Episode 6: A Former War Correspondent Unravels

[00:00:00] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Hey, this is ADR. Quick note before we start the show, this episode contains brief mentions of suicidal ideation and self harm. Please take care.

[00:00:12] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Welcome to Altered States, I’m Arielle Duhaime-Ross. For most of his career, Ernesto Londoño played the part of the war correspondent. Stoic, skeptical, and, in his case, a little detached. In 2017, Ernesto moved to Brazil to cover Latin America for the New York Times. And from the outside, he was thriving. But inside, he needed a change.

[00:00:36] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Which is what led him to ayahuasca ceremonies. In his new book, Trippie, The Peril and Promise of Medicinal Psychedelics, Ernesto Londoño details his journey into the world of ayahuasca retreat centers across the Americas. He joins me now to share what he learned along the way.

[00:00:57] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Ernesto, thanks for joining me today.

[00:00:59] Ernesto Londoño: Thanks [00:01:00] for having me.

[00:01:01] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: So you grew up in Colombia, which is one of the countries where ayahuasca has long been used by indigenous peoples. Were you aware of all of that in those early years, you know, before you started reporting on this and also just as you were diving into the story.

[00:01:18] Ernesto Londoño: No, I grew up at a time when there was a civil war brewing in Colombia. And during my earlier years, it played out largely in rural areas. As things escalated, the conflict started seeping into the cities. And what that meant was that people who were perceived to be wealthy were kidnapped for ransom. And at points, there were terrorist attacks.

[00:01:42] Ernesto Londoño: So for a period of my teenage years, for instance, We stopped going to malls because malls were being bombed. So there was this real sort of sense of dread and fear that permeated just everyday life. And much of it was fueled by the high stakes of [00:02:00] the war on drugs. But at the time, I had no knowledge that there was this sort of facet of mind altering substances that were part of the drugs that were illegal that had a really rich and unique history, particularly when it comes to their use among indigenous people.

[00:02:18] Ernesto Londoño: But it was only many years later that I stumbled into that.

[00:02:23] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: So you were working as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times in Brazil when you decided to try ayahuasca for the first time. How did ayahuasca end up on your radar?

[00:02:32] Ernesto Londoño: Yeah, so just to paint the scene, this would have been 2017 when I moved to Brazil and if you were to look at my life from the outside.

[00:02:41] Ernesto Londoño: It looked like everything was going great. I had this great new job. I had this penthouse apartment with a gorgeous view of the ocean. I had a generous expense account. But I became deeply depressed shortly after moving to Brazil. And looking back, I think I’ve struggled with depression for as long [00:03:00] as I can remember.

[00:03:01] Ernesto Londoño: But up to that point, I had developed pretty effective coping mechanisms. And I don’t know what happened with this change. Starting a new job, in a new country, in a new city, where there was kind of a whole system failure. I was struggling to get out of bed in the morning. I started having thoughts about self harm.

[00:03:21] Ernesto Londoño: And I just felt incredibly lonely and despondent, and unable to think through the fog of depression, about what might be a way to dig myself out of this hole? And when I arrived in Brazil, I had a handful of story ideas, and one of them had been trying to, you know, go and check out these psychedelic retreats that were increasingly drawing foreigners into the jungles of Brazil and Peru and Colombia.

[00:03:50] Ernesto Londoño: I remember specifically there was a sleepless night where I was laying in bed. It was really windy outside and the windows in my room would rattle when it was windy [00:04:00] so it made it impossible to sleep. And it must have been like three or four in the morning where I reach for my laptop and I Google Ayahuasca retreats Brazil.

[00:04:10] Archival: And we are in Bahia, in the south of Bahia, in 39 acres in the jungle.

[00:04:20] Ernesto Londoño: So I ran across this YouTube video that was recorded by this Argentine psychotherapist.

[00:04:27] Archival: And you can listen everything, the insects, the rain, the lagoon, the water moving.

[00:04:34] Ernesto Londoño: She talks about. nature in about what these compounds do to the mind about her center and what it’s like to be there when it rains.

[00:04:46] Archival: You know, with ayahuasca, you can have beautiful visions, but it’s not the most important. The most important are the insights.

[00:04:55] Ernesto Londoño: It was like an invitation to step into a world [00:05:00] where things are just steadier. I felt so desperate and so broken that what began as a journalistic interest turned into my own Hail Mary of sorts.

[00:05:14] Ernesto Londoño: It was like there was a gravitational pull that was luring me toward this woman, toward her little center in the middle of the jungle. And then the next day I woke up and this idea was fresh in my mind. I went straight for the computer, filled out the form, and within a couple of days my slot was secured.

[00:05:32] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Okay, so you sign up, you start corresponding with this guide, and then what happens?

