Welcome to my new blog
"magic mushrooms" by love.jsc is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Welcome to my new blog. Here you’ll find my writing about the business, science, politics, culture and history of psychedelics. I can assure you that there’s lots to write about.
Yesterday, for example, I went to an event on Capitol Hill organized by the Psychedelic Medicine Coalition, a new Washington DC-based advocacy group whose mission is to “create, protect, and promote safe, equitable access to psychedelic medicines.”
That’s pretty much my mission, too. I’ll occasionally write about other things – tobacco control, philanthropy, animal rights – but the psychedelic renaissance unfolding now is the most important and interesting story that I want to tell.
I’ve been reporting on psychedelics since 2019, when I wrote a long story for The Chronicle of Philanthropy about donors who supported research into psychedelic medicines during the decades when neither the government nor private companies would do so. Like many, my interest in psychedelics was sparked by Michael Pollan’s excellent book, How to Change Your Mind. What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.
While researching that story, I met Roland Griffiths, a pioneering researcher at Johns Hopkins University, who pointed me to studies showing that classic psychedelics, particularly psilocybin, show great promise in treating depression, anxiety and addictions. What’s more, he said, the benefits of the treatment lasted months or years. “It’s unprecedented in psychiatry that a single, discrete intervention can produce durable effects,” Griffiths told me.
That got my attention. So did the research into psychedelics emerging from other leading universities including NYU and Yale, my alma mater. One finding: Psychedelics appear to be “trans-diagnostic,” that is, able to treat an array of mental ailments, which suggests that they work by changing deeply-rooted patterns in the brain. Over time, I’ve also heard many people describe how psychedelics, often in combination with therapy, helped them alleviate suffering they had lived with for years. Some took these compounds in FDA-approved clinical trials. Others did so in underground settings.
My reporting convinced me that psychedelics can be life-changing.
This does not mean they are a panacea. They are not for everyone. They are not risk-free. They must be respected. These are powerful medicines.
But they are coming, down one path or another. Medicalization as the FDA approves MDMA and psilocybin as prescription medicines, probably in the next two or three years. Through decriminalization as cities and states, including Oregon and Colorado, make them available at regulated healing centers. Or at plant-medicine churches that offer psychedelics to all comers.
So much about all this is unknown, which is why it’s a great topic for journalism.
Back to today’s event. Rick Doblin, the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Research; philanthropist and podcaster Tim Ferriss; and Matthew W. Johnson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins all argued for greater federal support for research into psychedelics.
“Federal funding is critical on a whole lot of levels,” said Ferriss, who has donated millions of dollars to academic research into psychedelics.
In moving testimony, Jesse Gould, the founder and president of the Heroic Hearts Project, and Matthew “Whiz” Buckley, the founder and hero of the No Fallen Heroes Foundation, described their experiences with psychedelics, which they sought out only after they could not get the help they needed for their PTSD and depression from the Veterans Administration.
Both found relief by traveling outside the US to obtain psychedelics–ayahuasca for Gould, ibogaine for Buckley–and they are now offering psychedelic healing to other veterans.
“These medicines gave me my life back,” Buckley said, as some in the audience fought back tears. “It’s time to heal the warriors.”
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Thanks for reading. I’m always looking for story ideas and open to feedback via email or on Twitter. I invite you to subscribe to my blog here.
