The psychedelic industry could revolutionize mental health. Compounds like MDMA and psilocybin are rapidly entering clinical trials and have already been adopted by numerous US cities and states. With the psychedelic gold rush upon us, experts are warning of the need for marketers prioritize sober education over intoxicating profits.
After more than half a century of propaganda-driven demonization, psychedelics are slowly but surely being adopted by the mainstream. Now speculators are rushing in, eager to cash in on a burgeoning market that could be valued at more than $10 billion by 2027. There are some who fear profit-seeking, coupled with irresponsible marketing practices, could overshadow measures. security, with potentially disastrous consequences, according to experts.
There is a growing sense that the future of mental health belongs to psychedelics, and investors and entrepreneurs have been seizing the moment. Billionaires such as Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies), Steven Cohen (hedge fund manager and owner of the New York Mets), and Bob Parsons (founder of GoDaddy.com) have invested in psychedelic startups that stand to make a fortune when psychedelics become legally available. Psychedelics have also become media darlings. “Psychedelic Revolution Is Coming,” declared The New York Times in a May 2021 headline. “Psychiatry may never be the same again.”
As they move down the long road to FDA approval, many have begun to wonder what legal psychedelic-assisted therapy might look like. It’s unclear how a drug company, for example, can expect to profit from a drug like psilocybin, which has been shown in some cases to provide months of psychological relief, sometimes after a single dose. What is clear is that demand is likely to be high, especially in the wake of the emotional upheaval of the pandemic.
To get a sense of what commoditized psychedelic-assisted therapy might look like, one need only look at what is already happening with ketamine. After the FDA approved esketamine (a derivative of ketamine) for treatment-resistant depression in 2019, ketamine quickly shed its sketchy reputation as “special K” to become a multibillion-dollar industry, with posh ketamine clinics popping up in some major cities. Marketing materials from such clinics are filled with breathless accounts of how ketamine “has saved my life,” along with stock footage of healthy, happy-looking young people, like the ones you might see in a Coca-Cola ad. .
Although not technically a psychedelic (it is a dissociative anesthetic), ketamine is often grouped with so-called “classic psychedelics,” a category that includes LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and DMT. It is also generally accepted that, like psychedelics, ketamine should be administered under the supervision of a therapist. Most ketamine clinics are careful to adhere to that model. But some have downplayed, or even eliminated altogether, the role of the therapist in order to get ketamine into the hands of more clients.
With FDA approval on the horizon, investors and entrepreneurs are ready to jump in
All classic psychedelics remain classified as Schedule 1 substances by the Drug Enforcement Agency, meaning they have no established medical value and high potential for abuse. But clinical trials have been disproving those long-held beliefs, and some cities and states have changed their laws accordingly. In 2019, Oakland, California became the first city in the country to decriminalize psychedelics. Just over a year later, Oregon became the first state to legalize psilocybin. Even Texas, a state not exactly known for its liberal drug policies, legalized psilocybin research in 2021 with the goal of treating PTSD among its veteran population. (Rick Perry was among those who publicly expressed support for the legislation.) Trials of MDMA and psilocybin-assisted therapy have advanced rapidly, and both treatments could receive FDA approval within a year or two.
With such a huge potential market on the horizon, some companies have already started developing their strategies to sell psychedelics to the masses. Brad Burge, founder of Integration Communications, a public relations firm that represents companies in the psychedelic space, says that to avert disaster, economic enthusiasm must be tempered with sober education about psychedelics, their benefits and risks, and the proper environment in which they are to be used. “We need to continue destigmatizing and talking about the beneficial potential of these substances [along with] the importance of education and accountability to therapists,” says Burge. “But there’s also this psychedelic gold rush, and you’re getting these psychedelic business conferences and herds of investors flooding in and looking to see if maybe this is going to be a good way to make a quick buck. And in the process of that, with investor dollars, or private funding, or whatever, they’re promoting this message of psychedelics. [as] this miracle treatment… and unfortunately, [they’re] the loudest, because they have the biggest budgets.”
This would not be the first time that the healthcare industry and the private sector have been swayed by the promise and potential benefit of an exciting new class of drugs. The introduction of SSRIs in the 1980s was hailed as a revolution for mental health. Which of course it was; Untold numbers of lives have been saved. But it wasn’t until much later that we discovered that drugs like Prozac are a double-edged sword, with some nasty and life-threatening side effects.
