This post was originally published on this site.
Imagine a medication that can permanently relieve a stressed-out parent who currently gulps addictive anti-depressants to get through each day. Or a veteran with PTSD who has turned to alcohol to cope. Or a terminally ill patient using morphine to numb his pain and end-of-life distress.
Imagine one therapeutic treatment that can, in just one application, alleviate a range of mental illnesses — a treatment that has already been championed by the most esteemed medical institutions in the country.
This is a world that the state Legislature explored last week, when the Senate Health Committee heard expert testimony about psilocybin – the psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms – and how this natural substance is used to treat mental disorders, addictions, and pain.
The members of the committee were impressed by the studies conducted by researchers and physicians from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Rutgers – along with stories from patients who testified about the success of their own clinical trials – and the two-hour hearing made it impossible to deny the vast therapeutic potential of psilocybin.
It is especially encouraging that our lawmakers recognized that psilocybin could be a game-changer – just as lawmakers have learned in other states where it is already in clinical use – which means the debate over a bipartisan bill authorizing the production and medical application of this astonishing gift of nature is about to find another gear.
“We have a mental health crisis now, and increases in alcohol and drug abuse, so I’m a firm proponent any therapy that helps people who are suffering without having to pump them with pharmaceuticals in perpetuity,” said Sen. Holly Schepisi (R-Bergen), a recent co-sponsor of the bill (S-2934) that Senate President Nick Scutari (D-Union) introduced last summer.
“I have a friend who suffered from depression and alcohol abuse, he went through one of the trials, and it saved his life. Based on the studies I’ve reviewed – from Johns Hopkins and some New York hospitals – it’s working for people suffering from PTSD, severe untreatable depression, and alcohol or substance use disorders. So I’m all-in. We need to get this conversation rolling on this.”
Committee chairman Joe Vitale (D-Middlesex) had this takeaway: “This hearing left me thinking that government’s most important role is to help people understand the potential of this treatment, and to avoid putting up roadblocks for researchers,” he said. “The FDA has already given them the green light for clinical trials, so our role should be clear: Let them do their work.”
There has been rigorous research from UCLA to the Imperial College in London, and lawmakers were told of studies that show how a single psilocybin treatment supervised by a trained facilitator can significantly reduce many forms of depression, break addictions to alcohol, cocaine, and nicotine, and bring peace to cancer patients as they live out their final months. They heard that unlike the current drugs used for these disorders, there is no instance of psilocybin being addictive and it rarely causes side effects.
This is why the FDA granted psilocybin “breakthrough therapy” status for depression in 2018, a designation that paved the way for clinical trials. The leader of a trial for major depressive disorder conducted at Johns Hopkins, a cognitive neuroscientist named Dr. Frederick Streeter Barrett, told Vitale’s committee that more than half the patients they treated were in remission for at least a year.
The FDA will likely grant full approval of psilocybin within the next two years, so the time to move on Scutari’s bill is now.
The bill creates a work group – entitled the “Psilocybin Behavioral Health Access and Services Advisory Board” – inside the Department of Health. The 18-member panel that would include physicians, psychologists, health policy professionals, experts in clinical dependence, scientists from related fields such as mycology (fungi), ethnobotany (native plants) and psychopharmacology, and relevant cabinet members.
For the first 18 months, the board would launch a public education program and inform the development of a regulatory scheme — including the training protocols for facilitators and licensing rules. Under the bill, consumption would only take place under supervision by a health professional at a licensed center, and even though mushrooms were decriminalized in New Jersey two years ago, Scutari says “this is not a recreational industry.”
Some mistakenly regard it as such, prolonging a stigma around mushrooms that dates back decades. The associate dean at Rutgers School of Nursing, Dr. Caroline Dorsen, warns what’s coming: “I ask that we get rid of the noise around us and focus instead on the data, which overwhelmingly points to psilocybin being a safe and effective medication,” she told the committee. “Psilocybin is not for everyone. But it is a much-needed tool in what is currently a very small toolbox of options for people who are struggling.”
It won’t happen quickly, but fine-tuning Scutari’s 50-page bill and getting the workgroup launched should be a priority. It took two years for Oregon to settle on a regulatory framework; Colorado legalized the use of psilocybin in November, but its advisory board won’t post rules until September, and clinics won’t start treatments until next year.
In that way, New Jersey has an inherent advantage, in that it can monitor treatment outcomes in other states. Red states such as Utah, Texas and Oklahoma have already passed study bills and are doing the same. Let the healing begin.
Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.
Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.