Today the hot news is that Ecstasy and psilocybin are shaking up psychiatry with psychedelic Therapy Schools Popping Up everywhere like little Magic Mushrooms! In addition to recently announced Hawaii, New Psychedelic Bills are being filed in Florida, Connecticut, Vermont and New Jersey, as the freedom of consciousness and natural medicine movement sweeps the globe.
During the 1950’s and 1960’s, scientists published over 1,000 articles on the use of psychedelics as a psychiatric treatment based on at least 40,000 medical studies, and countless other personal trials, books, albums, unparalleled works of art and urban legends such as the time Pitttsburgh Pirates Pitcher Doc Ellis threw a no hitter on Acid. Not an easy feat sober. At the time, many so-called ‘drugs,’ both natural and manmade, ironically the manmade substances being the most destructive to our fragile biology, much confusion and political economic agendas led to the war on ‘drugs’ and ultimately, a war on health, causing extensive death, trauma, economic damages, social inequity, confusion, fear, ultimately all being very unnecessary and a drain on society. Fortunately however, more recent neurological understanding, including ground breaking work with cannabis and its effects on the unique endocannabinoid system, has allowed psychopharmacologists, that’s just fun to say, such as Carhart-Harris to better understand the innerworkings of the innerworkings of the supercomputer brain and quite profound psychedelic effects, gaining a vastly better appreciation of human health.
Thanks to ongoing and highly successful clinical results from John Hopkins and their Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, the more popular entheogens such as psilocybin, LSD, DMT, Ayahuascya, yage and MDMA are finally getting recognized for their reparative healing abilities and Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy facilities are in the beginning phases of opening in many states to provide natural medical alternatives for debilitating mental-health disorders such as PTSD, depression, alcoholism and addiction, anorexia and other mental health issues. These illnesses contribute to the unnecessary suffering and death of millions of Americans every year, having huge sociological and economical tolls on us all. Fortunately these new laws will allow for a wider array of healing modalities and no doubt profoundly improve the state of mental health for humanity when properly understood and administered.
These new psychedelic healing facilities offer training courses to become licensed psychopharmacologists and now more than a dozen of these schools including the California Institute of Integral Studies, offer certificates in psychedelic-assisted therapies and research. Naropa, a Buddhist university in Boulder, Colo., also began offering a course in MDMA-assisted psychotherapy last year and Compass Pathways also received a “breakthrough therapy” designation from the US Food and Drug Administration and is now offering a core training curriculum.
These virtual and in-person introductory courses such as “Foundations in MDMA and Psilocybin Safety” and “Psychedelics and Social Justice,” can range in length, from several weeks to months, and cost anywhere between several hundred to a tens of thousands of dollars. Some companies such as Compass Pathway are also beginning to patent and trademark proprietary programs, offering retreats featuring flotation tanks, sweat lodges and holotropic breathwork sessions. Due to the fact that no legal opportunities exist, yet, on a federal level for U.S. health-care workers to administer psychedelics beyond cannabis and ketamine, most programs focus on teaching professionals how to support patients before and after psychedelic therapies, a practice known as psychedelic integration. In the words of Ingmar Gorman, Co-Founder of the Psychedelic school, Fluence, “Clinicians are not recommending psychedelics but rather supporting the autonomy of patients who might, for example, go to Peru for an ayahuasca ceremony.” Gorman also says that his business has increased seven fold in 2020 and currently hosts dozens of virtual courses ranging from $550 to $1,200, as well as a $7,500 certificate program that includes an in-person retreat in the Catskill Mountains in New York. Gorman estimates that the school has enrolled over 640 students, with 60% being social workers or psychologists, 30% therapists or medical providers and 10% coaches or professionals such as engineers, lawyers and clergy.
