Latest news with #psychedelicmedicine
WIRED
2 days ago
- Health
- WIRED
Psychedelic Therapy Crashed and Burned. MAHA Might Bring It Back
Jul 29, 2025 6:00 AM Abuse allegations and infighting helped kill a campaign to legalize MDMA for medical use. Trumpworld is giving the therapy's advocates hope for a second shot. Photograph: Tonje Thilesen This was supposed to be the year of the MDMA revolution. About this time last year, prescription MDMA looked like a sure thing. After decades of clinical research, political wrangling, and aggressive promotion, the popular underground club drug was set to be tamed and medicalized, with a stamp of approval from the US Food and Drug Administration. Then, it wasn't. In a stark change of course, the FDA rejected the MDMA therapy it had been considering by a 10-1 vote. The decision derailed psychedelic medicine for the foreseeable future. Except for one thing—an unexpected lifeline from the Trump administration. In May, the FDA's new commissioner, surgical oncologist Marty Makary, appeared on cable news to declare MDMA and other Schedule 1 narcotics 'a top priority for this FDA and this administration.' Elsewhere, Mr. MAHA himself, the US Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has spoken positively about the psychoactive stems-and-bark tea ayahuasca. Matt Zorn, a lawyer recently appointed to RFK Jr.'s department, had previously fought the US government to allow access to cannabis and psychedelic mushrooms. Casey Means, Trump's nominee for surgeon general, has spoken of the benefits of psilocybin-assisted therapy, claiming that psychedelic mushrooms helped her find love and made her feel like 'part of an infinite and unbroken series of cosmic nesting dolls.' Psychedelic medicine, as it turns out, slots rather comfortably into the burn-it-all ethos of RFK Jr.'s movement. But as MDMA's advocates regroup to take advantage of this surge of support, they're also reckoning with why they failed to win over the FDA—and whether a second attempt could go better. Could the psychedelic world's new Trumpworld allies be the ones who finally help it achieve its goal? Photograph: Tonje Thilesen For almost half a century, American psychedelic medicine—and MDMA in particular—has had one indispensable advocate: Rick Doblin. On a cool December morning, I met Doblin at his bright purple craftsman home in the Boston suburbs. Dressed in a well-worn chamois shirt and khakis and with a wiry tangle of hair, he was cheery and avuncular. His look was classic New England and a bit bedraggled, befitting the scion of a wealthy industrialist family turned elder statesman of the counterculture. Doblin first tried LSD in 1971 as a freshman studying psychology at Florida's experimental New College. By 1982, he was studying under pioneering psychedelics researcher and therapist Stanislav Grof at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. At the time, many at Esalen were excited about a legal chemical called MDMA, which was said to help people conquer fear and forge profound connections with others. Doblin sampled the drug with a girlfriend and was shocked at how easy it became to talk through their issues. But then, to Doblin's chagrin, the US criminalized MDMA, and in 1986 he founded a nonprofit called MAPS—the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. For the next several years, MAPS was a one-man operation. To advocate for MDMA's legalization, Doblin collected reports from animal studies on the drug's toxicity and lined up experts to argue with Drug Enforcement Administration officials on Phil Donahue . He slipped into Nicaragua during its civil war and provided the drug to clinicians to treat traumatized soldiers and civilians. He even subjected himself to excruciating spinal taps in an attempt to disprove a prevalent belief that MDMA depleted natural stores of serotonin. Doblin believed early on that it was essential to distance MAPS from the counterculture to gain mainstream credibility. (The organization's first Psychedelic Science conference in 2010 instituted a 'no tie-dye' rule for staff.) He set out to collect clinical evidence on the benefits of MDMA and other prohibited drugs. He then used those results to wage a campaign to change public opinion and ultimately end prohibitions. Between 2005 and 2017, MAPS refined a model for clinicians to administer MDMA to patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, guide their experiences, and provide post-trip emotional support. Its 74-page manual stressed the importance of 'inner healing intelligence'—a concept touted by Doblin's mentor Grof, which holds that the human psyche has an 'innate capacity' to heal itself. During this time, MAPS operated as a charity, taking in over $6.7 million in 2013 to fund its research and advocacy. The organization prided itself on living its values of drug destigmatization; it had a policy where employees could consult with their managers on 'smokable tasks' that could be completed under the influence of drugs. ('I personally feel like strategizing and brainstorming goes better when I'm high,' Doblin explains.) But the cornerstone of Doblin's plan—establishing MDMA's efficacy in a clinical trial—required resources of a different magnitude. MAPS needed to raise more than $100 million for research and operational costs. So in 2014 the organization minted a for-profit subsidiary, which came to be known as Lykos Therapeutics. Seeking to change the public perception of MDMA as a party drug, Doblin decided to focus on a sympathetic patient population: military veterans diagnosed with PTSD. MAPS formed partnerships with veterans' groups and secured a $1 million donation in 2018 from the Mercer Family Foundation, run by Rebekah Mercer, the conservative donor some have dubbed 'the First Lady of the alt-right.' Mercer was a notable departure from the most prominent psychedelic philanthropists, like the Silicon Valley venture capitalist and longtime MAPS donor George Sarlo, podcaster and lifestyle guru Tim Ferriss, and David Bronner, an executive who is currently the 'cosmic engagement officer' of Dr. Bronner's empire of 'magic soaps.' In 2017, the FDA granted MAPS' MDMA treatment a Breakthrough Therapy designation, providing a fast-track through the agency's arduous trialing and review process. In December 2023, Lykos submitted an application to the FDA including data from hundreds of patients. The data showed that the treatment had a remarkable 70 percent success rate. An expedient review would follow. On June 4, 2024, Jonathan Lubecky, a 48-year-old ex-Marine