Sampo Kaulanen

Costa Rica, rainforest. May 2021.

The air is filled with herbal smoke. 

A shaman waves a fan made of dry leaves and chants a steadymantra. In the maloka, a ritual space built by the indigenous peoples of the Amazon, a group ofpeople has gathered. They lie on mattresses, each with a bucket and a roll of toilet paper in front ofthem.

The shaman ofers everyone a small glass of dark, sticky liquid. It looks like muddy sludge and tasteseven worse. The drink is ayahuasca, a psychoactive herbal brew that makes you vomit and havediarrhea, while also producing visions. Soon, retching can be heard around the maloka.In the back row, on a mattress, lies Sampo Kaulanen, a village shopkeeper from Äkäslompolo. Heworries about work. Running the store has been physically painful for quite some time.

When the psychedelic starts to take efect, Kaulanen sees a strange figure holding a mop and a bucket.He tells it about his problem. The figure begins to “clean” Kaulanen, pushing the mop down his throat.Kaulanen starts vomiting.

The next day, Kaulanen writes in his diary. A new idea is taking root in his mind:

“If only there was a place like this in Finland where people could come to heal.

Letting go of the family store in 2023 wasn’t the only big change in my recent years. My entire life hasturned upside down, guided out of a dead end by spirituality.

I struggled under the grip of addictions, often wondering how I would endure my life until the grave.

Äkäslompolo in the 1980s was no cradle of civilization, is how I describe it. The older generationscarried the heavy burden of war and passed their pain onto their children. Even though Äkäslompolo was slowly becoming known as a tourist destination in Lapland, it was still just a small, remote village.There wasn’t much to do other than drink. We learned from tourists and reindeer herders, who wereprofessional boozers. 

By the age of 12, I was stealing bottles of liquor from my parents’ cupboards andfrom the porches of tourist cabins.

As a shy, red-haired child, I found the courage I craved in alcohol. I began to build a version of myselfwho was a violent bully, a brawler, and a troublemaker. Alcohol remained my survival mechanism forthe next twenty years.

A lot happened during that time. I first entered public awareness in 2010 through the reality TV show Diili. During filming, I was mostly drunk or hungover. 

I didn’t win, but I met my wife, Minttu.

I kept pushing myself into the public eye because I had decided to make Jounin Kauppa the mostfamous village shop in Finland. 

I was also driven by the pounding awareness that I had €14 million indebt from building a new store.

But being a shopkeeper wasn’t a calling for anyone in my family. 

My grandfather Jouni had practicallybeen forced to establish the store in 1950, and my parents Esa and Anne reluctantly carried it on. Ifollowed in their footsteps simply because I couldn’t think of anything better.

Work and publicity brought stress and a fear of failure. I numbed myself with medication until I foundmyself popping benzos like cereal. Anxiety and insomnia drained all my strength.

My father committed suicide in 2016. Before that, we had fallen out. 

Grief, anger, fear, and everythingthat had happened culminated two years later.

I was taken in restraints by ambulance, escorted by police, all the way to a hospital in Rovaniemi. I had mixed alcohol with sleeping pills and lost control in a bar.

I sat in the hospital again, begging a doctor I already knew for something to quiet my head, but he hadnothing left to give me. I felt broken, unable to cry or laugh.

I kept seeking help, going through everything from AA to religions and therapies.

Then something earth-shattering happened in my thoughts: “Maybe the Sampo I’ve always believed myself to be isn’t necessarily who I really am. 

Maybe I couldbe a little dif erent. ”My wife found online a retreat led by shamans in the Amazon rainforest—a place where more andmore people were traveling to heal their traumas and mental health struggles. Celebrities, from Prince Harry to Megan Fox and Will Smith, have praised the treatment on social media.

We went to the retreat in 2021. 

The first night was so awful I wanted to leave immediately, butsomehow I endured the whole week. It was worth it. I quit two decades of snus use on that trip.I soon traveled back to South America, utterly exhausted. Hungover, I told the shaman in tears that Icouldn’t go on drinking or with much of anything. The shaman just nodded, saying “sí” at the rightmoments. Nice, I thought. No help at all.

That evening was another ayahuasca ceremony. For the next 12 hours, I vomited so violently I thoughtmy ribs would break. That was the end of my drinking. Since then, it hasn’t even crossed my mind tohave a single beer in the sauna. It’s crazy.

The retreats have given me understanding toward both my father and myself. When someone endstheir life because of sufering, it’s hard to blame them for it.

The retreats also sparked the idea of a resort, a place where people could come to heal, “a bit more of ahigh-end destination.”

There’s no financial sense in this project if getting rich were my goal. I could have taken the millionsfrom selling the village store and invested them, then just “spit at the ceiling and scratch my balls,” butI couldn’t have lived with myself that way.My intention is to build Jänkä Resort into a place that ofers holistic treatments such as meditation, yoga, and sound bowl therapy. 

Eventually, I hope to ofer ayahuasca ceremonies as well.The tabloids wrote about the crazy shopkeeper who lost it, then found peace of mind in the South American rainforest and became a disciple of spirituality.

That’s partly true. 

But not the whole truth.

My emotions still rise up from all sorts of things. Many triggers remain. But the feelings no longer takecontrol of my mind.These days, my favorite moment of the day is the small calm I feel just before falling asleep.

Sampo Kaulanen, Yrittäjä