For D. Wesley Applebury, the pandemic years meant overcoming crushing personal traumas in the midst of global tumult. In early 2020, at the age of 27, he was diagnosed with a rare cancer that radiated out from the lining of his chest wall, collapsing his left lung. It then spread to his spine, leaving him temporarily paralyzed below the neck.
“I was in a really difficult spot,” Applebury, who is training to become a chaplain at the Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
After 12 courses of chemotherapy, 28 rounds of radiation, and five surgeries, Applebury’s condition improved. Then his father became gravely ill, also with cancer. And his romantic relationship fell apart. In September 2022, after caring for his father until the man’s death, Applebury’s psychiatrist put him in contact with Dr. Ali Zarrabi at Emory University.
Zarrabi’s proposal was simple: to enroll Applebury in a trial melding intensive psychological therapy sessions with palliative care and spiritual support from chaplains. The team would also administer a high-dose of psychedelic medicine. Medical researchers, at Emory and around the U.S., are learning in clinical trials that the plant-based drugs, derived from fungi and sometimes called magic mushrooms, can help people suffering from pain, PTSD, and addiction. The drugs also seem to lift the spirits of those suffering from major depression and suicidal thoughts.
The work at Emory, as well as similar undertakings by those outside clinical settings in Georgia, are helping make metro Atlanta a center of what some are calling a psychedelic renaissance in the United States. Georgia bans the growth and possession of psychedelics, and federal rules have limited use to clinical trials at major universities. But researchers and clinicians say the evidence in favor of psychedelic medicines is positive. However, they caution that people should not self-administer the drugs, and only seek treatment within medical settings.
When they do seek treatment, Zarrabi said, psychedelics can speed a recovery that might otherwise have taken years of therapy. And help people avoid the trap of drug addiction.
“How much morphine can you use for an existential crisis, or for pain?” Zarrabi told the AJC. “People are asking for other options.”
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Most psychedelic drugs are made from plants and fungi, and some have been used for thousands of years in traditional or religious rituals. Other psychedelic and dissociative drugs, such as midomafetamine (MDMA, also known as ecstasy) and ketamine, are made in a lab. At certain doses, psychedelics may bring on vivid visions or sensations, alter a person’s sense of self, and promote feelings of healing, insightfulness or connection, according to the National Institutes of Health.
“With MDMA and psilocybin you’re seeing benefits that go on for months, and that’s what’s exciting in the field,” Albert Garcia-Romeu of Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research in Baltimore, told the AJC. “They are remarkably safe when given under medical supervision.”
A new study from the University of Oxford in England said as much when it found that psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, is an effective treatment for depression. That study confirms an earlier trial conducted at Johns Hopkins University, which noted that the antidepressant effects of psilocybin-assisted therapy, given with supportive psychotherapy, can last a year for some patients. As for possible side effects: a recent study by researchers at the University of Georgia suggests that psilocybin is similar to traditional antidepressant medications.
Last year, Australia became the first country to legalize psychedelics when it began allowing authorized psychiatrists to prescribe psilocybin and MDMA.
It’s a far cry from the 1970, when President Richard Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act, prohibiting the consumption of many psychedelics in the United States. But they remained in use in Native American and other religious rituals. In 1993, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act enshrining that right. The bipartisan law — backed by the National Association of Evangelicals, the Southern Baptist Convention, the American Jewish Congress, and the American Civil Liberties Union — overturned a 1990 Supreme Court ruling that denied unemployment benefits by the State of Oregon to a Native American man who was fired for using the hallucinogenic drug peyote as part of a ritual of the Native American Church, according to the New York Times. That led to a quandary: the drugs became legal to use in religious and spiritual ceremonies, but not to sell. An underground market sprang up to supply the mushrooms, which can be grown easily in the U.S.
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Practitioners in Georgia working with psilocybin see the spiritual connection as critical to their work, said PsyAtlanta founder, Moshe Jacobson, who offers psychedelics as part of his Atlanta-based life coaching and spirituality practice.
“This work is based on integrating the heart and the mind,” Jacobson told the AJC. Often in our society, we are taught to make decisions based on our head-centered thinking. The psychedelic experience tries to connect the head with the heart and the gut. We are trying to create personal transformation.”
Applebury said when he first visited Emory’s Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality, the transformation he sought was to accept the trauma in his body. “The turning point for me was learning that I don’t live in the best body, a body that causes me pain, but that I can be ok with it,” he said.
