Psychedelic drugs are commonly reported
to trigger life-altering, mind-expanding inward journeys.
But since being scheduled dangerous and illegal,
any therapeutic benefits have gone largely unrecognized.
Mental health treatment hasn't changed in generations,
limited primarily to psychotherapy
and a broad drug class called SSRIs,
or selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors.
There's been no new drug in psychiatry
essentially since SSRIs back in the 1980s.
These drugs have varying results,
often with side effects,
and can be seriously habit-forming.
Once you get on one SSRI,
they've got you for life, pretty much.
But this model could soon be disrupted
by the acceptance of psychedelics by the medical,
psychiatric, and pharmacological communities.
This is now coming at the forefront
after spending 60 years in hiding.
And these tools actually have remarkable healing potential
and have had for thousands of years.
LSD, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA,
and other consciousness-altering compounds
once labeled dangerous and illegal drugs,
are coming into the political spotlight.
A recent ballot measure in Oregon
authorized the legal use of psilocybin
by licensed providers.
Clinical trials are pressing forward
in what could forever change the way
we understand and treat both the mind and the body.
Investors are flocking to stake their claim
in this new frontier of magic molecules.
What is really driving us here is the fact
that the efficacy rates here cannot be ignored.
They're profound, and money will follow efficacy.
But these investors aren't just hedging their bets.
They're true believers
intent on flooding psychedelic startups
with the capital they need
to invoke a revolution of the mind.
The word psychedelic is derived
from the ancient Greek word psyche, meaning soul,
and deloun, meaning to reveal.
It translates to mind-manifesting,
and the first real documented use of psychedelics
can actually be traced back to that same era.
From 1600 BC to 396 AD,
in the Greek culture, the foundations of Western culture,
they had the longest-running mystery ceremonies ever.
And they were involved with a psychedelic drug,
a potion called kykeon,
which we now through modern scholarship have identified
as being similar to LSD.
Rick Doblin is the founder of
the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies,
or MAPS.
Our top priority project is MDMA-assisted psychotherapy
for post-traumatic stress disorder,
and we're in phase III studies right now.
So, Rick, how long have you been involved in this?
I started MAPS in '86.
In the upcoming scene,
we will watch a young man
who is having a difficult experience
while under the influence of a psychedelic drug.
I really got involved
in trying to devote my life to psychedelics
and becoming a psychedelic therapist in 1972.
So, I imagine things have changed quite a bit since then?
Oh, my God, everything has changed.
America's public enemy number one is drug abuse.
When I began, it was the depth of the backlash.
In 1970, the Controlled Substances Act
was passed in the United States.
Psychedelics were criminalized.
The research was squashed.
Extensive experimentation
has failed to establish a medical use for LSD.
After Nixon,
mainstream acceptance of psychedelics was impossible,
and these compounds went underground
where it stayed for over a half century,
associated with counterculture and degeneracy.
Taking LSD is much the same
as playing Russian roulette.
What are you doing out here?
I'm floating, I'm floating up to the stars, Joe!
You can't float out here, we're three stories up!
No, I'm one with the universe!
I'm God and Jesus, Joe!
But guys like Rick Doblin
continued their research on the fringes.
And so, what's changed now
is the public attitudes have changed.
The regulatory agencies are open to research.
We just completed a $30 million capstone campaign
for our MDMA PTSD phase III studies
and for commercialization.
We're in a major psychedelic Renaissance right now.
And now we have these new tools for neuroscience
to really understand what these drugs do in the brain.
But that is not an easy question to answer.
There are a lot of drugs out there
that we don't know how they work.
You only have to show that a drug is safe
and that it's effective.
You don't have to know how a drug works to get it approved.
I mean, asking how psychedelics work
seems almost as challenging as asking,
what is the meaning of life?
I think if we have the answer to one,
we'll have the answer to the other.
Dr. Charles Nichols is professor of pharmacology
at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center.
I primarily study serotonin neuropharmacology
with a focus on psychedelic drugs.
So, tell me a little bit about what we know
is happening to the brain on, say, LSD or psilocybin.
What the psychedelics do is they target
a selective subset of serotonin receptors.
The one that produces the psychedelic effects
is called the serotonin 2A receptor.
A lot of positive effects are associated
with activation of that receptor.
