Magic Medicine (2018) - full transcript
In 2012 a team of medical researchers asked themselves, "what would happen if we gave psilocybin (magic mushrooms) to people suffering from severe depression"? It took them three years to get the necessary permissions to find out.
(soft music)
- In 2012, a team of British
researchers asked the question,
what would happen if we treated
20 people suffering from
severe depression with magic mushrooms?
It took them three years to
get permission to find out.
I've tried I think maybe
six or eight different
antidepressants and have never worked.
It I can't be for patients
has been four years ago,
I realized that I couldn't go in on us.
You know, she didn't say anything.
Find a way to change
About 50% of people don't
respond to antidepressants
and one in six of them
go on to kill themselves.
So we really should be exploring
every other treatment available.
With me, what I've always
been desperate to do is to try
and find a physical reason
for feeling this way.
Although I didn't want to take my life,
I didn't want to wake up.
I want to go to sleep, just
not have to face severe.
Depression is so prevalent,
everyone's exposed to it.
We're looking at giving
psilocybin to patients
with quite severe treatment
resistant major depression.
- I don't think it's
normal to feel the way
I do the anxiety,
the fear the terror panic. If this
is living then it sucks. It really does.
- [Announcer] LSD was isolated
by stolen Hoffman in a Sandoz
pharmaceutical company
of Basel, Switzerland.
The door swung wide open for research
into the nature of this
piece of reading process,
and in a larger sense into
the biochemistry of psychosis.
Between 1950 and 1965 40,000
patients were prescribed
a psychedelic drug for
neuroses, schizophrenia
and psychopathy.
These trials resulted in
over 1000 scientific papers.
If you have enough
Is that a beautiful experience?
I would say
- [Narrator] when
psychedelics became available
to the wider public
in the 1960s, dramatic changes
in attitudes and behavior.
- This is one area where
we cannot have budget cuts,
because we must wage what
I have called Total War
against public enemy number
one in the United States,
the problem of dangerous drugs
in 1971, under pressure
from President Nixon,
the UN declared that all psychedelic drugs
should be classified as schedule one.
- One of the difficulties in
terms of schedule one drugs,
including psilocybin, is that
because they're in schedule one,
this has discouraged any research
into the middle medical value of that drug
and there's been virtually
nothing in the world Research
ever since 1960s.
- [Narrator] With backing from
the Medical Research Council,
the team at Imperial College
London are conducting
the first ever clinical
trial of psilocybin,
the active ingredient of magic mushrooms.
- This isn't a job to rush if you think
that somebody could have one of
the most profound experiences
of their whole lives
and they're ready for the music here.
- That was taken was a winter of 2010
when it was really cold
and we had a lot of snow
so happy time.
I was Yeah, yeah, it was
really nice. Yeah. I mean today
going down to Imperial,
it's actually Hammersmith hospital. And
tomorrow is the first dosing day.
Can you put into words
how important this is?
But sir
That's a tough one
(soft music)
well we woke up Mikey got a call was it
seems there was a fight so thank you
for rolling resolving
that put my readers on.
And because we're gonna sleep upstairs
so we thought the price if
we wait into the kitchen for some reason
during the session there
was a tickle in the kitchen.
We just thought oh well
it's just not much.
We'll be we'll be fine.
And the next thing we
knew that when we come
back a few hours leading up
to the step in there, how does
that affect you in the knowledge
of the trial coming up,
aim right at that point I thought
I'm not going to do I can't do it.
But for me, it's the last chance.
I think this is that, you know,
I don't think there's any all medicines
that title these ones
that's been made in a lab
and none of what, you know
the very short term impacts
and then nothing.
(soft music)
Over the past 30 years,
I've had maybe 30 different
types of medication,
antidepressants, some of them
have worked for a short time
some work for a bit longer
but they all kind of tail off
was I had a CT at 23
sessions of which I've been
told worked for a period
But then the effects you know, wore off.
So I do feel like this trial
is another kind of last chance
to make any kind of change for
me, but I felt that before.
Robin Carhartt Harris is the trial lead
and head of psychedelic
research at Imperial College.
I have suffered from clinical depression.
You know, I've been
through some dark times.
So I think that kind of
thing helps you have sympathy
for people who suffer from
New disorders in general.
Psychedelics are, for
me easily the best tool
that exists to study both
the mind and the brain.
I think it has the potential
to revolutionize depression
treatment, if not psychiatry,
Professor David Nutt, head
of neuro psychopharmacology
will oversee the trial.
This part of the brain
is called the cortex.
And in the cortex, you do your
hearing and your seeing etc.
But also in this part of the cortex,
particularly this bit
here goes from the front
to the back here.
There's the sense of self.
It integrates what you can see and hear
and with what you can think and feel.
And serotonin is an important
chemical in the brain.
It's a fundamental neurotransmitter
for regulating brain function,
particularly in the emotional sphere.
And what psilocybin and
other plant products do is
to stimulate those receptors
and by stimulating them we can
mimic serotonin in the brain,
and sometimes perhaps,
do more than serotonin is doing
because in some people say returning
may not be working adequately.
