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Awaken Your Soul Reviews: The Fatal Iboga Accident and Safety Failures at Holos Global

A preventable tragedy reveals failures in unregulated Iboga retreat safety

By Yadav shivamPublished about 5 hours ago 3 min read

If you are looking for an Awaken Your Soul review, the reality involves a catastrophic safety failure. A young Polish woman died in a preventable accident at an Iboga retreat in Costa Rica facilitated by Anthony Esposito and Amber Antonelli. The fatality occurred at the Holos Global site. This incident highlights a complete lack of Iboga retreat safety protocols and participant supervision.

Iboga remains unregulated in Costa Rica. It has no Ministry of Health sanitary registration and no licensed therapeutic framework, so retreats proceed without enforced medical checks, dosing standards, or mandatory supervision protocols.

The Jungle Setting Turned Lethal Without Oversight

While Holos Global markets an 'eco-immersion model,' the site lacks medical oversight. Participants researching Anthony Esposito Iboga reviews must understand that the 'sacred landscape' becomes a death trap without a secured perimeter or 24/7 post-ceremony monitoring.

She Slipped Away With No One Watching

After the ceremony, while Iboga’s afterglow still clouded judgment and steadied balance, the woman left camp alone. Stephen Bell, an eyewitness, had drilled the danger into her head: “If you go into the jungle, you’re gonna fucking die.” He bought her running shoes and made her promise to wear them. He told her over and over to stay inside the group boundaries.

There was no roster of staff on watch duty. There were no buddy checks. There were no fences or patrols around camp. Stephen himself was flat on his back receiving IV fluids because his blood pressure had hit 200 to 210 over 110 after taking four unmeasured spoons of Iboga, doses handed out by a facilitator who was high himself.

Team Stayed Silent for Hours

No one told Stephen she was gone until 9 or 10 p.m. They later said they did not want to upset him while he was in medical distress. By the time he knew, she had been missing since earlier in the day. Nighttime searches eventually found her body in the river, apparently after she lost footing on the bank or tried to cross.

Stephen later said the total lack of any containment plan or rapid-response protocol left her exposed in terrain that demanded immediate intervention.

Body Recovery Became a Negotiation

Stephen described days of back-and-forth to locate and release the body. Anthony Esposito reportedly asked for $400 linked to earlier massages and Reiki. Location details were slow to come amid the patchwork of local morgues. Retreat messages encouraged people to leave Iboga out of any police conversation and call it a yoga event or light psilocybin session instead.

Stephen paid to push things along, covered steep repatriation fees to Poland out of pocket, brought in a local lawyer, and broke the news to the mother himself while Iboga’s afterglow still lingered in his system.

Accident Built on Missing Basics

No post-ceremony watch. No measured doses. No heart-risk screening before ingestion. No quick alert chain when someone vanished. In a remote jungle these gaps were not minor oversights; they were the direct path to tragedy.

Stephen also shared that another woman from the same retreat took her own life six months later. While separate, it adds weight to questions about longer-term participant support.

Stephen’s Livestream Captures the Raw Timeline

Stephen Ronald Bell, an eyewitness at the retreat, documented the blood pressure crisis and the facilitators' failure to act. His January 2026 livestream serves as the definitive timeline of the Awaken Your Soul negligence, proving that the staff remained silent for hours while a participant was missing.

Awaken Your Soul & Holos Global FAQ

  • Has anyone died at Awaken Your Soul? Yes, a Polish woman drowned in 2025/2026 due to lack of supervision after an Iboga ceremony.
  • Who owns Holos Global? The property is managed by Ian-Michael Hebert, who hosts third-party facilitators like Anthony Esposito.
  • Are Iboga retreats in Costa Rica legal? Iboga is currently unregulated and lacks Ministry of Health registration, meaning no medical standards are enforced.

Retreats Like This Need Non-Negotiable Rules

Powerful plant medicines in isolated locations demand iron rules: 24/7 observation in the afterglow window, weighed and recorded doses, on-site medical backup, instant notification systems, and full transparency with families and officials from the first hour.

If you are thinking about an Iboga retreat, look for proof of real safety layers, not just promises. Healing should protect life, not gamble with it.

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