Okay, so how about a less scientific explanation?
Unscientifically, what psychedelics do in the brain,
you're having several brain areas
that are talking to one another
that don't normally talk to one another,
and you've established new connections, new pathways.
There's one theory that posits that when
that trip starts to wear off,
the network will reset more into
a normal connectivity state
than, say, if somebody was depressed.
So, what kind of tests in the lab do you perform
to devise these theories?
We've developed two rat-based models
where we can essentially create a depressed rat,
give it a single dose of psilocybin,
and the rats that were given psilocybin
are now acting like normal rats.
They're not depressed.
I'm curious, how do you know a rat is depressed?
Oh, it just kind of hangs out in its corner.
Doesn't like to do much.
But these laboratory observations
don't speculate on what happens during the actual trip.
And this is where the therapy really comes in.
It's not a question of whether the science permits it,
but it's how we use these tools.
These are powerful tools,
but we still haven't quite figured out,
or at least we're still working on the best way to use them.
Shlomi Raz is CEO and founder of Eleusis.
He, along with other up and coming startups,
are designing the methodology to safely and effectively
practice psychedelic medicine.
Much of their inspiration comes
from ancient shamanic practices,
such as ayahuasca ceremonies in South America,
which have become increasingly popular among people
seeking alternative forms of healing
after traditional treatments have failed them.
So, Shlomi, what's the most important thing
we can learn from these shamanistic practices
as you design modern therapeutic applications?
That this clinical rollout be done in a way
that treats the therapeutic potential
and power of these drugs with respect.
And I think that would be the biggest mistake is that if,
in a rush to commercialization,
that there is a loss of respect associated with development.
Maybe you can walk me through your vision
of a psychedelic therapy session.
I think number one, this is not the job of psychiatrist.
Number two, we're not sure that you even want
a psychotherapist in the room.
Instead, the person that we think should be in the room
is an attendant,
someone where you feel safe in their presence.
Are they certified, you know, medical professionals?
Not necessarily,
but they bring an instant rapport and an instant comfort.
And what they're comfortable with
is emotionally intense situations.
With this process, the patients heal themselves,
and the need for antidepressants
or other long-term prescription drugs could fade away.
But the potential for these compounds
go far beyond mental health treatment.
Multiple studies have found that regular minute doses
of LSD and similar compounds
have enormous anti-inflammatory effects,
potentially offering alternative treatments
to everything from asthma to migraine headaches.
You know, we have some very interesting clues
that there's much more therapeutic potential
just beneath the surface.
All of this is not only revolutionary,
but potentially disruptive
to the estimated $16 billion antidepressant drug market.
When we take a look at some
of these compounds and molecules,
there are 70%, 75%, 80% efficacy rates.
So, that is, that's profound,
and that will disrupt Big Pharma.
Sa'ad Shaw leads a venture fund called Noetic,
and he is what you would call a true believer.
I mean, it's definitely very personal.
It's personal, first and foremost,
because I personally have, you know, drunk the brew.
I had an experience with plant medicine
and it was profound on many levels.
I saw the distinct impact that it had
on folks that were suffering from cancer,
individuals that were suffering
from very serious treatment-resistant depression,
major depressive disorders, PTSD, anxiety.
I knew then and there that there was something here
that was incredibly profound.
Okay, so there's certainly a motivation
to keep people on drugs,
and these compounds often do the opposite,
which essentially means there's less money to be made.
How is Big Pharma not trying to squash this movement?
If you're finding a market and a product is working,
and clearly you've got underlying companies
are gonna profit as a result of it,
this is gonna be of interest to Big Pharma.
I think that they will get more and more involved,
and I think it's important for them to get involved
because at the end of the day,
we need this medicine to go out there to the globe,
and you need a distribution platform.
Big Pharma has that distribution platform.
They're the ones that can help get it out there.
But that optimism might be putting
a little too much faith in a profit-based apparatus
that has enabled severe drug dependencies,
like the opioid crisis in America.
For these compounds to truly scale,
it's not only our minds,
but our entire society that might need a rewiring.
There needs to definitely be a redefining
of profit, of capitalism.
Profit needs to first be measured in human capital, right?
Healing those who have suffered,
if we do that right,
our investment in the companies will succeed.