How LSD became a brain hemorrhage patient's lifesaver

My guide for the evening had accepted my 400 dollars, the price for my journey, in tie-dyed pants. It was my own fault I wasnt tripping very hardId told her, out of nervousness, I didnt want to travel to other planetsthough I suspected she knew less about the sacraments she was prescribing to us than she purported to. (Do you know that Peruvians drip ayahuasca into the eyes of their newborns? shed told me earlier. All Peruvians? Id asked, and shed blushed.) Still, I liked her, partly because there was something in her eyes that made me think of the Wordsworth line from Elegiac Stanzas: A deep distress hath humanized my soul. I sensed thered been some suffering in her past. Many of the participants, I noticed, had the same benignly haunted look. An ex-physician told us that ten years ago shed been diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer; shed recovered, but couldnt shake the feeling that it would return any second to finish her off. To allay her lingering fear of death, shed enrolled in a psilocybin trial, and her whole reality changed. She divorced her husband and began to juggle motherhood and what full-time psychonauts call The Work, traveling the world to partake in aya ceremonies.

ILLUSTRATION BY MARIANO PECCINETTI