[00:05:38] Ernesto Londoño: There were these funny rules that kind of struck me as really quirky, and strange, and a little off putting, but not enough to sort of deter me from going through with it. For starters, she said you needed to stop drinking alcohol prior to starting the retreat, and there would be no alcohol available during.

[00:05:56] Ernesto Londoño: You needed to agree to adhere to [00:06:00] a vegetarian diet while you were there, and I was a big meat eater, so this sounded really like, you know, the opposite of fun. You needed to refrain from any sexual activity, even masturbation. I think, like, it was a week before, during the retreat, and after, which also sounded really kind of strange and a little draconian.

[00:06:17] Ernesto Londoño: And then I think the one that was, like, really funny to me was she counseled people to stop following the news before the retreat and during the retreat. And she kind of said the news, you know, brings you down and keeps you anxious and frazzled. And I was like, Well, this is what I do for a living. So it was a tall order to disconnect, but actually like the more I thought of it, the more I understood, yeah, you know, for somebody who was struggling being really plugged into the news can be really unhealthy.

[00:06:48] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: And obviously you’re open to this situation, right? You’re open to going, you’re open to the potential changes that this could bring. You want this to work. Where do you think that reticence to actually follow those rules was coming [00:07:00] from at the time?

[00:07:01] Ernesto Londoño: Yeah, it’s funny. Like on some level, the whole thing looking back now feels so irrational that somebody who was struggling and somebody who was dealing with suicidal ideation would take this big gamble on this untested substance in the middle of the jungle with this woman who has.

[00:07:17] Ernesto Londoño: It’s a YouTube video, but it was almost like my intuition was telling me, this is what you need to do. This is where you need to go and just follow it. But then there was my rational mind kind of questioning all the things that didn’t quite make sense. And at the end of the day, I think like my intuition was stronger, but my skeptic mind, you know, kind of the, the journalistic instinct to question and challenge and look under the was still sort of trying to have a voice and a seat at the table.

[00:07:47] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: So you have to travel to a place to go to this retreat. Can you tell me what that looks like and what happens once you get there?

[00:07:57] Ernesto Londoño: Yeah, so I took two flights to get to [00:08:00] this small city north of Rio and then drove for about two hours and then when we got to the retreat it’s in this, you know, pretty rural area near the ocean and the gates open and it looks like the Garden of Eden.

[00:08:19] Ernesto Londoño: It’s this like gorgeous little strip of the jungle with a pond in the middle and with a handful of little bungalows that ring the pond. The sounds of nature were almost sort of hypnotizing because they were so sort of strong and vivid and it, you know, disconnecting from the city and the hustle and bustle, especially of Rio at that time, which was going through a really difficult period of violence and political tension. It was like being transported to a different universe.

[00:08:59] Ernesto Londoño: So [00:09:00] when I drop off my bags, the first thing I do is I hop in the pond to cool off and I start meeting some of the other participants. And there’s this woman in particular, her name is, uh, Princess, a woman from Texas who starts asking if this was my first time with a medicine. And I don’t think I’d ever heard anybody refer to psychedelics or ayahuasca as the medicine.

[00:09:22] Ernesto Londoño: So I kind of found that strange in terms of the language. And then, you know, she said something along the lines of like, if you’re here, you’re ready for her. She’s been calling you. And that also just felt like, you know, way too woo woo for me. So she started speaking about ayahuasca as something that kind of had its own intelligence and agency and, you know, kind of explained to me that people end up sort of being pulled into its gravitational pull when they’re ready and when the stars align.

[00:09:55] Ernesto Londoño: So there was something kind of really curious about it. That concept, but [00:10:00] also just made me do a double take and really question whether I was of sound judgment in having signed up for this and having showed up.

[00:10:13] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Okay. So the main event of this retreat is a series of ceremonies in which you drink ayahuasca as a group under the leadership of a guide. What was that like?

[00:10:23] Ernesto Londoño: So I had one initial ceremony, which was kind of terrifying ’cause it felt like I was jumping off a cliff into the unknown. Ayahuasca is. It’s usually served in a shot glass.

[00:10:36] Ernesto Londoño: I would say it has the consistency of Turkish coffee, generally. It’s sort of a dark sludge. It smells and tastes really, really bad. And the more times you’ve drank ayahuasca, I think, the more your body kind of recoils at the mere whiff of the smell. The way to do it I think is to just drink it like a shot [00:11:00] and just kind of wince and maybe bite into a lime and just get it over with.

