Episode 1: The Oregon Experiment

Ep 1

Kaylee Howard : Okay, so this is just a ground-up mushrooms.

KH: And when it’s homogenized like this, it just kind of dissolves better in the water, there’s less chunks for you to get stuck in your teeth.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross: This is the sound of ground mushrooms getting dumped into a cup and then stirred in hot water.

KH: And when you get to the drinking portion of it, you’re welcome to scoop out any goop that might be left in there, but really all of the psychoactive properties should have dissolved into the water.

KH: So some people like to eat it all like an insurance policy, but you don’t have to unless you want to.

ADR: These mushrooms contain the psychoactive drug known as psilocybin.

ADR: And the person doing the mixing is Mark, who at 67 years old runs an architectural millwork company in Oregon.

Mark:  I ate a live caterpillar once in the outback of Australia.

Mark:  I think I can handle some stuffy stuff in there.

ADR: Mark is here to ingest a psychedelic tea and have his very first mushroom experience.

KH: You can give one extra little splash of water if you’d like.

KH: I’m just going to set a timer on my phone for five minutes.

Mark:  What happens if you just eat it straight and don’t mix it and steep it?

ADR: And while Mark undergoes this experience, he’ll be supported by Kaylee Howard.

KH: Depending on your digestion, it just likely takes a little bit longer for it to kick in.

KH: And so it’s an option, but this helps you get into it quicker and helps your body digest it better.

KH: So sometimes there’s less nausea in this way.

Mark:  I was just curious.

KH: Take a couple deep breaths as we begin to drink, open up your body to drink this tea.

ADR: KH:   is a state-licensed psilocybin facilitator.

KH: And you don’t have to chug it in one fell swoop.

KH: You can take your time, whatever feels natural for you, but give it a couple spins.

KH: What do you think?

Mark:  Tastes like dirty mushroom water.

KH: Great work.

ADR: In 2020, Oregon voters passed a ballot measure that made Oregon the first state in the country to allow people to take psilocybin legally.

ADR: It took a few years to set up all the rules and regulations, but for about a year now, people from all over the country have been heading to Oregon for guided psilocybin sessions.

Mark:  Want a chair?

Mark:  I’m like, I’m a two-year-old.

KH: Yeah, I’m like, did you finish your mushrooms?

KH: Okay.

KH: So, now is when we’re going to move you to the bed.

Mark:  Bed?

KH: Yes.

KH: Let’s find an arrangement of pillows that feels comfortable for you.

KH: Okay.

ADR: What’s taking place in Oregon can accurately be described as a massive psychedelic experiment, the first of its kind.

KH: Do you want a fuzzy blanket or a puffy blanket?

ADR: All eyes are on Oregon.

ADR: What happens in these treatment centers with guides like KH:   and clients like Mark, that may very well determine the future of psychedelic drug use in the US.

ADR: And whether we move forward with this experiment on a much larger scale, or pump the regulatory brakes.

ADR: I’m Arielle Duhaime-Ross.

ADR: For the last decade, I’ve worked as a science journalist, covering everything from climate change and wildlife to clinical drug trials, diseases, and new technologies of all kinds.

ADR: And as you might have noticed, there’s a lot going on in the world of psychedelics right now.

ADR: From FDA drug approval applications to international psychedelic retreats and hotly debated issues like plant conservation and drug safety.

ADR: So today, we’re launching a show that will report on all of that.

ADR: From PRX and the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics, this is Altered States, a podcast about what science can tell us about psychedelics and what psychedelics can tell us about ourselves.

ADR: With this show, we hope to give you the tools that you need to tune out the noise and get to the good stuff, right?

ADR: The good information, from the fundamentals of what psychedelics are and what they do, to where they might or might not take us as individuals and as a culture.

ADR: First up, the Oregon Experiment.

KH: As we enter this process, we trust in our own agency, knowing that whatever is revealed is revealed for our greater good and the greater good of those in our orbit.

[MUSIC CHIMES]

ADR: Under federal law, psilocybin is illegal.

ADR: It’s a Schedule I drug, which means it belongs to a class of drugs that the federal government says have a, quote, high potential for abuse and serve no legitimate medical purpose in the United States.

