In mid-September, after the fire season in the American west largely went quiet but before hurricanes ravaged the south-east, seven first responders from across the US traveled to Mexico seeking a therapy they hoped would transform their lives.
They had embarked on a sort of pilgrimage, journeying thousands of miles to an airy villa outside the humid beachside city of Puerto Vallarta, where over the course of three days a team would guide them through ceremonies with psilocybin, the psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT and tobacco.
The retreat, paid for by a California-based non-profit, offered a chance at healing that had eluded the first responders through years of counseling, medication and meditation. On a sweltering Thursday afternoon, they sat in a circle under a wood pergola and shared what ailed them: pain and rage without an identifiable source, on-the-job injuries that had upended their lives, childhood abuse, beloved friends lost to suicide or violence.
An Indiana man convicted of storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 with his mother has reportedly applied for asylum in Canada — and is already living there, apparently — after failing to report to prison over the summer to serve his 
A commercial jet carrying 181 people skidded off a runway at an airport in South Korea and burst into a massive fireball, killing all but two, who somehow miraculously survived the horrifying aviation disaster, according to South Korean media.
