Good news for psychedelic therapy in Australia

Michael McDonald

It’s still surprising news that the Therapeutic Goods Administration is reclassifying the psychedelic drugs MDMA and psilocybin in July this year ‘to allow them to be prescribed by psychiatrists to treat patients with post-traumatic stress disorder and treatment-resistant depression’, according to a recent ABC article (3 March) by Flint Duxfield and Samatha Hawley – https:// tinyurl.com/5n8va2r7.

Surprising because psychedelic drugs, particularly LSD, have long been regarded as the bad boys of the drug world, helped along by the intervention of US president Richard Nixon and some of the anarchy of the ’60s and ’70s fuelled by the overexuberance of LSD guru Timothy Leary. The excess made serious therapists of the time cringe, and put an end to their encouraging results and to the accompanying scientific research.

Now the so-called ‘psychedelic renaissance’ in drug therapy is getting into full swing, though the drug-taking in social settings never really went away, despite the risk of arrest or mental health issues. The renaissance is in part happening because there is a worldwide upswing in depression and PTSD, and the usual chemical remedies just don’t cut it for some people.

An American soldier who found great relief in MDMA for his PTSD explained it clearly in an interview. ‘We were told there were good drugs and bad drugs’, he said, ‘but it turns out the good drugs caused the opioid crisis while the bad drugs cured PTSD, so we need to rethink how we see drugs’.

We need to rethink how we see society in general because ours is fractured by family violence, unsustainable capitalist excesses and the human inclination to wars, among other maladies. Psychedelic drugs have their part to play by breaking down fixed ideas of self and the accompanying baggage, and by giving us a larger perception of our connection to nature – which may mean that less of it is being bulldozed.

The same American soldier is advising his nation’s defence department on the effectiveness of psychedelic therapy. (The scale of PTSD in the USA would have been lessened by suppressing the urge to send its soldiers off to overseas trouble spots on dubious grounds.) There is also an American police officer urging the use of MDMA therapy, pointing out that more cops in America die by their own guns than by those of criminals.

The revelations of the soldier and the police officer are contained in a four-part Netflix series, How To Change Your Mind, based on the book of the same name by American journalist Michael Pollan, who also narrates the series. The series looks at the history, uses – and misuses – of LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, and mescalin.

Pollan is touring Australian cities, including Brisbane, in May and tickets can be bought at thinkinc.org.au/pages/michaelpollan-2023-tour, for those interested. YouTube already provides a free introduction to Pollan’s work through several interviews.

Pollan writes well and obviously his book covers much more ground than a streaming series can. As an old freak I was particularly interested in the chequered history and the larger-than-life characters who promoted or opposed psychedelic therapy.

From the age of 16 on I tried all four drugs covered in the book and series, with mostly beneficial results. However, these days I confine myself to two cups of black coffee in the morning, one tab of Apo-zopiclone once a week to give myself a longer sleep than the usual 5-6 hours broken by pee breaks, and a few glasses of shiraz four or five times a year when a friend comes to visit from Melbourne. Hardly the image of the crazed drug fiend derailed by psychedelics.

I’m sure many people in the NSW Northern Rivers understand how therapeutic psychedelic drugs can be. Their effectiveness as therapy depends on the ‘set and setting’, to use Leary’s phrase, the willingness of the participant to relax into the experience, and the skills of the therapist. I doubt there is any true objectivity available to the therapist when dealing with the human mind, as they bring with them their own mindset.

Of course, there are many other ways to get relief from mental problems, usually involving exercise or stilling the mind or both – yoga, dance, sport, art of all kinds, and even some standard pharmaceuticals. (After all, LSD was first synthesised in 1943 from the ergot fungus in the labs of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Sandoz.) Apparently that depressive genius Spike Milligan got more relief from a game of squash than from many of the drugs he had been prescribed over the years.

Where psychedelics often stand apart is in that they may need to be taken only once (which is not great news for the therapist’s wallet), they break down the preconceptions of the individual personality and reveal the beautiful aspects of the universe often described as a ‘mystical experience’.

In his book, Pollan looks at the debate surrounding these ‘mystical experiences’, which engage the minds of mystics and neuroscientists alike, not that these occupations are mutually exclusive. Do these mystical experiences indicate a larger, universal consciousness at work or is it the wonderful impact of the drugs on the brain’s willing receptors?

I’m inclined to the latter view. Whether or not, as very small animals of little brain in a very large universe, we can ever get to the facts of the matter (dark or otherwise) is anybody’s guess, I guess.

The success or otherwise of the current psychedelic renaissance will be fascinating to follow. The mental health and survival of the human race might depend upon it.