ADR: But since 2020, state law in Oregon says otherwise, after Oregon citizens voted to pass a ballot measure that legalized taking psilocybin with a guide.

ARCHIVAL #1: A historic change in our drug laws in America.

ARCHIVAL #1: Oregon is the first state in the country to legalize psychedelic mushrooms.

ADR: That’s not the reason I moved to Oregon at the start of this year, but I will admit that it’s an interesting coincidence.

ADR: After years of thinking and talking about moving here, my spouse and I packed up our New York City apartment and along with our two chihuahuas, we made our way to the West Coast.

ADR: Now that I live here, Oregon’s psilocybin program, it feels a lot more real.

ADR: So far, more than 3,000 people have been able to take mushrooms legally in the state.

ADR: That’s more people than in all the psilocybin clinical trials ever completed in the US combined.

ADR: What’s happening here is unprecedented.

ARCHIVAL #2: When it comes to psilocybin in Oregon, well, you could call us trailblazers or guinea pigs or maybe both.

ADR: And I can’t stop wondering, how is it all going?

ADR: Is the program actually working?

ADR: And is this the start of legal psilocybin across the US.?

ADR: To find out, we’re kicking off this season in Oregon by spending time with one of the most crucial actors in this whole experiment, a licensed psilocybin facilitator.

KH: If you talked to me pre-pandemic and told me that this is my life now, that I have my master’s in psychology and I’m a psilocybin facilitator, I’d be like, that sounds awesome, but it sounds like a totally different life.

KH: Oregon, are you joking?

KH: But here we are.

[MUSIC PLAYS]

KH: I’m Kaylee Howard.

KH: I am a licensed psilocybin facilitator here in the state of Oregon.

ADR: Okay, so to take psilocybin legally in Oregon, you have to do it under the supervision of a licensed guide like Kaylee.

ADR: These facilitators, they don’t have to be mental health professionals, but they do have to go through a training on how to monitor and support people on mushrooms.

KH: Psilocybin had been something I had been using for 15 years for my own healing.

ADR: Kaylee ‘s background is in marriage and family therapy, but that’s not how she started out.

KH: My first career was as a writer.

KH: I wrote a book.

KH: I sold it as a TV show.

KH: I moved to LA and was ready to have them embrace me with open arms.

KH: But it did not go that way.

ADR: Kaylee stuck around LA for a while doing all kinds of things, lots of writing jobs in Hollywood.

ADR: But eventually she grew tired.

KH: And I was like, what am I doing?

KH: I’m so tired of writing about fake people with fake problems.

KH: I want to do something real, real people, real problems.

ADR: So Kaylee decided to switch careers.

ADR: She got her master’s in psychology in 2020.

ADR: She trained remotely to be a marriage and family therapist.

ADR: And then she and her husband decided to move to the Pacific Northwest.

KH: While we were driving up to Oregon, Measure 109 passed.

KH: I was reading the news on my phone, and I was like, wait a second.

ADR: It felt to her like it was meant to be.

ADR: Now Kaylee has been facilitating psilocybin sessions legally since November 2023.

ADR: She told me she sees about 9 to 12 clients a month.

ADR: She likes educating folks, especially newbies, or what researchers like to call the psychedelic naive, about what a trip should and shouldn’t look like.

KH: I think people are scared of bad trips, and I always try to explain the difference between a bad trip and a difficult trip.

KH: I think a bad trip would be you take psilocybin, you smoke some weed, you’re at a concert with some people, it gets dark, you don’t know all these people.

ADR: You could go to a dark place.

ADR: Kaylee says that with the right support, psilocybin can really help people, even if a client’s psychedelic experience ends up being a challenging one.

KH: You might touch into overwhelming emotions or experiences that might feel hard to confront or go through.

KH: I would say that 100% of the people that I’ve worked with who have had difficult journeys would say it’s still super valuable because going through that, there’s always stuff to mine from that.

KH: I’ve described it as a prescribed forest burn.

KH: Like you kind of sometimes need to like burn it down so that things can regrow.

KH: Okay, welcome to psilocybin day.

KH: So we’re going to sign you in here.

