For Thanksgiving, here are 23 things for which I’m grateful in 2023. Some are drawn from the world of philanthropy–so please read on if you are planning to make donations during the holiday season–while others are political or personal. In no particular order.

Philanthropy

Effective altruism: The brand has been tarnished, to say the least, by Sam Bankman-Fried. But the fundamental insights of the EA movement remain sound. These are people who are serious about finding the best ways to do good. If only they had more impact on the rest of philanthropy.

Give Well: Donating to GiveWell helps save lives. The organization does deep research into charities to find those that are most effective. All operate in poor countries, where the needs are greatest and your dollars go further.

Give Directly: A simple, beautiful idea: Give money to the world’s poorest people, and let them decide how to spend it. My favorite charity.

Giving Green: Which are the best nonprofits working to curb climate change? It’s a tough question to answer. The people at Giving Green have found organizations that have a big potential impact but are relatively neglected by donors.

Animal Charity Evaluators: Another meta-charity. This one recommends nonprofits, some quite small, that aim to reduce the suffering of farm animals.

Open Philanthropy: Guided by the principles of effective altruism, Open Philanthropy prioritizes causes based on three criteria: importance, neglectedness and tractability. I’ve found this framework incredibly helpful when I think where to donate, and also when I look for stories to cover as a reporter.

Arnold Ventures: Laura and John Arnold fund research and advocacy in such arenas as criminal justice, higher education and health care. Unlike many big foundations, they’re strictly non-partisan and evidence-based.

Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies: Since 1986, Rick Doblin & Co. have been working to make psychedelics safely and legally available for beneficial uses. That world is coming, slowly but surely.

Martha’s Table: I like to give locally and have long been an admirer of (and volunteer for) this Washington DC-based charity, which gave cash transfers to poor residents during the Covid pandemic.

Standing Together: I’m just learning about these Israeli and Palestinian peace activists. They say: “People don’t need to choose whether they are #freepalestine or #standwithIsrael, they need to stand with innocent people on both sides who want to live in peace and safety.”

Politics and media

Joe Biden’s big climate bill: The future of the planet will be shaped by China, which now emits more greenhouse gases than the US and EU combined, but we Americans need to do our part.

Reason magazine: Smart, libertarian takes on the folly of governments everywhere.

The Ezra Klein Show: The podcast has done great work on Israel and Palestine since October 7.

Freddie deBoer: An iconoclast and, easily, the smartest Marxist I know. He writes beautifully, too.

Andrew Sullivan: He’s been right about so many things: gay marriage, torture, Obama, Trump and the excesses of identity politics. What’s more, he’s never dull.

Matthew Yglesias: Pragmatic takes on policy and politics, with a high nerd quotient.

Personal

Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation: My beloved religious community, which keeps me focused on the things that matter.

Montgomery County Road Runners Club: My running community for nearly 30 years. Yikes. We’re growing older together.

The psychedelics community: Open-minded, big-hearted people. My friend Charley Wininger says: “The best thing about the psychedelics community isn’t the psychedelics. It’s the community.”

My friends, and especially my gf: You know who you are.

My band of brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews and boyfriends: This year, 17 of us will gather for Thanksgiving dinner.

My daughters and their families: Sarah, Becca, Amy, Eric, Hudson, Sawyer, Max, Everly and Dori. My time with you brings me immense joy. I am so lucky to have you in my life.

Historic is a word much overused in journalism, so we’ll leave it to others to say whether Psychedelic Science 2023 will be long remembered. But the gathering staged last week in Denver by the nonprofit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Science (MAPS) certainly felt momentous: It showcased the size, strength and diversity of the fast-growing movement to bring psychedelics into mainstream America.

Some 12,000 people — 12,000 people! — converged on the Colorado Convention Center. They were scientists, physicians, therapists, activists, investors, entrepreneurs, philanthropists and, yes, psychonauts who toured an exhibit hall where vendors sold books, T-shirts and grow-kits allowing anyone to propagate psilocybin mushrooms at home. They endured long days of panels and PowerPoints and enjoyed long nights of partying and partaking in mind-altering chemicals.

The conference offered plenty of serious conversation but a playful and mildly subversive vibe was never far from the surface. Carl Hart, a drug-reform activist, a heroine user and tenured professor of psychology at Columbia, warned that he might not be his best self as he took the stage for a 9:45 a.m. interview. “I don’t usually see the day before noon,” he noted.

Support for psychedelics came from politicians, notably Jared Polis, Colorado’s Democratic governor and Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, a Republican. Other bold-faced names — NFL all-star quarterback Aaron Rodgers, singer Melissa Etheridge and best-selling author Andrew Weil — testified to the benefits of these mind-expanding drugs.

Others described the many paths by which psychedelics are becoming more available to more people in more places than ever. Plans for so-called psychedelic service centers in Oregon and Colorado, whose voters have decriminalized plant medicines, are well underway; before long, anyone over 21 in those states will be able to experience the magic of psilocybin mushrooms, in a regulated environment.