and US Army sergeant, appeared via webcam before an FDA advisory committee and told the story of how MDMA had saved his life. Lubecky had deployed to Iraq in 2005 and completed a yearlong tour of duty. After he returned home, he was plagued by nightmares, anxiety, depression, and thoughts of suicide. Triggered by fireworks during a Fourth of July celebration, Lubecky hid in a closet with his service dog. He had a meltdown at Disney World after spotting a guest in Islamic garb with a backpack. After exhausting the treatment options offered by Veterans Affairs, Lubecky had lost all hope. He was taking 42 prescription pills a day and had made five attempts on his life. Then, one day in 2014, an intern at a South Carolina hospital slid him a piece of paper scrawled with the words 'Google mdma ptsd.' When he did, Lubecky came across a clinical trial for MDMA therapy, run by MAPS, that was enlisting veterans. Figuring he had nothing to lose, he signed up. Under the psychoactive sway of MDMA and the attention of a therapist, Lubecky found himself opening up about his wartime horrors. And then he kept going. 'I went in thinking I was going to talk about Iraq,' he says, 'and I ended up talking about my whole fucking life.' The treatment, which consisted of three drug-assisted therapy sessions as well as regular therapy, 'healed me,' Lubecky told the panel. Since then, he has even made multiple trips to the front lines of the Ukraine-Russia war as a volunteer, resupplying Ukrainian medical stockpiles. Lubecky also became a dedicated advocate for the clinical use of MDMA and served as a government liaison for MAPS between 2018 and 2023. Like Doblin, Lubecky was optimistic that the treatment would get approved. But during the proceedings, a statement was entered into the record on behalf of a woman named Meaghan Buisson. In 2014, Buisson was recruited into a Phase 2 clinical trial run by MAPS. While under the influence of MDMA, she said, she had been 'blindfolded, gagged, pinned, cuddled, and caressed' by the therapists, a married couple. She had attempted suicide afterward, she said; a doctor later told her she had effectively been 'drugged, raped, blamed, and held as a sex slave.' Another speaker, Neşe Devenot, a senior writing lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, recounted an incident in which a therapist pinned down a patient 'as their distress escalated to the point of shouting, quote, 'Go away. Get your effing hands away from me.'' In a 17-page document submitted to the FDA, Devenot alleged that the MAPS therapy wasn't a scientific treatment at all: It was a 'therapy cult,' comparable to NXIVM, the notorious sex-trafficking pyramid scheme. When the hearing concluded, after some eight exhausting hours of testimony, Lubecky stepped onto the balcony of his Washington, DC, apartment, inhaled deeply, and yelled, 'FUCK!' He was sure Buisson's and Devenot's accounts would doom the treatment's chances of approval. Here, he believed, was a medical innovation that could save thousands of lives, and it had been torpedoed not by its usual opponents, like law enforcement agencies or opponents of drug legalization, but by warring factions of the psychedelic community itself. Or, as he described them, 'a bunch of fucking hippies who fucked it up.' Photograph: Tonje Thilesen Until fairly recently, the 'psychedelic space' was a small and somewhat parochial collection of academics, research chemists, and recreational trippers, all loosely connected to the drug underground or the vestigial 1960s counterculture. Then, in 2018, author Michael Pollan published How to Change Your Mind, his bestselling account of the 'psychedelic renaissance,' and helped popularize drugs like LSD, MDMA, psilocybin, and mescaline. The community's gatherings outgrew church basements and Holiday Inn ballrooms and relocated to glass-and-steel convention centers swarming with pharmaceutical salespeople and venture capitalists. To many in the left-wing, anticapitalist psychedelic scene, Neşe Devenot told me, it was like the evil Eye of Sauron from The Lord of the Rings had swiveled in their direction. Devenot, who uses they/them pronouns, first took LSD as a freshman at Bard. It was 'the most profound experience of my life,' they said. Until that point, they had been terminally shy and suffered from intrusive thoughts about dying. But under the influence of LSD, Devenot says, 'the finality and fearfulness I associated with death disappeared.' They fell in with the community of researchers and enthusiasts in which Doblin was regarded as a pioneer. 'Before this field became financialized,' Devenot told me, 'it was a domain for a lot of weirdos and misfits … people looking for community and meaning and connection.' In 2018, Devenot joined an advocacy group called Psymposia, which was founded to advocate for drug policy reform. The group began working diligently to conduct policy research and rail against the corporate capture of psychedelia. A Psymposia cofounder named Brian Normand told me that he finds the incursion of Silicon Valley and Big Pharma into psychedelia 'incredibly cheesy.' With open letters, articles, academic papers, podcasts, and voluminous social media posts, Psymposia called attention to abusive practitioners of psychedelic therapy and right-wing uses and abuses of mind-expanding compounds, among other topics. Early on, Psymposia and MAPS worked together. But a few years after MAPS spun off its for-profit arm, the alliance splintered. In 2021, Psymposia and New York magazine coproduced an investigative podcast called Cover Story: Power Trip . One of its most damning episodes was deeply critical of MAPS and featured Meaghan Buisson—the woman whose story of assault came up in the FDA hearings. The podcast, along with accompanying video footage of her therapy, covered many of the details she would later recount to the FDA. Buisson had been homeless around the time she enlisted in the trial in 2014, which was conducted by two MAPS-trained clinicians, Richard Yensen and Donna Dryer. Buisson also alleged that Yensen, an unlicensed psychotherapist, had pursued a sexual and romantic relationship with her after the trial concluded. In 2018, Buisson filed a civil suit against Yensen, which was reportedly settled out of court, and lodged an ethics complaint with MAPS. In a statement, MAPS has said that Yensen confirmed having sexual contact with Buisson. Dryer relinquished her medical license. (Yensen did not respond to a request for comment. When asked for comment, Dryer pointed to a Canadian Medical Association rule banning doctors from commenting on anyone who has ever been a patient.) 