Day: July 27, 2025

Semey, Kazakhstan – In the windswept, seemingly infinite steppe of eastern Kazakhstan stands a city with a dual, haunting legacy. It is a place where one of the world’s literary giants plumbed the depths of the human soul, and where, a century later, humanity sought to master the power to extinguish itself. This is Semey, formerly Semipalatinsk, a city whose soil is steeped in the memory of both Fyodor Dostoevsky’s exile and the Soviet Union’s atomic ambition.

For Fyodor Dostoevsky, one of Russia’s most celebrated writers, Semey was not a destination of choice but of punishment. Arrested in 1849 for his involvement with the Petrashevsky Circle — a group of intellectuals who read and discussed banned political texts — Dostoevsky was sentenced to death, only to be spared at the last moment in a mock execution ordered by Tsar Nicholas I. His sentence was commuted to four years of hard labour in the Omsk fortress, followed by compulsory military service in Semipalatinsk.

Arriving in 1854, Dostoevsky spent nearly five years in Semipalatinsk, a provincial outpost on the Russian Empire’s edge, where exiles, soldiers, and bureaucrats mingled with Kazakh nomads and merchants. Though his official role was that of a soldier in the Siberian Line Battalion, his time here marked a critical period of transformation — politically, spiritually, and literarily.

Semey offered isolation, but also introspection. Deprived of literary contact, Dostoevsky was forced inward. His exposure to suffering — in prison, in exile, and his struggles with epilepsy — sharpened the moral and psychological vision that would later define Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov. In letters from this time, he describes long walks through the barren steppe and his growing fascination with the Kazakh people, whose customs and resilience left a lasting impression.

During his years in Semey, Dostoevsky also began to reengage with the intellectual world. Thanks to the leniency of local officials, he was able to read, write, and eventually re-enter literary circles. It was here he completed Uncle’s Dream and The Village of Stepanchikovo, and began work on Notes from the Dead House, a fictionalised account of his time in prison that marked a decisive shift from romanticism to the raw psychological realism for which he became renowned.

Despite its remoteness, Semey in the 1850s was not without its cultural encounters. Dostoevsky formed a lasting friendship with Chokan Valikhanov, a Kazakh nobleman, ethnographer, and military officer, whose liberal views and deep knowledge of Central Asian culture helped broaden Dostoevsky’s perspective on the empire’s outer subjects. Their conversations influenced Dostoevsky’s thinking on race, empire, and the spiritual dignity of non-Russian peoples — ideas that subtly permeate his later works.

Dostoevsky’s House in Semey; image: Yakov Fedorov

Today, Dostoevsky’s former house still stands in Semey, converted into a museum dedicated to his life and writings. Modest in size but rich in atmosphere, it preserves manuscripts, personal letters, and portraits that evoke the introspective solitude of his exile. A statue of the writer stands in a quiet square, facing the steppe — perhaps as he once did, searching for meaning beyond the horizon.

Yet Semey is also haunted by another legacy: from 1949 to 1989, it lay just 150 kilometres from the Semipalatinsk Test Site, the epicentre of Soviet nuclear experimentation. More than 450 nuclear tests were conducted there, leaving environmental and genetic scars that still shape the city’s identity today. The juxtaposition is startling: a town that once reformed a writer who peered into the abyss of human suffering later became the stage for mankind’s flirtation with annihilation.

In this strange confluence of literature and atomic history, Semey emerges not as a forgotten frontier but as a place that reflects the extremities of human ambition and resilience. It remains, in many ways, a Dostoevskian city, fraught with suffering, yet never fully devoid of redemption.

• Bethenny Frankel rocked a runway at 54 and said her lifestyle habits keep her youthful.
• She focuses more on walking than hitting the gym, and isn’t afraid to say ‘no’ when she needs a rest.
• Frankel has been expanding her business partnerships into wellness, trying new supplements and skincare.

This summer, Bethenny Frankel’s abs went viral.

At 54, the ‘Real Housewife’ turned-business mogul walked the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Show, and her toned midriff galvanized the internet.

Frankel told Business Insider she has been inundated with questions about her secrets for aging gracefully with a busy, travel-intensive schedule.

“They want to know how I live, how I eat, how I pack, what I do,” she said.

Frankel said she doesn’t follow a strict routine. She tries to walk regularly, manage stress proactively, and doesn’t overthink her diet.

Still, she understands the fear of getting older, and the desire to feel confident and healthy in your 50s.

