Hey, it's Arielle.
We decided to make this, our final
episode of the season, a kind of
PSA.
While reporting our last episode in
Utah, we started hearing stories
from people who'd experienced harm
in the psychedelic scene there.
And given how fast the psychedelics
church movement is growing in this
country, we wanted to just
stop and ask, what would
it take to minimize that harm?
This is Altered States.
Cassady Rosenblum takes it from
here.
Last episode, I reported on the
legal battles of one of Utah's
newest psychedelic churches.
I've been to Utah a bunch over the
last several years to report on
psychedelics.
And for the most part, I hear so
many positive stories of genuine
healing.
But I've also started hearing a
second kind of story about
psychedelic facilitators,
inside and outside of the church
setting, who are sexually,
financially, or psychologically
abusing participants.
And they're doing this while people
are in the midst of a powerful
mind-altering journey.
It's hard to describe how terrifying
this is, unless you've been
in an altered state.
When you're on psychedelics, you can
become vulnerable, kind of
like a baby.
Even getting a glass of water could
feel like a Herculean task,
let alone rebuffing a sexual advance
or some other mind manipulation.
This kind of abuse can happen
anywhere, but it is especially
rampant in Utah, where the
demographic using these substances
are typically former Mormons.
And many of them say they are used
to giving their power away.
Yeah, leaving Mormonism is
hard because every
action you take is
built around the beliefs of
Mormonism.
Am I supposed to be doing this?
Does God want me to do this?
How will it reflect on the church?
So when you leave that,
you're kind of a babe in the woods,
you kind of lost.
And, in my
case, I see now that
I had not developed a
moral or ethical code.
That's Steve Urquhart.
You heard him in the last episode.
He's the co-founder of the Divine
Assembly, one of the psychedelic
churches in Utah.
But before that, he had a whole
other life as a Republican
state lawmaker and
a devout Mormon.
But after retiring from the Senate,
he had powerful experience with
ayahuasca and later left
the Church of Latter-day Saints.
I'd been handed a list of
things to do, things not to do
and that was my
moral compass.
So when that compass was
broken, I didn't know what
to do. And I was lost.
I was hurt.
And so I had this hole that I'm
trying to fill.
And so, you know, I filled the hole
with alcohol, with drugs,
I had just some torrid affairs,
and I was just a
sloppy, sloppy human
being.
Steve eventually got into therapy,
which he credits for saving his life
and his marriage.
But Steve also says that this
intense period of experimentation is
common for people who leave the
Mormon church as they try all
the forbidden fruits for the first
time.
Add to that sacraments
that increase suggestibility
and vulnerability.
You know, I really think in
psychedelic worship we
should really expect
a lot of predation
unless we work against
it.
In 2023, that kind
of predation came to a head in
Salt Lake City.
According to Steve, what transpired
didn't happen within a psychedelic
church, but it became
a kind of cautionary tale,
a boogeyman story, that
has hung over the psychedelic
movement, including the psychedelics
church movement, in Utah ever
since.
There was a man named
Parth Gandhi, and he was
a therapist in Salt Lake City.
Like Steve, Parth was another
early leader in the local
psychedelic scene.
He was charismatic, magnetic even.
A lot of people admired him.
He seemed impressive to me.
He had a ketamine practice, he had
some things going, and he wanted
to reach our crowd.
And he reached out and said, let's
do something for bicycle day.
Bicycle Day celebrates the
anniversary of April 19th,
1943, the day Albert
Hoffman first intentionally consumed
LSD, a drug he discovered
in his lab, and took one
very interesting bicycle ride.
But shortly before the event, Steve
says he received texts from two
friends asking, Why
are you doing something with a
rapist?
I'm like, oh, can we talk?
According to his friends, Parth had
sexually assaulted multiple
individuals.
Women, whom Steve's friends knew
personally.
They were telling Steve second-hand
information, but it was enough for
Steve to cancel the event.
I just cut him off.
You know, and I would tell people,
I'm hearing bad things about
him.
Domestic abuse, sexual
solicitation, and rape.
