On psychedelics (and me)

Anxiety.

(Psilocybin mushrooms)

Over the weekend, something big happened in Australia.

Here’s how the Associated Press reported it:

Australia is now the first country to allow psychiatrists to prescribe certain psychedelic substances to patients with depression or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Beginning Saturday, Australian physicians can prescribe doses of MDMA, also known as ecstasy, for PTSD. Psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms, can be given to people who have hard-to-treat depression. The country put the two drugs on the list of approved medicines by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

That came just days after Frank Biden, Joe Biden’s brother, signaled that the president is “very open-minded ” about using psychedelics as a treatment option for things like depression, addiction, obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety.

“The question is, is the world, is the U.S. ready for this,” said Frank Biden. “My opinion is that we are on the cusp of a consciousness that needs to be brought about to solve a lot of the problems in and around addiction, but as importantly, to make us aware of the fact that we’re all one people and we’ve got to come together.”¹

The U.S., to date, has not gone nearly as far as Australia.

Last November, Colorado voters — in a ballot initiative — decriminalized the use of psychedelic mushrooms for people over the age of 21. It doesn’t go into affect until 2024 — and there is an advisory board that can add other plant-based psychedelics to the decriminalized list in 2026.

Two years earlier, Oregon voters did the same.

Nationally the big news came about a week ago when the Food and Drug Administration put out clinical guidance for psychedelic drug trials — the first time it has ever done so. That included trials for LSD, MDMA and psilocybin.

In short: There appears to be real momentum toward the mainstreaming of psychedelics as a way to treat a variety of mental illnesses.

I’ve been actively interested in the power of psychedelics since reading “How to Change Your Mind” by Michael Pollan, which details both the science and his own personal experiences with mind-altering drugs.

I learned a ton from the book but one of the big things is that psychedelics didn’t always carry the stigma that they (still) do in some circles. They were used regularly for medicinal purposes during the first half of the 20th century.

The ‘60s changed all that. Suddenly things like LSD and magic mushrooms were the purview of hippie culture — and a threat to societal order. And they became scary stuff, the sort of thing that “good” people didn’t use.

I still remember my dad in the 1980s — when I was barely a teenager — warning me against the dangers of LSD. He would return to the subject fairly frequently — trying to scare me away from every even considering using it.

It worked. I never went near it.

But, as I’ve aged — and as my anxiety and OCD has resisted being curtailed by the various medicines currently available to treat it — I’ve gotten more and more interested in the possibilities represented by the psychedelics.

There’s little doubt that for some people — many people? — the mind-altering effects occasioned by the use of psychedelics produces a real and lasting change in perception.

I’m drawn to that — and yet still scared of it too. I don’t want to get lost during an LSD or psilocybin trip, even though the risks of doing so are reportedly quite low.

I’m encouraged by the willingness of the scientific and medical community to consider that psychedelics might well provide answers — or some sense of resolution — for people.

Being a bit of a fraidy cat I think I will continue to wait as the psychedelics go through clinical trials.

But I am really interested to hear if other people have had positive experiences with them.

1. Frank Biden, in that same interview, said he has long struggled with alcoholism.