The global wellness industry is doing superbly, thank you very much. In recent years, it grew a healthy 12.8 percent, becoming a $4.2 trillion market. Whether the lives of wellness consumers are improving at a comparable rate is another matter altogether.

Wellness products and services run the gamut, from vitamins and juice cleanses to upscale wellness studios and spas. At the very end of the spectrum, there are tours positioned as healing and spiritual journeys to the Amazon, where people go in search of psychedelic, hallucinatory insights through sampling ayahuasca, a traditional plant medicine, under the guidance of indigenous or self-styled shamans.

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