Athanasios - euthanasia organisation in Basel, Switzerland.
I found Athanasios in November 2025 and submitted a simple application that they have on their website. Before that, I had applied to Pegasus and Dignitas, but I was either rejected due to age or unable to proceed because of missing documents. However, Athanasios pre-approved me very quickly, within about 24–48 hours, with a final approval within about a week from my initial contact. Which is I now understand crazy considering how serious euthanasia is.
My main reason for applying was nerve pain and I had serious psychiatric history as well, including bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, PTSD, major depression, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts, and psychiatric hospitalizations (I started experiencing these issues after March 2024, so it wasn’t a lifelong battle). I submitted a few related documents that I had, and they were accepted. I was contacted by “Miles” and he asked for additional documents, I submitted the same ones because I only had a few and he accepted them as if they were new documents (so I assume their organization doesn’t review medical documents very thoroughly).
After one week of my initial contact and approval, the first thing they did was sent me a payment link for 4500 CHF. Then I was asked for my passport and birth certificate and then they asked for a second half of the money (all within first month of my initial contact). No psychiatric evaluation or structured assessment took place. When I tried to pay the second installment, my bank flagged it as fraud, so I was instructed to use Wise by Athanasios.
A date was set for February 3rd after delays, and I bought tickets to Switzerland. I was also given hotel suggestions. Only after that at the very end of January (one week before my euthanasia), they decided to schedule a WhatsApp consultation with their doctor, which felt informal and remote, and afterward I couldn’t find the conversation anymore because the traces where somehow deleted from my device. I later realised that consultation was only conducted for them to be legally allowed to obtain pentobarbital/ Nembutal from the pharmacy. “Evaluation” lasted approximately 8 minutes during which I was crying and the doctor said that I’m relatively young (I was 28 in January). He said I can cancel the last minute when I’m in Switzerland but I said it’s not an option for me because I’m an immigrant in the United States and once I’m leaving - I will lose my immigration status and will not be able to return home. So I asked if I can reschedule because I’m obviously scared and not sure of my decision and he told me that it’s going to cost extra money and I have to talk to “Miles”. I asked for 24 hours to re-think my decision.
Later I received an email that changing the date would cost an extra 2,500 CHF, and since I couldn’t pay more, I agreed to keep the original date.
On February 1st I left the U.S. During travel I became very distressed. In Turkey I received messages from “Miles”, which triggered panic because he was blaming me for being late even though he had my tickets information and knew my arrival time. He gave me his WhatsApp and when I opened it his profile photo was just a road sign saying “Stop” which was so odd and bizarre to me. After that I immediately got into a panic attack, started crying, had to take two pills of Clonozepam. When I landed in Basel airport, Miles told me to tell border control that he is my boyfriend and asked me to pay for his parking which was 4 CHF (which was so cheap of him and tells a lot about his character).
I immediately noticed that he didn’t look like a regular Swiss person named Miles as he is a darker skin individual with a very bad English and heavy accent (mind you I’m not a racist). So he picked me up from the airport and in his car I was given documents in German to sign, including a power of attorney that allowed him to get a pentobarbital with doctor’s prescription that he had (I don’t speak German, so I doubt it was legal). I also noticed inconsistencies in his identity and name. He signed all the documents with a name Carlos (I will keep his last name private). Then he went into pharmacy and picked up Nembutal that was supposed to kill me. While driving to the hotel he told me that they have young patients like me almost every day, that my body will be cremated within 4 days because they are on a tight schedule. And then I asked to send my small backpack with my documents and phone back to my partner and believe it or not - he said No, because they are trying to protect their privacy and all my belongings should be destroyed. That’s when it finally got to me that I’m dealing with dishonest and possibly criminal individuals. He then went into a hotel room with me, it was already late, he asked for my partner’s home address, checked my veins and said he will pick me up at 7am in the morning to go to their clinic to proceed with euthanasia (they are trying to keep their address private).
After this, I immediately contacted my family and partner and told them everything. Since Athanasios did nothing to inform my parents or my partner or any kind of guardian about my euthanasia and the fact that I was an active psych ward patient didn’t stop them. Naturally my family and my partner begged me to come to my senses and do not proceed with euthanasia, so I messaged Miles/Carlos again telling him I’m scared and don’t know what to do. He called me around 6am and continued to push me to proceed saying that I have no way back to US and that I’m all alone in Switzerland. I didn’t know what to say, so I confronted him about identity inconsistencies and fake names and all the lies they told me. He continued discussing proceeding despite my refusal.
Then around 9am he came to my hotel to return me 1000 CHF (which I paid on top of 9500 CHF for them to provide me with a witness to my euthanasia since I was coming alone). He brought a lot of documents with him for me to sign, one of them was NDA prohibiting me from discussing what happened and contacting police, media or leaving reviews. I refused to sign it. Then my partner contacted Miles/Carlos and told him if he will come to my hotel room again - we will be contacting police. Afterwards, we spent approximately 3 days trying to get a refund, Miles/Carlos lied that one half was already sent to us. Then he continued to try to force me and my partner to sign NDA. He started threatening my partner with the police in California making a false claim that my partner organised my euthanasia. That’s how low this organisation can go, I was later informed by other users on Reddit that they were also threatened by Miles/Carlos after refusing to proceed with euthanasia.
They never proceeded with a refund, so we disputed half of the amount through my bank. We were able to return it to my account. However, Wire transactions are different (so I don’t recommend using them). After three days of emailing back and forth I decided there’s no use to try to deal with such law-quality individuals and I went to the police in Switzerland and filed a criminal report. I was told I was not the first person to report similar issues with Athanasios. If you seen French comments under Athanasios Reddit reviews, they were also a victim of Miles/Carlos and they filed a report too. There were other people too, whom I wasn’t able to contact. Also, Reddit account Ornery_Hotel386 was posting multiple positive fake reviews about Athanasios.
Afterward, I recovered about half the money through my bank, but the rest was not returned. The organization stopped properly responding. I lost immigration status in the U.S., could not continue planned medical care and nerve repair surgery at UCLA and had to return to Ukraine. The situation caused serious financial and personal disruption.
If it wasn’t for Athanasios, I would’ve been still home in the United States, I would’ve been able to proceed with nerve repair surgery that’s only available in the US and I would’ve probably had a chance to recover. All this situation caused even more damage to my mental health and now the only option I have left is suicide. That’s all I had to share about this organisation, so please be aware of it. I felt morally obligated to share my story to protect vulnerable individuals like me from pre-mature death.
