Altered States – Details, episodes & analysis

Several years ago, Heather was given three doses of psilocybin as part of a clinical study for treatment-resistant depression. Ever since, she’s been experiencing strange visual distortions, including “visual snow” and shimmering walls. What’s it like to develop a chronic condition following a trip? And what do scientists know about why it happens and who’s at risk?

For a transcript of this episode, please visit this link.

For the last couple of years, producer Shaina Shealy has been following Israeli and Palestinian peace activists who have been coming together to drink the psychedelic brew ayahuasca in an effort to heal their collective intergenerational trauma. It seemed to be helping them when suddenly the region erupts into chaos and violence.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s decision on MDMA-assisted therapy for post traumatic stress disorder.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is poised to decide whether to approve MDMA-assisted therapy for the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder. Host Arielle Duhaime-Ross interviews Michael Pollan, author of the best-selling book "How to Change Your Mind,” about how we got here, and what the decision might mean for the future of psychedelics.

For a transcript of this episode, please visit this link.

In 2020, voters in Oregon passed a ballot measure that allows people to take magic mushrooms, or psilocybin, with a guide. But what does that actually look like — or sound like? Host Arielle Duhaime-Ross follows along with a licensed psilocybin facilitator as she guides a 67-year-old man on his first mushroom trip.

For a transcript of this episode, please visit this link.

Psychedelics now inhabit a strange liminal space. Are they party drugs? Medications? Religious sacraments? In Altered States, host Arielle Duhaime-Ross explores how people are taking these drugs, who stands to profit, and what these substances might offer us as individuals and as a society.

For a transcript of this episode, please visit this link.

In recent years, an increasing number of international clinics have begun offering treatments using ibogaine, a psychedelic drug that comes from a West African plant, to help treat conditions such as trauma and addiction. Much of the global supply of ibogaine is smuggled illegally out of Gabon. A former NBA basketball player from Gabon named Stéphane Lasme is at the forefront of new efforts to build a sustainable fair trade iboga industry.

For a transcript of this episode, please visit this link.

Ernesto Londoño is a national correspondent and former war correspondent at The New York Times. For most of his life, Ernesto was a classic journalist – skeptical, stoic – whose early life in war-torn Colombia and reporting experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan left him traumatized, though he didn’t know it. Then Ernesto signs up for a retreat in the Amazon where he drinks ayahuasca. This retreat is followed by many more throughout Latin America. These experiences began to melt some of his armor, revealing a surprising new side of himself. Along the way, Ernesto reports on the strange world of international psychedelics retreats.

For a transcript of this episode, please visit this link.

Altered States is taking a short breather and will be back soon. In the meantime, consider joining host Arielle Duhaime-Ross and other journalists for a virtual panel called The New Psychedelic Beat: Unraveling Oregon’s Drug Policy Story hosted by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics. September 25, 2024 at 1 pm PT.

For a transcript of this episode, please visit this link.

When journalist Anna Silman started reporting on ketamine five years ago she did so because people in her friend group had begun taking the drug recreationally. She was intrigued by the ways that interest in psychedelic-assisted therapy meant more people were taking ketamine, both with a prescription and without one too. But as she started to see friends struggle with dependency, something other countries have been ringing the alarm about for years, she began to wonder whether the U.S. has been too naive. We hear from a woman we’re calling Olivia, just a few months out of rehab, who thinks the risks of ketamine have been severely underestimated.

For a transcript of this episode, please visit this link.