'We never tried to downplay it,' says Michael Mithoefer, a MAPS clinical researcher and psychiatrist who authored its treatment manual. MAPS confirmed that ethical misconduct had taken place, notified the FDA, barred Yensen and Dryer from all future activities, and provided Buisson with about $11,000 for therapy. MAPS also told trial participants that if they had similar complaints, they could confidentially contact its compliance team or the study's Institutional Review Board. MAPS researchers did, however, include the results from Buisson's trial in three scientific articles published in the journal Psychopharmacology. 'That was a mistake,' Mithoefer says. Psychopharmacology has since retracted the papers. Ultimately, MAPS said, Buisson's was the only documented complaint of sexual abuse among hundreds of patients treated with MDMA. It later turned out that at least six of the speakers who gave negative testimonies to the FDA had some social or professional ties with Psymposia. (Devenot notes that two of those six were not officially connected but rather were 'fans' of the group.) This created a strange asymmetry in the proceedings. The positive testimonies were given by representatives of groups such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which represents more than 1 million people. The most disturbing accounts came from people loosely associated with a small advocacy organization that disagreed with some of MAPS's methods. In 2024, Psymposia received $185,000 on behalf of the Sarlo Charitable Fund, recommended by Susie Sarlo, daughter of the aforementioned MAPS donor, George Sarlo. A MAPS board member and the Sarlo estate had previously been in dispute over alleged elder abuse of George. Susie Sarlo also filed a public comment with the FDA advisory committee, warning of 'MDMA's recognized use as a tool for exploitation.' Asked about Susie Sarlo's contributions, Normand maintained that Psymposia is 'nobody's attack dog.' Devenot noted that Psymposia members had spent years developing their analyses and raising the same concerns, long before receiving funding. In the view of some MAPS-trained therapists, Psymposia had leveraged the Buisson incident to discredit the entire treatment. Devenot's complaint to the FDA states that its protocols 'incentivize' exploitative dynamics between vulnerable patients and potentially predatory practitioners. Abusive therapists like Yensen and Dryer, Devenot alleged on Substack last fall, are 'an inevitable consequence of MAPS's therapeutic ideology.' (Speaking on behalf of Psymposia, Devenot responds that "We are disappointed to see that MAPS has reverted to scapegoating critics rather than engaging with substantive safety improvements that would protect future patients.") 'The metaphor they use is that's not just one rotten apple, it's the whole orchard,' says Casey Paleos, a board-certified psychiatrist who served as a therapist in MAPS's Phase 3 trial. 'I know the other apples in the orchard. None of us are like Richard Yensen.' A mock therapy session. Courtesy of MAPS I interviewed several patients from the MAPS Phase 3 trial to get a detailed sense of how the therapy typically unfolds in a clinical setting. Laura Lynn MacDonald, a 55-year-old mother of two, is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. She had cycled in and out of therapy and been prescribed antidepressants and a battery of antianxiety medications to treat panic attacks, ADHD, and insomnia. (The average trial participant had been living with PTSD for 14 years.) MacDonald credits the treatment with curing her symptoms. By her account, the therapists were methodical and responsible as they helped her process intense sensations and memories. Throughout, she felt she was being safely guided, even flashing back to a very vivid, very fond memory of being paddled in a canoe by two caring camp counselors. 'No boundaries were crossed. Safety measures were diligently followed,' she said, adding, 'as a sexual abuse survivor, the manipulation and weaponization of the only sexual abuse case that occurred during the MAPS clinical trials infuriated me.' During the hearing, Devenot used the account of a therapist who pinned down a patient to illustrate a wider pattern of abuse. The therapist, Veronika Gold, says that the patient (who took ketamine, not MDMA) had consented to touch and role-play and that Gold was in character as the patient's abusive father. The patient has never spoken publicly about the event, and Gold quoted this case of a 'reparative fantasy' extensively in a book chapter she wrote. 'It has been very upsetting,' Gold says of Devenot's characterization of her work. 'They are misrepresenting what actually happened … and it seems like it made an impact on the advisory committee." Devenot, meanwhile, contends that Gold's use of physical touch 'exposes patients to an undisclosed risk of retraumatization.' It's unknown exactly how Psymposia's criticisms factored into the FDA's final decision. Members of the FDA advisory committee did not respond to repeated requests for interviews. I spoke to two former Lykos executives who had seen the agency's Complete Response Letter, who said that the FDA treated Psymposia's concerns as significant and that the agency cited issues with trial design, a consistent bugbear of psychedelic FDA also allegedly flagged an underreporting of 'positive adverse events' in which the experience proved not just therapeutic, but so enjoyable that a patient might be primed to abuse the drug. In the aftermath of the ruling, Psymposia certainly seemed happy to claim credit for the outcome. The group commissioned a PR firm, which pitched journalists on the story of a 'small watchdog organization that stopped a billionaire-funded company, Lykos Therapeutics, from getting their unscientific and flawed MDMA therapy model approved by the FDA.' Last fall, Devenot posted a picture on Substack of them posing in front of an FDA flag, with the caption 'My Everest.' Strangely serene about his life's work being kneecapped, Rick Doblin lays the blame as much with Psymposia as with the Lykos brass. In the run-up to the FDA hearing, Lykos management instituted a mandatory 'quiet period,' preventing anyone involved with the drug application from responding to criticism. In his mind, this created a sort of vacuum that his critics eagerly and capably filled. 'I think they deserve full credit,' says Doblin wryly, of Psymposia. 