“I think people were moved by the Sports Illustrated Walk because they were saying, ‘oh wait, I am not done. I have so much time. I could have a glow up in five years, in 10 years, in 20 years,'” Frankel said.

If you are looking to give your lifestyle a tune-up, here are her top tips.

Keep your fitness routine simple

Frankel become a major player in business, turning her Skinnygirl brand into a multimillion dollar company and investing in various other companies — a golden touch known as the “Bethenny Effect.”

Still, she said she’s not the type to follow a set schedule.

“There is no typical day. A morning routine? I’m not that kind of person.”

One thing she will always fit in, though, is a walk.

“I just try to get in steps, but certainly not every day.”

Walking is a great for longevity, since it keeps your heart strong and promotes good balance and stability, according to cardiologists and healthy aging doctors.

While lifting weights is good for healthy aging too, the best exercise is one you’ll do consistently, personal trainers say.

If she’s learned anything over the years, Frankel said, it’s that you don’t need to overcomplicate your workout routine to stay healthy as you age,

3 supplements she swears by

Frankel said she takes a daily “pile of vitamins” and powders including:

• NAD+ — a trendy molecule being researched for energy and healthy aging in an IV and pill form.
• Collagen — a type of protein that supports healthy skin, hair, and joints.
• Irish sea moss — a nutrient-rich, edible seaweed that provides fiber, magnesium, and vitamins A and C.

Carbs are good, actually

Frankel has long been famous for her “supermodel snacks,” low-calorie bites that combine protein sources like turkey slices with mustard and bagel seasoning.

Despite loving cottage cheese — which is protein-packed — Frankel said the high-protein trend is over-rated.

“People are fixated and obsessed with so much protein. I think protein is good, just like I think carbs are good, fiber is good,” she said.

Instead, she tries to get creative in reaching for flavors she’s craving, while being mindful of portion sizes.

Make time for yourself

Frankel said one of the major reasons for her continued success in both health and business is a proactive approach to burnout.

She has a packed schedule, and finding balance is what has allowed her to keep up with a steady stream of obligations.

Frankel said she still has stressful days, but she’s learned to set aside plenty of time after to recover. That means being diligent about really resting, taking a full day to do nothing — not a 15-minute interview, not a quick meeting, not anything work-related, no matter how small, so she can fully unwind.

“I don’t run the car into the ground,” Frankel said, preparing to take a long, relaxing walk in the sunshine after wrapping up her interview with BI. “You need to have a discipline about saying no.”

Every year, it feels like there are multiple claimants to the title of “drink of the summer.” For the fancy, maybe 2025 is the year of the Hugo spritz. But if your finances are a little more stretched, which a lot of people’s are, you might be opting for this year’s more economical option: the Spaghett. Also known as the NASCAR spritz, the hobo Negroni, or the trailer park spritz, the drink consists of a bottled beer — often a Miller High Life — topped up with a splash of Aperol and maybe some lemon juice (a lot of people don’t bother with the last bit). It’s a way to fancy up your drink without fancying up the price tag too much. And the Spaghett’s popularity has been on the rise, as more drinkers feel increasing pressure on their wallets. Recession indicator? Maybe. Let’s call it the recession Aperol spritz.

Data from the payments platform Square shows that orders for Spaghetts in the first half of 2025 are up by 65% from last year, and since 2022, Spaghett orders are up by 1000%. The number of Spaghetts showing up on bar receipts has risen over the past five years, per Square’s data. Google searches for Spaghetts have spiked this summer.

Much of the interest is organic — Spaghetts are appearing more on menus, they’re easy to make at home, and the word is spreading about their existence, both on social media and in real life. There’s also been a corporate effort to make Spaghetts more of a thing. Miller High Life introduced the Spaghett-sicle in July, a push-pop version of the drink. Though, the $79 price tag for a six-pack is not as wallet-friendly as the regular version you’d find at a local dive or the one you could concoct in your kitchen. Given that an Aperol spritz could easily run you $15, the cost of the knock-off beer version is part of the draw.

“Sparkling wine comes with that assumed price tag because it doesn’t really matter what people are paying for it on the backend; they’re still going to charge you a fair amount,” says Tom Brander, the beverage director at Wilder, a restaurant in Philadelphia. “At a dive bar, you can just get a little bit of Aperol.”

The origin of the Spaghett can be traced back to Wet City Brewing in Baltimore in the mid-2010s, where a bartender created it as a sort of “bastardized Aperol spritz.” Part of the Spaghett’s allure has been that it’s familiar to those who work in bars and restaurants. It’s sort of a secret menu item. Stuart Wellington, the owner of Hinterlands, Minnie’s, and Commonwealth in Brooklyn, jokes it’s a drink for “service industry nerds and other weirdos that are in the know.” It trickled out across the city, region, and eventually the country from there, getting a Bon Appétit writeup in 2019.

