It's hard to describe why something that felt like such a Hail Mary seemed like a good idea at the time.

People sometimes describe that before they go on an Iowa-Wasca retreat,

there's almost like this gravitational pull.

It's almost like there's some force that is pushing them into this mysterious realm.

From Fuduro media and PRX, it's Latino USA.

I'm Maria N'Hosa.. Today journalist and author Ernesto Londonio shares his healing

journey with psychedelics and talks about the hopes and worries about their therapeutic use. Ernesto Londonio is a national correspondent at the New York Times

where he covers the Midwest.

Originally from Bogota, Colombia, Ernesto moved to the United States

for college in 1999 and later he would end up working for several major

publications like the Dallas Morning News and the Washington Post where he covered

the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and eventually ended up on the front page of the New York Times.

This year he released his first book, it's called Trippy, the peril and promise of

medicinal psychedelics. It explores the use of psychedelic therapy.

Enesto based his book on his own experience with

psychedelics, especially with Ayahuasca, which is a psychoactive brew

made with plants from the Amazon jungle.

The book opens around the time that Ernesto moved to Rio de Janeiro in 2017.

He had just become the Brazil Bureau Chief for the New York Times and arguably he was at the height of his career,

but he was struggling with depression.

It wasn't the first time that Ernesto was dealing with mental health issues. But he says that this particular

moment in his life in Rio de Janeiro and his journalistic curiosity led him to

...