'Now, deserve doesn't mean that I think what they did was right. Just that they were very effective.' Photograph: Tonje Thilesen After the FDA setback, Doblin relinquished his seat on Lykos' board of directors. The company slashed three-quarters of its staff, and scientists and stakeholders from Big Pharma heavyweights and other multinationals were shuffled in. Yet Doblin persists. He recently helped to secure Lykos $25 million from billionaire and longtime Elon Musk ally Antonio Gracias, an early Tesla and SpaceX investor who also financially backed Musk's pro-Trump Super PAC and now works as part of DOGE efforts in the federal government. Doblin hung out with Gracias, who has also funded psychedelic research at Harvard and London's Imperial College, at a predawn Burning Man party late last summer. (In one sense, Gracias makes an unusual ally; Doblin's daughter lost her job due to government cuts enacted by DOGE.) In March, Lykos received additional support from Gracias and Sir Christopher Hohn, a British hedge fund manager and philanthropist who has been described by The New York Times as 'one of Europe's most feared activist investors.' A seasoned pharma executive, Michael Burke, is stepping in as the company's new CEO. Lykos declined to make any members of its new leadership team available for comment. At the time of writing, Lykos plans to use its new investment to submit the MDMA application to the FDA again, in hope that the new MAHA regime will be more inclined to reexamine the data. An approval of the therapy, if granted, would likely require a Phase 4 study in which the treatment is carefully monitored after it has hit the market. But if the FDA refuses the reapplication, Lykos would need to run another Phase 3 study, conduct years of further research, and expend many more millions. A spokesperson for HHS says 'the agency is actively exploring and supporting innovative treatment options,' including 'emerging approaches using gold standard science.' In the meantime, Doblin and Psymposia have made efforts to cool hostilities. In March, Doblin, Devenot, and Normand met up at the South by Southwest conference in Austin. Over the course of around four hours, Doblin listened to their questions and criticisms of the MDMA therapy. Devenot says Doblin treated them as 'good-faith actors; people who had genuine concerns but were not saboteurs.' Doblin, too, spoke warmly of the meeting. 'They just want to protect vulnerable people,' he says. 'We all gave each other a hug after the meeting.' (Neither Devenot nor Normand would confirm or deny the hug.) For patients who have benefitted from the therapy, all the infighting seems rather academic. The ones I spoke to also weren't troubled by the optics of partnering with Trump- or Musk-aligned allies. Laura Lynn MacDonald told me she didn't care who the 'delivery man' was for 'the good medicine'—she just wanted the treatment to be available for people who needed it. The interest in psychedelics from MAHA-world, she observed, optimistically, 'might be a strange perfection of ingredients.' Let us know what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor at mail@
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Inside the $10 billion boom in psychedelic medicine
Tim, a doctor in Atlanta, was reviewing new clinical research into psilocybin when he decided to try shrooms for himself. A hallucinogen derived from mushrooms, psilocybin was making its way through the drug approval process, and medical professionals viewed its mind-and mood-altering properties as a promising treatment for everything from PTSD to end-of-life anxiety. Tim was hoping to get more involved in the emerging field of psychedelic medicine. "If I'm going to operate this roller coaster," he recalls thinking, "I should ride it at least once so I know what it's like." To take his first dose of mushrooms, Tim went to the EAST Institute, an organization in Atlanta that described itself as a center for psychedelic healing. Run by a local tech founder named Jeff Glattstein and his wife, Lena Franklin, a social worker and Yoga Magazine cover star, EAST promoted "personal healing and transformation" through a combination of plant medicine, meditation, and "vibrational sound therapy." Similar facilities have been sprouting up across the country, part of an entrepreneurial shroom boom spurred by the growing movement to legalize psilocybin for use in therapeutic settings, and a belief that these drugs could be the future of mental health treatment. Tim found his first trip, in 2022, life-altering. It helped him let go of his feelings of shame about his sexuality and to heal the trauma from a sexual assault he had suffered years earlier. "It sounds trite, but I felt so connected to everything," he recalls. "I felt this light burst out from me in the form of these rainbow bullets. They pushed the predator away. I felt bathed in this light and energy and power that was simply beyond my own agency, beyond my own personal narrative, and beyond my own body." Toward the end of the session, Tim looked over at Glattstein, who'd been facilitating the trip. In his 60s, wearing a woven poncho and a dazzling array of giant turquoise rings, the older man struck Tim as a guru, a healer who could deliver him from his guilt and pain. Still experiencing the trip's euphoric afterglow, he dubbed Glattstein the Light Keeper. "I was ready to latch on to a savior at that moment," Tim recalls. (He and other trainees spoke on the condition that they be identified with pseudonyms, since they could suffer professional consequences for using illegal drugs outside a clinical setting. Glattstein declined to comment for this story.) To get a head start in the exciting new field of hallucinogenic healing, Tim paid $25,000 to enroll in EAST's signature offering: a six-month course to train students to serve as facilitators of psilocybin-assisted therapy. During the sessions — which included weekend ceremonies in which trainees would take turns tripping on high doses of mushrooms — Tim developed what he called an "eternal bond" with his fellow students and EAST's staff. He imagined a future where they would all take care of one another's children. ("It was the mushrooms talking, of course," he says.) Halfway through the training, Tim's personal life imploded when his boyfriend of four years broke up with him. In his fragile state, he told two EAST employees that he thought he should take the weekend off from taking mushrooms. But when Glattstein handed him a high dose, Tim says, he took it. "There was always this feeling that they must know something