podcast
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Every Thursday on The Assignment, host Audie Cornish explores the animating forces of this extraordinary American political moment. It’s not about the horse race, it’s about the larger cultural ideas driving the conversation: the role of online influencers on the electorate, the intersection of pop culture and politics, and discussions with primary voices and thinkers who are shaping the political conversation.
The Power and Promise of Psychedelics in Therapy
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
May 9, 2024
Bad trips, anti-drug PSAs, and the crackdown under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 helped stigmatize psychedelics in the U.S. But now, there’s renewed clinical inquiry into whether these drugs can ease emotional trauma. To understand the future of psychedelics, Audie calls up Ernesto Londoño, reporter at the New York Times and author of the new book, “Trippy: The Peril and Promise of Medicinal Psychedelics.” They discuss his own mental health and psychedelic journeys and why he thinks there’s good reason for both hope and skepticism.
Episode Transcript
Audie Cornish
00:00:00
'Bad trips, anti-drug PSAs, and the crackdown under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 helped stigmatize psychedelics in the U.S. Seriously, those PSAs were a lot.
U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare's "Curious Alice" PSA
00:00:12
Do you know what you're doing? What are we doing? What time is it? It's six o'clock? Tea time. Time to take a pill. No, why?
Audie Cornish
00:00:20
This one was made by a U.S. government health department. And it's a riff on Alice in Wonderland, with the White Rabbit on uppers and the Mad Hatter on LSD.
U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare's "Curious Alice" PSA
00:00:31
Sleeping pills are beautiful. Heroin is king. Everything is clearer now. Just let me do my thing
Audie Cornish
00:00:40
Now, since that time, hallucinogens have been locked in a category of drugs for high potential for abuse with no medical value. But three trends have converged in recent years to change that. First, the return of clinical inquiry. Globally, more researchers are looking into whether hallucinogens, which people enjoy illicitly for their mind altering effects, can also help ease emotional trauma. LSD, psilocybin, aka magic mushrooms, and MDMA are being studied for people struggling with addiction and PTSD. Dimethyltryptamine, also known as DMT, is part of ayahuasca, and is being studied in the context of anxiety and depression. Second, decriminalization in more than a dozen countries. And in the last four years, Colorado and Oregon voters allowed some uses of substances like shrooms by ballot. And cities in Massachusetts, Michigan and Washington state have followed. Lastly, there's the destigmatization. Celebrities of all kinds are speaking publicly about their therapeutic "trips," so to speak. I mean, here was actor Jada Pinkett Smith during a book tour last year on the TODAY Show.
Hoda Kotb on the TODAY Show
00:01:49
Ayahuasca really was
Jada Pinkett Smith on the TODAY Show
00:01:51
That that was the turning point.
Hoda Kotb on the TODAY Show
00:01:53
So that in and of itself turns you from on the brink of suicide.
Jada Pinkett Smith on the TODAY Show
00:01:58
And I never had a suicidal thought again. Now, in saying that ayahuasca is not for everybody.
Hoda Kotb on the TODAY Show
00:02:04
Yeah.
Audie Cornish
00:02:05
It turns out there is a burgeoning industry ready to serve the new influx of people who find themselves turning away from traditional mental health therapy, and a growing branch of churches and spiritual retreats for whom certain legal loopholes have allowed them to meet that demand.
Ernesto Londoño
00:02:23
That made this whole ecosystem of retreats and practitioners who were starting to operate ever more openly, really fascinating, because on the one hand, I think it's signaled that the mainstream mental health care system was failing many, many people, but also that many of the most vulnerable people struggling with very serious conditions were gravitating toward practitioners who had the least experience and sort of the fewest safeguards in place.
Audie Cornish
00:02:56
Today, the gap between what we know and what we don't about psychedelic therapy. I'm Audie Cornish, and this is The Assignment.
Ernesto Londoño
00:03:18
My name is Ernesto Londoño. I am a national correspondent at the New York Times. And I recently wrote a book, titled Trippy: The Peril and Promise of Medicinal Psychedelics.