As it will launch
into more symbolic
one life into another.
Sometimes you think they be
strong because you don't want
to come across as an emotional mess.
I woke in the early
hours and I was weeping
and I don't know where it came from.
It's quite difficult.
It's it's quite tough
their two days is the first time Simply
to test the volunteers
tolerance to the drug.
And the treatment days
will follow a week later.
Each trip lasts about six hours.
And a psychologist and
psychiatrist always in the room.
The experience of taking
the capsules is going
to be very significant for him.
He's never experienced
anything like this at all
in his life.
And he's a scientist.
He's someone that really enjoys
kind of the predictability
of testing hypotheses and problems
that can be solved without actually
so this is a huge departure from that.
I can remember being in the doctor's
and feeling absolutely
ashamed of where i was.
You know, I worked as a
scientist and as a team leader,
and out of the blue,
I was told that I had to work
in a procurement department
and this was pretty much
my vision of how Really,
there was just this a base
that was in front of me.
And I went to see the
occupational health nurse.
Before I knew it was in floods of tears
and just completely burned down.
And she said to me, there's
something seriously wrong me.
And yeah, we're, what, 13
years down the road now.
(laughs)
Real laughs a minute.
I have been thinking about it
quite a lot this afternoon.
I'm worried that he's so different,
that I take a long time to catch up,
and he loses patience with me.
So yeah, I'm a bit concerned.
I'm going to get left behind. Oh oh
Very powerful, very powerful going.
And that was that was
two capsules next week.
So five capsules
What are your thoughts
about next Wednesday?
They're probably more anxious,
actually, if I'm honest,
because of what came up
today. and that I know
that could get amplified next Wednesday.
So I think there's a battle
there that's not done yet.
- He was taken back to a
very, very difficult memory
which he didn't think was a memory.
It was kind of a new experience
that he was going through
of having his mother on the one side
and his father on the other
having to choose between them.
And he went to be with the
very calm, benevolent energy
of his dad, and he felt the
presence of this dad there.
He said he actually really
kind of met his dad again
and felt his dad wrapped around him.
He could feel the knit of the
cardigan his dad used to wear.
So that was a really difficult
but also very positive
powerful experiences.
(calm music)
- [Monty] It's a huge
responsibility for you, this.
Do you get sort of scared or nervous?
- I do, I think if you're
giving a incredibly powerful
psychoactive drug to individuals
who are especially vulnerable,
you have to think about negative
psychological responses.
You have to think about anxiety.
You have to think about
fear and potential panic.
(soft music)
- [Ros] Let's just carry
on breathing naturally.
And then I'd like you to imagine
that you're lying down
in a beautiful woodland.
You're in a clearing,
and the ground is covered with
green most, soft and springy.
- I think depression's
about like an addict.
You learn to hide it from people.
(mumbles) people in arms.
I don't want no sympathy.
I don't even want a lot of kindness.
And I would like to go into the bedroom
and close the curtains, put
the lights off, and just stare.
- It's a big day, probably as
big a day as our wedding day
maybe 'cause this could be the start
of a new life, fingers crossed.
(Maggie laughing)
- In mental health, you just have to go
into an inpatient ward
anywhere and realize
that we need something new.
So John and the other
patients in the trial
have got what's called
treatment-resistant depression,
which means they've tried
three different types
of treatment and nothing's worked.
I think the name
treatment-resistant depression
is really a bad name 'cause you can't say
that John's depression
is resitant to treatment.
It's just that we haven't
found the right treatments yet.
- [Monty] How are you feeling today?
- All right, certainly more
positive than I was before,
I am,
but I definitely felt
that there was something
I couldn't achieve on the first dose.
It felt like I could
identify there was a problem,
but I couldn't quite grasp
it or tackle it, you know?
It's not like I'm feeling euphoria or high
or happiness or, I just
don't feel rubbish, you know?
And so if this is all it
does, then that's fine.
But hopefully it'll do more.
(soft music)
(bell ringing)
- I'd just really like to
get to the bottom of it
or have somebody help me
get to the bottom of it.
- Difficult to know what to expect.
I sort of feel like I
don't know him well enough
as perhaps we should at this stage,
so that doesn't feel ideal.
It's the low dose today.
Essentially, I know
he'll be fine physically,
so let's just go into it
with the right attitude,
really, and support him.
- [James] Do you feel ready
to take the capsules now?
- Yeah, I'm fine to take that.
- Here's a glass of
water for you, all right?
- Mark hasn't really revealed
to us why he's depressed.
I don't think he knows, and now the taking
of this drug is about trying to understand
where this is coming
from, what this block is.
(soft music)
- I can't pinpoint a date or an event
that could possibly be the cause of it.
Over all this time, I think it
must be something biological.
I don't expect a magic wand,
to go, "Wow, you feel
all the sudden great,
"and you're you for doing anything!"
Kind of what I do expect
is just not to feel
so cripplingly negative about everything
that it infringes upon my daily life.
(soft music)
- Are you hopeful?
I am hopeful for Mark
because if I wasn't hopeful,
that would be a problem in itself.