These are some of the reports we
found filed over the years involving
Parth Gandhi.
In 2023, Parth murdered
his 16-year-old son and
then killed himself.
At the time, he had a thick file
with the police, mostly for
custody battle disputes.
But he was also under investigation
for sexual assault.
After the murder-suicide, ABC4
News spoke to a woman who says she
was sexually assaulted by Parth
after going to him for a ketamine
treatment.
Like what you don't trust me.".
She opened up to him about her
trauma.
Ghandi gave her a lozenge and
a glass of orange juice.
The next thing she remembers is
leaving at 2 a.m.
She had never filed a police report.
But at least two other women had,
alleging rape.
You know, Salt Lake City, Utah,
it is a pretty small
village, and especially
in psychedelics.
And there were a lot of ripples from
that, and a lot us
asking ourselves,
should we have done more?
But knowing what more to do can be
tricky.
And it's a tough situation
because he
would threaten defamation
lawsuits and it
silenced a lot of people.
So that is a huge problem
in this space.
You hear allegations about
bad actors and then
instantly there are
threats of defamation.
No one wants to be in an
expensive lawsuit.
So, it does tend to
shut people up.
I saw that fear firsthand.
For many months, I talked to women
who had experienced unwanted sexual
advances while on psychedelics
in Utah, but they were too afraid
to make a police report or go
public with their stories.
And I get it.
It's not easy to admit to police
that you use an illegal substance or
be a single mom and face the
prospect of being sued into
oblivion.
And so in the absence of legal
accountability...
It often falls on individuals to
try to come up with ways to protect
themselves and each other.
I'm Aymee Condie.
I live in Utah County,
Utah, which is exactly
like it sounds.
It's pretty Utah.
Aymee is a licensed clinical social
worker.
When she's not wearing her
professional hat, she runs a
different chapter of the Divine
Assembly in Utah, about 45
minutes from Salt Lake City.
Aymee's chapter has developed its
own culture around consent.
They even have a group creed.
Our leadership group took the
concepts that are
in the 12-step programs,
which keep a nonprofit being
nonprofit.
We took the concept from Burning
Man, which is another group process
that goes really well and focuses
on decommodification.
The motto for Aymee's chapter of the
divine assembly is quote,
"No Profits, No Prophets",
as in no money,
and also no Joseph Smith
types.
We're referring to the FIT
kind of profits and the PHET
kind of profit.
And it's interesting to notice
for myself, when I
say no profits, no profits I speak
the F-I-T profit first.
And for other people they speak the
P-H-E-T profit first when they
speak.
For myself, money becomes
something that changes our
relationships.
It becomes an exchange of
services.
For this reason, members of Aymee's
chapter trip-sit for each other for
free.
This requires a shared understanding
of how everyone is expected to
behave.
Another community that has really
informed a lot of our stuff is
the kink community, which has a lot
established ways to give consent,
that consent needs to be
enthusiastic throughout,
that consent is something that is
agreed to before, during,
and at any moment could be revoked.
But also how to tell
people no.
No can be a hard word for a lot of
people, but Aymee says that's
especially true in Utah.
I don't think I have to really elude
that Utah is a Mormon culture.
And I think in my culture
here in Utah, a lot of
women specifically are not
encouraged to tell people no.
We're actually kind of encouraged
to tolerate certain forms
of things, because
it will hurt people's feelings if
we say I'm not interested.
I guess I'll just speak from my own
experience, but I do believe it's
shared by a lot people.
The idea that men are so
overwhelmed with sexual desire
that they can't control themselves.
Aymee says Mormon women are often
placed in the role of managing
Mormon men.
Until this year, women in the faith
were not allowed to wear tank tops.
They cover their shoulders,
because shoulders are, they're too
tempting for men.
Men can't look at shoulders.
And so in that way,
it's up to women to dress modestly
so that they're not drawing a
man's gaze.
It's up women to make sure that they
are keeping themselves chaste and
pure because men lack
that ability.
So in that way women are put in
the role of being the ones who
say no.
And who are in
charge of making sure that sex
doesn't happen.
Women confide in Aymee.