Audie Cornish
00:03:31
I notice you do not introduce yourself as, like, a psychedelics user.
Ernesto Londoño
00:03:38
That's true. That's probably not going to be the first line of any bio that I post.
Audie Cornish
00:03:44
Even for a book called "Trippy?" Feels relevant.
Ernesto Londoño
00:03:50
And I am somebody who stumbled into the psychedelics rabbit hole and walked away with a ton of questions.
Audie Cornish
00:04:00
Which he explores in his new book. He comes to the subject with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Ernesto Londoño
00:04:07
If I think of my own upbringing, I was born and raised in Colombia. You know, very much under the shadow of the war on drugs, which played out very violently. And, you know, I was conditioned to think that all drug use was problematic and bad and, you know, morally wrong. And, you know, one thing that was really missing from my understanding of the vast spectrum of mind altering substances is that some actually are therapeutic and have therapeutic applications that, got sort of washed out during the prohibition era, starting in the 70s.
Audie Cornish
00:04:44
I wanted to better understand how he went from skeptic to participant, and he told me that journey began a few years ago when, after years of covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he got a new job: Brazil correspondent for the New York Times.
Ernesto Londoño
00:05:00
'This was sort of a dream come true. It was an incredible assignment. I got to cover five countries. I had, you know, editors who were very invested in my success. And, you know, it seemed like I had all the runway in the world. But just days into getting settled in this new life and my new apartment, which had a majestic view of the ocean, I became really depressed. And, you know, I think as I look back on my life, I think I have lived with depression since childhood, but I've always been able to white knuckle through, and I developed pretty effective coping mechanisms, including really pouring myself into work. What I knew was that I was feeling so depressed and had reached a point where things felt so out of control that I was starting to think about self-harm, and I was starting to think thoughts that took on a really ominous nature. You know, interestingly, one of the story ideas I had when I first arrived in Brazil was exploring these psychedelic retreats that were drawing more and more people into the jungle, including veterans. Somebody had sort of planted the seeds, and I had identified that as something that might be journalistically really interesting.
Audie Cornish
00:06:17
Yeah, that's a very cool story to pitch to editors, right? Like, hey, I'm in Brazil. And did you know people are coming here – international visitors –
Ernesto Londoño
00:06:25
Right.
Audie Cornish
00:06:26
To do some Amazon retreat where they come out saying their whole life is changed.
Ernesto Londoño
00:06:32
Correct.
Audie Cornish
00:06:33
And in fact, kind of kind of tabloid sounding, right, like very clickable. So you're walking in this thinking like, this is going to be a pretty, I don't know, maybe straightforward story?
Ernesto Londoño
00:06:45
Yeah. You know, the original sort of idea was I'm going to go and find a good place where I can shadow retreat participants, and this will be a neat story. But then I think there was one night in particular where I was really having trouble falling asleep. I was feeling, really low. I probably had had, you know, 3 or 4 glasses of whiskey and about, you know, 3 or 4:00 a.m. Having been unable to to get any rest. I opened my computer and I googled "ayahuasca retreats Brazil." And I stumbled into this YouTube video, recorded by a woman who's been one of the pioneers of this nascent retreat industry in South America.
Audie Cornish
00:07:28
That's a real a.m. Google.
Ernesto Londoño
00:07:30
'And --
Audie Cornish
00:07:31
Right? That's like I cannot sleep. The vibe is desperation.
Ernesto Londoño
00:07:37
Yes. And something clicked for me in that moment. And when you go back and look at that video, you know, much of it sounds kind of bonkers.
Spirit Vine Center on YouTube
00:07:47
But when you drink the tea, ayahuasca as an amplifier will show you your fears, and then you will get rid of that and you will move to another realm.
Ernesto Londoño
00:07:58
But there was something really calming about the woman's voice. Her name is Silvia. And the notion that maybe this was an off ramp, that maybe I hadn't clicked on this link by mistake. And the next morning, you know, I wake up, I fill out an application form for the retreat, and it's hard to explain why this felt like a sensible idea and why I didn't have more due diligence questions to ask myself and others, but I kind of felt like I was on a path of no return, and I felt this was something I needed to explore.