[00:11:05] Ernesto Londoño: But every time I’ve done it, you know, I kind of feel shudders through my body like it mean that my body kind of recoils and then your nervous system kind of hypes up for a little bit. And then you catch your breath, you mellow out, you sit down. Generally, the lights go off, the music comes on, and then it’s a matter of waiting for the effects to kick in, which typically takes anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour.

[00:11:38] Ernesto Londoño: There was this ceremony where, you know, I think my defenses had eroded in terms of my rational thinking and my attempt to kind of keep my, my head screwed on tight, and I remember just being kind of guided through this sequence of memories. It was almost like I was watching [00:12:00] a succession of slides from random moments of my life, many of them from childhood.

[00:12:07] Ernesto Londoño: And it wasn’t just a sequence of memories, I felt like I was kind of returning to the emotional texture of each of these moments. And it was really fascinating that not only do you retain the memories, but you kind of retain the way you felt in the moment and the fact that was kind of accessible and that it came alive the way it did was really mesmerizing.

[00:12:30] Ernesto Londoño: So I remember just being in awe and starting to weep at times at these memories. And then I, the one I really latched on to as though I was being guided to really see. sit with something difficult and painful was a relationship I had very early in life when I was about 18 and I dated a man who was a lot older than me and it was a relationship that was you know I think the first time I fell in love meaningfully with a man it was also the first time I [00:13:00] had my heart shattered and it brought back memories of just how scary and hard it had been to wrestle with my sexual orientation and how afraid I had been about what that would mean for my safety and for the kind of life I could aspire to live.

[00:13:20] Ernesto Londoño: And I was so consumed by the terror and the sadness of that period of my life, which I think I had just never really found the time or the emotional bandwidth to revisit and to reflect on it meaningfully. And yet, during this ceremony, it felt like there was nothing else I could do. There was no changing the channel.

[00:13:44] Ernesto Londoño: These were feelings that needed to be felt. These were memories that needed to be revisited. And there was no opting out of it.

[00:13:59] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: [00:14:00] So this retreat that you go to, you actually do end up having pretty profound experiences. How do you emerge from it all?

[00:14:09] Ernesto Londoño: I think there were two things that happened. On the one hand, the symptoms of depression cleared. It was like the cobwebs were gone, they’d been power washed, and for the first time in months, I could think clearly and I felt joyful.

[00:14:27] Ernesto Londoño: It was like there had been a real hard reset of my emotional hardware. Music was pleasurable, like looking at nature was pleasurable. Being with my dog filled me with joy. You know, I think on another level, I realized at the time that there were all these things from my past, you know, from my childhood, from things I experienced throughout my career, that I never really had processed.

[00:14:56] Ernesto Londoño: And when I kind of started thinking about my own [00:15:00] personal journey in a chronological and linear way, it was inevitable to conclude that there was a lot of trauma that I had just sort of. papered over and soldiered through and that I had developed coping mechanisms. So I think I kind of understood in a clear way, yes, you’ve been really depressed, but also there’s like really good reasons for you to have reached this low.

[00:15:26] Ernesto Londoño: And if you’re going to get to a point where you’re going to be more resilient. It requires kind of retracing some of these steps, understanding them better, and just finding ways to make room for them.

[00:15:39] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: It seemed like a lot of your habits changed when you came home from that retreat. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

[00:15:46] Ernesto Londoño: Yeah. So the first big plot twist was I never wanted to touch alcohol again, and I haven’t had a drink since 2018. There was another surprising thing that happened, and it was that my appetite shifted, [00:16:00] whereas, you know, I used to be a huge carnivore and loved steak. My body all of a sudden started recoiling at the idea of eating a juicy, bloody steak, and then progressively I didn’t want chicken or fish.

[00:16:14] Ernesto Londoño: So, I became vegetarian, which also felt like Just a really strange thing, but it was kind of happening really intuitively and it was effortless. Um, and it was like flipping a switch. I think the other thing that happened was I had had sort of a slight interest in meditation, you know, for years, but it was never something that I’ve had reason to put in the time and effort and be serious and disciplined about it.

[00:16:41] Ernesto Londoño: But after this retreat, I kind of saw value in starting to sit every morning to meditate.

[00:16:48] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Wow. It’s, you know, from zero to 60, right? It’s a complete reversal of your previous habits, your previous life. You, you came back, like, Legitimately, a different person.

[00:16:58] Ernesto Londoño: Yeah, and it was very [00:17:00] mysterious. It was really surprising for people who knew me well.

[00:17:04] Ernesto Londoño: And initially, I think some people were worried about me. Like, what happened to him? And why won’t he have a beer?

[00:17:12] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Right. And how did you make sense of that? Did you feel good in all of those changes? Or were you also freaked out?

[00:17:18] Ernesto Londoño: No, I mean, I felt so ebullient, especially like in the immediate aftermath of that retreat, I just remember just being kind of a sponge of joy.