MARK:  Okay.

KH: Take a seat.

KH: We’re going to sell you some psilocybin too while you’re here.

ADR: The day I spent with Kaylee started with a drug deal of sorts.

KH: I know we talked about going up to about 40 and we’re starting at 29, because that’s just, instead of 30, because that’s just how the sizes of these break down.

ADR: Remember Mark, the guy who you heard drinking mushroom tea at the beginning of this episode?

ADR: Before he could drink that tea, he had to buy the mushrooms.

KH: But we could either boost to 10 or we could have the option of boosting to 15.

KH: But it’s 29 milligrams of psilocybin.

ADR: So Kaylee and Mark are sitting together on a couch, looking at a tray of packets of powdered and whole mushrooms.

ADR: Mark is buying a strain of mushrooms called Makilla Gorilla.

ADR: The tray was brought in by a rep from the psilocybin service center, where Mark’s session is taking place today.

KH: Okay, well, did you bring 360?

Mark:  I brought lots of money.

KH:Okay, great.

Mark:  We can do this twice.

KH: Okay.

KH: So I think we buy 45.

KH: In this way, we have options too if we want to take a five.

KH: Let’s say you want to go up to 34.

ADR: Everything you just heard, from the price of the mushrooms to the amount of psilocybin Mark will be taking, all of that stuff Kaylee previously discussed with Mark during what’s called a preparation meeting, which is a necessary step mandated by the state.

ADR: In that meeting, Mark described himself as somewhat of a perfectionist.

ADR: Kaylee asked Mark to think about his mantra for the session.

ADR: Mark chose the word, relax.

ADR: So should Mark feel lost along his journey, that’s the word he’ll use to refocus his experience.

ADR: And the 29 milligrams of psilocybin, a larger dose than Kaylee typically recommends to her clients, it’s intended to help Mark, quote, surrender to the mushrooms.

ADR: Because Kaylee thinks he might have trouble letting go.

MARK:  I’m not a drug person.

MARK:  I don’t smoke pot, I don’t smoke, I don’t drink.

MARK:  I don’t do any kind of drugs.

ADR: Mark’s married, he’s got kids, he’s in his late 60s.

ADR: For decades, he ran his own business.

ADR: Now he’s semi-retired.

MARK:  I had a successful business, millwork company doing architectural millwork.

MARK:  Lived in the same house that I built 35 years ago.

MARK:  One of the reasons I came here is everything about my life should be really good.

MARK:  But at the same time, I’m just not functioning well.

ADR: Mark has been dealing with mental health issues for most of his life.

ADR: He’s been in therapy.

ADR: He’s tried a bunch of treatments, including electroconvulsive therapy, what used to be called shock therapy more than 20 years ago, and more recently, ketamine therapy.

ADR: But so far, nothing has really helped him get where he wants to be.

ADR: Not long term anyway.

ADR: Still, he hasn’t given up hope.

MARK:  So the data is pointing to the fact that it can be very helpful, specifically with people that like me are blocked.

MARK:  My brain shuts down, says, I don’t want to do this.

MARK:  It’s hard for me to function.

MARK:  So I thought, what the hell?

ADR: Oregon purposefully stays away from calling the psilocybin program a medical treatment or a therapy.

ADR: Still, a lot of the people seeking out these guided sessions are in a marked situation.

ADR: They’ve explored other options and are now turning to this newly state legalized substance that they hope will finally offer them some relief.

ADR: And there’s early evidence to support that they might find it.

ADR: Maybe.

ARCHIVAL #2: Starting with the potential benefits, what does psilocybin help with?

ARCHIVAL #3: Dianne, anecdotally and according to some early research, psilocybin has widespread potential uses in treating a variety of mental health illnesses, such as anxiety, depression, PTSD, eating disorders, and more.

ADR: On the day we met, I asked Mark about his expectations for his psilocybin session.

ADR: What do you hope to get out of this?

ADR: And sharing just what you feel comfortable sharing.

MARK:  To hopefully just be lighter and be able to have a smoother life.

ADR: Mark wasn’t the most forthcoming, but I sensed his pain.

ADR: He’s a funny guy, endearingly gruff.

