On 13 July, there was a cloudy sky over the southern German city of Mannheim. But, despite the gloomy weather, it was a day of hope for millions of people living with depression – as a research project conducted by the Central Institute of Mental Health first determined patients to have psychedelic experiences.
He was blindfolded and wearing headphones that played music and was accompanied by two doctors. The hallucinogen used for internal travel is called psilocybin.
This active ingredient was isolated about 60 years ago. This gives magic mushrooms their “magic”—that is, their mind-altering effect. And it has been banned around the world, including in Germany, for more than half a century.
Even for the Mannheim researchers, “getting the substance has proved to be the biggest obstacle.” This is according to researcher and professor of psychiatry Gerhard Grunder.
“There are not many manufacturers in the world from which you can get such a substance in the required quality. It was a long and painstaking process,” he said.
But that laborious process is becoming more common. Hallucinogenic trips have long taken off as a recreational pastime for hippies. An increasing number of scientific studies point to the potential of psilocybin-assisted therapy to treat depressed patients — even those for whom other treatments have been exhausted. The Mannheim study, with a total of 144 patients, is now large enough that Grunder “expects statistically strong findings.”
Depression is a widespread condition
According to estimates by the World Health Organization, around 300 million people worldwide are living with depression. In Germany, the number is estimated at 5 million, and the Ministry of Health refers to it as a “widespread disease”.
A conservative estimate is that approximately one in five patients cannot be helped by conventional treatment methods. “There is a huge need,” Grunder said, adding that his institution is almost overrun with inquiries from patients.
In conventional treatments, patients are treated with daily doses of antidepressants. The new approach is fundamentally different.
“Here, it’s a matter of taking this substance once or twice,” Grunder said. “It’s a very disruptive therapy that becomes embedded in a psychotherapy program.”
Subjects in earlier studies reported life-changing experiences and significant improvements in mental status, and were even able to stop taking their antidepressants, often a condition that persists for several months after the treatment visit. Went. The prospect of being able to significantly improve the condition of severely depressed people with just a few psychedelic sessions has cost the Ministry of Education and Research more than €2 million ($2.3 million) in funding.
The fact that public funding is now also flowing into research with psilocybin in Germany shows that psychedelic research is slowly moving from the edge to the medical mainstream.
Psychedelic substances have returned to where they once were – at the center of psychiatric, medical and psychological research – in the 1950s and ’60s.
International meeting of experts in Berlin
This could be seen in mid-September in Berlin, when the Insight 2021 conference, organized by the Mind Foundation, took place. According to its website, the foundation advocates for “evidence-based, safe and legal use of psychedelic experience in medicine and society.” The meeting place of the International Psychedelics Research Center is the Berlin Charity, one of Germany’s most prestigious medical institutions.
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For four days, attendees discussed neurological processes, compared the effects of LSD, psilocybin, and other drugs with diagrams, and presented the status of research in a variety of areas. Even an employee of the German drug approval authority, the federal authority for drugs and medical devices, was there.
“We managed to discredit the subject; A discourse has emerged,” said Mind Foundation co-founder Andrea Jungberle briefly. “How this discourse will affect the day-to-day medical profession remains to be seen.”
Experts are already excited. “How ecstasy and psilocybin are shaking up psychiatry” a headline in the science journal Nature made a splash at the start of the year.
Psilocybin on the stock market
A large number of companies are also curious. If they had their way, psilocybin, the ecstasy active ingredient MDMA and other substances would soon be used to treat depression, addiction, and other ailments across the board. At least, that’s what ATAI Life Sciences, a biotech holding company owned by German investor Christian Engermeyer, aims for.
Engermeyer has discussed his own psilocybin experiences in German media, including the newspapers Handelsblatt and Wirtschaftswoche – and this summer he took his company public in New York. Just three years after its founding, the psychedelic holding is already worth over $2 billion.
ATAI’s holdings include Compass Pathway, a British company that has developed its own synthetic psilocybin. Compass Pathway is currently undergoing Phase 2 trials with the drug involving more than 200 patients at 22 locations in 10 countries, which is currently the largest psilocybin clinical trial in the world. The company, which is also listed on the Nasdaq in New York, is valued at over $1 billion after just five years of existence.
The Mind Foundation’s Berlin Registry reveals that the “trip therapy boom” has allowed an entire industry to flourish. It lists about 130 companies in the psychedelic industry, from A Whole New High, which offers psilocybin retreats in the Netherlands, to WavePath, experts in true sound through headphones for an inner journey.
Even Andrea Jungberle is not completely comfortable with rapid development. “Our best friend and our worst enemy is propaganda,” she says sparingly, promoting “the appropriate attitude between the demon and the transfiguration.”
Swiss psychiatrist Peter Gasser, who has worked with LSD and MDMA for 30 years, shares this assessment.
“This speed almost scares me,” he said. “This scaling of small niche treatments: only a few patients per study, now you’re already thinking in terms of millions.” Gasser fears that the quality of treatment may suffer “because it is seen as too technical or too planned.”
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