It’s kind of like an industry handshake.

“Nobody could have foreseen that this silly little one-off cocktail would be this big,” says Alexander Rudy, a bartender in Austin who used to live in Baltimore. “It’s kind of like an industry handshake.”

Jacquelyn Caldwell, an associate brand marketing manager for Miller High Life, says the brand has seen the Spaghett gain “steady momentum,” especially over the past year. “It started as a bartender favorite in dive bars — mixed directly in the High Life bottle, no frills, just great flavor. From there, it evolved from an under-the-radar pick to a popular choice,” she says.

There are a lot of facets to the Spaghett’s appeal. It’s simple to make — you crack open a beer, maybe pour a little out or drink one swig, and then just toss in a half a shot of Aperol. The aperitif adds complexity to a drink without a lot of effort. While it’s typically created with a High Life, you can attempt it with other beers, too. One bartender tells me Aperol in a hazy IPA is “fire.” The people serving them up also appreciate the simplicity.

“Pricier drinks take time to assemble, so the ability to churn out a round of drinks quickly, even if they are less expensive, is important when it is busy,” says Frederic Yarm, a bartender and writer in Boston.

In an era of more people watching their alcohol intake, the Spaghett has a relatively low ABV compared with a lot of other options. The drink is a sort of orangey-pink, it plays into the bottled cocktail trend, and it’s just kind of fun to say the word “Spaghett.”

“With the popularity of the Aperol spritz, you can only have so many until you’re ready to venture into the next thing,” says Julianna McIntosh, the founder of Join Jules, a cocktail blog, and the author of the book “Pretty Simple Cocktails.” It’s a lot of guys who drink Spaghetts, but it appeals to women, too. “It’s a way easier way for, I would say, to get the female demographic into beer,” McIntosh says.

Chances are, you’re not going to find a Spaghett on the menu at a high-end cocktail bar or expensive restaurant. It’s one you come across in dive bars and more middle-of-the-road establishments, if it’s on the menu at all — a lot of the time, you just have to ask for it.

When Mawuli Grant Agbefe, a substitute teacher and Spaghett fan in Chicago, first started ordering Spaghetts, he’d sometimes have to explain what it was to the bartender. But he’s started to notice it pop up on menus over the past year or two. He likes the taste, and he thinks it’s an especially good option when it’s hot out. “Before I got into the Spaghett, I liked the Miller High Life plain, but after a bunch of High Life over the years, you kind of want to gussy it up sometimes,” he says.

Part of the charm of beer cocktails is making something not special a little special. The other part of the equation: the price. Trading down from an Aperol spritz to a Spaghett usually puts a few bills back in your pocket, while swapping a regular beer for a Spaghett isn’t going to break the bank, especially if the regular beer is cheap to begin with.

Wellington, the Brooklyn bar owner, calls Miller High Life his “recession beer.” “I’ve definitely noticed within a certain portion of my, let’s say, moderately employed regulars, they went from drinking draft beer to switching over to just drinking High Lifes,” he says. His average weekly order of High Life has gone up “considerably” over the past five years. Wellington has a buddy who has a full Spaghett setup at home, complete with a premixed squeeze bottle of Aperol and lime juice. Though he felt like they really hit last summer, he still sees them around and orders them himself. The idea of turning a beer into a Spaghett “has a little bit of, ‘Oh, we’re going something fun today,'” he says. The Spaghett is also cheaper than the other bar insider’s secret combo — a beer and a shot of Fernet.

“As consumers are looking to pull back a bit on spending and shift to lower ABV beverages, we’ve seen a rise in the popularity of beer cocktails — across restaurants on Square, orders for Spaghetts and other beer and spirit mixes have been increasing over the past few years,” says Ming-Tai Huh, the head of food and beverage at Square.

After a bunch of High Life over the years, you kind of want to gussy it up sometimes.

When I ask bartenders how much they charge people for the Spaghett, particularly if it’s not on the menu, most of them laugh. One says they’ll add a dollar or two onto the price of the beer they use as the base. Another says they may double the price of the already-inexpensive beer, or add the Aperol on as a shot. Others admit it’s a bit of an it-depends situation — they might just let the splash of Aperol go and charge only the beer.