ADR: I’m genuinely rooting for him when he stands up and follows KH:   to the room where his session will take place.

KH: So, welcome to upstairs.

ADR: Meanwhile, the service center rep, whose name is Jin-Soul, boils water for the mushroom tea.

ADR: Before she heads upstairs, I put a recorder on the platter she’s prepared for Mark.

ADR: And then she’s off.

JIN-SOUL: And then you’ll just empty all of these in here.

JIN-SOUL: And once they’re all in here, you’ll add some hot water, a little less than halfway.

JIN-SOUL: And then stir it up and we’ll let it sit for five minutes.

MARK:  Okay.

ADR: To prevent any tampering with the psilocybin, state law requires that Mark open the packets and mix them into the water himself, which he does.

ADR: After slurping down the psychedelic tea, Kaylee leads Mark through a meditation.

KH: Now bring your attention back to your breath, drawing your focus up to your heart center.

KH: On your next inhalation, visualize your chest filling with white light.

ADR: Downstairs, I intercept Jin-Soul  as she passes by the living room.

ADR: She tells me Mark drank the psilocybin tea at 9:55 a.m.

ADR: So the countdown starts now.

JIN-SOUL: We have this guide here that shows us the duration depending on their dosage.

JIN-SOUL: So this tells us how long someone has to stay depending on how much they take.

ADR: The state also mandates that each client has to remain in the service center for a certain number of hours, which are determined by the dose a client takes.

ADR: So in Mark’s case, he’ll be here for at least five hours if he doesn’t take a booster.

JIN-SOUL: Yes.

ADR: Is that it?

JIN-SOUL: 25 to 35 milligrams means five hours.

JIN-SOUL: Yeah.

ADR: Got it.

JIN-SOUL: So we’ll be hunkered down for a little while at least.

JIN-SOUL: Okay.

ADR: Cool.

ADR: Upstairs, Kaylee is working on getting Mark into the right mindset for what’s to come.

ADR: She brought these sound bowls and she plays them.

ADR: And then, 13 minutes in, much earlier than Mark expects.

MARK:  might mention here that although you’re not supposed to feel anything, there’s quite a bit going on.

KH: Great.

KH: What are you noticing so far?

MARK:  Flushing.

KH: Flushing?

MARK:  A little dizzy.

KH: Okay.

KH: That’s great.

KH: And it’s not right away.

KH: You took them about 13 minutes ago.

KH: All right.

KH: That’s fine.

KH: This is good timing.

KH: Just go let yourself…

MARK:  It seemed right away to me.

KH: Good timing.

KH: Maybe you won’t even need a booster.

KH: Just let yourself sink into those feelings.

ADR: He doesn’t know it yet, but Mark is about to go through a lot.

ADR: That’s after the break.

[MUSIC CHIMES]

ADR: This is Altered States, I’m Arielle Duhaime-Ross.

ADR: Before the break, we heard the start of 67-year-old Mark’s very first psilocybin session.

ADR: His facilitator, Kaylee helped him get settled into his trip, which started about 13 minutes after drinking the mushroom tea.

ADR: Kaylee asked that I only record the start of Mark’s session because she didn’t want to have the act of recording interfere with Mark’s experience.

ADR: As for Mark, he didn’t hesitate when it came to being recorded for this episode, but he did have one request, that we not include any information about his family, since they weren’t the ones doing the session.

ADR: And I agreed to that request.

ADR: I’m waiting in the living room of the Psilocybin Service Center while Mark’s session is taking place.

ADR: And while I’m there, I think about how different this setting is than what I pictured in my head.

ADR: The service center is located in Portland, in this residential area, inside a beautiful century-old house.

ADR: It’s decorated tastefully mid-century modern, classy, but warm.

ADR: The only clues that people take psychedelics here are small ceramic mushrooms on a coffee table by the front door, and this mushroom-themed wallpaper in the first floor bathroom.

ADR: For most of the day, the house is empty besides Jin-Soul , Kaylee, Mark, and myself.

ADR: This individualistic approach is pretty different from the ways that indigenous peoples in Mexico and Central America have used psilocybin in collective religious and mystical ceremonies for millennia.

ADR: The name of the service center is Chariot.

ADR: It’s one of more than 20 such centers in the state, but from the outside, you’d never know it.

ADR: There’s no sign out front telling passers-by about what happens here, and that’s by design.

ADR: When Chariot opened its doors in September 2023, there was a sense that because the program was so new, some people might misunderstand what state legal psilocybin entails in Oregon.

ADR: So to be clear, psilocybin service centers are not magic mushroom dispensaries.

ADR: To get the experience Mark is getting right now, you first have to find yourself a facilitator.

ADR: If they decide to take you on, and you can actually be denied for any reason, then you schedule your sessions.

ADR: You have to attend at least one preparation session led by your facilitator before the actual psilocybin session, not to mention the many forms you’ll be asked to fill out.

ADR: And that’s just on the client side of things.

ADR: This is how the local news explained it.

ARCHIVAL #4: Let’s get into some of the nitty gritty of the psilocybin services law.

ADR: Facilitators have to be trained and then licensed.

ARCHIVAL #4: The facilitator has to be with you the entire time.

ARCHIVAL #4: Now, if the facilitator has to use the restroom, they can only be gone for five minutes or less.

ADR: For security reasons, service centers have to do things like keep the mushrooms in a fireproof safe, weighing at least 375 pounds.

ARCHIVAL #4: The place must have an alarm system with at least two panic buttons inside.

ADR: I mean, listen, this is a state-run program.

ADR: It was bound to be bureaucratic.

ARCHIVAL #4: The sessions last from one to six hours, and the more you take, the longer you’re going to have to stay.

ADR: Of course, some of the rules are less well liked than others.

ADR: I talked to a number of people, facilitators, center owners, and advocates.

ADR: And while some feel constrained by all the rules, they know these regulations are in place for a reason.

ADR: To keep clients safe, to cover everyone’s ass, and to make sure the program gets to live another day.

ADR: About four hours into Mark’s session, I get a text from Kaylee.

ADR: I got this text at 2:16 p.m.

ADR: From Kaylee  that says, our boy has been fighting with his mind and body today.

ADR: I’ll give you the full scoop later, but I think it’d be best for us to hold off capturing anything with him until tomorrow.

ADR: I’m surprised and a little anxious.

ADR: I don’t know why, but I assumed or at least hoped that everything would go well for Mark.

ADR: About 45 minutes later, Mark emerges from the second floor.

00:22:54.977 –> 00:22:59.897

ADR: I take a quick peek, wave hello, looking a bit worse for where he waves back.

ADR: Then I duck into the other room to give him some space.

ADR: Mark’s hair is a bit out of place.

ADR: He seems tired, but he’s standing, so that’s good.

ADR: And his ride is on time.

ADR: State law says Kaylee shouldn’t let Mark drive himself home.

KH: I’ll see you tomorrow.

KH: And remember, if it feels good, you might want to begin to just write down things you remember, but it’ll begin to come back to more as we talk about it tomorrow or whatnot.

KH: And balance maybe a little off, so just hold on to the handrail even if you don’t like it.

ADR: And that is when Kaylee collapses on the couch in the living room.

ADR: She’s exhausted, but also totally wired, talking faster than usual.

ADR: I’m sorry to immediately shove in the microphone to your face.

ADR: It’s good.

MARK:  It’s rough.

ADR: That’s already a lot, but you look exhausted.

MARK:  Yeah.

KH: Yeah, that was…

KH: I think we talked about my feeling of what could be the issue.

KH: His body pains, his inability to not fixate on certain things.

KH: And that was what did show up.

KH: It was…

KH: it began with yawns, which sometimes can happen.

KH: Regardless, yawns can be part of the process.

ADR: It can also be like a sign of stress, right?

ADR: She tells me that Mark’s aches and pains, an issue he’s been dealing with his entire life because of a spinal deformity and a few accidents, those aches flared up during his session and manifested themselves in repeated movements, like yawning,

KH: yawning and yawning and yawning and yawning.

KH: So that was a fixation for about an hour until it moved into his shoulder.

KH: And then there was about an hour of the right shoulder before it moved to the left shoulder.

