing it, which would explain why he seemed so out of it.

Once at the village we did Kambo with little-to-no sleep and it was rough. Then we did Kambo four more mornings in a row.

The only trainings we had were unorganized classes where we’d learn half-a-notebook’s page worth of Matses and Spanish (some of which I couldn’t hear or went too quickly).

On the website we were promised 14 sessions of Kambo (8 receiving and 6 applying), Huito body painting, jungle walks, nunu preparation, cassava preparation, clay pot making, weaving, discussions, Kambo medicine extraction, hunting, closing ceremony, a completion kit, a starter kit, website promotion on kambohealingme.com, access to a private forum on the KamboHealingMe website and ceremony assistance.

Out of all of those, we received 5 Kambo sessions, were able to participate in the Huito body painting and the men were allowed to extract the Kambo medicine one night after the excursion was cancelled the previous one where we ended up doing nothing instead. This was after around 6 days. We didn’t get anything else.

Even the Matses tribe were complaining to Bryce about how unorganized everything was and said they needed a schedule.

The website listing turned out to be a scam as Bryce revealed we would have to pay $100 a month for it, which still isn’t listed under its description and we could buy Kambo and rapé medicine from him for basically full price at his online store but if we referred people we’d get a $10-15 credit. So those were essentially pyramid schemes.

We never received any training on how to apply Kambo and the second day we had to take 3-4 hits of rapé (a tobacco snuff) up each nostril without notice. We were also informed we’d have to get repeatedly whacked with a spikey branch which would give us a fever along with flu-like symptoms and pain on the spots of contact for at least two days but we’d feel great afterwards. A woman in our group pointed out that this was not listed as part of the program and asked what were we supposed to do for that time we were laid up as we were supposed to be on a tight schedule. No real answer was ever provided to this.

Bryce also stated that we wouldn’t complete the program if we didn’t do 9 dots of Kambo in one session (which also was never listed on the site).

Everyone looked very ill because we weren’t getting any nutrition and the food was prepared using South American river water. If that wasn’t bad enough, during dinner one night, we were served uncooked river water to drink without being told what it was.

Because of this, most -- if not all -- of the group got sick. Since we ran out of bottled water, Bryce went back to town to get more. But he had diarrhea for over half a day and was held up. Instead of bringing back more jugs, he brought back more Iboga for himself, plastic toys for the kids and firecrackers.

The following day most of the trainees in my group wanted to leave. They got everyone together and had a meeting. Then we had a meeting with Bryce. Instead of listening, he proceeded to blame most people who spoke up for their personal problems instead of addressing the issues.

Bryce had agreed to step down from leading the group but by then it was too late as it was clear he lost control and everything had gotten out of hand. All the instructors had decided to leave so the whole group besides his wife who would stay for one more night decided to leave as well. Before we did so, Bryce agreed to refund half our training money and a full refund of the dieta money if we would sign an NDA.

We left and for the next approximately half week I attended a makeshift training that was quickly thrown together by his former instructors. While attending this, everyone’s emotions were flaring up because of what happened. After finishing, I went back and told Bryce this, in hopes of him realizing how cheated everyone felt and that he would do the right thing by calming everyone down by making things right, which would ultimately salvage his business.

It looked promising, because he called a meeting. But once at the meeting, he didn’t even attempt a conciliatory tone. He talked down to the attendees, put blame on everyone else but him, lambasted his former associate for what should have been a private conversation and topped it off with telling a sexual assault victim that she was to blame for what happened to her and if she listened to him it wouldn’t have happened.

A day later, I went to the retreat center, but it was still under construction (Bryce told me not to tell anyone that it wouldn’t have been ready for everyone anyway since only two huts were built and one had a toilet whose plumbing went right into the ground behind it which stunk up the place), another person handed the shaman Maestro Don Guido Nolberto Rimachi Vilchez there a sack full of money that he said was from Bryce, there wasn’t an English translator there as promised and they were doing construction while I was supposed to have a quiet area. So I left after a couple of days. Bryce confirmed I’d still get my refund.

Well, he dragged his feet and in January 2019 I reached out to him and he had changed. By this point he had reduced the amount of the refunds and kept pushing them back until he told me I wouldn’t get any money back at all because he didn’t like my attitude.

He then forwarded me by e-mail a cease & desist letter from his criminal defense attorney father in Utah which was dated 8-9 months earlier (April 2018) and told me I couldn’t talk about what happened at all. By the date, it would appear that this is a recurring problem with him and he’s also trying to illegally trample my 1st Amendment rights.

Oh, and a young mother of 3 who was in my group wrote a letter to Bryce's former associate attributing her parasite infection which turned into sepsis and then pneumonia solely to the uncooked river water she drank (which sent 5 people to the hospital). When she reached out to him, she stated that instead of taking the high road and helping an AIDS patient, he taunted her. I was told she died the day after writing that letter.