When people are nervous about the economy, they start to look for ways to get more bang for their buck. They trade restaurant visits for meals at home. They switch international vacations for more local destinations. Alcohol can be a place where people do some amount of splurging — who among us has been at a bar and had a drink or two more than anticipated? But they also find ways to cut corners. They buy alcohol in smaller bottles, or they try to find options that still do the trick, inebriation-wise, without breaking the bank.

I’m not really a beer gal, and until recently, I had not heard of the Spaghett. I did go try one at a local bar, and let’s just say it’s not for me. But it is for plenty of other people. When I mentioned it to a coworker, they sent me a picture of their pink-hued High Life from the Fourth of July weekend. At a work event, I brought Spaghetts up to a stranger in passing, and he raved about them — this summer, they’re his main drink. And whatever your liquor proclivities, once you start to notice a beer cocktail in one place, you notice them everywhere — the Corona sunrise, the beermosa, the lagerita, the shandy. Beer companies are finding ways to zhuzh it up for price-conscious drinkers in other ways, too, and consumers are biting. Garage Beer, a Midwestern beer startup backed by the Kelce brothers, says its lime version is now outselling its regular light version.

As much as Americans are becoming more conscious about their drinking habits, they’re still drinking plenty. And in many cases, they’re seeking cheaper ways to do it. After all, a lot of the reason Gen Z has been late to booze is that they can’t afford it. After years of inflation, economic turmoil, and now, tariffs, consumers are strained. They’re finding ways to stretch their buck, whether that’s stocking up on frozen pizza or buying fewer snacks. When they do imbibe, many are looking for lower-cost options. The Spaghett is budget-friendly while still a little fun. And if it sounds a little gross, McIntosh says to give it a whirl anyway — you might be surprised. “Don’t knock it till you try it,” she says. “It’s actually really, really fun.”

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Tim, a doctor in Atlanta, was reviewing new clinical research into psilocybin when he decided to try shrooms for himself. A hallucinogen derived from mushrooms, psilocybin was making its way through the drug approval process, and medical professionals viewed its mind-and mood-altering properties as a promising treatment for everything from PTSD to end-of-life anxiety. Tim was hoping to get more involved in the emerging field of psychedelic medicine. “If I’m going to operate this roller coaster,” he recalls thinking, “I should ride it at least once so I know what it’s like.”

To take his first dose of mushrooms, Tim went to the EAST Institute, an organization in Atlanta that described itself as a center for psychedelic healing. Run by a local tech founder named Jeff Glattstein and his wife, Lena Franklin, a social worker and Yoga Magazine cover star, EAST promoted “personal healing and transformation” through a combination of plant medicine, meditation, and “vibrational sound therapy.” Similar facilities have been sprouting up across the country, part of an entrepreneurial shroom boom spurred by the growing movement to legalize psilocybin for use in therapeutic settings, and a belief that these drugs could be the future of mental health treatment.

Tim found his first trip, in 2022, life-altering. It helped him let go of his feelings of shame about his sexuality and to heal the trauma from a sexual assault he had suffered years earlier. “It sounds trite, but I felt so connected to everything,” he recalls. “I felt this light burst out from me in the form of these rainbow bullets. They pushed the predator away. I felt bathed in this light and energy and power that was simply beyond my own agency, beyond my own personal narrative, and beyond my own body.”

Toward the end of the session, Tim looked over at Glattstein, who’d been facilitating the trip. In his 60s, wearing a woven poncho and a dazzling array of giant turquoise rings, the older man struck Tim as a guru, a healer who could deliver him from his guilt and pain. Still experiencing the trip’s euphoric afterglow, he dubbed Glattstein the Light Keeper. “I was ready to latch on to a savior at that moment,” Tim recalls. (He and other trainees spoke on the condition that they be identified with pseudonyms, since they could suffer professional consequences for using illegal drugs outside a clinical setting. Glattstein declined to comment for this story.)

To get a head start in the exciting new field of hallucinogenic healing, Tim paid $25,000 to enroll in EAST’s signature offering: a six-month course to train students to serve as facilitators of psilocybin-assisted therapy. During the sessions — which included weekend ceremonies in which trainees would take turns tripping on high doses of mushrooms — Tim developed what he called an “eternal bond” with his fellow students and EAST’s staff. He imagined a future where they would all take care of one another’s children. (“It was the mushrooms talking, of course,” he says.)

Halfway through the training, Tim’s personal life imploded when his boyfriend of four years broke up with him. In his fragile state, he told two EAST employees that he thought he should take the weekend off from taking mushrooms. But when Glattstein handed him a high dose, Tim says, he took it. “There was always this feeling that they must know something I don’t know,” he says.