ADR: Repeatedly jerking one of his shoulders and then the other, his feet got really cold too.

ADR: Kaylee says she did her best to help him move through all of that, putting her hand on his shoulder, changing the music, even warming up his feet.

ADR: But Mark struggled, he was uncomfortable in pain.

ADR: And that’s not the only thing that happened.

ADR: He also cried a lot, but couldn’t pinpoint why.

KH: Towards the end, he was able to say, you know, is this pain in my head or am I actually experiencing pain?

KH: Because when I think of the pain, he pointed to like a few feet from him.

KH: It’s over there.

KH: And I’m realizing it’s not my shoulder, like the pain is actually there.

KH: And so these insights started to come at the end, but there was a difficult physical experience that I’m sure he will share.

KH: But I would say witnessing it, it definitely looked difficult, not in like a scary things were happening, but just a difficulty in letting go.

KH: I would say like maybe 10 percent struggle more than others.

KH: The physical part of it, like if they have those issues coming into it, it’s really hard to get out of your body, out of your head, get out of both of them, and just be able to release.

KH: And so, yeah, it was, it was, I was working today.

KH: I was busy.

ADR: Despite how active and involved Kaylee had to be for hours throughout Mark’s difficult session, she is still almost unbelievably at peace with all of it.

KH: There’s only so much you can do, and everybody’s experience is different.

KH: And just as I tell them, you can’t rush to understand what it’s going to mean, I also know that.

KH: I know that some of the people who have had more difficult experiences or more mild experiences are some of the people that I think possibly have more lasting change as time goes on, if they worked to make meaning of it in the integration phase and to take certain steps.

ADR: It’s now 4 p.m.

ADR: and Kaylee has another meeting.

ADR: A client from California flew in for a session, which will take place tomorrow.

ADR: So today she needs to prep the client.

ADR: We leave Chariot and I marvel at the energy Kaylee still has left.

KH: We’re going to a hotel downtown to do our prep session with a client who’s going to be doing a session at a different center tomorrow.

ADR: A lot of psychedelic experts agree that having a meeting after a session, which is called an integration meeting, to discuss what happened ideally with a trained facilitator is pretty important.

ADR: Because that is where people begin to make meaning of their experience.

ADR: Mark, like almost all of Kaylee’s clients so far, followed her recommendation and opted to attend the two integration meetings she offers.

ADR: So the day after his session, Mark and Kaylee meet up again at Chariot for the first one.

ADR: With Mark’s permission, I set up my recorder, walk out of the room, and let Kaylee  and Mark talk.

KH: So talk to me.

KH: What’s it been like the past, I don’t know, about 24 hours since I’ve seen you?

MARK:  Um, look at that.

KH: Oh my goodness.

MARK:  I know.

KH: Somebody’s been writing.

KH: Beautiful.

MARK:  Um, it’s fine.

MARK:  I think we went over these things the other day.

MARK:  It’s a little confusion.

MARK:  Not sure what’s going on.

MARK:  Wondering what’s the drugs, what’s me, what’s the mental thing, what you’re doing, you know, not understanding the interplay of the thing.

ADR: Their meeting lasts about an hour.

ADR: They talk about what Mark saw and felt during his session.

MARK:  I remember specifically lying there in the pain in my shoulder and visualizing, you know, in space, so I could visualize where it was.

KH: Can you describe it?

MARK:  A blue or yellow glass ball with, seeming to have sort of its own little light source in it.

MARK:  Seems to be glowing a little bit.

KH: Is there an emotion attached to it?

MARK:  Not a feeling, like a tension, but like an emotion.

MARK:  I went from curious to a little sad, but if I’m a little sad, I’m having more trouble visualizing it.

KH: Okay, well maybe be with the sadness for a little bit.

KH: Maybe let yourself feel that.

MARK:  Sort of weird sadness because there was an emotion that popped up when I wasn’t, without any rational explanation for it.

KH: Is sadness an emotion you often let yourself feel into?

MARK:  Not really.

ADR: Mark doesn’t know why he cried during the session.

ADR: And the pain that he eventually realized was coming from outside his body, it wasn’t constant.

ADR: He’d have moments of peace and spend them anticipating the pain’s return.

