The state advisory group plans to keep monitoring research and policy around psilocybin nationwide.

By Natalie Bankmann, Community News Service

Studies suggest psilocybin, the fungi-found psychedelic known as magic mushrooms, can assist patients with depression. Yet a clear plan to legalize and administer the drug for the increasing number of mentally ill people in Vermont has hit its second roadblock in one year. 

A bill earlier this year originally would have decriminalized psilocybin and created a group to study the drug’s use in medicine, but legislators decided to pass a version only establishing the study group. After signing that bill into law in May, Gov. Phil Scott formed the Psychedelic Advisory Working Group, a group of nine mental health experts that met five times between July and October to review research on psychedelic use and programs in other states. 

A couple weeks ago the group published its final report and did not come to a consensus on a plan to legalize mushrooms in Vermont. The group hopes to continue the conversation by studying research from across the country on psychedelics. 

“My takeaway was there are a lot of qualms. The only operating state is in Oregon, where access isn’t easy,” said Jessa Barnard, executive director of the Vermont Medical Society and a member of the advisory group. “The answer isn’t straightforward.” 

Oregon Psilocybin Services, part of that state’s health agency, does not refer to its program as a treatment, Barnard said. Since psychedelics are federally illegal, Oregonians who administer the drug cannot do so in a medical facility and are not allowed to make diagnoses, she said. It usually costs clients $1,000 to $3,000 and up for a session at Oregon’s service centers, the regulated businesses where licensed professionals called facilitators guide people on their trip, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. Rates are up to each service center and facilitator. 

Barnard said many people from the working group had problems with Oregon’s model due to its inaccessibility and its separation from the traditional health care system.

The question of legality does not stop people in Vermont from using psychedelics. 

“There is a cultural side to this story,” said Tom Fontana, a substance abuse counselor at the University of Vermont’s Center for Health and Wellbeing. “Some people might argue legalization would take away some of the magic. I mean, it’s something we pick right off the ground. I imagine they could be messed around with in labs and eventually capitalized off of, like with opiates.” 

Fontana compared the medical legalization of mushrooms to medical birth practices. People have been giving birth outside of hospitals for centuries, but that tradition doesn’t undercut the value of medical research that aids to make birthing safer. Magic mushrooms too have been used culturally for decades. The legalization process could make them more accessible and intertwine a traditional practice with Western medicine, Fontana said. 

Group member Rick Barnett, a licensed psychologist and substance abuse counselor who serves on the Vermont Psychological Association board and founded the Vermont Psychedelic Society, wrote in an email, “I personally do not think keeping psychedelics illegal helps anyone.” 

Barnett described how psychedelics can interrupt typical brain patterns and with the right preparation, settings and mindset can lead to positive life changes. 

The group discussed research from John Hopkins Medicine’s Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. Gül Dölen, a professor at University of California, Berkeley who spent much of her career as a John Hopkins neuroscientist, has helped lead research that suggests psychedelic trips can help people be more capable of unlearning bad habits and thought processes. 

“It hits the cure, not the symptom management,” said Fontana as he described how psychotherapy directly following a trip can help patients use the insights from their experience in daily life and unlearn unhelpful thought patterns. 

As Dölen put it in a podcast on Vox last year, “It’s the difference between giving someone a pill and expecting the next day they’ll be able to speak German, or giving them a pill and expecting that the next day they can learn how to speak German.” 

While the focus of the state working group has been psilocybin, the group briefly discussed how ketamine therapy is used in Vermont to treat patients. Ketamine, a more accessible drug than psilocybin, since it can be legally prescribed by doctors, and is used in multiple locations across Vermont to treat mental health struggles. 

Doctor Hobie Fuerstman, a friend of Barnett’s, works for Preventive Medicine in Colchester, administering ketamine IV therapy. The medication works alongside therapy in the same way you might pair “steroids and bodybuilding,” he said, making an analogy. 

“The experience itself is not the primary thing. It drives changes in the brain no matter the specific dosing,” Fuerstman said. “This isn’t (just) to have some trip. There are literal neurochemical benefits — our research shows it.”

The advisory group hoped to develop a plan to better support patients who had or planned to take psychedelics on their own, Barnett said. Continuing the conversation and attempting to chip away at the stigma associated with psychedelics was one of Barnett’s main hopes with the group. 

Said Barnard, “It is not as much about talking about how to use it, but how it’s already being used and what information we have about how to support those using it.”

Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship