Trippy: The Peril and Promise of Medicinal Psychedelics

New York Times correspondent Londoño debuts with an arresting survey of the “medicinal psychedelic field” and where it’s headed. Used by Indigenous communities for generations, magic mushrooms, LSD, and other psychedelics have gained popularity in recent years as those who’ve lost faith in “conventional medicine” flock to the “largely unregulated field,” enticed by questionable purveyors of these drugs and resorts that market to the wealthy via “C-list celebrities, bro-ey podcasters, and #blessed Instagram influencers.” Despite legal risks and such side effects as vomiting and paranoia, psychedelics represent a promising frontier of mental illness treatment: MDMA and psilocybin (the psychoactive compound in magic mushrooms) have been designated by the FDA as “breakthrough therapies” for PTSD and severe depression; both are expected to gain approval for mainstream clinical use in 2024. Woven through Londoño’s research are vivid, sometimes hypnotic discussions of his own mental health struggles, which reached a peak when he “unraveled” in 2017 and led him to seek relief in ayahuasca, a psychoactive brew made from botanical ingredients (“Each trip seemed to add clarity to my personal narrative, like a puzzle that gradually starts resembling a landscape.... The implicit deal you make on this path is to... lean heavily into your darkness in order to metabolize pain”). Ultimately, Londoño argues that “with proper safeguards, psychoactive compounds have the potential to reduce suffering on a large scale.” It’s a scrupulous study of a fascinating development in mental health care. (May)