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You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey, Shortwaivers, Regina Barbara here.

I'm talking with one of our producers, Rachel Carlson, who's been reporting a series on psychedelics and related drugs.

Hey, Rachel.

Hi, Gina.

So in our last episode, we talked about how drugs like psilocybin and ketamine are raising all these questions about the limits of what we know about our brains and how we experience reality.

Definitely check out that episode if you missed it, but also this one will make sense without it.

Rachel, you touched on one thing in that episode that we're going to go a little deeper on today, and that's the challenge of studying these drugs.

Exactly. So when we're talking about how drugs like psychedelics and ketamine work, or if they

work at all, what the heck are we actually talking about?

There's the drug, there's the trip, and then there's all these non-drug factors, meaning

the stuff at the beginning, like the expectations you set,

the hope you have, the lessons you learn.

This is Dr. Boris Hefitz.

He's an anesthesiologist and neuroscientist at Stanford University, and he told me that

researchers have been wondering for a while if the trip that comes with a lot of psychedelics,

this journey or

experience, is really important or if it's just this unnecessary byproduct when it comes to making

people feel better. So a lot of people actually have been talked about this for years, like, well,

...