Audie Cornish
00:08:36
You write in the book that there are a number of people who end up in this place, right? We'll call it your 4 a.m. place, where in one way or another, they they haven't been able to access or haven't availed themselves of whatever mental health, support they can find, if they can find it. And this world of retreats and this world that is steadily becoming more clinical is there waiting, right? It's filling a vacuum of a kind.
Ernesto Londoño
00:09:12
Definitely. You know, one thing I experienced consistently is that a lot of people who signed up for these retreats do so as a Hail Mary of sorts. I can't tell you how many times I interviewed people who told me, you know, "I was so suicidal and I had lost hope in everything else I had tried that I said, you know, if this thing kills me, at least I will have tried the last thing on my list." So, you know, that made this whole ecosystem of retreats and practitioners who were starting to operate ever more openly really fascinating, because on the one hand, I think it's signaled that the mainstream mental health care system was failing many, many people, but also that many of the most vulnerable people struggling with very serious conditions were gravitating toward practitioners who had the least experience and sort of the fewest safeguards in place. And that makes it really, really interesting, but also a little vertigo inducing.
Audie Cornish
00:10:16
Just for us to understand this, what is the current law around medicinal use?
Ernesto Londoño
00:10:25
Well, it varies by country. Where I got my start in Brazil, the specific kind of retreat I went to, which is an ayahuasca retreat, is legal. If you find your way to a spiritual community or a retreat community that is doing this in a ritualistic way, it's legal. In the United States, most of these compounds, continue to be Schedule I compounds, meaning they are illegal. And, have been so since since the 70s and the 80s.
Audie Cornish
00:10:58
Under federal law.
Ernesto Londoño
00:10:59
'Under federal law. Correct. But we're starting to see, a really interesting movement. On the one hand, we're starting to see states and cities take action to decriminalize some of these compounds, especially the ones that have shown promise in treating, conditions like depression, serious depression that does not respond to conventional treatments. So Oregon and Colorado right now are the places where you're starting to see the quasi legal marketplace for treatment with psilocybin mushrooms, psychoactive mushrooms, and many other cities have started decriminalizing these compounds or telling the police that it should be the lowest enforcement priority, because they see that many people are self-medicating with these compounds, and they don't want that to lead to legal consequences that are going to make their lives harder.
Audie Cornish
00:11:51
This is also interesting because when it comes to cannabis and the the legalization movement there, at first the conversation was about medicinal uses, but it has very quickly been mainstreamed as recreational. This is not the case with psychedelics. Right now, the conversation about psychedelics is, as far as I can see generally about what its medical benefits could be and whether we are, at least in the U.S., even in a position to figure that out.
Ernesto Londoño
00:12:29
Yes. And I think there's a couple of features that are unique to the way the psychedelics movement is, is is advancing and that is that, you know, on the one hand, veterans have become key advocates to expand access to psychedelic treatments and to pour more dollars into psychedelics research. So politically, because many of the people trying to make headway on this issue are tying their brand or their specific lane of research to the veteran mental health crisis, that has meant that this has a significant amount of bipartisan support.
Audie Cornish
00:13:03
I see, because it's taps into the support our vets, support our military families.
Ernesto Londoño
00:13:09
Absolutely. But on the other hand, churches and spiritual communities have become sort of the path of least resistance right now for people who want to use psychedelics in ceremonial or therapeutic settings. So what I've seen, which is really interesting, is a lot of the people who end up gravitating toward these, toward these, communities, are people who come from backgrounds of faith and who have a complicated relationship with organized religion. So, you know, from from a political and cultural standpoint, I think you're seeing strange bedfellows coalesce.
Audie Cornish
00:13:47
So there's loosening the stigma. You're getting more clinical interest. You're getting some little bit loosening of the law. What that sounds like, though, is this weird world where you have therapy straddling like spiritual and clinical approaches?
Ernesto Londoño
00:14:11
Yes. And I think that's made this a really complicated field from a regulatory and legal standpoint.
