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PROLOGUE
Two years hadn’t dulled the pain. If anything, the hole in her soul had grown bigger. Holly didn’t think she could miss her father any more than she already did, but being this far away from home made the memories of him feel fuzzier, his absence more acute.
What am I doing here with all these old burnt-out hippies and weirdos?
Holly resented her grandfather for dragging her to this primeval Peruvian jungle, five thousand miles from home. But even the struggling eighteen-year-old realized he had only acted out of love and concern.
Holly had been in a downward spiral ever since the accident. Her grades had plummeted. She was disconnected from the few friends who had stuck with her through her grief. And life alone in the house with her melancholic and withdrawn mom felt more like living in a tomb. More than once, Holly had eyed the bottles lining her mother’s medicine cabinet, imagining what a relief it would be to just swallow all the pills.
“Trust me, Koala,” her grandfather had promised her with a sad smile as they boarded the plane for Lima. “This will help you.”
But this was his world, not hers. Everything about it felt foreign to Holly. At times, nightmarish. The twisted tangle of branches forming such a thick canopy that Holly couldn’t see the sky. The constant hums, thrums, buzzes, and chirps. Even the smells—a combination of vegetation, moisture, soil, and decay—made her want to puke. It all gave her the unsettling sense of being just another rung on the food chain of the living ecosystem that engulfed her.
Holly was the youngest one on the retreat by at least fifteen years. She had been mortified that first morning when she had to shed her clothes and immerse herself in the communal plant bath—basically just a deeper pool in the muddy stream that ran beside their encampment—in front of all the other women in the group. And she found the ceremony that followed it on the dirt floor of that weird circular hut, with its smelly inhalants, purgatives, and poultices, to be just as unnerving.
None of this mystic bullshit will bring Dad back. Or make me any less responsible for what happened to him.
That evening, the group gathered after dusk in the clearing for what would become a nightly ritual. By the time Holly sat down with the others around the roaring fire, she could feel the panic welling inside her chest. Sensing her growing distress, her grandfather reached over and gently took her hand in his, giving it a reassuring squeeze. That helped for a while. Then the kettle dangling above the dancing flames began to hiss, and the bitter, acrid stench of the special tea brewing inside turned her stomach and reignited her apprehension.
As she reluctantly brought the clay cup to her lips for the first time, feeling nothing but dread and regret, Holly would have never guessed that her life was about to be transformed.
CHAPTER 1
Monday, April 1
Any perceptive observer would recognize that the windowless room has been engineered for maximum calm. The light-taupe walls are sprinkled with pastel acrylic abstracts. The LED lighting is comfortably dim but not dark. A neutral ecru rug covers much of the hardwood flooring. The exit is clearly demarcated by the string of soft red lights lining the top of the door. And the relaxing scent of sandalwood floats through the air, the diffuser nowhere in sight.
Mocha-colored leather recliners form a crescent around Dr. Holly Danvers. Each of the seven seats is occupied. And what a hodgepodge of occupants they are: a rock star, a CEO, an activist, a fashion designer, a lawyer, a socialite, and even one of Holly’s own colleagues. To one another, they’re members of the same eclectic self-labeled “tribe.” But to Holly, they’re clients, a term she much prefers over patients.
All of them are equipped with identical black blindfolds and headphones. Each has a blood pressure cuff already wrapped around their arm and an IV bag suspended above their chair with tubes dangling below, waiting to be hooked to their forearms. But that’s where the physical similarities end. Race, size, gender, age, sexuality, and dress vary from one client to the next. Holly feels particularly protective over each of them today, but the therapist in her reminds her it’s merely a reflection of her own sense of exposure and vulnerability.
After all, today is the day the experiment leaves the laboratory.
Holly has been working with them for almost three months. They have made genuine progress, as a group and as individuals, through their weekly ritual: first, a potent intravenous dose of the psychedelic agent ketamine, followed later the same day or next by individual therapy and then a group session.
But they’re still addicts. Each with their own habit, ranging from sex and gambling to opioids and alcohol. Their hold on sobriety is new and fragile. One of them hasn’t even reached that point, but that is a secret only she and Holly share.
Eleven weeks into group therapy, Holly recognizes that all of them still have obstacles in their paths: truths they aren’t willing to admit and past traumas they are unable to confront. But her gut tells her that they’re as ready as they ever will be for a session under dual doses of two powerful psychedelics. A new step for them. And for her, at least in the clinical setting.
But Holly isn’t nearly as confident as she projects to the group. While ketamine-enhanced therapy is legal and largely accepted, none of the same holds true for the off-ramp she is about to lead her clients down. She’s going to supervise them as they self-administer a second psychedelic that has no legitimate pharmaceutical supplier and no sanctioned medical use, and in so doing, she will expose herself to potential legal and professional risk. She has reservations about a few of them, especially Elaine and Salvador, the two most anxious members. Salvador had a dysphoric reaction—what laypeople would label a “bad trip”—during one of his previous sessions. And Elaine’s needle phobia only worsens with each subsequent IV insertion.
Then why do it?
Holly sees it as a calculated risk, one worth taking if it will help to free them from the shackles of addiction. At least, that’s what she tells herself. But she realizes she’s motivated by more than simply altruism. There’s potential glory in it for her, too. Not to mention material gain—in terms of research data as well as free publicity for the book she has been contracted to write. That is, if she can demonstrate that adding a second psychedelic provides a stronger and more permanent form of abstinence.
As Holly was taught during the month she spent shadowing an anesthetist friend from med school, she has already preloaded the ketamine into the IV bags that now hang above the chairs. After the clients arrived, she tested each of their MDMA tablets using her laboratory-grade analyzer and found the pills to be pure. The group had to procure the MDMA on their own, albeit through a site Holly recommended, since she can’t prescribe it. No physician can. Besides, even in the exploding world of ketamine clinics and other plant-based wellness centers, none offer therapy combining two such potent psychedelics. Or if they do, none dare to publicize it.
Elaine Golding squeezes her eyelids shut and whimpers as Holly inserts the IV needle into her forearm. Fortunately, it slides into the vein with ease. Elaine gasps with relief, as if she has just jumped back onto a curb and narrowly avoided an onrushing truck.
Once all the IVs are secure and the last of the seven clients have swallowed their MDMA tablets, Salvador Jimenez raises his arm as if about to ask a question in class. Despite his meteoric rise in the LA fashion world, the designer looks and sometimes acts like a child. It doesn’t help that his round face is accentuated by an ever-present, undersized ball cap.
“They call this kitty flipping, don’t they?” Salvador asks with a giggle.
Holly frowns. “They?”
“Y’know. Like on the street.”
“The mean streets,” Baljit Singh grunts. “That makes us sound so badass. So Narcos. Not the whiny bunch of entitled elites we actually are.”