Later that night, and while he was still under the influence of the mushrooms, Tim says he was sexually assaulted by Scott, an EAST staff member responsible for ensuring that trainees got home safely from the ceremony. (Business Insider is referring to him by a pseudonym; he was never criminally charged. He denies Tim’s allegation.)

Tim says he hoped to work with EAST to develop an ethics policy and roll out better safeguards. He set up a Zoom meeting with Glattstein and Franklin, and asked two of his closest confidants in the training council, Beth and Lisa, to join the call. “I knew I had been taken advantage of by someone who was supposed to take care of me,” says Tim. “I was very concerned with ensuring something like this didn’t happen again.”

Initially, according to an audio recording of the meeting reviewed by Business Insider, the two founders said they “believed” Tim. But when Beth suggested that the incident represented an institutional failure at EAST, Glattstein jumped in. “As far as EAST being culpable,” he said, “we had a person on our staff who stepped over the line.”

Glattstein and Franklin hired a law firm to conduct an independent investigation, and Scott was ultimately fired. Franklin declined to share the resulting report with Business Insider. But in an email to the council, she wrote that the report concluded that EAST had “no culpability in the alleged events.”

This is a new field, and there are no real regulations. It’s sort of the Wild West phenomenon where the most kind of aggressive, entrepreneurial people can take advantage of that.Dominic Sisti, an associate professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania

But things at EAST were about to get even more complicated, as multiple women came forward to accuse Glattstein of touching them inappropriately during healing sessions — accusations he denies. And such accusations aren’t isolated to EAST.

Over the past few years, as drugs like MDMA and mushrooms have turned into a lucrative business, accusations of abuse have begun to surface at a host of leading centers for psychedelic medicine. In the wake of decriminalizing psilocybin, cities and states have implemented few ground rules to govern the sudden explosion of “consciousness medicine.” And the same properties that make mushrooms so effective in repelling destructive thoughts can also render users highly suggestible, making them vulnerable to the cultlike dynamic that has long pervaded the world of psychedelic healing. As a result, a growing number of people who have signed up to get care or serve as caregivers in the budding new industry say they’ve been harmed while taking the very drugs whose healing powers they were being taught to harness.

“This is a new field, and there are no real regulations,” says Dominic Sisti, an associate professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania who has researched the ethical dilemmas involved in psychedelics. “It’s sort of the Wild West phenomenon where the most kind of aggressive, entrepreneurial people can take advantage of that.”

Humans have been getting high on magic mushrooms for almost as long as there have been humans. Popularized in the United States during the 1960s, psychedelics came under fire during the Nixon administration’s “war on drugs.” In 1970, they were classified as Schedule 1 substances, rendering possession illegal, even for research purposes.

Then, in 2000, scientists at Johns Hopkins University received permission from the Food and Drug Administration to conduct research into psilocybin. As studies began to show that the substance had significant benefits for patients with chronic mental illness, voters started to see it more as medicine than menace. From Burning Man to luxury retreats, experimenting with psychedelics has become common among tech founders and executives like Elon Musk and Sam Altman, who credit the drugs with quieting their nerves, boosting productivity, and allowing them to better harness their creativity. The global market for psychedelic medicine could hit $10 billion by 2028, according to the Business Research Company.

Oregon and Colorado have legalized psilocybin for therapeutic use, and more than 20 cities have decriminalized it. With the hope that federal regulators will follow suit, venture capital firms have been financing shroom startups, and scores of training programs have sprung up to meet the growing demand for psychedelic facilitators who can administer the drugs in a safe environment. In the San Francisco area, where psychedelics have a long and checkered history, at least six training programs now operate, even though psilocybin remains illegal for medicinal use.

Regulations have not changed with the psychedelic gold rush. In Oregon, there’s little government or medical oversight of the 20 training programs authorized by the state. Those certified to administer psychedelics are required to receive 160 hours of training — compared with the 625 hours mandated for licensed massage therapists.

Franklin had an aesthetic perfectly suited to psychedelic medicine in the Instagram era. Glattstein, once a tech entrepreneur, had reinvented himself as a shaman.

EAST — short for Entheogenic Assisted Spiritual Transformation — was founded in the fall of 2021. Located on the ground floor of an office park in northwest Atlanta, its ceremonial space had the look of an ashram outfitted from an Anthropologie catalog. White sheepskin rugs were arranged in a circle; Buddhist statues adorned an altar lined with candles and a large geode. The veneer of curated calm was periodically pierced by the racket coming from Insight Virtual Ballistics, a bar and “virtual shooting” arcade next door.

