Author: Michael Ollove
Alex Jones claims a trip to Jamaica saved her life. Not a trip Down Jamaica: a hallucinogenic journey IN Jamaica.
Severe depression hit her at the age of 10 and continued inexorably for the next two decades. She couldn’t work, couldn’t bear to look at herself in the mirror, and could barely get off the couch for days. The temptation to end it all was always on the periphery.
“I felt like I was the living dead,” said Jones, now 34.
She underwent many hours of talk therapy and used 30 different treatment regimens. She underwent delicate therapy and then shadowy therapy. She tried an experimental ketamine nasal spray followed by a ketamine infusion. She underwent a series of electroshock therapy and sleep deprivation. She underwent transcranial magnetic stimulation, during which she wore a gigantic helmet equipped with magnets.
None of them worked, at least not for long, and some had sedate side effects. Doctors told her she was “treatment resistant”, meaning she was seemingly beyond aid.
But in 2019 it happened to her “60 Minutes” report. on clinical trials showing strongly encouraging results with the employ of psilocybin, a psychedelic agent derived from mushrooms, in the treatment of patients with depression, anxiety and addiction. Outside of trials, the treatment has not been available in the United States, where psilocybin remains illegal under federal law.
Jones booked a week-long stay at a resort in Jamaica. There, she underwent three supervised sessions with psychedelic mushrooms, followed by sessions with “facilitators” on the island and alone for months at home in Tacoma, Washington, exploring the psychedelic journeys she experienced.
She found that she felt better. Much better.
“It woke me up,” she said. “I was alive, I was myself again. I saw the beauty of the world. Even the physical changes were surprising. The next day after the first dose I was charging the dunes. I previously had difficulty climbing stairs.
Five months ago, she told Washington lawmakers considering a bill to legalize the employ of psilocybin that the trips she experienced in Jamaica “saved my life.”
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As studies have shown promising results for patients, lawmakers in other states and cities are also considering loosening restrictions on psilocybin. Several states want to legalize psilocybin treatment for all adult patients, while others want to limit it to veterans or people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Other states have formed task forces to study the issue.
Research in recent years has shown that psilocybin and other psychedelics may have beneficial effects on a variety of mental health and other conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anorexia, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, and addiction. Indigenous populations around the world have recognized the beneficial effects of psychedelics and incorporated them into spiritual rituals for hundreds of years.
In 2018, the US Food and Drug Administration Called psilocybin a ‘breakthrough therapy’ to treat major depression, a term the agency uses for drugs that show significant improvement over existing treatments in early studies.
Not everyone is ready to give mushrooms the green delicate. IN written testimony in February to Maine’s joint legislative committee overseeing Health and Human Services that was considering a measure to legalize psilocybin, Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the state Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cautioned that there are not yet enough recognized medical standards to ensure secure employ psilocybin.
“Although there may be early evidence for the employ of psilocybin in the treatment of treatment-resistant depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), this research is ongoing and there are currently no clinical practice guidelines or FDA-approved treatments to ensure the secure and appropriate employ of the therapy ” he said.
“50 times greater interest”
In 2020, Oregon voters approved voting agent this puts the state on the path to a regulatory and licensing framework that, starting in 2023, will allow patients to take psilocybin under supervision. Oregon is the first state to legalize psilocybin.
In this year’s budget bill, the Connecticut Legislature began the process of legalizing centers where veterans and first responders could administer psilocybin and MDMA, a synthetic psychedelic drug. Some veterans groups have long pushed for making psychedelic therapies available to veterans, particularly those with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Texas, Utah and Washington state have established task forces or funded research into the medical uses of psilocybin. Maryland has established a $1 million fund to research alternative treatments, including psychedelics, for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or traumatic brain injury, and to pay for such treatments for veterans.
Ballot initiatives that would legalize psilocybin are in progress in Colorado and California. Last month, president of the New Jersey Senate presented the bill this would legalize psilocybin for the treatment of certain disorders.