They've told her multiple stories
about psychedelic facilitators,
some who also call themselves
therapists, initiating
sexual contact during psychedelic
journeys.
Aymee says this is wrong.
Consent can't be given in the middle
of a trip.
So if you go Into it.
Let's say you're with your sexual
partner who you have sex with all
the time.
That's a completely appropriate
thing to say, hey, we're going to
use some substances together and
we'll probably have sexual contact.
And making that your agreement from
the start, that is a
different experience than,
hey let's heal.
I have some techniques and
strategies that can help you heal.
Here's some medicine.
And then when you're in medicine
saying, AH I find you
so attractive.
I don't think I've ever been
attractive to someone like that.
That is a completely different
experience and it's changing
the expectations and the
rules basically.
But bad consent culture still
happens.
And it's not hard to see why.
On one hand, these substances can
make people highly vulnerable,
almost childlike.
On the other hand, some people
experience a super inflated ego,
a kind of megalomania.
Put those two kinds of people
together and things can get
dangerous.
I think some people take
psychedelics, and instead of finding
God, they believe they're God.
The Mormon culture I was raised in,
I was taught that you could be a
God, that if you
kept all of the rules, that
you would be given your own planet
one day.
And so it's not a far stretch for me
to think that some of those things
still live inside of people who were
raised in that religion.
I don't really know how to weed
people out and say you're one
of the people who found God and
spirituality and now believe in it.
Like a collective unconscious,
and those that believe, now I have
the answers.
But I do know that there's red flags
that we can spot in people, and we
can teach people about spotting
those red flags in other people.
So what do you need to know to spot
those red flags?
And how might that information be
applied to the growing psychedelic
church movement?
That's after the break.
To find out how these mind-altering
substances might play into the abuse
of power, I called Brian Anderson.
He's a psychiatrist and a professor
at UC San Francisco.
And in his free time, he volunteers
with Sacred Plant Alliance,
a non-profit organization of 13
psychedelic churches all over the
country.
He's thought a lot about this stuff.
When there's a power dynamic where
there's someone who's a leader,
a guide, there's already the
chance that there can be abuse of
that alone without any sort of
mind-altering substance.
Brian is someone with one foot
rooted in science and the other in
spirituality.
I don't always see these realms
as totally separate in
part because my path even
into working in allopathic
or conventional medicine, a lot
of that came out of experiences that
I had as a young man.
When Brian was in his early 20s,
he got to spend some time in Brazil,
where ayahuasca churches are a
normal part of society.
You have generations
of families who attend these
communities where the grandparents,
the parents, and even their
young adult children and sometimes
maybe even teenagers are part of
ceremonies.
There's just this deep sincerity
about how this is a religious
practice.
I learned a lot about what it means
for people to intentionally
come together.
To use psychedelics for
what they see as their spiritual
practice as a way of connecting with
a higher power and to
do so in a totally non-medical
way that is frankly very
often, or at least if it's done
well, it can be done very safely
and it's not done under the
auspice of science and it is not
done under the oversight of
medical professionals.
But even where it is more normative,
it is not uncommon for psychedelic
churches to replicate some of the
power structures seen in traditional
religions.
There can be a charismatic church
founder, a prophet type,
or people seeking some sort of guru.
And in many of the stories I've
heard, the abuser is in a leadership
or guide position.
So I asked Brian, as a psychiatrist,
how these mind-altering substances
might play into that abuse of power.
From a psychological perspective,
the abuse of power is
something that seems
strangely familiar as we
can find it in many settings all
over the place.
As a psychiatrist and someone
trained in psychotherapy, it's
something that we learn in our
training how when you do
very deep, close work with
someone, there can be what feels
like an exchange of
romantic energy.
Because if you imagine
what psychedelics can do if
there's more of a merging of
yourself with the self
of the person next
to you helping you.
You feel this intense intimacy
and connection.
The substance awakens these
very sometimes powerful feelings
of love,
of warmth.
There can be a type of attraction
or attachment, and unfortunately
we've heard of real cases
including in clinical research
settings over past years, of
where this very intimate,
powerful relationship of
a helper or a healer and
someone seeking care can lead to
boundary crossings when
a psychedelic is involved.