I don't know," he says. Later that night, and while he was still under the influence of the mushrooms, Tim says he was sexually assaulted by Scott, an EAST staff member responsible for ensuring that trainees got home safely from the ceremony. (Business Insider is referring to him by a pseudonym; he was never criminally charged. He denies Tim's allegation.) Tim says he hoped to work with EAST to develop an ethics policy and roll out better safeguards. He set up a Zoom meeting with Glattstein and Franklin, and asked two of his closest confidants in the training council, Beth and Lisa, to join the call. "I knew I had been taken advantage of by someone who was supposed to take care of me," says Tim. "I was very concerned with ensuring something like this didn't happen again." Initially, according to an audio recording of the meeting reviewed by Business Insider, the two founders said they "believed" Tim. But when Beth suggested that the incident represented an institutional failure at EAST, Glattstein jumped in. "As far as EAST being culpable," he said, "we had a person on our staff who stepped over the line." Glattstein and Franklin hired a law firm to conduct an independent investigation, and Scott was ultimately fired. Franklin declined to share the resulting report with Business Insider. But in an email to the council, she wrote that the report concluded that EAST had "no culpability in the alleged events." This is a new field, and there are no real regulations. It's sort of the Wild West phenomenon where the most kind of aggressive, entrepreneurial people can take advantage of that. Dominic Sisti, an associate professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania But things at EAST were about to get even more complicated, as multiple women came forward to accuse Glattstein of touching them inappropriately during healing sessions — accusations he denies. And such accusations aren't isolated to EAST. Over the past few years, as drugs like MDMA and mushrooms have turned into a lucrative business, accusations of abuse have begun to surface at a host of leading centers for psychedelic medicine. In the wake of decriminalizing psilocybin, cities and states have implemented few ground rules to govern the sudden explosion of "consciousness medicine." And the same properties that make mushrooms so effective in repelling destructive thoughts can also render users highly suggestible, making them vulnerable to the cultlike dynamic that has long pervaded the world of psychedelic healing. As a result, a growing number of people who have signed up to get care or serve as caregivers in the budding new industry say they've been harmed while taking the very drugs whose healing powers they were being taught to harness. "This is a new field, and there are no real regulations," says Dominic Sisti, an associate professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania who has researched the ethical dilemmas involved in psychedelics. "It's sort of the Wild West phenomenon where the most kind of aggressive, entrepreneurial people can take advantage of that." Humans have been getting high on magic mushrooms for almost as long as there have been humans. Popularized in the United States during the 1960s, psychedelics came under fire during the Nixon administration's "war on drugs." In 1970, they were classified as Schedule 1 substances, rendering possession illegal, even for research purposes. Then, in 2000, scientists at Johns Hopkins University received permission from the Food and Drug Administration to conduct research into psilocybin. As studies began to show that the substance had significant benefits for patients with chronic mental illness, voters started to see it more as medicine than menace. From Burning Man to luxury retreats, experimenting with psychedelics has become common among tech founders and executives like Elon Musk and Sam Altman, who credit the drugs with quieting their nerves, boosting productivity, and allowing them to better harness their creativity. The global market for psychedelic medicine could hit $10 billion by 2028, according to the Business Research Company. Oregon and Colorado have legalized psilocybin for therapeutic use, and more than 20 cities have decriminalized it. With the hope that federal regulators will follow suit, venture capital firms have been financing shroom startups, and scores of training programs have sprung up to meet the growing demand for psychedelic facilitators who can administer the drugs in a safe environment. In the San Francisco area, where psychedelics have a long and checkered history, at least six training programs now operate, even though psilocybin remains illegal for medicinal use. Regulations have not changed with the psychedelic gold rush. In Oregon, there's little government or medical oversight of the 20 training programs authorized by the state. Those certified to administer psychedelics are required to receive 160 hours of training — compared with the 625 hours mandated for licensed massage therapists. Franklin had an aesthetic perfectly suited to psychedelic medicine in the Instagram era. Glattstein, once a tech entrepreneur, had reinvented himself as a shaman. EAST — short for Entheogenic Assisted Spiritual Transformation — was founded in the fall of 2021. Located on the ground floor of an office park in northwest Atlanta, its ceremonial space had the look of an ashram outfitted from an Anthropologie catalog. White sheepskin rugs were arranged in a circle; Buddhist statues adorned an altar lined with candles and a large geode. The veneer of curated calm was periodically pierced by the racket coming from Insight Virtual Ballistics, a bar and "virtual shooting" arcade next door. The initial draw for many of the trainees at EAST was Franklin, who ran a therapy and mindfulness business in Atlanta before meeting Glattstein. An ethereal beauty with long, dark hair and a radiant smile, Franklin has an aesthetic perfectly suited to psychedelic medicine in the Instagram era. Her look — a seemingly endless rotation of hand-dyed silk dresses and turquoise jewelry — was at least partially attainable: A gift shop in EAST's entryway sold brightly hued dresses and robes for hundreds of dollars a pop. If Franklin, 40, was the draw, it was Glattstein, 65, who ran the show. He spent years in the up-and-down world of tech startups. In 1997, he cofounded an internet services company called Virtual Resources that raised $25 million in venture capital, only to sell for $6 million two years later. In 2018, after several subsequent startups