Elsewhere, a growing number of churches provide psychedelics as sacraments; they’re protected, more or less, by laws guaranteeing religious liberty. Underground markets appear to be flourishing, and retreat centers are springing up in Jamaica and Costa Rica. Nonprofit groups like the Heroic Hearts Project take combat veterans to Costa Rica or Peru for treatments.

Perhaps most important, MAPS’s drug-development unit, called the MAPS Public Benefit Corporation, expects to get FDA approval next year for its plan to treat PTSD with a combination of therapy and MDMA, or ecstasy.

It’s no wonder that MAPS founder and president Rick Doblin relished the scene as conferees packed into the 5,000-seat Bellco Theatre for the event’s opening plenary.

“I can only wonder, am I tripping?” asked Doblin. Pause. “It’s not that I’m tripping, the culture is tipping.”

With more than 500 sessions, the conference sprawled every which way. Sample titles: “90 Years of Tryptamine Chemistry.” “Can modern psychedelic medicine take lessons from the plant medicine traditions?” “Assessing the evidence for microdosing.” “Decolonization and the psychedelic renaissance.”

Not surprisingly, “Sex, Money, Death and Psychedelics” drew a standing room only crowd.

Lucid News provided extensive coverage, with reports here.. Below, I’ve pulled excerpts from my contributions and added a few observations.

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You can read the rest of this story at Medium.

Several years ago, an investor offered to pay $150 million for 20 percent of MAPS public benefit corporation, the for-profit drug-development subsidiary of MAPS, according to Rick Doblin, the nonprofit’s founder and president. MAPS — it stands for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies — has for nearly 40 years been working to bring psychedelic medicines to the mainstream. It is thought to be tantalizingly close to winning FDA approval for MDMA-assisted therapy to treat people with PTSD.

Doblin turned down the investor. He told Lucid News that the valuation was too low, and that MAPS would sell equity in its drug-development unit “only as a last resort.”

It’s last resort time.

This week, reporting for Lucid News, I broke the story that MAPS has hired Cowen & Co., a New York investment bank, to sell shares in MAPS PBC, as the wholly-owned drug development unit is known. MAPS PBC estimates that it will need to spend somewhere between $70 million and $250 million to commercialize MDMA-assisted therapy, assuming the treatment protocol is approved by the FDA.

So far at least, MAPS has been unable to raise that money through philanthropy. Since Doblin founded MAPS in 1986, it has raised a total of about $140 million in donations. Through the first nine months of last year, it raised less than $10 million in donations.

Can Doblin raise the money, from some combination of investors and donors? The stakes are high, not just for MAPS and for those suffering from PTSD who could benefit from the treatment, but for the entire psychedelics sector.

Although MDMA is not a classic psychedelic, it is classified as a Schedule 1 drug by the DEA, meaning that it has no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Getting FDA approval for a combination of talk therapy and MDMA mean that the medicine has been shown, through rigorous clinical trials, to provide medical benefits. Getting insurers to cover the treatment would further reinforce the idea that MDMA, which is known on the street as ecstasy, has value to patients. Finally, a successful rollout of MDMA to treat PTSD could bring enormous relief to millions of people, including combat veterans and victims of sexual assault or abuse, who suffer from PTSD. It would show that at least one psychedelic medicine can deliver on its promise.

As Daniel Goldberg, a founder of the venture capital fund Palo Santo, told me for my story: “It’s incredibly important to the entire sector and to the movement in general that MDMA gets across the finish line.”

MAPS PBC is exploring a variety of way to raise money for commercialization, an executive there told me after my story ran. Investors are definitely interested, this executive said. The question is, what will they want in return—seats on the board, influence on the speed and scope of the rollout, a focus on short-term profits?

It’s also possible that a super-rich philanthropist could pay for the rollout, on his own or with a few wealthy friends. The Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation has been one of MAPS’ most generous donors, giving the organization $3.4 million, largely to support its work with veterans. The billionaire owner of the New York Mets could write a check for 50 times that amount, and hardly miss it.

Goldberg, for one, is optimistic that Doblin will successfully finish the work to which he has devoted much of his adult life. “If anyone can do it, MAPS, and particularly Rick, will find a way to get it done,” he said. Let’s hope he’s right.

You can read my story about MAPS here.

MDMA is an illegal drug that, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, has no medical value and a high potential for abuse.

Yet MDMA -- better known as ecstasy or molly -- is being welcomed into a veterans administration hospital where it will be used to help combat veterans with PTSD.

How can that be?

The research at a Bronx, NY, VA hospital has been permitted by the FDA, which, to its credit, continues to approve clinical trials to assess the therapeutic benefits of psychedelic medicines. Guided by science and not by the politics of the war on drugs, FDA regulators are increasingly aware of the potential of psychedelics; when accompanied by therapy, they appear to be able to help alleviate suffering from a range of mental disorders.