[00:17:27] Ernesto Londoño: You know, it was surprising. It was bewildering that this had happened, but I had no reason to question it. And it just felt like I was following my intuition and that my intuition had led me to some positive changes.

[00:17:42] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Now that it’s been a number of years since your first experience and that you’ve done this multiple times.

[00:17:48] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Long term, what would you say has been the impact on your mental health?

[00:17:56] Ernesto Londoño: One of the things that became clear to me early [00:18:00] on was that I had, like, I had a really impressive career and I, you know, focused on my work and my reputation as a journalist at the expense of my personal life. And what I mean by that is, you know, my relationships up to that point were really messy and were sort of a succession of failures.

[00:18:28] Ernesto Londoño: And I remember there was this moment early on where it became really, really clear to me that if I was going to be successful at anything in my life, it was going to be making myself open to loving and being loved as deeply and as much as possible. And I just remember like this really kind of corny line that went something along the lines of, you know, when all is said and done, that the only thing that will truly matter is how much you loved and how much you were loved in return.

[00:18:59] Ernesto Londoño: And it [00:19:00] sounds like a bad Hallmark card, but I remember just sitting with that idea and really feeling it deeply to my core and being really kind of immersed in its meaning, and it became something of a north star. It sort of filled me with hope that I now had a roadmap to sort of reorient my priorities and to move through the world differently.

[00:19:32] Ernesto Londoño: And, you know, Now, years later, I’m married. I moved to Minnesota in the middle of winter for love. I took a series of calculated risks in the pursuit of that, and they paid off. And I’m pretty sure I would have not done the things I’ve done, and I wouldn’t have made the choices I’ve made in the pursuit [00:20:00] of trying to sort of right size that part of my life.

[00:20:03] Ernesto Londoño: Had it not been for that clarity, that sort of bolt of clarity that told me you need to sort of think differently about your priorities.

[00:20:11] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: That’s huge. And this sort of sounds like it went beyond just mental health for you.

[00:20:17] Ernesto Londoño: To me, this was also an introduction to kind of the spiritual deficit that had been kind of the default setting of my life.

[00:20:27] Ernesto Londoño: I was somebody who, you know, was raised Catholic nominally, but didn’t really find much comfort or solace in that faith and in the church as it existed at the time. So I kind of went through life without any real religious affiliation or spiritual practice. And I think these really mysterious and powerful and hard and mind opening experiences do kind of open a portal into at least the possibility that there’s some external divine force out there [00:21:00] that maybe we should be in relationship with.

[00:21:03] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: There’s a huge rush underway to have certain psychedelics be designated as medicine. And when I say medicine, I mean like, In the eyes of the FDA, that’s the route that’s being taken to commercialize these drugs. And I’m curious how you and the people that you spoke with square that with the idea of, you know, these more mystical impacts of these drugs.

[00:21:25] Ernesto Londoño: Yeah. Yeah. It’s a question I think about a lot. I think one reason that scientists and other psychedelic enthusiasts have been interested in kind of getting through the finish line of some form of regulatory approval is that it will likely lead to legalization. So it would sort of shift the legal designation of these drugs as compounds that in the eye of the government are not only harmful but have [00:22:00] no medicinal value.

[00:22:02] Ernesto Londoño: If we were to get to that, meaning if, you know, mainstream medicine were to make room for these experiences and come up with protocols and the ability for people to access these and for licensed professionals to prescribe them. There’s a really fascinating question of whether you would be losing something sacred and essential by undergoing these experiences in a really sanitized clinical setting and sort of devoid of some of the ritual and some of the, um, cosmology that, you know, Indigenous people have come to explain to us.

[00:22:45] Ernesto Londoño: My sense is that it’s a good thing if we you know, in the years ahead, managed to come up with a psychedelics field that is a pretty open tent. I [00:23:00] think the science and the very kind of like, regulated and tightly controlled settings may be ideal for some people, particularly for people who are highly vulnerable.

[00:23:13] Ernesto Londoño: I think that may be a good entry point for some people into these experiences which may otherwise be really scary or destabilizing in the absence of a more robust container and safeguards. Um, but I do think there’s the question to be raised and a debate to be had about whether in the long run, you know, the majority of people should experience these altered states in a communal settings, in a ritualistic manner.

[00:23:46] Ernesto Londoño: And I don’t think you have to pick one over the other. I think you can let both lanes, you know, kind of grow and become increasingly accessible. And I think there’s a lot each one [00:24:00] can learn from the other.

[00:24:02] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Coming back to the journalism, what you’d initially thought of as a newspaper story ended up being this really personal journey for you.