Audie Cornish
00:14:18
I mean, that sounds that's very clinical way of saying uh what? Right? Like, how? Should this be legal? How do you teach a form of therapy that's barely legal? What do we know? Who should practice it? How do we deal with the spiritual part of it that might be ancestral? It just feels like it's more than the Wild West. Like it's space.
Ernesto Londoño
00:14:43
'Absolutely. When you take a look at what's happening on the clinical side, you have well-respected scientists, clinicians, psychiatrists, neurologists really interested in understanding what exactly happens to the brain of a person after a psychedelic experience or a handful of psychedelic experiences.
Audie Cornish
00:14:59
Because they don't totally know. We should say that, for the record, we have some idea, but there's not as much research as we would like.
Ernesto Londoño
00:15:07
Correct. But, you know, one of the findings, that that many researchers have stumbled into is that people reported experiencing a mystical phenomenon and it varies from person to person. Some people will talk about connecting with dead ancestors. Some people will talk about, you know, taking peeks into past lives. You know, things that current science really doesn't have very good answers for. But what you also see is that people walk away from these experiences feeling a lot better. When people who had been struggling with addiction or PTSD or depression that was not responding to conventional treatments, when they experienced an immediate reprieve of symptoms, you know, that's something that's really unusual in psychiatry, and it's why I think the field is so interested in getting a sense of of how it can harness the healing potentials of these tools. But there's a lot of unanswered questions. You know, what kind of people are these compounds dangerous for?
Audie Cornish
00:16:10
Do you have a copy of your book with you?
Ernesto Londoño
00:16:13
I do.
Audie Cornish
00:16:13
All right. So on page 29, you describe your first ayahuasca experience. So set this up for us. Where are you when you have your first experience?
Ernesto Londoño
00:16:23
Yes. So I am, in a very beautiful, lush area of Brazil, in the state of Bahia, at a retreat called Spirit Vine, which is run by a woman named Sylvia, who is a psychotherapist by training. And when I walk in, I'm very skeptical because I'm hearing a lot of things.
Audie Cornish
00:16:45
I think you call it a cult.
Ernesto Londoño
00:16:45
Right?
Audie Cornish
00:16:47
You straight up in the book are like, what is this? The vibe is cult.
Ernesto Londoño
00:16:53
There is a lot of woo woo, and there is a lot of talk that, you know, just sounds really, just difficult for me to process.
Audie Cornish
00:17:01
And also the process of doing it is not a clinical process. Right? It isn't like.
Ernesto Londoño
00:17:06
No
Audie Cornish
00:17:06
Fill this script, sit down with a glass of water. It's like, don't – fast before you do this. Don't have sex. Don't do this. Don't do that. Your body needs to be, your mind needs to be clear, etc., etc.. So when you walk into the first experience, how much do they lean into it? Like is there music? Is there – does it feel spiritual or does it feel like a psychotherapist is working with you?
Ernesto Londoño
00:17:33
It does not feel like being in psychotherapy. You're in this round ceremony room which has sort of a cone shaped roof. You're hearing the sounds of the jungle all around you, which is very, very loud and captivating. And after each participant is served a shot glass of ayahuasca, which tastes awful. You lay down in the dark, in a little mat on the floor with a blanket and a pillow, and each person has a bucket because many people vomit after drinking ayahuasca.
Audie Cornish
00:18:03
Hmm, you're not selling it so far, but continue.
Ernesto Londoño
00:18:08
Yeah, I'm not on commission so I can be transparent about what this is like
Audie Cornish
00:18:13
I love it, I love it.
Ernesto Londoño
00:18:15
But the lights dim and, the music starts and the music tends to be percussive early on in the ceremony. And it I think it's meant to sort of agitate you and to get sort of the mind stirred. So as you start feeling the first effects of the compound that you've drank and it's it kind of enters the bloodstream, you really start connecting with the music in a way that feels really, really primal.
Audie Cornish
00:18:42
Do you mind reading some of that?