also flopped, Glattstein turned the page. Instead of pitching companies, he was now pitching his own rebirth. The story, as he's told it in various interviews, is that he had fallen terribly ill — with what, he doesn't say — and despite being given "all of the Western medical treatments, all the therapies, all the drugs," his mysterious condition only got worse. "They had given me three months to live," he recounted on the "Psychedelic Conversations" podcast. "All my systems were shutting down." All that changed, he said, when he heard a voice command him, "Heal yourself." Glattstein says he stopped his medications, cut ties with his doctors, and started practicing with a shaman. His hair grew back and his body grew fit: His illness was gone. He started teaching, and Franklin was one of his early students. The two became a couple, bound by a passion for Eastern medicine and, they've said, their shared feeling as outsiders in Atlanta — Glattstein, the child of New York Jews in a predominantly Southern Baptist area; Franklin, whose mother was Vietnamese. They soon began hosting mini "medicine" retreats with friends at a cabin in the woods outside Atlanta. "It was just a small group of us doing mushrooms," said a friend who asked not to be identified for fear of professional repercussions. After founding EAST, Glattstein and Franklin proved to be gifted promoters of their new venture. Latching on to reality TV as a pulpit for their psychedelic gospel, they appeared as spiritual healers on Lifetime's "Little Women: Atlanta" and Bravo's "Real Housewives of Atlanta" spinoff, "Porsha's Family Matters." They trademarked the "EAST Method," which they said provided "profound healing benefits for depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction, compulsive conditions, pain management, and end-of-life demoralization" — though it's never been proven to be a treatment for any condition. Once they welcomed their first "council" of facilitator trainees, Glattstein — now calling himself a "world-renowned shaman" — took on the roles of teaching classes, sourcing the medicine, and setting the dos Before long, Glattstein was surrounded by a following of true believers. His supreme self-confidence, Beth says, made it hard to resist his instructions. "There were moments where I did feel connected to him," she says, "because of the drugs." On ceremony weekends at EAST, Friday and Saturday nights were reserved for psilocybin "journeys." On the first night, half of the council would take a high dose of mushrooms of up to 4.5 grams, according to six of the trainees. The other half would be given a relatively low dose, up to 1.5 grams, so they could help facilitate the others' experiences, they say. Franklin says that the doses were lower: 3.5 grams "was at a much higher end," she told Business Insider, while the low dose would be "up to one gram." The next night, they'd swap roles. As the students waited for the drugs to take effect, Franklin and the other lead facilitators would don dresses and ceremonial robes, play music, and dance. "I will always regret not saying, 'Wait a minute, Jeff, she's telling you that her intuition, her body, her spirit, is saying that she shouldn't do this. Why would we override that? We're here to learn how to be facilitators." The next day, the trainees would talk about their experiences from the night before. Glattstein would also lead sessions on topics like neuroscience and shamanic healing. The trainees, some of them healthcare professionals, said they found the lectures light on science. "Jeff gave some very basic information about the limbic system," recalls Sarah, a trainee in the third council. "I was like, 'Are we not going to get into serotonin receptors and how psychedelics interact with the brain?'" There was also no discussion about the boundaries between the facilitator and the subject, trainees say. "There was never anything about ethics, or what we should do as facilitators if we found ourselves attracted to somebody who was doing the medicine work with us," says Beth. As psychedelics move into the fields of medicine and therapy, the training in how to handle them is, in many cases, being conducted by spiritual healers who are intensely critical of Western medicine. Trainees say Glattstein could be openly hostile to the medical establishment. Zoe, a former employee of EAST, says she started to see a shift in the center's attitude that she wasn't comfortable with. "Their messaging was becoming increasingly, explicitly anti-mental-health treatment," she says. "Like, how you shouldn't go to therapy, and take mushrooms instead." At one ceremony in February 2023, a psychologist named Joan, who was part of Tim's council, was experiencing what she described as "serious insomnia and unrelenting anxiety." She says she asked Glattstein if she could skip the mushrooms that weekend and stick to facilitating. But Joan says Glattstein insisted she go ahead with the ceremony as planned, and she ultimately agreed. Two trainees recalled the interaction and say they wish they'd spoken up for Joan at the time. "I will always regret not saying, 'Wait a minute, Jeff, she's telling you that her intuition, her body, her spirit, is saying that she shouldn't do this," says Beth. "Why would we override that? We're here to learn how to be facilitators." Franklin says she knew Joan was struggling, but denies Glattstein pressured her to take mushrooms. As the course progressed, Joan's symptoms got worse. By the time it was over, she was a wreck. "I couldn't sleep. I couldn't work," she says. "I stopped doing pretty much anything." Her husband admitted her to the hospital, and she remained in the psych ward for two weeks. The same weekend that Joan asked to skip the mushrooms, Tim also tried to scale back his dosage after his bad breakup. Ahead of the ceremony, he says he went to two of EAST's employees, one of whom was Scott, and told them, "It may not be appropriate for me to take a high dose of psilocybin this weekend." When Glattstein proceeded as normal, Tim agreed to take the high dose. He remembers his trip that night as healing, helping him to view the breakup as "just a blip in our cosmic story." He was filled with a sense of "overwhelming love" for his ex, and was certain they would meet again in future lives. As the ceremony wound down, Tim was still tripping. Trainees say this was a common issue at EAST. The medicine ceremonies ended after three hours, and the effects of a high dose of psilocybin might last up to eight hours. It took so long to come down that