[00:24:11] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: But then you eventually came back to the idea of reporting on ayahuasca retreats for your book. Tell me about that decision.

[00:24:18] Ernesto Londoño: That happened years later. So, you know, this first retreat was in 2018. And, you know, I continued doing my job covering five countries for the New York Times. But I was really interested in you know, kind of the aftermath of this retreat, and I wanted to dig deeper and keep coming back to these experiences.

[00:24:39] Ernesto Londoño: So, for the next few years, I went on about one retreat per year, and I kind of saw that as a tune up of sorts to keep exploring, you know, this thing that had happened that was so mesmerizing, but also filled me with so many questions. And then, I think the more you start digging into the field [00:25:00] of ayahuasca retreat centers in Latin America, you start kind of stumbling into all these thorny questions and all these red flags in the field.

[00:25:10] Ernesto Londoño: But then also, like, you stumble into all these crazy characters, all these strange centers. You realize the price tag on some of these retreats are outlandish. There’s a little bit of a culty vibe. So, you know, early on, it was really clear to me that not only was this really fascinating and rewarding personally, but journalistically, there was kind of a Goldmine? Waiting to be explored?

[00:25:39] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: After the break, Ernesto Londoño reveals what he discovered while he was exploring the world of psychedelic retreats. Stay with us.

[00:25:58] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: I’m Arielle Duhaime-Ross, and this is [00:26:00] Altered States. I’ve been talking to Ernesto Londoño, who recently published his book, Trippy, in which he writes about ayahuasca retreats in the Americas and relates his own experiences with the drug.

[00:26:10] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Ernesto, it seems to me like we are in the midst of a boom in ayahuasca retreats, or at the very least that more and more people in North America are willing to take part in these kinds of retreats.

[00:26:21] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Am I wrong about that? Is that the sense that you get as well?

[00:26:25] Ernesto Londoño: Yeah, I think it’s a field that’s growing really rapidly. And I think in the U. S. you’ve had an underground ayahuasca scene for many years, but I would say over the past couple of years, much of this is happening pretty openly. And uh, The reason for that is I think many of these once underground communities have become aware of the really interesting case law at the intersection of drug policy and the use of psychedelics as sacraments, and felt that it was safe to start operating openly, that [00:27:00] they were going to make a claim that their use of these compounds was protected under religious freedom laws.

[00:27:08] Ernesto Londoño: So now we’re in an era where A lot of people I think are testing the boundaries of how much the government is going to tolerate when it comes to using these compounds ritualistically, but also selling them for people who wish to do so.

[00:27:25] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Did you have any hesitation to pursue this as a journalist as opposed to just a participant looking to heal?

[00:27:32] Ernesto Londoño: Yeah, I think I had a lot of fear about what it would mean to come out of the psychedelics closet and the extent to which that may compromise my credibility or harm my reputation. Um, I think you and I are now speaking in an era where this is pretty widespread and normalized and, you know, kind of everybody and their mother has some psychedelic or psychedelic adjacent [00:28:00] experience.

[00:28:00] Ernesto Londoño: But even a few years ago, it did feel like I was doing something that was going to be risky. Um, so, I had to be thoughtful and I had to have a lot of conversations with people about whether this was doable and whether there might be fallout.

[00:28:17] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: In your book, quite a few people you talk to about ayahuasca describe the plant as having intelligence and as a spiritual entity with its own desires and purpose.

[00:28:28] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Can you talk about that?

[00:28:30] Ernesto Londoño: A lot of people speak about ayahuasca as this Divine Feminine Energy, often calling it Mother Ayahuasca or even Grandmother Ayahuasca. And initially I found these descriptions kind of bewildering and a little off putting, but the more experiences I had, the more I sat in ceremony, the more open I became to the possibility that there truly is some form of external intelligence that we dial [00:29:00] into in these altered states.

[00:29:02] Ernesto Londoño: There was this one particular conversation that comes to mind with an elder in an indigenous village in Brazil. His name is Mushuino, and he took me on this plant walk through these trails near their village. And he slowed down next to a handful of plants that were near and dear to his heart and explained their significance, sort of explained their spirits.

[00:29:29] Ernesto Londoño: And what he said was that in order for these plants to work medicinally or spiritually as sacraments, it’s really important to talk to the plants. before you pick them from the earth to sort of be really tender and intentional about how you are approaching these live sentient beings and making sure that you’re being very deliberate about what it is you’re asking of the plant realm.

[00:29:56] Ernesto Londoño: And I remember initially just being very skeptical about [00:30:00] that. Skeptical that these shrubs, you know, that are everywhere in the jungle really had kind of an innate wisdom and sort of magical properties for lack of a better term. But on the other hand, I think I’ve become a lot more humble over the years about all the things we don’t know.