The initial draw for many of the trainees at EAST was Franklin, who ran a therapy and mindfulness business in Atlanta before meeting Glattstein. An ethereal beauty with long, dark hair and a radiant smile, Franklin has an aesthetic perfectly suited to psychedelic medicine in the Instagram era. Her look — a seemingly endless rotation of hand-dyed silk dresses and turquoise jewelry — was at least partially attainable: A gift shop in EAST’s entryway sold brightly hued dresses and robes for hundreds of dollars a pop.

If Franklin, 40, was the draw, it was Glattstein, 65, who ran the show. He spent years in the up-and-down world of tech startups. In 1997, he cofounded an internet services company called Virtual Resources that raised $25 million in venture capital, only to sell for $6 million two years later. In 2018, after several subsequent startups also flopped, Glattstein turned the page. Instead of pitching companies, he was now pitching his own rebirth.

The story, as he’s told it in various interviews, is that he had fallen terribly ill — with what, he doesn’t say — and despite being given “all of the Western medical treatments, all the therapies, all the drugs,” his mysterious condition only got worse. “They had given me three months to live,” he recounted on the “Psychedelic Conversations” podcast. “All my systems were shutting down.”

All that changed, he said, when he heard a voice command him, “Heal yourself.” Glattstein says he stopped his medications, cut ties with his doctors, and started practicing with a shaman. His hair grew back and his body grew fit: His illness was gone. He started teaching, and Franklin was one of his early students. The two became a couple, bound by a passion for Eastern medicine and, they’ve said, their shared feeling as outsiders in Atlanta — Glattstein, the child of New York Jews in a predominantly Southern Baptist area; Franklin, whose mother was Vietnamese. They soon began hosting mini “medicine” retreats with friends at a cabin in the woods outside Atlanta. “It was just a small group of us doing mushrooms,” said a friend who asked not to be identified for fear of professional repercussions.

After founding EAST, Glattstein and Franklin proved to be gifted promoters of their new venture. Latching on to reality TV as a pulpit for their psychedelic gospel, they appeared as spiritual healers on Lifetime’s “Little Women: Atlanta” and Bravo’s “Real Housewives of Atlanta” spinoff, “Porsha’s Family Matters.” They trademarked the “EAST Method,” which they said provided “profound healing benefits for depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction, compulsive conditions, pain management, and end-of-life demoralization” — though it’s never been proven to be a treatment for any condition.

Once they welcomed their first “council” of facilitator trainees, Glattstein — now calling himself a “world-renowned shaman” — took on the roles of teaching classes, sourcing the medicine, and setting the dos

Before long, Glattstein was surrounded by a following of true believers. His supreme self-confidence, Beth says, made it hard to resist his instructions. “There were moments where I did feel connected to him,” she says, “because of the drugs.”

On ceremony weekends at EAST, Friday and Saturday nights were reserved for psilocybin “journeys.” On the first night, half of the council would take a high dose of mushrooms of up to 4.5 grams, according to six of the trainees. The other half would be given a relatively low dose, up to 1.5 grams, so they could help facilitate the others’ experiences, they say. Franklin says that the doses were lower: 3.5 grams “was at a much higher end,” she told Business Insider, while the low dose would be “up to one gram.”

The next night, they’d swap roles. As the students waited for the drugs to take effect, Franklin and the other lead facilitators would don dresses and ceremonial robes, play music, and dance.

“I will always regret not saying, ‘Wait a minute, Jeff, she’s telling you that her intuition, her body, her spirit, is saying that she shouldn’t do this. Why would we override that? We’re here to learn how to be facilitators.”

The next day, the trainees would talk about their experiences from the night before. Glattstein would also lead sessions on topics like neuroscience and shamanic healing. The trainees, some of them healthcare professionals, said they found the lectures light on science. “Jeff gave some very basic information about the limbic system,” recalls Sarah, a trainee in the third council. “I was like, ‘Are we not going to get into serotonin receptors and how psychedelics interact with the brain?'” There was also no discussion about the boundaries between the facilitator and the subject, trainees say. “There was never anything about ethics, or what we should do as facilitators if we found ourselves attracted to somebody who was doing the medicine work with us,” says Beth.

As psychedelics move into the fields of medicine and therapy, the training in how to handle them is, in many cases, being conducted by spiritual healers who are intensely critical of Western medicine. Trainees say Glattstein could be openly hostile to the medical establishment. Zoe, a former employee of EAST, says she started to see a shift in the center’s attitude that she wasn’t comfortable with. “Their messaging was becoming increasingly, explicitly anti-mental-health treatment,” she says. “Like, how you shouldn’t go to therapy, and take mushrooms instead.”