trainees would make arrangements for someone to drive them home. Tim and Scott knew each other from years earlier, when they'd gone on a few dates, but both say it never turned sexual. That night, Scott was already due to give Tim a ride home from the ceremony, along with another trainee who was staying at Scott's home that weekend. Now, Tim says that Scott suggested Tim stay over, too. Wouldn't that be better, he said, than returning to the home Tim shared with his ex-boyfriend? Oh, Tim thought as he stared out the window, gazing at the passing lights amplified by the psilocybin. How lovely that this person would offer me a place to sleep. After several months of psilocybin use, he felt a deep affection for everyone involved with EAST, including Scott. Since the other trainee would be staying on the couch, Tim says Scott suggested that they could share his bed. (The other trainee did not respond to requests for comment.) Still feeling the effects of the psilocybin, Tim agreed. But as Scott crawled into bed with him, the feeling of love and connection Tim had felt on the ride home dissolved into confusion. He "kind of turned into this archetype of a tiger," Tim recalls, "with the growling and these half-closed eyes." As Tim recalls it, Scott tried to undress him and physically force him to perform oral sex. "I put my underwear back on at least three times," Tim says. Finally, Tim says he gave up trying to resist. In a telephone interview with Business Insider, Scott denied having "any sexual contact" with Tim. According to Tim, they wound up having one more sexual encounter with another man, though Scott says he was present but didn't participate. Business Insider has reviewed text messages between Tim and Scott, in which they exchanged friendly banter and, on one occasion, Scott sent Tim an explicit photo. A few months after the alleged assault, and after Tim had opened up to his therapist, Tim says he came to believe that EAST had taken his money and put him in the care of someone who took advantage of him while he was in a suggestible state. In retrospect, he puts much of the blame for what happened on Glattstein and Franklin. After all, they were the ones who put Scott in charge of getting him home safely. "How," he began to wonder, "are these people running a training program?" The lack of clear guidelines is a widespread problem in facilitator training. The gold standard for centers like EAST is a manual developed by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, the country's leading psychedelic and research advocacy organization. But the guidelines provided by MAPS are murky at best. For example, the manual states that facilitators must "always ask for permission regarding any kind of physical contact." The guidelines don't address the fact that a person under the influence of psychedelics may not be in a position to consent. Suggesting physical contact with someone who is on psychedelic drugs, by its very nature, fosters an environment that is ripe for abuse. "It goes against everything we know about therapeutic boundaries and ethics when the facilitator or therapist leans heavily into touch," says Neşe Devenot, a researcher at the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation at Harvard. "And when the client is on these suggestible substances, that touch creates a feeling of intimacy that can be exploited." Betty Aldworth, the director of communications and education at MAPS, said the organization's guidelines are clear. She says the MAPS manual stresses that touch is optional and that consent for touch can be revoked at any time and in different ways, including nonverbally. She added that proper training and sound clinical judgment are crucial to the process. 200 psychedelic practitioners and advocates have signed an open letter calling for accountability and transparency in the psychedelic community. In 2019, MAPS acknowledged that Richard Yensen, an unlicensed therapist in one of its clinical trials, "substantially deviated" from its manual while treating Meaghan Buisson, a trial participant who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming in part from sexual abuse. Video footage of the treatment showed Yensen and another therapist cuddling, hugging, and aggressively restraining Buisson while she was on MDMA. In a lawsuit, Buisson alleges that following the treatment, Yensen continued to act as her therapist and repeatedly sexually abused her for more than a year after the initial incident. After Buisson sued him for sexual abuse, Yensen argued in a legal filing that the relationship was consensual and, because his therapy license had lapsed, he was not under a "duty of care" as a medical professional. The case was settled out of court. In 2022, California's Board of Behavioral Science brought eight "causes for discipline" against Eyal Goren, a therapist who trained with the Center for Consciousness Medicine. The claims included sexual misconduct, gross negligence, and emotional harm against trainees who had taken psilocybin, MDMA, and ayahuasca. Goren denied the allegations, but agreed to surrender his license for at least three years. Goren declined to comment. In 2021, 200 psychedelic practitioners and advocates signed an open letter calling for accountability and transparency in the psychedelic community. A healthcare blog published by Harvard Law School, and co-authored by Devenot, concluded that the accounts of abuse throughout the rapidly growing ecosystem of psychedelic medicine "align with the familiar social dynamics that make up destructive cults." Franklin says EAST did consider ethics when setting up the program, but she concedes they could have done more. "EAST was not perfect, obviously, and there's a lot of growth area for sure," she says. "But we definitely did our best." Still, she adds, the institute can't be blamed for what happened outside its training. "What people did when they stepped outside of the doors, we just don't have control over that," she says. Members of Tim's council were shell-shocked by his allegations. As they debated what to do, more allegations surfaced — this time about Glattstein. In October 2023, two women from EAST's first facilitator training sued Glattstein, alleging that he had sexually abused them during private "energy healing" sessions. One of the women, Mica Davis, said Glattstein would touch her breasts and vagina over her clothing, ostensibly to help clear her "root chakra" — energy that resides in the groin area. Doing so, he told her, would "make her husband happy." The second