On 20 February 2020, people around the world are going to share stories of the healing and transformation that they’ve experienced through the use of psychedelic medicine. It’s a bit like a global ‘coming out’ campaign. South African science writer Leonie Joubert of The Psychonauts speaks with the organisers of the Thank You Plant Medicine global campaign ..read more

For some people, depression can be a terminal illness. American novelist David Foster Wallace was one of its victims. He died of depression in September 2008. A few years before that, he wrote something beautiful that might help a well person better understand the peculiar kind of hell that depression is. He said that a depressed person doesn’t choose this end because they find death suddenly appealing. Someone ends their life, he wrote, in ‘the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise’. The terror of falling from a great height is easier to face t ..read more

Kalk Bay Books is an independent bookstore outside Cape Town that regularly invites authors to speak about their latest book projects. This month, they hosted science writer Leonie Joubert to speak about her podcast The Psychonauts, a serialised audio-book project which she's release chapter by chapter as the book unfolds. Leonie sat in conversation with medical doctor Rene Usdin to talk about research in the field of psilocybin-therapy, and the changes of mainstreaming it in South Africa ..read more

In South Africa, the underground psilocybin community is relatively new, and from the outside might look more like a religious group than a collective of therapists. These journey guides work by a set of principles for how to facilitate journeys, which, for the most part, try to manage the risks that come with deep-dose sessions. They draw on tried-and-tested shamanic traditions and some good old-fashioned common sense. But a whole lot of New Age gimmickry has crept in, too, which is a bit off-putting for those wanting a more secular or medical approach. If we want to mainstream psilocybin-as ..read more

Human beings are hardwired to ruminate, leading to depression, anxiety, and addictive rituals. Boosting our emotional wellbeing with techniques like mindfulness and meditation is a bit like good oral hygiene: we need to brush and floss and visit the dentist regularly. But every now and then, we might need something a bit more drastic, like root canal. That’s where a psychedelic session comes in ..read more

A quick update on the status of the podcast after a long silence, and a look at the different legal routes that could see hallucinogenic mushrooms decriminalised or legalised in South Africa. And if, as some argue, we have a constitutional right to access a substance that our laws withhold from us, where is there scope for civil disobedience ..read more

Many South Africans are seeking out psychedelic medicine and retreats, even though it's illegal. In the interests of harm reduction, this Voice Diary looks at how to put medical support in place for those who decide to try this therapy process through the underground community. And it considers how the medical community can prepare itself for when this form of medicine becomes legal and mainstream ..read more

The South African government has already opened the door for psychedelic-assisted therapy: in 2016, it allowed the potent psychedelic, ibogaine, to be prescribed as a medicine. If one psychedelic is legal for medical use, why not all of them? This short voice diary considers what this means for the legal challenge to decriminalise psilocybin mushrooms here in South Africa this year ..read more

One of the oldest myths about psychedelics is that playing with them is like a game of Russian roulette: for every few fun trips, there’s a bad one loaded in the chamber and waiting to flip you into a kind of madness. The truth is far less ghoulish, although there’s still a lot of mystique surrounding these substances in popular culture: because psychedelics have been forced underground for nearly five decades, there’s too little research to get a true reading of just how often people have ‘bad’ trips on psychedelics. But researchers from a few medical labs that are licensed to work with th ..read more

Voice Diary 3: The Psychonauts on the PechaKucha platform. South Africa's Constitution upholds our right to healthcare. Given how unaffordable and inaccessible mental health treatment is in South Africa, having access to a treatment like psilocybin-assisted therapy becomes a Constitutional one. Early findings from clinical trials show that psilocybin may be more effective for treating some mood disorders and addictions than current methods. But psilocybin is currently illegal in South Africa, making it impossible for therapists to include it in their treatment methods. A 2018 court bid to leg ..read more