‘This is medicine’: inside the psilocybin retreat for US first responders

Amid a US mental health crisis, police officers, firefighters and paramedics are flying to Mexico for treatments they say are transformative

In mid-September, after the fire season in the American west largely went quiet but before hurricanes ravaged the south-east, seven first responders from across the US traveled to Mexico seeking a therapy they hoped would transform their lives.

They had embarked on a sort of pilgrimage, journeying thousands of miles to an airy villa outside the humid beachside city of Puerto Vallarta, where over the course of three days a team would guide them through ceremonies with psilocybin, the psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT and tobacco.