ADR: At one point, he wondered why his head felt huge.

ADR: He said, some of it felt kind of trippy.

ADR: And throughout, Mark says he was trying hard to just let everything happen.

ADR: After the integration meeting, Mark and I had a chat of our own.

ADR: So, it’s been a long few days for you.

ADR: How are you doing?

MARK:  I’m doing fine.

MARK:  It was an interesting experience.

MARK:  Yesterday was not in any way pleasant.

MARK:  But I think helpful.

MARK:  I haven’t quite worked at all out yet.

ADR: You seem a little different to me.

MARK:  I am much mellower today than I was before I did this yesterday.

MARK:  And I want to reiterate that nothing was pleasant about yesterday.

MARK:  There was no fun involved in it whatsoever.

MARK:  But at the same time, while it’s going on, you have the total sense that it’s useful.

MARK:  It was transformative in some way.

ADR: It sounds like what you went through yesterday was difficult.

ADR: It also sounds like it was meaningful.

ADR: But the fact that it was difficult, how do you feel about that?

MARK:  I actually think that since it was really difficult, it might be more beneficial.

MARK:  Because if it would have been easy, I don’t think there would have been any benefit or insight.

ADR: I’m going to be honest here.

ADR: Because Mark Session had been so grueling, I was prepared for him to seem unchanged.

ADR: But the Mark I’d met two days ago was preoccupied, distracted, a little grumpy too.

ADR: And the Mark I met today, he was a different guy.

MARK:  I do definitely have a positive effect.

MARK:  As you can tell when you said you look different and are more relaxed and present, I think is what you’re probably noticing.

ADR: Yeah, absolutely.

MARK:  My particular thing is that when I get in my head, I get angry.

MARK:  I don’t lash out, but I get angry and surly and not pleasant to be around.

MARK:  And so here I am being friendly with you.

ADR: I know that as time goes on, the meaning that Mark makes out of this session might change.

ADR: But seeing him a day later so serene, it felt nice.

ADR: But I still wanted to know what Kaylee thought of Mark’s experience and the role she played in it.

KH: People are only as ready as they can be, and all we can do is kind of provide the support and the resources on either end and just give them the space to go there.

KH: Our job is not to like push them into like, you know, transcendence.

KH: That’s, that’s, that’s the mushroom’s job.

KH: No, I’m just kidding.

KH: That’s them and the mushrooms working together.

ADR: Documenting one facilitator’s day and one single person’s journey with legal psilocybin in Oregon, that’s never going to give me a full picture of what’s going on in my new home state.

ADR: My sample size is one, so all the usual caveats apply.

ADR: But as far as launching a podcast about psychedelics goes, Mark’s experience with KH:   and the mushrooms felt to me like the right way to set the tone for this upcoming season.

ADR: Because what Mark went through was nuanced, both challenging and hopeful too.

ADR: That’s the space that this show lives in, in that nuance.

ADR: So I hope you’ll tune in again next week.

ADR: I’m your host, Arielle Duhaime-Ross, and this is Altered States.

ADR: This story was reported and produced by me, Arielle Duhaime-Ross.

ADR: Special thanks to Deena Prichep.

ADR: Altered States is a production of the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics and PRX.

ADR: Adizah Eghan is our senior editor.

ADR: Our associate producer is Cassady Rosenblum.

ADR: Our audio engineers are Tommy Bezerian and Terence Bernardo.

ADR: Fact-checking by Graham Hacia

ADR: Rotating BCSP script readers are Michael Pollan, Michael Silver, and Bob Jesse.

ADR: Our executive producers are Jocelyn Gonzalez and Malia Wollan.

ADR: And our project manager is Edwin Ochoa.

ADR: I’m your host, Arielle Duhaime-Ross.

ADR: Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review Altered States wherever you get your podcasts.

ADR: Most well-known psychedelics remain illegal around the world, including the United States, where it is a criminal offense to manufacture, possess, dispense, or supply most psychedelics with few exceptions.

ADR: Altered States does not recommend or encourage the use of psychedelics, or offer instructions in their use.

ADR: We’ll be back next week.

ADR: From PRX.