Cities including Ann Arbor, Michigan; Denver; Oakland, California; and Seattle have passed measures that essentially decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms and sometimes other psychedelics derived from plants or mushrooms. Cities do not distinguish between medical and recreational uses.
However, even those states that could implement a regulatory system would not do so in the medical community, as expressed by the Shah of Maine. The Maine bill, which did not pass, included psilocybin centers that, as Shah testified, “would operate as facilities for recreational employ rather than treatment facilities, places limits on the Department’s ability to regulate secure employ, and does not sufficiently address behavioral and public health contributions into the structure.”
Proponents say they feel comfortable using psilocybin outside the medical system but with applicable regulations and licensing.
Washington state Sen. Jesse Salomon, a Democrat, sponsored a bill this year that would establish a regulatory system like Oregon’s. It would adopt standards for growing mushrooms and processing psilocybin, as well as licensing centers and suppliers who would administer the drugs to patients.
The bill didn’t make it out of committee, but lawmakers allocated $200,000 to a task force to study the issue. Salomon said the original bill generated a lot of interest, especially during a two-hour hearing in February during which several veterans testified.
“I received 50 times more interest on this bill than any other bill I have ever written,” Solomon said. “I had no idea this would happen. I just threw it out there.
Although psilocybin remains a federally banned drug, Salomon and other legalization advocates say they are confident that U.S. law enforcement will take the same hands-off approach they are taking in states that have legalized marijuana.
Remission possible
Legislative efforts across the country have been fueled by positive clinical research on the effects of psilocybin.
One influential 2020 study In Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry found that 71% of patients with severe, previously treatment-resistant depression showed “clinical improvement” that lasted at least four weeks and had “low potential” for addiction. More than half of the patients were considered to be in remission after four weeks.
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“I would say that at this point, the research shows that in a safe setting, it does provide some people with relief from debilitating mental health problems,” said Alan Davis, one of the study’s co-authors, a neuroscience researcher at Ohio State University and an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research.
Davis said imaging done on patients shows that psilocybin causes changes in the brain, although determining the significance of these changes requires further study. It is clear that the patients had a mystical or spiritual experience during the trip that profoundly changed their perspective.
“They have spiritually important experiences, not only in the short term, but also in the long term.”
It’s clear, he said, that psilocybin affects the brain differently than other drugs used to treat mental health conditions.
“Regular [psychiatric] Medicines don’t cure anything,” he said. “But with psilocybin, after two or three doses, some people go into complete remission.”
“Most Key Experiences”
Some veterans’ organizations, convinced of the benefits of using psychedelics to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health conditions, fund trips abroad if the substances are legal.
This is how Matthew Griffin, a former Army Ranger captain with four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, ended up in Costa Rica in 2017, where he took ayahuasca, another plant psychedelic. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury and struggled with memory loss. His tiny temper and drinking made life miserable for everyone around him.
That hallucinogenic trip and the way he later unpacked it, he said, “were one of the most important experiences of my life,” he said. Since then, he has traveled abroad four or five times for hallucinogenic purposes, most recently taking mushrooms.
“Emotionally, energetically, financially, sexually, everything in my life has become better since I chose this alternative path of healing,” he said.
Other users describe similar experiences. “I learned to love not only myself, but others as well,” said Corey Champagne, a Marine veteran from Redmond, Washington, who took ayahuasca in Peru last year.
According to Jones, the drug’s benefits have continued since Jamaica. “After hating yourself for 20 years, being deeply depressed, having evil desires, and believing evil things to be true, I could never free myself from these thoughts. But now I feel like myself again. It has changed the way I look at myself and the possibilities for the future.
So much so that she left her home in Washington this month to start a novel life on the East Coast. (She didn’t want her novel location revealed.)
“It’s something that wasn’t even considered two years ago.”
Michael Ollove is a reporter for Stateline.org, a project of the Pew Charitable Trusts, where this story first appeared.