woman, Jacqueline Wigder, who had come to EAST in part to work through trauma stemming from childhood sexual abuse, said that Glattstein would press his hands on her pubic bone and reach under her bra to run his hands between her breasts. Her sexual energy, he allegedly told her, was "like a caged tiger that needed to be released." Glattstein and EAST have denied the allegations. In a blog post on his personal website, Glattstein says the women signed informed consents specifically for "hands on" energy work. "The reputation of an incredibly gifted healer that has dedicated his life to helping humanity was severely damaged," he wrote. The case is still pending. In December, EAST filed for bankruptcy. The EAST website is now blank, and all posts have been deleted from the group's social media accounts. Franklin, meanwhile, has migrated some of EAST's offerings to her personal website. Earlier this year, she offered a six-day trip to Egypt called "The Awakening," which she advertised as a "reclamation journey of the powerful Priestess within" that will unlock "dormant cellular DNA." Today, she says, her goal is "to share what it really means to be an impactful, courageous, conscious leader in the healing and psychedelic spaces." As for Tim, he hopes for a day when psilocybin therapy is fully professionalized, with credentials and oversight boards. In a sense, it's not that different from the process that Western medicine underwent at the turn of the 20th century. Back then, medical schools were required to implement standardized curricula and training requirements to counteract widespread public dissatisfaction over snake-oil salesmen and other medical "quacks." Properly regulated, Tim believes, shrooms and other psychedelics could one day be as commonplace as talk therapy — a trusted treatment for the traumas and anxieties of modern life. Getting there will mean establishing appropriate boundaries between patients and practitioners, ensuring proper oversight, and moving beyond the field's anything-goes roots in the New Age counterculture. "I still believe this is the future of medicine," Tim says. "But you can't just have some tech guy walk in and call himself a shaman." Katie MacBride is a freelance writer. Read the original article on Business Insider Solve the daily Crossword
Globe and Mail
19-06-2025
- Health
- Globe and Mail
Ibogaine by David Dardashti Takes Center Stage on Day One of Psychedelic Science Conference 2025, Emphasizing Collaboration, Education, and Industry Synergy
DENVER, CO - June 19, 2025 - Ibogaine by David Dardashti, a leading initiative in ibogaine research and advocacy, today commenced its participation in the highly anticipated Psychedelic Science Conference 2025 in Denver, Colorado. As the conference officially began its main programming today, June 18th, the presence of Ibogaine by David Dardashti marks a pivotal moment for the burgeoning field of psychedelic medicine, championing a collaborative approach to advance ibogaine's therapeutic potential, particularly in the realm of addiction treatment. On this crucial first day of the conference, which runs from June 16-20, 2025 (with workshops on June 16th and 17th preceding the main conference), representatives of Ibogaine by David Dardashti are engaging with a diverse array of stakeholders, focusing on three key areas: potential collaborations with integration-based psychedelic therapies, offering internship opportunities to students of psychedelic studies, fostering synergy with other industries for enhanced news exposure within the psychedelic sub-sector. "The future of psychedelic medicine, especially ibogaine, lies in our collective ability to integrate these powerful experiences into comprehensive, supportive care models," stated David Dardashti, the driving force behind Ibogaine by David Dardashti. "Our discussions here at Psychedelic Science 2025 are centered on forging partnerships with organizations dedicated to integration-based therapies. It's not enough to simply administer a compound; we must ensure individuals receive the robust psychological and spiritual support necessary to process and implement the profound insights gained from their ibogaine journeys." Recognizing the critical need for a skilled workforce in this evolving field, Ibogaine by David Dardashti is also actively promoting internship opportunities for students pursuing psychedelic studies. "The next generation of researchers, therapists, and advocates will be instrumental in shaping the trajectory of psychedelic medicine," Dardashti emphasized. "We are committed to providing hands-on experience and mentorship to talented students, empowering them to contribute meaningfully to this vital area of healthcare." These internships aim to bridge the gap between academic learning and practical application, offering students invaluable exposure to clinical research, patient care, and policy development related to ibogaine. Furthermore, Ibogaine by David Dardashti is keen to expand the reach and understanding of ibogaine within the broader public discourse. The initiative is exploring collaborations with media and other industries to facilitate greater news exposure for the psychedelic sub-sector. "Accurate and responsible media representation is paramount to dispelling misconceptions and fostering public acceptance of psychedelics as legitimate therapeutic tools," Dardashti noted. "By partnering with key industry players, we can ensure that the scientific advancements and profound patient stories surrounding ibogaine receive the attention they deserve, moving beyond sensationalism to substantive reporting." The engagements of Ibogaine by David Dardashti at Psychedelic Science 2025, particularly on this opening day of the main conference, underscore its commitment to fostering a holistic and collaborative ecosystem for ibogaine's integration into mainstream medicine. The initiative's vision extends beyond singular research efforts, encompassing a comprehensive strategy for patient support, professional development, and public education, all crucial elements for the responsible and effective rollout of psychedelic-assisted therapies. About Ibogaine by David Dardashti: Ibogaine by David Dardashti is a renowned initiative led by David Dardashti, dedicated to exploring ibogaine's potential in treating addiction and other mental health challenges. With a deep commitment to ethical practices and patient well-being, the initiative champions a holistic approach to psychedelic therapy, emphasizing the importance of integration and ongoing support.
