On this week’s episode of CoverStory, seeing underground psychedelic therapy through the eyes of a trainee whose mentor crossed a line
Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images On this week’s episode of Cover Story, we follow “Susan” as she goes through training to become an underground psychedelic therapist at the same college, and within the same circle of people, to which collaborator Lily Kay Ross belonged. While training, Susan’s mentor crosses emotional and physical boundaries, blurring the line of how a trusted therapist should behave and using Susan’s altered state to his advantage.
iO Tillett Wright: We’re in a forest. We’re on a tiny winding road with these giant redwood sequoias… I don’t even know. They’re like multiple stories tall, reaching for the sky, like nature’s fingers. To Françoise Bourzat’s house, we go. Oh my God. There’s a fucking deer. Hey little friend. Oh my God. You’re so beautiful. This is a magical place. We’re pulling off onto a dirt road. There’s the house.
Wright: When I smoked Salvia, I stared deeply at a fire hydrant for 12 minutes, but maybe that’s just me. If you ask a wealthy tech mogul to recommend a psychedelic guide - Françoise has been a go-to for off-the-radar trips – sometimes for five thousand dollars a pop. She wrote a popular book that Michael Pollan promoted; she advised local governments looking to legalize psilocybin, and she runs psychedelic retreats for grief-stricken parents out of Jamaica.
Wright: Even though it’s still really early days with the research, Oregonians have already voted to make psilocybin therapy legal starting in 2023. Psilocybin, by the way, is what puts the magic in magic mushrooms. Bourzat: There’s a certain criterion to be certified at CCM, at the organization that we have, and we train them in the art of delivering this work.Bourzat: It’s about creating a collaboration between me as a therapist/guide and someone else who wants to heal, grow, become more mature, heal some trauma, discover life, spirituality, or purpose. Psychedelics are not meant to be taken alone. It’s a very disorienting territory.
Ross: She’d been training to become a psychedelic therapist with Françoise and her husband in this underground training program that they had. And she’d already reached out to James Kent, another podcaster that we know because she was feeling really weirded out.Susan: Hi, how are you? I felt like I woke up from something and I was like, “who else is awake?”Susan: Um, uh. I was just sort of reaching out to you cause I’m like… I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t use my name or anything.
Susan: Growing up, it was like, if you show emotions other than positive emotions, you’re sensitive and dramatic. Susan: And I was thinking, by the time I graduate psychedelic therapy might be legal. It was really exciting Wright: I just want to jump in here to tell you two things. One, New York Magazine reached out to Eyal to ask him about this – and all the details you’re gonna hear from Susan – and through his lawyer, he generally declined to comment, except to say that Susan’s allegations are false.
I think I was just in that receptive state. I’ve never done ceremonies before this. I didn’t know what was normal, what was not normal. And then he kept being like, “oh my God, Susan, there’s one more spot left. I thought there were no spots left, but there’s one more spot for you. You’re gonna learn from my teachers. This is the last training they’re doing together.”
And I kept being like, “I think I need to work with a woman” because I felt uncomfortable with him. And he kept saying, “no, that’s your resistance. That’s your resistance to this.” Then I was thinking, oh, is it me being resistant? Susan: I don’t know what the processes are for psychedelics. I have no idea. So I was trusting him, and always not trusting him, too. I was always holding both.Susan: I was always confused. Because any of my questions he would frame it as my own resistance. It was always my resistance.
Susan: I had deep catharsis for some childhood trauma. It was wonderful. It actually really helped me a lot. Susan: He hugged me, but then he moved back and just stroked my body, like slowly moving down the side of me. A slow, stroking of my whole side and him like looking at my body. So that was weird and uncomfortable. But there was always the thing in my mind of like, he’s helping me.Susan: Don’t be weirded out by him. He’s helping me.
Ross: And that’s just in the class that covers ethics and law for normal, traditional psychotherapy. It’s even more of an issue when you’re using psychedelics because they can really open people up, they make people even more vulnerable and they can amp up sexual feelings. So now this guy is her therapist and as a therapist, he’s even weirder. He keeps focusing on their relationship.
Ross: It’s probably worth mentioning that this process and this person are her connection point to this training that she wants to do. He holds a certain key to her professional aspirations. Susan: I was like, “oh, she’s legitimate.” She’s being asked to speak at a scientific conference at UCLA. This made me think she’s something. People respect her and look to her for guidance.
Ross: She goes to more retreats and ceremonies and she’s into them and they seem to love her. There’s this story that Susan tells where there’s going to be this potluck thing at some point in the weekend. And she’s been assigned to make the vegan lasagna. Ross: I think part of what some of this gets at is that a thing that keeps people coming back to this group is the sense of belonging. And once you have that sense of a group, it can make it easier to normalize things that might otherwise stand out as odd.
Wright: So on the surface, that sounds fine, right? But what it’s actually saying is “remove your autonomy.”Ross: I mean, who knows? Maybe you would.Ross: We’re still at a part of the story where Susan is vibing on the group training. Ross: She’s trying to just get him to stop and feels like the best way to do that is to be like, “I need you to come here.”
Susan: He came up behind me and took me by the waist and then hugged me again. And again, he’s like slow-moving his hands down my sides. I wasn’t asking for hugs. Susan: He called me, so I answered the phone and he was like, “we’re going to do one more MDMA session. And in it, you’re going to fight me.”Ross: We will get there.
Wright: I just want to note here that when our fact checker reached out to Françoise and Aharon about the phone call and the email, they declined to comment. I told you earlier, that when New York Magazine reached out to Eyal Goren to hear his side of the story, through his lawyer, he generally declined to comment except to say that Susan’s allegations were false—but there was one interesting extra detail.
Susan: Pornography on one wall, and then like murder on another wall, while these people were on these substances. Susan: Six hours in or something, then they’d bring them ketamine and give them ketamine. So they were on multiple things. After that, they would bring in the family members of the people and have them talk to their family members in these states and then keep them up for another day. Then the next day, give them Mescaline.
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