Ernesto Londoño
00:18:44
Okay. The colors became brighter, the outlines sharper, and the shapes more ornate with every passing moment. I felt anesthetized, surrendering to the majesty of these mysterious visions. Were they the product of my mind? Gifts from another realm? Evidence that Princess, who was another participant, was onto something? Or was this simply what it felt like to be on drugs? I noticed I was smiling as I pondered these questions. Then I felt the unexpected flow of tears that drifted onto the pillow from the corner of my eyes. It didn't feel like conventional crying. There was no heavy breathing. No tightness in my chest and not a hint of sadness. I had never felt lighter, less burdened. For a few precious moments. The fog of depression cleared; its shackles suddenly unclasped.
Audie Cornish
00:19:59
What's it like to read that now?
Ernesto Londoño
00:20:03
You know, Audie, it's interesting. I recently recorded the audiobook, and, I had to stop many times because I started crying. You know, this is all really fascinating to revisit because there's a part of me that doesn't recognize the person I was in in that period of time now. But I think one thing I felt consistently in writing the book, but also in reading the book out loud recently to myself, was a huge amount of compassion for these earlier versions of myself. And one thing that was instantly apparent is that I was not able to offer myself that kind of compassion in real time.
Audie Cornish
00:20:48
More with Ernesto Londoño in just a moment. Stay with us. Welcome back to The Assignment. I'm Audie Cornish. So there have been more people coming forward lately about their experiences with psychedelics in the context of their mental health. Ernesto Londoño's reporting for his new book also found that there are still many questions about how and what a safe experience should look like.
Ernesto Londoño
00:21:16
'One thing that became apparent instantly is that when you take psychedelics, especially if you're vulnerable to start with, it induces a period of malleable thinking, which I think makes you very easy to persuade, to think differently, to act differently. So you become highly suggestible and in the wrong hands, under the wrong guidance, things can things can go really bad. You know, one thing that has been a problem in many corners of the so-called psychedelics renaissance is that guides often end up sexually harassing or abusing people in their care. And there's, I think, historically been a tendency to be very quiet about these incidents. And many people who've been victims of this form of abuse are reluctant to speak out, on the one hand, because they feel tremendous shame that they put themselves in this kind of situation and made themselves vulnerable. But there's another layer to the cone of silence. And that is, I think, that many people who have come to understand that these compounds are therapeutic and have been healing for them don't want to give the whole field a bad name. So there's a lot of circling the wagons that happens. That unfortunately means that predators remain in business.
Audie Cornish
00:22:34
What about the pressures of it becoming its own marketplace, right? Like while governments still try and figure out who's doing what, how they should be licensed, the studies, there's lots of people who are now offering some version of it as a mental health service.
Ernesto Londoño
00:22:53
Absolutely. And, you know, I think we're seeing, you know, not just experiences that become really sort of pricey, but a lot of upselling that happens when you hook somebody with your protocol or your brand. You know, one of the places where you're seeing a real, you know, sort of a real boomtown sort of nature of of this, of this marketplace, is Costa Rica, which, you know, it's kind of the sweet spot in terms of feeling sort of remote and exotic enough to entice people to go experience this around nature and in jungle like settings
Audie Cornish
00:23:29
And is also long comfortable for expats.
Ernesto Londoño
00:23:32
Right. But yeah, an easier sell than telling somebody to sort of wade, you know, deep into the Amazon, on a boat. And, and to sort of be surrounded by a lot of insects and snakes. And, you know, there's this one retreat in Costa Rica that I wanted to highlight in the book, and there's a chapter devoted to it because, it's one of the loudest in terms of its marketing. It pretty much guarantees that if you go there, spend a week, and believe in their dogma into their instructions, and have absolute faith in what they're telling you to do, the you're going to walk away with a miracle.
Audie Cornish
00:24:09
Did you enter as a journalist or a patient or this strange hybrid?
Ernesto Londoño
00:24:13
I was transparent about the fact that I was a journalist and the fact that I was there working on a book. So I was, you know, I didn't do any undercover reporting for this book.
Audie Cornish
00:24:24
Okay, yeah, but but you went into it. So you entered this world and. The marketing to you was striking because it actually promised change.
