DEBATES about assisted dying are usually dominated by the certain. In The Body Politic (Radio 4, Sunday), the columnist and broadcaster Sonia Sodha managed to bring out the divided feelings that many of us experience.
Out of love, Debbie Binner accompanied her husband, who suffered from motor neurone disease, to an assisted-suicide clinic in Basel. Yet she was unconvinced that it should be legal: 18 months before, her teenage daughter had died from bone cancer, and she had met so many young patients desperate for even one more day.
Sir Nicholas Mostyn, a High Court judge diagnosed with Parkinson’s, who wanted the option of assisted dying in preference to unbearable pain, spoke for the articulate and confident. Chelsea Roff, an anorexia survivor who said that she would “100 per cent” have opted for assisted dying, had it been available, represented the vulnerable.
What about the sanctity of human life? Sodha, a self-described “non-believer”, said that the phrase made her squeamish; and yet she concluded that she believed in it after confronting the “travesty” of someone who had been pressured into assisted suicide. More than that, she had learned that even “rational liberals” such as herself had belief systems that were built not entirely on cold reason.
The programme’s framework of touching personal stories displayed the continuing power of narrative, unrivalled even in an era of combative, data-driven argument.
Organised drug tourism is big business. On Heart and Soul (BBC World Service, Friday), Janak Rogers travelled to Iquitos, the metropolis of the Peruvian Amazon, to explore the impact of the ayahuasca boom on the region. Pushed by celebrities, including Joe Rogan, as a cure for depression and PTSD, the plant brew is also promoted as a channel for “spiritual experiences”, even contact with the divine, especially if its use is accompanied by indigenous shamans.
Rogers discovered jungle resorts charging £5000 for all-inclusive luxury drug experiences, while the staff earnt something closer to £100 per week.
A local journalist, Carlos Suárez Álvarez, revealed the terrifying truth: the drug mainly acts as a purgative, making those who take it seriously nauseous. Relatively few experience the desired colourful visions. Reversing the usual presentation of North-South global relations, Álvarez praised the positive economic impact on this remote region, while observing that the Western tourists who flocked to the Amazon unaccompanied were sometimes exploited by unscrupulous actors.
The tourists who referred to the potion as an actual person who spoke to them, even as “Mama Ayahuasca”, left me disturbed, as did the need for several warnings that ayahuasca “is not scientifically proven” as a mental-health treatment.
But locals, not just jaded Westerners, reported having spiritual experiences — even Álvarez, clearly a hard-boiled hack, reported being helped by a powerful trip after his mother died.
Would I head for Iquitos myself? Thank you kindly, but my smartphone already turbocharges my amygdala quite enough.