At one ceremony in February 2023, a psychologist named Joan, who was part of Tim’s council, was experiencing what she described as “serious insomnia and unrelenting anxiety.” She says she asked Glattstein if she could skip the mushrooms that weekend and stick to facilitating. But Joan says Glattstein insisted she go ahead with the ceremony as planned, and she ultimately agreed. Two trainees recalled the interaction and say they wish they’d spoken up for Joan at the time. “I will always regret not saying, ‘Wait a minute, Jeff, she’s telling you that her intuition, her body, her spirit, is saying that she shouldn’t do this,” says Beth. “Why would we override that? We’re here to learn how to be facilitators.”

Franklin says she knew Joan was struggling, but denies Glattstein pressured her to take mushrooms. As the course progressed, Joan’s symptoms got worse. By the time it was over, she was a wreck. “I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t work,” she says. “I stopped doing pretty much anything.” Her husband admitted her to the hospital, and she remained in the psych ward for two weeks.

The same weekend that Joan asked to skip the mushrooms, Tim also tried to scale back his dosage after his bad breakup. Ahead of the ceremony, he says he went to two of EAST’s employees, one of whom was Scott, and told them, “It may not be appropriate for me to take a high dose of psilocybin this weekend.” When Glattstein proceeded as normal, Tim agreed to take the high dose. He remembers his trip that night as healing, helping him to view the breakup as “just a blip in our cosmic story.” He was filled with a sense of “overwhelming love” for his ex, and was certain they would meet again in future lives. As the ceremony wound down, Tim was still tripping.

Trainees say this was a common issue at EAST. The medicine ceremonies ended after three hours, and the effects of a high dose of psilocybin might last up to eight hours. It took so long to come down that trainees would make arrangements for someone to drive them home.

Tim and Scott knew each other from years earlier, when they’d gone on a few dates, but both say it never turned sexual. That night, Scott was already due to give Tim a ride home from the ceremony, along with another trainee who was staying at Scott’s home that weekend. Now, Tim says that Scott suggested Tim stay over, too. Wouldn’t that be better, he said, than returning to the home Tim shared with his ex-boyfriend?

Oh, Tim thought as he stared out the window, gazing at the passing lights amplified by the psilocybin. How lovely that this person would offer me a place to sleep. After several months of psilocybin use, he felt a deep affection for everyone involved with EAST, including Scott.

Since the other trainee would be staying on the couch, Tim says Scott suggested that they could share his bed. (The other trainee did not respond to requests for comment.) Still feeling the effects of the psilocybin, Tim agreed. But as Scott crawled into bed with him, the feeling of love and connection Tim had felt on the ride home dissolved into confusion.

He “kind of turned into this archetype of a tiger,” Tim recalls, “with the growling and these half-closed eyes.” As Tim recalls it, Scott tried to undress him and physically force him to perform oral sex. “I put my underwear back on at least three times,” Tim says. Finally, Tim says he gave up trying to resist.

In a telephone interview with Business Insider, Scott denied having “any sexual contact” with Tim.

According to Tim, they wound up having one more sexual encounter with another man, though Scott says he was present but didn’t participate. Business Insider has reviewed text messages between Tim and Scott, in which they exchanged friendly banter and, on one occasion, Scott sent Tim an explicit photo.

A few months after the alleged assault, and after Tim had opened up to his therapist, Tim says he came to believe that EAST had taken his money and put him in the care of someone who took advantage of him while he was in a suggestible state.

In retrospect, he puts much of the blame for what happened on Glattstein and Franklin. After all, they were the ones who put Scott in charge of getting him home safely. “How,” he began to wonder, “are these people running a training program?”

The lack of clear guidelines is a widespread problem in facilitator training. The gold standard for centers like EAST is a manual developed by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, the country’s leading psychedelic and research advocacy organization. But the guidelines provided by MAPS are murky at best. For example, the manual states that facilitators must “always ask for permission regarding any kind of physical contact.” The guidelines don’t address the fact that a person under the influence of psychedelics may not be in a position to consent.

Suggesting physical contact with someone who is on psychedelic drugs, by its very nature, fosters an environment that is ripe for abuse. “It goes against everything we know about therapeutic boundaries and ethics when the facilitator or therapist leans heavily into touch,” says Neşe Devenot, a researcher at the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation at Harvard. “And when the client is on these suggestible substances, that touch creates a feeling of intimacy that can be exploited.”