[00:30:19] Ernesto Londoño: We understand what our intelligence entails and how our intelligence works. But there’s so much about not just plants but animals that I don’t think we fully appreciate and perhaps never will.

[00:30:36] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: What is the legal status of ayahuasca in countries that you went to, to report on ayahuasca retreats?

[00:30:44] Ernesto Londoño: Yeah, so it varies slightly from place to place.

[00:30:46] Ernesto Londoño: In Brazil, Santo Domingo back in, I think it was like the 1980s, led, you know, this pretty sophisticated effort to persuade regulators that these compounds should not be classified under their normal [00:31:00] narcotics. regulations. So they carved out the ceremonial use of ayahuasca as something that was legal and it remains so, as long as it’s done as something that’s spiritual or ceremonial.

[00:31:12] Ernesto Londoño: Peru also has carved out exceptions in its drug laws, understanding that this is a vital piece of Indigenous heritage in the country. The same holds true for Colombia. Costa Rica is an interesting outlier in that it’s become an increasingly kind of crowded and competitive marketplace for psychedelic retreats because it’s kind of more accessible than those Latin American countries and accommodations tend to be a little bougier.

[00:31:39] Ernesto Londoño: So it kind of attracts people for whom the Amazon feels like a bridge too far. But in Costa Rica. These compounds have no legal standing, meaning people who are selling and importing ayahuasca are breaking drug laws. But Costa Rica also decriminalized personal drug use, which means [00:32:00] that as a retreat participant, if you fly there and just take The ayahuasca that is offered to you by these retreat operators, you personally are not really taking a legal risk.

[00:32:12] Ernesto Londoño: And then here in the United States, ayahuasca, because it contains DMT, is still considered a Schedule 1 drug, meaning the most restrictive and perceived as the most dangerous class of drugs. But interestingly, there’s been a handful of spiritual communities that have won legal battles. with the government, which has acknowledged that they are serious about their spiritual and sacramental use of these compounds.

[00:32:43] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: So with this boom in retreats, how are the indigenous communities who are holding some of these retreats, how are they adapting to the success of these, you know, I want to use the word business, these businesses, you know, how is that impacting them? [00:33:00]

[00:33:00] Ernesto Londoño: There’s a broad range of views. There are some indigenous people who feel that ayahuasca tourism and bringing in a bunch of white people to drink ayahuasca over a weekend is not in keeping with their belief system and their traditions, and kind of perverts something that is deeply sacred for them.

[00:33:19] Ernesto Londoño: You know, on the other hand, I think this has brought a lot of money to communities that have been struggling for years to stay afloat financially and to even just hold on to their land and their traditions and their ways of life. You know, there’s also kind of a middle ground of places where you have retreat centers run by foreigners, who, uh, employ Indigenous people to run the ceremonies.

[00:33:44] Ernesto Londoño: And I’ve seen kind of a range of this. There are some places where you do see that the people who are running the retreat have reverence and deep respect for the Indigenous people. And then there’s other places where Indigenous people are kind of trotted out almost as [00:34:00] artifacts and ornaments to give sort of the experience of a of credibility or legitimacy, but in ways that feel unseemly at the end of the day and kind of exploitive.

[00:34:10] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Yeah.

[00:34:11] Ernesto Londoño: So I think it’s a messy question, and I think it’s also important to recognize that the way we are now drinking ayahuasca in this modern age is very different than how Indigenous people approached this just a few decades ago. So these traditions are changing really, really quickly.

[00:34:28] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: So, in terms of the history, what do people need to understand about ayahuasca’s origins and the path that this brew took to reach someone like you?

[00:34:38] Ernesto Londoño: There isn’t a really satisfying chronology of where or when this started or for what reason. And I think anthropologists and archaeologists, um, you know, may never find a good answer. And one thing that I thought was really interesting was when I was interviewing indigenous people about this question and trying to pin [00:35:00] down the history, like you would, you know, following just conventional journalistic instincts, they thought it was kind of a strange line of inquiry.

[00:35:07] Ernesto Londoño: Like to them, it didn’t really matter just where or when it started. Like they have their own cosmology, their own understanding of like the roots of this and the fact that it’s part of a spiritual realm. But the question of who. understood that mixing these two plans would yield such a powerful brew, um, just kind of seems besides the point to them.

[00:35:31] Ernesto Londoño: You know, they saw this as something that could be used medicinally to heal people who were ill or who were dealing with challenges. But it was also, there was also kind of a darker and more sinister side to how it could be used. For instance, in Indigenous tribes, that oftentimes were at war with rival tribes.