A lot of different organizations
over the years have tried to put
together safety tips and rules
to avoid that kind of boundary
crossing.
A psychedelic group called the
Women's Visionary Council has
20 safety tips posted on their
website that one of their founders,
Annie Oak, wrote more than a decade
ago.
I wanted to talk about number 18 on
that list.
I read it to Brian.
Consensual sexual encounters between
ceremonial leaders and participants
do occur.
These experiences may make the women
involved feel special,
but such relationships imply an
imbalance of power that has the
potential to be coercive and
potentially abusive.
Consider that the professional
ethical standard for therapists
in the U.S.
is a complete ban on
intimate relationships with former
clients for two years, after
the conclusion of their therapeutic
work together.
Reflect deeply on the wisdom
of this standard if you or
your healer are considering sexual
intimacy after a ceremony.
This is really interesting to me
because a lot of the stories I hear
do tend to fall into this grayer
category.
It's also interesting that this
statement implies you can give
consent but still be
coerced or abused.
Can you break that down a little
bit?
One thing is to say, yes, I consent
to this, but another thing is also
to stop and step back
and try to assess what are
all of the dynamics and
things that are influencing that
decision.
If someone's a very charismatic
leader, if there are
psychedelics involved, or if
people are entering altered states
and going through other intense
experiences together,
there may be ways that someone would
make a choice that in another state
they may not. I think the
most important thing is we're
talking about relationships and
not just experiences.
Are their relationships healthy?
And ideally, are there other people
around in that community who can
give feedback on what
normal, healthy relationships are?
I asked Brian, what are his
red flags?
What sets off his spidey senses?
There's probably a number of red
flags actually in the last few
years, as it seems that
more and more people are maybe
encountering psychedelics,
not just through a
dear friend or a family member
or someone that they know who's
maybe part of a community, but
people are reaching out on their own
and they're going out
and they are not going through sort
of social filters or social
connections where you can trust the
person. Who introduced you
to a community because
they were part of it.
If people are going out and finding
these on their own,
and you want to look for a number of
things such as, who's
in this community in the first
place? Is it consistent?
Are there people who've come back?
Are there are people who bring their
family members and bring their
other loved ones there?
And for me, that would be a really
helpful sign, knowing that
people are invested in making
the community better, and they're
staying and they are bringing in
people close to them because they
trust the work there.
There is certainly
something about intense
experiences and how
they may be offered to
the world, that if done in
a very showy
way, a dramatic way,
will give me pause.
When I think of mentors
and people I've learned from,
they're often more quiet than
they are loud.
I'm wondering whether Sacred
Plant Alliance has ever had
sexual misconduct come up
within the context of any of
your 13-member churches.
Within the Sacred Planet Alliance,
yes, we've received some notices of
concern over the years.
They've involved both dynamics
between clergy within a
community as well as a
congregant or a practitioner within
that group having a
complaint about a leader.
Can you share a little bit more
about how Sacred Plan Alliance
handles that internally?
So we've been around for
five years.
We only allow groups to come in
that are already formed, have been
operating for several years in this
country, and have the policies and
procedures in place, we think, to
do a good job of
taking care of the people who are in
their community.
To be a member church with Sacred
Plant Alliance, the church has
to essentially agree to make a
hotline.
That way, if a congregant feels like
something has gone wrong, they can
reach out to Brian's colleagues
directly.
The complaint then goes before an
ethics committee made up of
representatives from the other
member churches.
They weigh the complaint against
Sacred Plant alliance's code of
conduct and vote on whether
a violation has likely occurred.
Do you have a standard
for...
Likely or not?
Is it 50% or how do
you judge that?
We just use the standard of
51% confidence
that the violation of the Code of
Conduct happened.
It's not perfect.
We're not going to be able to get it
right all the time, but
we do have a process of looking into
things and trying to give some
sense of resolution and
support and importantly,
a path forward for people to
do better.
That path forward can look like
assigning a mentor to a member
church for a lower level offense
like financial mismanagement.
