with PTSD and other indications—MAPS is sponsoring a clinical study at
UCLA that involves treating autistic adults with MDMA—Doblin believes
fervently in the power of psychedelics to improve humankind by
disclosing a spiritual dimension of consciousness we all share, regardless
of our religious beliefs or lack thereof. “Mysticism,” he likes to say, “is the
antidote to fundamentalism.”
• • •
COMPARED WITH RICK DOBLIN, Bob Jesse is a monk. There is nothing
shaggy or uncareful about him. Taut, press shy, and disposed to choose
his words with a pair of tweezers, Jesse, now in his fifties, prefers to do
his work out of public view, and preferably from the one-room cabin
where he lives by himself in the rugged hills north of San Francisco, off
the grid except for a fast Internet connection.
“Bob Jesse is like the puppeteer,” Katherine MacLean told me.
MacLean is a psychologist who worked in Roland Griffiths’s lab from
2009 until 2013. “He’s the visionary guy working behind the scenes.”
Following Jesse’s meticulous directions, I drove north from the Bay
Area, eventually winding up at the end of a narrow dirt road in a county
he asked me not to name. I parked at a trailhead and made my way past
the “No Trespassing” signs, following a path up a hill that brought me to
his picturesque mountaintop camp. I felt as if I were going to visit the
wizard. The shipshape little cabin is tight for two, so Jesse has set out
among the fir trees and boulders some comfortable sofas, chairs, and
tables. He’s also built an outdoor kitchen and, on a shelf of rock
commanding a spectacular view of the mountains, an outdoor shower,
giving the camp the feeling of a house turned inside out.
We spent the better part of an early spring day outdoors in his living
room, sipping herbal tea and discussing his notably quieter campaign to
restore psychedelics to respectability—a master plan in which Roland
Griffiths plays a central role. “I’m a little camera shy,” he began, “so
please, no pictures or recordings of any kind.”
Jesse is a slender, compact fellow with a squarish head of closely
cropped gray hair and rimless rectangular glasses that are
unostentatiously stylish. Jesse seldom smiles and has some of the