[00:35:49] Ernesto Londoño: The use of ayahuasca was seen as something that could give you an advantage in the battlefield, could help you seduce women from a rival tribe, for [00:36:00] instance. So I think what matters about understanding that history is an understanding that these compounds are not inherently benign or therapeutic. They can be harnessed to heal and to understand deeper truths.

[00:36:16] Ernesto Londoño: But it all requires kind of the right place, time, and intention. So it’s really important to kind of be clear eyed about the fact that just by undergoing these experiences, just by taking these compounds, you’re not by default going to walk away feeling better and feeling transformed in ways that are going to be healthy.

[00:36:37] Ernesto Londoño: You may change that are harmful. You may open yourself up to beliefs that don’t serve you. So it really kind of is a good idea to just understand that and to be really critical and careful about who you sit with and what kind of communities you end up gravitating toward, especially if you’re really vulnerable and suggestible to begin with.[00:37:00]

[00:37:00] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: In your reporting, you write about some of, some really difficult experiences that you both witnessed and heard about. People going through some really difficult things, some horror stories, essentially, at some of these retreats. And I was wondering if you could talk about some of that.

[00:37:16] Ernesto Londoño: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s important for people to realize that it’s easy to get hurt in the pursuit of healing with psychedelics.

[00:37:23] Ernesto Londoño: One of the main ways in which this happens is when people are sexually abused, either when they’re under the influence of a compound like ayahuasca, or in the days that follow when they’re still a little bit groggy and, you know, kind of trying to get their bearings. And, um, There’s this chapter in the book that tells the horrific story of a retreat that a number of women attended in Peru.

[00:37:51] Ernesto Londoño: And they were there because Several of them were really impressed by the reputation of the guy operating the retreat, who was [00:38:00] not only offering ayahuasca ceremonies, but teaching them how to administer Kambo, which is a medicine from the Amazon that comes from a frog. And what happened over the course of a week in the Amazon was that he started preying on these women sexually on three different nights, and one of them actually was raped.

[00:38:27] Ernesto Londoño: And toward the middle of the retreat, when the women are trying to figure out what this means and how to handle it, they confide in each other. They compare notes and they end up confronting him. And he initially denies that anything inappropriate went down and then starts apologizing profusely, but refuses to take them back to the city.

[00:38:48] Ernesto Londoño: And these women end up arming themselves with knives, fearing for their lives, essentially. And, uh, Once they left, and once they blew the whistle on what they [00:39:00] experienced, a torrent of similar testimonies came forward, and it became clear that many women who had been to the center had been abused, and that most of them walked away and weren’t willing or able to speak their truth.

[00:39:23] Ernesto Londoño: So I think one of the things that happens, especially with sexual abuse cases is there’s deep shame when you’ve been the victim of these acts because I think people may feel like You know, I was an idiot putting myself in such a vulnerable position But also I think another reason that keeps people from speaking out is kind of this notion that you know If I have come to believe that the war on drugs is wrong and that these experiences and compounds can be therapeutic I don’t want to give this whole field a bad name So there’s sort of a reluctance to kind of add a new kind of [00:40:00] argument or talking point for people who would want more strict drug policies by shedding light on these dark corners of the field.

[00:40:09] Ernesto Londoño: And then I think the other way in which I think things can go sideways is, There’s something that happens in the aftermath of these experiences that scientists describe as a period of neuroplasticity, meaning your brain is operating in different ways and is forming ideas in kind of novel ways. And this can make you really open to things that in the past you may have thought were a bad idea.

[00:40:32] Ernesto Londoño: It may make you less inhibited or discerning than you otherwise would be. And, you know, for instance, one thing I encountered and reported on in the book is at this retreat in Costa Rica, at this place called Ritmia, You know, it’s four nights of ceremony, you know, back to back. So you’re pretty sleep deprived and really kind of groggy toward, you know, the end of the week.

[00:40:55] Ernesto Londoño: And then toward the end of the week they start offering you all these things you could spend a lot of [00:41:00] money on if you really want to turbocharge your healing journey. So like one of the things on offer, are these stem cell injections for like 17, 000. And you start seeing that people who seem really kind of smart and sophisticated when you met them on day one are very open to the idea that this might be a good investment, even though, you know, it’s a sham.

[00:41:24] Ernesto Londoño: So when you think about the ways in which this could go wrong in the years ahead, I think like, you know, if you have people who become very charismatic leaders of spiritual communities using psychedelics, you could see the seeds of cults. in some of these communities that initially attract people who are struggling, who are dealing with trauma, and may be ill equipped to be careful and discerning and not become highly suggestible to things that may be harmful for them down the line.

[00:41:57] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Are there practices that retreats can do [00:42:00] that can help give people confidence that maybe they’re signing up for something that is a little bit more vetted, a little bit more safe, you know, maybe doing things a little bit better than others?