Specifically, this clinical trial took root at a meeting at Burning Man and was made possible by the philanthropy of two colorful billionaires. You can read more in my latest story at Medium.

In 1976, Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, a brilliant and eccentric chemist who concocted hundreds of psychoactive drugs in a home-based laboratory in the hills of Berkeley, California, cooked up a batch of MDMA, the drug that later became known as Ecstasy or Molly. He then tried some, as was his habit.

He loved it. “I feel absolutely clean inside, and there is nothing but pure euphoria,” he wrote in his lab notes afterwards. “I have never felt so great, or believed this to be possible. The cleanliness, clarity, and marvelous feeling of solid inner strength continued throughout the rest of the day and evening. I am overcome by the profundity of the experience.”

This is quite the endorsement, if only because Shulgin took a lot of drugs during his long life.

Thirty five years later, MDMA is having a moment. A clinical trial of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD, run by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPs, produced impressive results, moving the combination of MDMA and therapy closer to FDA approval. The first study of MDMA-assisted therapy for alcohol-use disorder, conducted by researchers at Imperial College in London and the University of Bristol, delivered encouraging, albeit very preliminary, findings. Researchers studying MDMA, as well as experienced users, say that the drug could be an effective way to treat other psychological ailments, while improving the health and happiness of so-called “healthy normals.”

You can read the rest of this story at Medium.

Little-known outside the world of psychedelics and drug policy, Rick Doblin is one of the most effective nonprofit leaders in America. Doblin is the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, better known as MAPS, which for 35 years has been trying to develop psychedelic medicines and advocating for the responsible use of psychedelic drugs.

Doblin, in my view, is a brilliant strategist who has done more to change the narrative around psychedelics than anyone, with the possible exception of the writer Michael Pollan. He has built political alliances on the right and left, worked closely with medical researchers and, as best as I can tell, made few enemies along the way. MAPS is on the verge of a major breakthrough by securing FDA approval for the use of MDMA, along with talk therapy, as a prescription medicine to treat PTSD.

I tell the remarkable story of Doblin and MAPS at some length in the new issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. The story is ordinarily paywalled but it is available for free until April 1. Here's a link.

This is a remarkable moment for psychedelics. Elite universities, including Johns Hopkins and Imperial College in London, have opened centers to research the medical benefits of such drugs as psilocybin, a hallucinogen found in mushrooms. The nonprofit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Research (MAPS) is recruiting people suffering from PTSD to participate in FDA-approved clinical trials using MDMA, better known as molly or ecstasy. CBS News’ 60 Minutes last fall reported on life-changing psychedelic journeys.

So far, the psychedelic renaissance has focused on the potential of these dugs to heal mental illness, and rightly so. A growing body of research suggests that they can alleviate suffering caused by a broad array of ailments: depression, addiction and anxiety, among others.

This story, though, is not about how psychedelics can heal the mind. It’s about how they can heal the world. There is sickness all around us. The threat of climate change. Unconscionable poverty amidst great wealth. Extreme political polarization. These are manifestations of deeper ills: People feel disconnected from one another and from nature.

Serious people — not just hippies, but neuroscientists with PhDs, and their philanthropic supporters — say psychedelics can help address these deeper problems. Drug trips, under controlled conditions, break down the barriers between people and bring users closer to nature.

“These medicines can help us wake up to new levels of caring and concern,” says David Bronner, a philanthropist and the CEO of Dr. Bronner’s, the family-owned maker of natural soaps. “It’s crucial to wake up to the miraculous world we’re part of and understand how we can serve and make it better for all of us.”

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You can read the rest of the story on Medium.

My wife Karen Schneider and I gave away about nine percent of our pretax income in 2019. Like most people, I delayed my charitable giving until the end of the year--a bad practice, because nonprofits have needs all year--so I’m just now writing my annual blogpost about where the money went. The Life You Can Save, a nonprofit inspired by the moral philosopher Peter Singer, has a calculator that recommends the percentage of your income that you should give, as well as an excellent list of top charities.*

My biggest gift went to GiveDirectly, which makes unconditional cash grants to people living in extreme poverty. Give Directly is my favorite charity. In 2018, I traveled to Rwanda to see how the organization operates and talk to recipients of its grants. I could say a lot about GiveDirectly but my biggest takeaway from the trip was this: The money that well-to-do Americans spend on a few restaurant meals, or for a single night in a nice hotel, is enough to make a meaningful difference to the life of a poor person in Africa. If you care about inequality--and it seems that more and more people do--there’s no better charity than GiveDirectly.

Next on the list is GiveWell, a donation platform that identifies and analyzes effective charities in depth. If you want to do the most good you can for each dollar that you spend on charity, GiveWell is essential. Most of the money it raises flows to charity that improve global health, in particular by helping poor people protect themselves against malaria.