Ernesto Londoño
00:24:36
Right, but yeah, I didn't go to Rythmia thinking, "you know, maybe I will have my miracle." I went to Rythmia thinking "based on what I've heard so far, this feels like really rich terrain journalistically, and it feels like a place that I want to see up and close."
Audie Cornish
00:24:50
What did you find there?
Ernesto Londoño
00:24:53
So with Rythmia, they put you through this really intense, protocol of ceremonies where you drink ayahuasca, you know, four nights in a row, which is really heavy on the body and the mind. Then you're you're very strongly encouraged to attend these workshops early in the morning, so it means you're sort of kept sleep deprived for, you know, the better part of the week. And then toward the end of the week, they start offering you a bunch of things that can turbocharge your healing journey. You know, the most jarring among them was stem cell therapy for $17,000 that you could put on a credit card right away. And what I found, and, you know, this was really disturbing, was that people who were otherwise, you know, smart and, you know, sort of rational thinkers: in that time and place become convinced that what they're being sold is as good as described. And to me, that was a real rude awakening of how malleable people can become in these settings. And also that people who, you know, are struggling with with a lot of pain and a lot of distress, become sort of ideal clients for these, these products that, you know, for some of them can lead to a real financial consequences.
Audie Cornish
00:26:14
You know, you write that, you know, despite your personal breakthroughs and the things you saw on the retreats, you also saw that there's this kind of murky legality around the whole thing. That that is hard to wrap your arms around.
Ernesto Londoño
00:26:36
Yeah. The legal landscape is enormously murky. And, you know, one place where this is playing out in really interesting ways is in the United States with this boom of psychedelic churches. And the bar is pretty high for the government to come in and stop people and say, you know, you're crossing a line.
Audie Cornish
00:26:55
So it's cultural, it's religious, it's not medical. We leave it alone.
Ernesto Londoño
00:26:59
Correct.
Audie Cornish
00:27:01
What questions do you still have that you couldn't answer?
Ernesto Londoño
00:27:10
You know, I think when I walked away from my first retreat and felt that this had been, hugely transformational for me, my biggest worry was, how long is this going to last?
Audie Cornish
00:27:22
You mean in your own brain?
Ernesto Londoño
00:27:24
Yes. You know, it's just going to be a temporary reprieve or this is, you know, sort of get you to higher ground, in, in a lasting way.
Audie Cornish
00:27:32
That's a haunting question to have behind you, Ernesto. Don't you think?
Ernesto Londoño
00:27:38
Yeah, absolutely. And I've, you know, I've started answering that question, but, you know, it's a question with which I am in dialog, and and.
Audie Cornish
00:27:48
With yourself?
Ernesto Londoño
00:27:51
Yes, yes
Ernesto Londoño
00:27:53
You know, I think another question is, is how do you regulate this field? We know how mental health interventions are studied and regulated, and we know what the gold standard is in terms of clinical trials. But in this field, which is, you know, really the blending of both medicinal but also spiritual sort of interventions and approaches and philosophies, creates a real dilemma. You know, who should be policing this field, who should set the ground rules for how this works? Should this be, you know, more solidly shifting into the sphere of medicine and sort of our regulatory framework, or should this be allowed to, you know, to sort of grow and build as, a spiritual intervention? And I think those are really, really difficult questions. And, you know, I think there are questions that we will start tackling more intelligently as we become better at having really honest and constructive conversations about our own, experience with mind altering drugs and our own approaches to improving our mental health.
Audie Cornish
00:29:06
We're living in an era where politically, there is a world of people who would say, "look, these psychedelics, these drugs they have been around for God knows how many years and in so many communities, right, indigenous communities, etc. And maybe we should be more cautious with how we quote unquote 'police them'," right? Or 'medicalize them.'.
Ernesto Londoño
00:29:34
Yeah.
Audie Cornish
00:29:34
Etcetera. That, like, especially in the U.S., like, our history isn't great with figuring out how to deal with mind altering substances, right?
