Prisons Are Housing Mental Health Patients Who’ve Committed No Crimes
Andrew Butler was a popular kid at Hollis Brookline High School in New Hampshire, an honors student who was captain of the football and wrestling teams.
Then, during college, Andrew tore his leg muscles, making even walking to class difficult. He started struggling with depression, and after talking with his dad, he decided to take time off from his chemical engineering studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.
One weekend in July 2017, Andrew went camping in Vermont with friends. When he came back, he was acting strangely, running around in the woods, punching trees, clearly acting out on hallucinations that started after experimenting for the first time with psilocybin, the active compound found in hallucinogenic mushrooms.
