My guest this week, Adele Getty, is the author of A Sense of the Sacred and an educator in the field of assisted psychedelic therapy. Together with her husband Michael Williams, she started a non-profit here in Santa Fe called the Limina Foundation. Its mission is to support treatment for addiction and PTSD through both synthetic and plant-based psychedelic medicines.

On September 7, the foundation will host an event here in my adopted hometown of Santa Fe called The Enchanted State. That’s a play on New Mexico’s official nickname, which is the Land of Enchantment. But it’s also a nod to New Mexico’s growing role in the national conversation about whether and how substances like MDMA, mushrooms, and ibogaine should be legalized and regulated.

For thousands of years people have been ingesting compounds found in plants and fungi to facilitate religious ceremonies or help them access a kind of higher wisdom. In more modern times these substances have been used by people who want to explore their own inner psyches, or people who need help getting past addiction or deeply rooted psychological trauma. The US government criminalized the use and study of most psychedelics back in the 1960s. But in the last decade there’s been a major resurgence in interest in how they work and what they can teach us about consciousness or help us heal. 

Michael Pollan’s books How to Change Your Mind and This Is Your Mind on Plants have both been huge bestsellers. And lawmakers in Oregon, Colorado, and now New Mexico have decriminalized certain psychedelics and begun to create frameworks for therapeutic use. Here in New Mexico, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a bill earlier this year called SB 219, the Medical Psilocybin Act, that sets up a regulated system for people with PTSD and substance abuse disorders to use mushrooms under the guidance of a licensed healthcare provider.

That was a big step and it means New Mexico has the opportunity to help lead the country toward a future where psychedelics and their benefits are better understood and more widely available. That’s why The Enchanted State event feels so timely, and it’s why I wanted to interview Adele.

Learn more about this episode at http://www.soonishpodcast.org.