Ernesto Londoño
00:29:45
Yeah. I mean, one thing, you know, that I was sort of startled to reflect on was, that, you know, some of these compounds when you look at, for instance, peyote, in the context of the Native American church here in the United States, ayahuasca, which has been used by communities in the Amazon for centuries. You know, they have real reverence for these, for these compounds. They don't call them drugs. I think that's a word that really chafes with with people who, you know, for whom this is this is a really sacred experience. And I think we have so much to learn from these communities. You know, they don't just use these as as a one and done intervention. I think one of the things you hear often, especially from celebrities, is, you know, it was. Ten years of therapy in one night, and it kind of leaves you with the impression that you do this once and then you're done and you know, it'll it'll solve so many of your problems. For many of these communities. You know, you build a relationship with these substances and you're kind of, you know, you you approach them, you know, like you would approach a meditation practice which will pay dividends the more you do it and the more you understand its limitations, but also its depth.
Audie Cornish
00:31:06
Before I let you go, how is your mental health? Like, have you come away from this experience feeling? And this is probably the wrong word so correct me – cured?
Ernesto Londoño
00:31:22
Yeah, that's a great question, and and one I think about a lot. I feel so much more resilient than I did at my low point, but I think I will always feel a gravitational pull of depression. I think it will continue to be a recurring visitor in my life, and something that oftentimes has a lot of valuable things to teach me. So it's not something that at this point in my life, I want to be completely cured of. I have found value in the way my mind works and operates. And I think one of the things that psychedelics led me to, which has been, you know, probably the most healing thing for me is a daily meditation practice. And, you know, this happens to a surprising number of people that once you kind of take a peek at kind of the wonders and the wondrous nature of thinking and the mind, and also come to understand that the mind is more malleable than I think we understood, meditation becomes a more sustainable and, I think, effective way of starting to shift the way you respond to your thinking brain. And with psychedelics, I think I found a little bit of a point of diminishing returns. But with meditation, I've found the opposite.
Audie Cornish
00:32:42
In the end, did you come away with it thinking that it was the solution you were looking for, right? That night you couldn't sleep.
Ernesto Londoño
00:32:59
I feel so fortunate that, I stumbled into that experience. I think it would have been really hard for me to really extricate myself from, that grip of darkness I was in. It gave me a window of opportunity to see the roots of my distress more clearly. It was almost like a switch was flipped in a dark room, and all of a sudden I could see the mess and had sort of an understanding of what it would require to start cleaning it up.
Audie Cornish
00:33:33
But it isn't the thing that long term you think is going to make you healthy.
Ernesto Londoño
00:33:40
Oh, I think it can give you many answers and it can point in many directions, but then it requires action and it requires follow through. One of the things I recognized, you know, in the aftermath of my experience, was that I built a really lonely life for myself. And, you know, it may sound strange, but I hadn't really stopped and thought about why that happened and the series of choices that led to that. And it took some real sort of intentional thinking and acting to start rearranging my life and shifting my priorities in order to be less alone structurally. And, you know, opening myself to love and feeling worthy of love was probably, you know, the hardest but most meaningful dividend that I, that I walked away with from these experiences.
Audie Cornish
00:34:33
Well, Ernesto, I didn't expect the interview to go in this direction, but I'm glad it did. What a lovely lesson to learn for yourself.
Ernesto Londoño
00:34:40
Thank you Audie.
Audie Cornish
00:34:46
'Ernesto Londoño is a reporter at the New York Times, and he's also the author of the new book, "Trippy: The Peril and Promise of Medicinal Psychedelics." That's it for this episode of The Assignment. And just a reminder, we're heading into the summer months, so now is a good time for you to send us an assignment. You can give us a call, you can text us. You can just tell us what's on your mind. Our number is (202) 854-8802. You might even use your voice mail or text in a future episode of the show. This episode was produced by Carla Javier. The senior producer of The Assignment is Matt Martinez. Dan Dzula is our technical director, and we got help this week from Matt Dempsey. And support for the CNN Audio team comes from Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru and Lisa Namerow. The executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve Lickteig. Special thanks, as always, to Katie Hinman. I'm Audie Cornish. Thank you for listening.
