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.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a progressive champion. Matt Gaetz is a conservative firebrand. They don’t agree on much — except psychedelics.

Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, and Gaetz, a Florida Republican, have joined forces in Congress to try to make it easier for scientists to research marijuana and psychedelic drugs, including MDMA and psilocybin.

Such bipartisan cooperation will be needed to support the growth of psychedelic medicines and end the drug war, says Jonathan Lubecky, a retired Army sergeant and Iraq war veteran who now lobbies on behalf of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS.

“This isn’t a party line issue,” Lubecky says. “The polar opposites in the House came together on psychedelics.”

Voters are coming around as well. Last week, Oregon became the first state in the US to legalize a psychedelic medicine; about 56 percent of the state’s voters supported a ballot measure that will allow the medical use of psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms.

You can read the rest of this story here at Medium.