Betty Aldworth, the director of communications and education at MAPS, said the organization’s guidelines are clear. She says the MAPS manual stresses that touch is optional and that consent for touch can be revoked at any time and in different ways, including nonverbally. She added that proper training and sound clinical judgment are crucial to the process.

200 psychedelic practitioners and advocates have signed an open letter calling for accountability and transparency in the psychedelic community.

In 2019, MAPS acknowledged that Richard Yensen, an unlicensed therapist in one of its clinical trials, “substantially deviated” from its manual while treating Meaghan Buisson, a trial participant who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming in part from sexual abuse. Video footage of the treatment showed Yensen and another therapist cuddling, hugging, and aggressively restraining Buisson while she was on MDMA. In a lawsuit, Buisson alleges that following the treatment, Yensen continued to act as her therapist and repeatedly sexually abused her for more than a year after the initial incident. After Buisson sued him for sexual abuse, Yensen argued in a legal filing that the relationship was consensual and, because his therapy license had lapsed, he was not under a “duty of care” as a medical professional. The case was settled out of court.

In 2022, California’s Board of Behavioral Science brought eight “causes for discipline” against Eyal Goren, a therapist who trained with the Center for Consciousness Medicine. The claims included sexual misconduct, gross negligence, and emotional harm against trainees who had taken psilocybin, MDMA, and ayahuasca. Goren denied the allegations, but agreed to surrender his license for at least three years. Goren declined to comment.

In 2021, 200 psychedelic practitioners and advocates signed an open letter calling for accountability and transparency in the psychedelic community. A healthcare blog published by Harvard Law School, and co-authored by Devenot, concluded that the accounts of abuse throughout the rapidly growing ecosystem of psychedelic medicine “align with the familiar social dynamics that make up destructive cults.”

Franklin says EAST did consider ethics when setting up the program, but she concedes they could have done more. “EAST was not perfect, obviously, and there’s a lot of growth area for sure,” she says. “But we definitely did our best.” Still, she adds, the institute can’t be blamed for what happened outside its training. “What people did when they stepped outside of the doors, we just don’t have control over that,” she says.

Members of Tim’s council were shell-shocked by his allegations. As they debated what to do, more allegations surfaced — this time about Glattstein. In October 2023, two women from EAST’s first facilitator training sued Glattstein, alleging that he had sexually abused them during private “energy healing” sessions. One of the women, Mica Davis, said Glattstein would touch her breasts and vagina over her clothing, ostensibly to help clear her “root chakra” — energy that resides in the groin area. Doing so, he told her, would “make her husband happy.” The second woman, Jacqueline Wigder, who had come to EAST in part to work through trauma stemming from childhood sexual abuse, said that Glattstein would press his hands on her pubic bone and reach under her bra to run his hands between her breasts. Her sexual energy, he allegedly told her, was “like a caged tiger that needed to be released.”

Glattstein and EAST have denied the allegations. In a blog post on his personal website, Glattstein says the women signed informed consents specifically for “hands on” energy work. “The reputation of an incredibly gifted healer that has dedicated his life to helping humanity was severely damaged,” he wrote. The case is still pending.

In December, EAST filed for bankruptcy. The EAST website is now blank, and all posts have been deleted from the group’s social media accounts. Franklin, meanwhile, has migrated some of EAST’s offerings to her personal website. Earlier this year, she offered a six-day trip to Egypt called “The Awakening,” which she advertised as a “reclamation journey of the powerful Priestess within” that will unlock “dormant cellular DNA.” Today, she says, her goal is “to share what it really means to be an impactful, courageous, conscious leader in the healing and psychedelic spaces.”

As for Tim, he hopes for a day when psilocybin therapy is fully professionalized, with credentials and oversight boards. In a sense, it’s not that different from the process that Western medicine underwent at the turn of the 20th century. Back then, medical schools were required to implement standardized curricula and training requirements to counteract widespread public dissatisfaction over snake-oil salesmen and other medical “quacks.” Properly regulated, Tim believes, shrooms and other psychedelics could one day be as commonplace as talk therapy — a trusted treatment for the traumas and anxieties of modern life. Getting there will mean establishing appropriate boundaries between patients and practitioners, ensuring proper oversight, and moving beyond the field’s anything-goes roots in the New Age counterculture.

“I still believe this is the future of medicine,” Tim says. “But you can’t just have some tech guy walk in and call himself a shaman.”

Katie MacBride is a freelance writer.