[00:42:09] Ernesto Londoño: Yeah, I think one thing to watch for is are retreat centers screening applicants carefully?

[00:42:15] Ernesto Londoño: Are they doing due diligence and doing a full intake of your medical history and just a clear understanding of who you are and what is driving your interest in this? You know, and then I think the secondary question is like, Is there anything that is being asked of you, you know, in addition to showing up and doing the hard work of healing?

[00:42:33] Ernesto Londoño: Are there any things that are being encouraged in terms of financial commitments or, you know, other things that people are asking of you? I would regard those as red flags. But for now, I think, unfortunately, the best way to navigate this is to try to find people you know and you trust who have been places where they felt safe.

[00:42:54] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: There seems to be a lot of focus on community among these various groups that you spent time with at these retreats. [00:43:00] And at the same time, you yourself were experiencing a lot of loneliness and you were sort of distanced from your family, somewhat as a protective measure at the time. The way you tell it, it feels like you might not have realized how much you were really dealing with if you hadn’t taken ayahuasca with the guide.

[00:43:18] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Do you ever wonder if you could have gotten there? through other means, like various forms of therapy?

[00:43:26] Ernesto Londoño: Yeah, I have asked myself that question, and I’ve contemplated, like, what different scenarios would have looked like. What if I had gone on SSRIs, or what if I had embarked on, like, psychoanalysis, which I did actually in my teenage years for a while without a lot of success.

[00:43:43] Ernesto Londoño: And You know, I think it’s impossible to know what the road not taken would have been like. And had this not been something that I stumbled into, you know, would I have died by suicide? Would I have found another means to feel better and [00:44:00] to heal? I don’t think I will ever know, but what I do know is that for some people who are really, really trapped in this fog of depression, this date in which you’re obsessively thinking, Self limiting and destructive thoughts.

[00:44:19] Ernesto Londoño: I have yet to find something that so quickly and effectively takes you out of this dark hole and gives you a burst of oxygen to think clearly and strategically about how you got there. There may be other ways to do this. We may find breakthroughs in mental health care, but for now, I think these are really powerful tools that if used effectively and safely can be transformative for people.

[00:44:49] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: I think that sometimes when these stories are told, the idea that this was, So quick, quicker than, than therapy would go, because therapy takes time, it just does, it [00:45:00] depends on the modalities that you’re doing, some are more effective than others, but it takes time. And the way that some people react to these stories is like, oh, like that was a quick fix, you know, there’s like, I feel like there’s still a little bit of a stigma around that.

[00:45:12] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Did you ever feel that?

[00:45:14] Ernesto Londoño: Yeah, and I think some of the ways in which these experiences are marketed or described when people say it’s 10 years of therapy in one night, I think oftentimes can set up people for unrealistic expectations. Yeah, I’ve come to see these experiences as something that can open doors that.

[00:45:33] Ernesto Londoño: weren’t available to you before. But once that door is open, you still have to walk in and look at the mess inside the room and start clearing it out. And the psychedelics are not gonna do that work for you. I think psychedelics definitely can be something of a ladder that takes you to a higher place and gives you a richer view that then enables you to make different choices.

[00:45:59] Ernesto Londoño: It’s not [00:46:00] going to do the lion’s share of the work that is required for people to transform and to heal and to lead a fundamentally different lives. At the end of the day, that takes tenacity, it takes discipline, it takes continuing effort, and psychedelics alone are just not going to take you there.

[00:46:23] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Ernesto Londoño, thank you so much for your time and for telling us about your experiences. We really appreciate it.

[00:46:30] Ernesto Londoño: It’s been a huge pleasure.

[00:46:31] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Ernesto Londoño’s book is called Trippy, The Peril and Promise of Medicinal Psychedelics.

[00:46:49] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: The research for this episode was done by Cassidy Rosenblum. Altered States is a production of the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics and PRX. Adizah Eghan [00:47:00] is our senior editor. Jennie Cataldo is our senior producer. Our associate producer is Cassidy Rosenblum. Our audio engineers are Tommy Bazarian and Terence Bernardo.

[00:47:10] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: Fact checking by Graham Heysha. Rotating BCSP script readers are Michael Pollan, Michael Silver, and Bob Jesse. Our executive producers are Jocelyn Gonzalez and Malia Wollan. And our project manager is Edwin Ochoa. I’m your host, Arielle Duhaime-Ross. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review Altered States wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:47:31] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: 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. Altered States does not recommend or encourage the use of psychedelics or offer instructions in their use.

[00:47:50] Arielle Duhaime-Ross: We’ll be back next [00:48:00] week.