However, I hope to raise awareness about this place, along with other so-called spiritual centres that both mentally stable and unstable people can fall victim to. Unfortunately, there were extremely mentally unwell people there who didn’t escape, people who are still there now. Yes, it was me they prevented from going to the hospital with severe gastroenteritis, while I was pregnant! We weren’t allowed to leave, not even to go to the hospital.
He was insane, and we weren’t free at all. “We are free here,” our leader said, “free from society, and you are all so lucky to be here.” You’re blinded by the brainwashing, the control and the orders. Living as part of a cult, you don’t actually know it’s a cult until after you escape. You don’t know it’s a cult until you escape We’d come to find peace in nature and meditation, but this was an insanely unhealthy and dangerous place to be, and it was all in the name of Osho, the Indian guru and spiritual teacher.
We were all covered in self-inflicted scars, all immensely fragile and some of us, myself included, seriously needed to be in a psychiatric ward. For example, one night, he told us we were all brothers and sisters, and the next night, he told us all to make love to each other. One night, he told us we were all brothers and sisters, and the next night, he told us all to make love to each other. He told us all (individually) that we were impure, that we were self-hating zombies of society and that we had to devote ourselves to the ashram. The leader controlled everyone’s actions, thoughts and emotions. This wasn’t the spiritual Kumbaya retreat that was discreetly advertised. Detoxing from sex, drugs and alcohol meditating for 12 hours daily using compost toilets going vegan craving chocolate and tuna and figuring out what to do with this growing thing inside me was pretty hectic, but I was in the right place to find all the answers, right? Not quite.
I ended up getting heavily involved with cocaine, alcohol and a man who got me pregnant.Ĭatching myself crumbling to pieces after a few months, I said ‘see ya’ to this man and to Brisbane, and went to live at a self-sustainable, community living ashram in the Byron Bay Hinterland that I’d found on. Earlier this year, I found myself losing the plot with my mental health in Brisbane, Australia.