They were promised psychedelic healing. They say it brought them more pain.

for Business Insider

Tim, a doctor in Atlanta, was reviewing new clinical research into psilocybin when he decided to try shrooms for himself. A hallucinogen derived from mushrooms, psilocybin was making its way through the drug approval process, and medical professionals viewed its mind-and mood-altering properties as a promising treatment for everything from PTSD to end-of-life anxiety. Tim was hoping to get more involved in the emerging field of psychedelic medicine. “If I’m going to operate this roller coaster,” he recalls thinking, “I should ride it at least once so I know what it’s like.”

To take his first dose of mushrooms, Tim went to the EAST Institute, an organization in Atlanta that described itself as a center for psychedelic healing. Run by a local tech founder named Jeff Glattstein and his wife, Lena Franklin, a social worker and Yoga Magazine cover star, EAST promoted “personal healing and transformation” through a combination of plant medicine, meditation, and “vibrational sound therapy.” Similar facilities have been sprouting up across the country, part of an entrepreneurial shroom boom spurred by the growing movement to legalize psilocybin for use in therapeutic settings, and a belief that these drugs could be the future of mental health treatment.

Tim found his first trip, in 2022, life-altering. It helped him let go of his feelings of shame about his sexuality and to heal the trauma from a sexual assault he had suffered years earlier. “It sounds trite, but I felt so connected to everything,” he recalls. “I felt this light burst out from me in the form of these rainbow bullets. They pushed the predator away. I felt bathed in this light and energy and power that was simply beyond my own agency, beyond my own personal narrative, and beyond my own body.”

Toward the end of the session, Tim looked over at Glattstein, who’d been facilitating the trip. In his 60s, wearing a woven poncho and a dazzling array of giant turquoise rings, the older man struck Tim as a guru, a healer who could deliver him from his guilt and pain. Still experiencing the trip’s euphoric afterglow, he dubbed Glattstein the Light Keeper. “I was ready to latch on to a savior at that moment,” Tim recalls. (He and other trainees spoke on the condition that they be identified with pseudonyms, since they could suffer professional consequences for using illegal drugs outside a clinical setting. Glattstein declined to comment for this story.)

To get a head start in the exciting new field of hallucinogenic healing, Tim paid $25,000 to enroll in EAST’s signature offering: a six-month course to train students to serve as facilitators of psilocybin-assisted therapy. During the sessions — which included weekend ceremonies in which trainees would take turns tripping on high doses of mushrooms — Tim developed what he called an “eternal bond” with his fellow students and EAST’s staff. He imagined a future where they would all take care of one another’s children. (“It was the mushrooms talking, of course,” he says.)

Halfway through the training, Tim’s personal life imploded when his boyfriend of four years broke up with him. In his fragile state, he told two EAST employees that he thought he should take the weekend off from taking mushrooms. But when Glattstein handed him a high dose, Tim says, he took it. “There was always this feeling that they must know something I don’t know,” he says.

Later that night, and while he was still under the influence of the mushrooms, Tim says he was sexually assaulted by Scott, an EAST staff member responsible for ensuring that trainees got home safely from the ceremony. (continued)