Where The Wild Things Grow

Summary

This transcript presents a long-form psychedelic radio segment hosted by Lorenzo on the Psychedelic Salon, centered on a documentary story originally aired by Israel Story. The episode, titled Sacred Plants, features the work of Nathan Ehrlich, a multimedia journalist and therapist-in-training, and follows his personal and spiritual journey through illness, healing, and psychedelic medicine. The narrative begins with Nathan describing his childhood and adolescence, including a traumatic leukemia diagnosis that followed a seemingly ordinary game of dead arms with a friend. The illness led to aggressive chemotherapy, radiation, and a bone marrow transplant from his brother. Although he survived, Nathan explains that he was left with long-term, difficult-to-diagnose aftereffects such as chronic fatigue syndrome and irritable bowel syndrome. He portrays himself as a “scathed cancer survivor,” someone who lives in the difficult space between survival and full recovery. Frustrated by conventional medicine, he sought help from a wide range of healers, including acupuncturists, hypnotists, chiropractors, yogis, herbalists, and therapists. This search eventually led him to psychedelic and shamanic healing traditions. Nathan describes traveling to Peru to participate in huachuma, also known as San Pedro, ceremonies. There he meets Sergei Baranov, a Ukrainian-born Jewish healer who also has a history of displacement and suffering. Sergei recounts growing up in Ukraine amid antisemitic violence, then moving to Israel, where he again experienced exclusion and alienation as an immigrant Jew labeled a Russian. After further detours through California, Mexico, and peyote work, he settled in Peru and embraced a spiritual path centered on sacred plants. He rejects the label of shaman in a strict sense, calling himself a “recovering Jew,” but he clearly functions as a ceremonial guide and healer. The story gives detailed attention to the San Pedro ceremony itself: cactus is prepared in a cauldron, mapacho tobacco smoke is blown into the brew, and participants gather in silence around a lake. Nathan frames the experience as both physically and psychologically intense, emphasizing his fear and vulnerability. He connects the ceremony to his broader healing journey, including his earlier turn away from Western medicine and toward psychotherapy. A key section of the story describes his work with a therapist named Kati, who helped him uncover childhood memories and the belief that his real self was dangerous and should remain hidden. This insight becomes central to his understanding of why he remained unwell. The transcript then introduces psychologist Neil Goldsmith, who offers a metaphor of the human psyche as a well clogged by hardened leaves. In his view, psychotherapy can be slow and laborious, but psychedelics may provide a shortcut by loosening the blockage and allowing the “glow” at the bottom of the well to reemerge. This idea is reinforced by references to modern psychedelic research at Johns Hopkins, NYU, and UCLA, where psilocybin is being studied for terminal cancer patients. The transcript presents these studies as evidence that psychedelics can help people confront mortality, forgive, reconnect with loved ones, and live more fully in their remaining time. Nathan then recounts his own ayahuasca journey in the Peruvian Andes. He describes the brew as a harsh but loving teacher that works through nausea, vomiting, and purging. During one ceremony, the hospital-style pink vomit bucket triggers traumatic memories of chemotherapy, but in a later ceremony he is able to purge deeply and experiences visions that he interprets as healing. He feels his heart opening, his chronic fatigue resolving, and his relationship to marriage and life softening. He later marries Shula and credits ayahuasca with helping him feel love and emotional openness that he had previously thought impossible. The story returns to Sergei, who guides Nathan in a San Pedro ceremony after they discover a linguistic and cultural connection: Sergei accidentally uses the Hebrew-derived word “gan” for kindergarten, which surprises Nathan and deepens their bond. Sergei then tells the story of being stung by deadly scorpions during a peyote ceremony in Mexico. He describes the venom’s effects in vivid detail and says that the experience brought him close to death, but also gave him a profound appreciation for life and a sense of spiritual sanction to continue his healing work. Nathan sees this as a rite of passage that parallels his own near-death struggle with cancer. The final portion of the transcript shifts back to Lorenzo’s commentary. He reflects on the universality of psychedelic healing, emphasizing that people from different countries, religions, and backgrounds can find common ground through these medicines. He also shares his own history as a cancer survivor and credits cannabis, psychedelic mushrooms, and online survivor communities with helping him through his illness. The episode closes with a recording of Terence McKenna explaining how to smoke DMT, describing it as an overwhelming, alien, and visionary experience. Lorenzo uses this to underscore the power of psychedelic substances and to promote psychedelic research, harm reduction, and drug policy reform. He also mentions the death of Howard Marks, whom he praises as a legendary cannabis figure. Overall, the transcript is a meditation on suffering, identity, spiritual practice, and the possibility of healing through psychedelics, psychotherapy, and self-acceptance.