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The medicine was offered to me in what looked like a goblet, which took me by surprise, you know, in a clinical study. I began to make sounds that weren't words, that seemed to mean something, and I remember thinking in the moment, is that what's talked about in Scripture, speaking in tongues? You get to pop a pill and then meet God. Our saints didn't just pop a pill. There's a lot of disagreement over psychedelics and how these substances should be used.
Are they party drugs, medicines, religious sacraments, or maybe even a dress rehearsal for death? Very visual, very emotional memories come back. You know, DMT has those kinds of effects as well. These are sharp, clear, crisp, absolute, reliving the events more powerfully than when we lived through them in the earthly realm. I'm Arielle Duhaime-Ross, and on this season of Altered States, we're exploring two distinct worlds within psychedelics.
On one side, there's the realm of spiritualists, mystical experiences, and psychedelic churches. And on the other side are scientists, clinical trials, animal studies, and psychopharmacologists. These two factions are often far apart, and even at odds. The mixing of science and religion is just kind of explosive and makes people very uncomfortable. Scientists think religion is kind of woo-woo and not serious.
And religious people think psychedelics are a synthetic version of what is really profound and sacred and shouldn't be messed with. Team science is formidable. There are hundreds of clinical studies underway testing new treatments for physical and mental illnesses. If you have a severe and enduring mental illness, your mind kind of gets stuck in ruts. You can imagine like a sled going through the snow over and over and in the same circle.
Psilocybin is like if you had that in a snow globe and you shake the snow globe. And then there's team religion. The first gulp in the glass of natural sciences will lead you towards atheism, but at the bottom of the glass, God is waiting for you. We take this medicine, travel to the spiritual world, and we see what is hurting this person, and we're able to help heal the body. In the U.S., religion has an imposing player on its roster, the First Amendment.
Psychedelic churches around the country are claiming constitutional protections. Some people could say, oh, so you started a church to get around drug laws. I mean, maybe. Maybe that's a way that you want to say it, but I think that's very incomplete answer. Think of this as the science versus religion season, two potential paths towards expanded, legally protected access to psychedelics. That this can come as a result of a chemical produced by a mushroom. I mean, how extraordinary is that?
From the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics and PRX, this is season two of Altered States, launching September 24th.