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"publication bias."7 Of all the studies drug companies carry out, 40 percent are never released to the public, and lots more are only released selectively, with any negative findings left on the cutting room floor.

The endless tinkering with the chemical composition has created "Frankenstein drugs," says Ross Bell of the New Zealand Drug Foundation, who claims that the compounds in the current crop of legal highs are more likely than past versions to cause anxiety, increased heart rate, hallucinations, and depression.

Nobody claims that psychedelics work in the way we were told antidepressants did in the 1990s: they don't change your brain chemistry and therefore "fix" you. No. What they do is give you--when the experience goes well--a remarkable sense of connection, for a very short period. "The value of the experience," Andrew told me, is to "show you the possibility"--how connection can make you feel. Then, he says, "it's up to you to find other ways to maintain the experience." Its value is not as a drug experience but as a learning experience. And you need to keep practicing the lesson, one way or another.

Mexico's cartels have invested a lot of time and money in persuading journalists to tame their coverage. Persuasion takes the traditional form of plata o plomo--"silver or lead," meaning a bribe or a bullet--which the gangs use to get their way in other areas of public life.