What To Read This Week
1. Missouri Republicans Push For Psilocybin Therapy For Veterans
“If we can prevent one person from committing suicide, who are we to deny this treatment” asked Missouri Representative Tara Peters, a Republican from Phelps County, during debate on the Missouri House floor late last month on a bill that would allow people struggling with certain serious mental health conditions to access psilocybin-focused clinical trials.
The psilocybin treatment bill was perfected by the House and only awaits one final vote before it is passed onto the Senate.
As Dave Griffith, a Republican-member of the Missouri legislature who served as a Green Beret in the 8th Special Forces Group of the U.S. Army and then led the American Red Cross for six years, explained during the floor debate, this bill has special importance to veterans:
“We have heard from a number of veterans all around the state of Missouri, many of those who had to leave the state, leave the country, to get the kind of [psychedelics-assisted] treatment that they needed. The stories that they told us were very compelling—they told us how they were healed.”
Aaron McMullen, a Republican representing Independence, Missouri, echoed this sentiment:
“I’ve seen combat with my unit from Afghanistan and this is something that I’m very passionate about … there is a serious mental health crisis, substance abuse and suicide is escalating in the veterans community. Psilocybin is not a panacea for every issue, it represents a first true scientifically validated hope that we have to address this crisis.”
If the psilocybin treatment bill becomes law, Missouri–which has one of the highest rates of veteran suicide in the country—would become the first conservative state in the country to allow limited access to clinical trials on the use of psilocybin to treat serious mental health conditions. For the people who have worked on the front lines with veterans struggling with mental illness, such as Jim Schulte, a Republican who represents Callaway County, passing this bill would reflect a significant step forward for treatment prospects:
“For the past 11 years I have been working with veterans with visible wounds and invisible wounds … this is a breakthrough way to treat and help our veterans with PTSD and with traumatic brain injuries.”
2. Three More States Eying Clinical Trial Access To Psilocybin Treatment
Similar to the psilocybin treatment bill being considered in the Missouri House, here are updates from three other states actively considering bills to allow access to clinical trials focused on the use of psychedelic medicine to treat serious mental health conditions:
Arizona. For Arizona Public Radio, Rithwik Kalale reported on a bill in the Arizona House to allow people suffering with PTSD and severe depression to access psilocybin treatment through clinical trials. “Psychedelics allow the brain to rewire itself in a certain way [and] allow them to lead a more functional life,” Quinn Snyder, a physician in Arizona, told the news station. Dr. Sue Sisley, a physician and natural medicine researcher, similarly told the station: “If nature can produce things so inexpensively that can help heal people, then it's important for the public to know that and to figure out how we can harness that legally and safely.”
Washington. Writing for The Seattle Times, Esmy Jimenez detailed a bill that recently passed Washington’s Senate— and a key House committee—that would allow first responders and veterans access to psilocybin treatment through a pilot study at the University of Washington’s department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. “If passed, participants in the pilot study would have to be 21 and older, and have experienced substance use disorder, depression or anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder..”
North Carolina. Lawmakers in North Carolina are also considering access to psychedelic medicine based clinical trials for first responders, veterans, end-of-life patients, and survivors of sexual assault, Clayton Henkel reported for IndyWeek. Rep. Allen Chesser, a combat veteran who sponsored the bill, told IndyWeek that he supports the measure because it “is something that can give you a normal life back.” Chesser also said that he carries the obituary of a veteran with PTSD who lost his life because he could not get the kind of help that this legislation would provide.
3. The Promise—And Limitations—Of Psychedelic Medicine
Jon Kostas, a [bio], recently told Washington Square News, NYU’s student newspaper, that he “credits his psychedelic experience at NYU to curing his alcoholism and changing his life… Since the 2016 psilocybin-assisted study, Kostas no longer considers himself an alcoholic.” But, Kostas cautions, it is not the psilocybin alone that cured him:
“‘The psilocybin certainly helped me get to a point where I could work on myself and become aware of what I was dealing with and the alcoholism. But the whole team is why I had the outcome I had.” As the newspaper summarizes the point: “Therapeutic training, Kostas believes, is critical to ensure accessibility and high standards of care to meet increased demand as psychedelics enter the mainstream clinical sphere.”
That’s a perspective that other leading psychedelic medicine researchers at NYU share:
“NYU researchers have demonstrated the transformative power of plant medicines … to treat long-term mental illnesses such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, depression, alcohol use disorder, eating disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder,” Sheridan Smith writes for Washington Square News. Yet, Dr. Stephen Ross, a psychiatrist and NYU professor who leads much of this research, cautioned that psychedelics “are not a magic bullet … They have enormous benefits, but, when used in the wrong context, they can have real harm.”
According to NYU professor and psychiatrist Kelley O’Donnell, creating the right context means ensuring that the process begins far before the actual psychedelic medicine is administered: ‘Psychedelic-assisted therapy is certainly very different from standard psychotherapy. Whether we are working with MDMA or psilocybin, we are usually blocking out eight hours … these preparatory sessions are fundamental to the healing process.”
Related: In The Guardian, physician Farrah Jarral writes that psychedelics “are not a magic bullet …. There is something about psychedelics that induces a kind of evangelical fervor among some proponents. They are heralded as a panacea. Drugs like psilocybin do indeed have some remarkable effects [but also] rarely can cause harm—especially if users are at a higher risk of psychotic illness.”
