On this week’s episode of Cover Story: Power Trip, collaborators LilyKayRoss and D__Nickles look into two instances of psychedelics-caused deaths to uncover the truth of what really happened
Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images On this week’s episode of Cover Story: Power Trip, collaborators Lily Kay Ross and Dave Nickels look into two instances of psychedelics-caused deaths to uncover the truth of what really happened. Ever since Michael Pollan’s 2018 book How to Change Your Mind landed on the Times best-seller list, more people have gotten comfortable with trying psychedelic drugs.
Michael Pollan is no psychonaut. He’s not wearing a lab coat. He’s the kind of person who can talk to folks who occasionally watch network news or Colbert. You might hear him on public radio. You know, for people reading Michael Pollan’s book, his enthusiasm is contagious, and they might hear that and think, “I’d like to try this, too!”
JOHN: He liked the person he was working with. He felt like he had a good connection with that person. He had shared that with me. But then the story gets more complicated. A few months later the coroner gets a phone call from someone he calls “an interested physician.” That person educates the coroner about mushrooms, and the coroner looks up some of the studies himself. And after reading those, the coroner changes the cause of death.
So far Dave and I have talked about a bunch of reasons why people are not talking about the risks of psychedelic therapy. It’s like they want to put the best spin on it that they can. And sometimes, that’s about true belief in the drug, and sometimes, it’s a power trip. But there’s another motive, we have not talked about yet: the money.
DAVE: And MMA is part of the push for legalization in Australia. I mean, it’s kind of mind-boggling, because Peter Hunt is a multi-millionaire former investment banker, and Tania is an opera singer who identifies as a “social entrepreneur” and “global speaker.” These are not scientists or doctors, but they are the type of people who have enough money to just kind of hiring a bunch of people and start charging thousands of dollars for their psychedelic therapy training certificate.
PETER: We want anyone in Australia who decides with their doctor that it’s an appropriate therapy to be able to access that therapy. Even if they have no money, even if they’re penniless, even if they’re homeless. We want no differentiation between the wealthy and people who are poor.
LILY: Sometimes this whole situation feels like a circus, and people just keep clapping along as long as the music is playing… even when someone is dying in the ring. LILY: By all accounts, Jen Rothman was a talented therapist living in California. She was somebody who was able to help clients that were dealing with the dark stuff. So she got excited when she heard about psychedelic-assisted therapy because she thought it might help them. She wanted to get trained in it, so she would be ready when it was legal. But Jen Rothman died in 2019. LILY: Jen battled the effects of Lyme disease for decades, so she was always seeking out ways to feel better.
SCOT: They took this brew and went to each person with a cup. The medicine that he worked with was called San Pedro.SCOT: I had never taken it and Jen had never taken it. And it was much more of an interactive medicine. LILY: Amy and Luc say the whole thing was more of a party vibe than a medicine ceremony. Scot and Amy and Luc all stopped going, but Jen found something that worked for her. And she kept going back.
LILY: Jorge says Jen was no longer a participant, she was his assistant and co-facilitator. He says “Jen and I initiated our relationship about two years before her passing. As she was still in a relationship with her husband Scot Rothman, we proceeded in the most mindful and ethical way possible.”LILY: Her family and friends say they started hearing from her less and less.LILY: But they didn’t know much else about it – she never introduced Jorge to her family.
LILY: And it truly read like a story. In his version, the night Jen died, there weren’t any psychedelics involved, and Jen died in a moment of profound spiritual healing. He wrote: “Her face was radiant, her eyes very open, her heart energy fully present…” He told her mother that “she felt to me to be full of love, joy, and freedom.” But the letter was long, Jorge included much more than that. He wrote pages of things that most mothers would just not want to know.
AMY: She sent me text messages about how Jorge introduced her to this substance called the Holy Grail. And it was just completely life-altering. It was so healing.DAVE: Yeah, 5-APB. 5-APB is a drug that’s similar to MDMA. It hasn’t been studied in humans, but it was initially synthesized in the search for a safer alternative.
SUZI: She says, this is a quote, “Not good. Who am I fooling? I’m not taking good care here, where is my discernment? I’m not sure this is good for me. This “open” stuff, the medicines. He loves me when he’s on medicine so much. I don’t doubt it’s true. But then me bracing, bracing, bracing. I don’t know if I can do it. I feel concerned.”SUZI: There was a text exchange between Jen and Jorge that day. I don’t have the exact quotes in front of me, but essentially she was starving.
DAVE: So ”complications” with 5-APB kind of functions like MDMA, in that it makes you release a whole lot of serotonin. And such a high level of serotonin messes with the hormones which help your kidney regulate the ion content of your blood. And studies show that this effect is much more likely to occur in women.
JOE: I think it’s the sort of thing that if you take these sorts of drugs, you need to know what the what’s what to expect if something goes wrong.JOE: if you drink a lot of water after having taken the drug and gotten your antidiuretic hormones messed up? You can kill yourself. That’s important stuff to know.
LILY: In July of 2020, Jen’s family reached out to the one institution they thought could hold someone accountable and do something about this - CIIS, where Jorge Ferrer was a teacher. AMY: I wish the circumstances were different. I wish there was communication and honesty and sharing of facts. Just the sheer fact of Jorge’s narrative that Jen died in bliss and freedom when in fact she was having seizures and had already said she was freezing and exhausted and starving earlier that day. None of us have ever wanted anything other than the truth of what happened to someone we love. That’s it. It’s that simple.
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