In GQ, Eric Perry writes about how a brain hemorrhage left him "depressed, stuck in a rut, and strangely fearful of death." Then he learned of new medical research on the benefits of psychedelic therapy to treat anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. So Perry signed up for his own acid test with others who were seeking solace via psychedelic experiences. From GQ:
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 wasn't tripping very hard—I'd told her, out of nervousness, I didn't want to travel to other planets—though 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?" she'd told me earlier. "All Peruvians?" I'd asked, and she'd 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 there'd 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 she'd been diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer; she'd recovered, but couldn't shake the feeling that it would return any second to finish her off. To allay her lingering fear of death, she'd 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.
"LSD: My Life-Saving Drug" (GQ)
ILLUSTRATION BY MARIANO PECCINETTI