At the higher end, for an offense
such as physical or sexual abuse,
the church can be kicked out of
Sacred Plant Alliance.
It's an interesting model where the
actions of one individual can get
the whole group removed, but
at least it's a process.
By contrast, in Utah,
it's little bit more of a
free-for-all, with an emphasis on
personal responsibility.
I asked Brian what he thinks about
that.
In our country, religious
freedom allows people
to worship and come
together in so many different ways.
For me personally, it's a very
beautiful thing.
There's not going to be one right
answer for how people should
and can worship when they
choose to enter intense states
of consciousness, including those
that can be occasioned by
psychedelic substances.
Brian says a psychedelic church
shouldn't just be about
psychedelics.
It should also be about community.
The question I have is, if
there are gonna be communities
of people that come together, do
work together, and pray
together, what is the
sustainable way of doing that?
What is the way that is gonna keep
the most people most safe for the
longest amount of time?
For me, the models that I have
seen to be most sustainable do
involve people coming together, and
again, not just focusing on an
experience, but on
being part of something with others.
He also made a good point.
When psychedelics were more of an
underground thing, it's not like
there were a million policies or
review boards, for better or worse.
People have been governing
themselves in this space for
a very long time.
This conversation about consent
and safeguards around psychedelics,
it reminded me of this song
that I learned as a kid in Montreal.
Mon corps, c'est mon corps,
ce n'est pas le tien
Tu as mon corps à
toi, laisse-moi
le mien
The words go, my body
is my body, it's not yours.
You have your body, so leave me
mine.
Ask any French-speaking kid who grew
up in Montreal in the 90s, and
they will tell you that Mon Corps
C'est Mon Corps was one of the main
songs of our childhood.
We learned it in school.
Protecting bodily autonomy,
navigating risk, these are all
things that we aren't super great at
as a society.
But these things are crucial to
understand, especially in
the psychedelic space.
This season, we've explored two
worlds that exist within the
universe of psychedelics, science
and religion.
Both offer a path toward
legal psychedelics.
One where these substances are
sacraments and another where
they are prescribed medicines.
And each path has its own set of
legal and ethical challenges.
But you know what struck me the most
while making this season?
Whether in the context of clinical
trials, Native American peyote
ceremonies, or former Mormon
neo-religions, I kept
hearing again and again about
the healing qualities of
human connection and caregiving.
It's why the UCSF pediatrician
wanted her anorexia study
participants to have loved ones
present with them.
Clinical trials are limited and
we can only support someone for so
long, but they are going to have
this set of experiences related
to psilocybin dosing.
And we want something in their life
to be set up to continue to
support them.
It's why Sughra Ahmed wanted to have
her own psychedelic organization for
fellow Muslims.
Not all roads have to lead to taking
plant medicine, but our community
deserves healing.
It deserves specialism
in this field.
It's why Aymee, the therapist in
Utah, is trying to create these
shared guidelines around physical
boundaries and safety, and
why the Psychedelic Hotline Fireside
Project has received more than
26,000 calls.
We are social animals, and there is
power in a reassuring and
welcoming voice.
Because we just do better together,
tripping or not.
Altered States is a production of
the UC Berkeley Center for the
Science of Psychedelics and PRX.
This episode was reported and
produced by Cassady Rosenblum.
Adiza Egan is our senior editor.
Our executive editor is Malia
Wollan.
Jennie Cataldo is our Senior
Producer and our researcher is
Cassady Rosenblum Our associate
producer is Jade Abdul Malik and
our audio engineers are Terence
Bernardo and Jennie Cataldo.
Fact-checking by Graham Hacia.
Special thanks to Bob Jesse.
Our executive producers are Malia
Wollan and Jocelyn Gonzales.
And our project manager is Edwin
Ochoa.
Our theme music is by Thao Nguyen
and Nate Brenner.
And I'm your host, Arielle
Duhaime-Ross.
Be sure to subscribe, rate, and
review Altered States wherever you
get your podcasts.
Most well-known psychedelics remain
illegal around the world, including
in 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.