Curing the hangover from the ‘War on Drugs’
If psychedelics truly benefit individual people and the culture as a whole, experts say, companies seeking to cash in on their market potential must be careful to balance their economic motives with clear, transparent, and research-driven information. “There has to be a rebranding of psychedelics from conventional hallucinogenic and experimental substances to be associated with [the] clinical and scientific evidence that is proving right now,” says Kripa Krishnan, senior analytics consultant at Informa Pharma Intelligence, a data analytics firm that focuses on the pharmaceutical and medical technology industries. “And that rebranding requires a lot of marketing and advertising efforts… you need to continually invest in education. [and] basically in the diffusion of consciousness. You are not just marketing a product, you are marketing a concept. You are marketing a complete paradigm shift.”
Education will be key not only in ensuring the safety of avid users, but also in helping to change the mindset of those who still see psychedelics as the scourge of youth, the drugs that will fry your brain, alter your chromosomes or they will convince you that you can fly long enough to jump off a building to your death. Although their numbers are almost certainly declining, there are plenty of people who still think that way, their perception of psychedelics colored by a long-running and well-funded propaganda campaign sponsored by the US government.
“In many ways we still live in the shadow of the 1970s [and the] ‘War on Drugs,’ which painted all drugs, and especially psychedelics, with the same broad brush,” says Drew Gomez, director of brand and product marketing for Mindbloom, a company that provides ketamine-assisted therapy. “This tabloid reputation has often overshadowed the scientific research of the past 50 years, which has shown, time and time again, how safe and effective some of these psychedelic drugs can be in managing and addressing mental health disorders.”
The proper response to propaganda is never more propaganda. Many experts would argue that it is counterproductive and dishonest to portray psychedelics as all sunshine and rainbows. “These drugs are not panaceas,” says Burge. In fact, while their therapeutic benefits look promising, researchers are also quick to point out that psychedelics can trigger psychotic episodes in people with certain neurological predispositions. They can also be harmful if taken in the wrong context, that is, without the guidance of a trained therapist by your side. One of the big concerns is that breathless marketing from the private sector, coupled with glowing press coverage, will drive hordes of desperate people to buy MDMA or psilocybin on the street and take the treatment into their own hands. Needless to say, that would not be good for the industry.
The dangers of prioritizing profits over people
Given the current momentum, it seems very likely that we are heading towards a future where some psychedelic-assisted therapies will be legally available and where some companies will make huge sums of money from the new market. The dynamics of capitalism could inexorably push some companies to gain an advantage over the competition, to use an old trope, prioritizing profits over people. In other words, putting costly and time-consuming security measures on the back burner to “treat” more customers, of which, in this age of anxiety, there are almost certainly going to be many.
Ask just about any medical professional working in the field today, and they’ll likely carefully highlight the fact that it’s not necessarily the compounds themselves that affect positive behavior change; it’s its effects combined with the careful guidance of a trained therapist (or two), who sits with the patient during the session and helps them try to make productive sense of everything afterwards.
“What really needs to be reinforced in the public sphere is that what the FDA is evaluating is not MDMA or psilocybin per se, it is an MDMA-assisted therapy. [and] psilocybin-assisted therapy,” says Dr. Casey Paleos, psychiatrist and co-founder of Mindbloom. “That’s a very, very important distinction, because these drugs are like any really powerful tool: You can use a scalpel to save someone’s life in surgery, or you can stab someone with it. The tool itself must be operated with a level of training, experience and knowledge on how to keep a person safe during the process. [and] that should not be treated trivially.”
Marketers will have an important role to play in shaping our culture’s future relationship with psychedelics, according to experts. On the one hand, they could fuel the capitalist machine, thus increasing the probability of disaster not only for their customers but also for the entire industry, minimizing security measures, stifling warning voices from researchers, and presenting these powerful compounds as a cure. magical. -everyone. On the other hand, they might choose to emphasize safety, give doctors a voice, and make it very clear to their clients that psychedelics are not for everyone and should only be used in carefully circumscribed settings.
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