Applebury’s treatment plan entailed seven sessions in total. The fourth was an eight-hour session at Emory’s Brain Health Institute, where he was given psilocybin. “It was like I accomplished 10 years of therapy in 10 weeks,” Applebury said.
That’s not an uncommon experience, said Amber Capone co-founder of VETS (Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions, Inc.). Capone works with researchers at Emory and legislators around the nation to advocate for the use of psychedelics to help veterans recover from wartime trauma. The work is personal: her husband, a Navy SEAL, had lost his will to live.
“I worried I’d lose him to suicide,” Capone told the AJC. The plant-based medicine treatments that Marcus Capone received were so successful that the couple founded a scholarship program that has sent 1,000 individuals to access care in Mexico, where personal possession of some drugs is legal. Capone said most of the vets she works with have been treated with another psychedelic known as ibogaine, derived from the bark of the iboga tree native to Central Africa.
America’s opioid crisis and an epidemic of traumatic stress in a generation of soldiers who were enlisted in post-September 11 wars have pushed the federal government to revisit psychedelics’ potential in treatment. In February, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration agreed to review a new drug application for MDMA that can be used in therapy to alleviate post-traumatic stress disorder. The MDMA capsules, made by Lykos Therapeutics of San Jose, California, could be approved by August, the company said in a news release. The FDA has also granted “breakthrough therapy” designations for two formulations of psilocybin being studied for safety and efficacy as a medical treatment for depression. That designation allows institutions like Emory to study and source psilocybin with government approval.
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While the federal government studies broadening access, those who can afford it are seeking treatment abroad. Yet some voters across the U.S. have rejected the idea that Americans should need to seek care abroad to protect themselves from federal drug statutes that classify psychedelics as “Schedule I” drugs (or substances with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse, such as heroin).
In 2020, Oregonians voted to create a legal framework to allow plant-based medicines to be grown and used in therapy. Oregon’s law requires that a state-certified facilitator be present during therapy sessions involving psychedelics. In 2022, Colorado voters passed the Natural Medicine Health Act, allowing the use of certain plants or fungi for people 21 years of age or older. A year later, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed the Natural Medicine Regulation and Legalization law, which like Oregon’s law, regulates plant-based, psychedelic medicine programs in Colorado.
Several U.S. cities have enacted similar laws. Atlanta has signaled interest too: in 2022, the City Council held hearings on the benefits and risks of plant-based medicines. “It hasn’t decriminalized psychedelics yet,” Lena Franklin of Atlanta told the AJC. “But there was an openness in the city council. I was pleasantly surprised.”
Franklin works with clients over the course of several sessions, often over months, in order to understand if the client is a suitable candidate for a plant-based medicine ceremony, usually held in Mexico or Peru. Franklin, who is not a licensed therapist in Georgia, holds degrees in psychology and social work. She said last year she awarded $150,000 to help people make the trip abroad to work with psychedelics.
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Stephanie Farrow, chairwoman of Decriminalize Nature Georgia, says Georgians shouldn’t have to travel abroad to access the plant-based medicines. “We would like for Georgia residents to have access to the help they so desperately need to heal,” Farrow told the AJC. “Georgians should not be at risk for seeking our spiritual healing with organic substances given to us by nature.”
Neal Campion, 64, of Atlanta, worked with Franklin for several months in order to help him release workplace stress. He has also microdosed magic mushrooms, which he says help him focus. But the key to his transformation, he said, was a weeklong trip to Cuzco and Machu Picchu, Peru, where he went on a psychedelic journey. “It has helped me see a greater meaning in my life,” he said.
That business people would seek out psychedelics to reduce stress isn’t surprising, said Anne Philippi, founder of the New Health Club, a global psychedelic community, based in Berlin. In Europe, she said, professionals are turning to magic mushrooms as a way to reduce stress.
“Many people didn’t have time to reflect on the outcomes of the pandemic, and went right back to the rat race,” Philippi told the AJC. “People are saying, ‘That woman is microdosing and she has it together, I want to try it too.’ And that’s great, but the need is first to reconnect with yourself, and find a group to work with. The importance of a safe, legal setting will make or break the psychedelic renaissance in Europe and the U.S.”
Applebury is interning this summer at Emory Winship Midtown as an oncology chaplain, and hopes eventually to support others seeking treatment with psychedelics. “This was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in my life,” he said. “I want to help others gain such healing.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that Lena Franklin is not a licensed therapist in Georgia.
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