I firmly believe that this drug
is a route out of what can
other be an insoluble problem.
- The nature of the drug
effects are that they induce
a kind of malleability or plasticity,
so like they free things
up so that they can change.
And I think what can be
characteristic of depression
is that there are things
that aren't conscious
and you don't realize the
contribution to your state.
- Yeah, that all makes, it makes sense.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Well, I hope you have a nice...
- Yeah.
- And easy evening.
If ever you're worried about anything
or you just wanna ask anything,
you can give me a call.
- Okay.
(soft music)
- There are 16 ways in which drugs
can do harm to you or to society.
There are nine ways
they can harm the user,
and those are the blues bars,
and the size of the red bar,
the harm of the drug to society.
So alcohol is the most harmful
drug in Europe and the UK,
and the reason for that is
the size of that red bar.
It's not the most
damaging drug to the user.
Being on to the right,
then you have heroin
and crack and methamphetamine.
They have bigger blue bars.
And the drugs that the
media get hysterical about,
they're on the right-hand.
They're ecstasy, LSD, magic mushrooms.
They have virtually no harm to society
and considerably less harm
to the user than alcohol.
Making these drugs illegal
stops people researching them,
even though the UN Convention said,
"Oh, no, we're perfectly happy for you
"to carry on researching them.
"You just have to comply
with the regulations."
No one has managed to get
through those regulations
to do clinical trial of LSD in 50 years.
- And what do you think
does have to happen
in order for decriminalization
to happen in the UK?
Like, is it with a politician,
or is it with the research?
Is it with the people, what...
- What has to happen is we've gotta have
completely public debate,
and you've gotta hold MPs
up to account when they are
either not discussing this
or talking rubbish about it.
And the media, too, you know?
When are people lying
about the harms of drugs,
you've gotta challenge them all the time.
(soft music)
- [Narrator] Baroness Molly
Meacher has spent 10 years
as a crossbencher in the House of Lords
campaigning for the
liberalization of drug laws.
- UK governments tend
to be very conservative
on drug policy, much more conservative
than many Western European countries
and of course the vast
majority of U.S. states.
And that's something to do
with our media, I think.
They've been very hostile
to reform in this area,
which is probably something to do
with the conservatism
of the British people.
- [Monty] So where are we off to now?
- We're gonna go and pick up the capsules.
It's the second dose now, so this is where
things get even more interesting.
It's gonna be quite a
high dose, 25 milligrams.
- [Monty] And why are they down here?
- Oh, it's in, hi, Matt, how's it going?
- All right, let's get the key out.
- Sure!
So the drug has to be stored securely.
In order to do research
with Schedule I drugs,
we a Home Office license, so
it's stored in this secure area
in a locked safe that's
actually bolted to the wall.
(soft music)
- [Monty] What exactly is this?
- This is psilocybin, so this
is the psychoactive ingredient
in so-called magic mushrooms.
- [Monty] How does that compare
to the sort of recreational dose?
- It's quite a high dose, actually,
2 1/2 grams of mushroom material
or you know, hundreds, a couple of hundred
little liberty cap magic mushrooms.
So anyone doing that,
you'd consider really
taking quite a high dose, so yeah,
there's no messing about.
(soft music)
(Andy exhales loudly)
- So I'm ready for the exam.
You can't go on living like you have done
for the last 20 years because
it doesn't get better.
It does get worse.
Yeah, when I think back to
late November last year,
that was about as bad as it had got.
And that was, that scared me.
But we're beyond that.
I'm extraordinarily lucky to be here.
(soft music)
(Andy crying)
- Please go away, please go away!
Oh, please go away, oh god, no!
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!
No, no, no, no, no!
- Hey, Andy.
- No, no!
- Andy, it's okay.
With Andy, if you asked him what had been
making him struggle or depressed,
he would say experiences with his work
and not feeling good enough there,
but that didn't even come
into the sessions at all,
and it was more about his
early childhood experiences
of suffering in pain.
- I need more spaghetti.
- Does it want to come inside?
- I need more spaghetti.
- Okay, what about letting it in?
We're here with you, Andy, now.
- No, no, no, no, no, no.
No, no.
- Okay.
These kind of early childhood experiences
will often be repressed.
People can go through their whole lives
without ever really facing those demons,
but it's not as if the
demons they've pushed down
don't cause any suffering
because they're there.
- This is so (mumbles)
- Just let it be here and see
what it's here to show you.
- Oh, god.
- And know that you're safe.
- I'm afraid it won't go away,
won't go away, won't go away.
- Just a small improvement
would be lovely,
just for him to feel
differently about things
and see the world through
a different pair of eyes.
(soft music)
- [Andy] Hello!
- Andy!
- How are you doing?
(Andy laughs)
- How was it?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Oh!
- Extraordinary, extraordinary.
- Is that different from last time?
- Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah.
You knew that this was the big ride.
This is the one that changed things.
And of course, it's left lots
and lots of questions, really,
but those I think the answers to those
will come out in good time.
- Yeah.
- Dad was there.
- Yes.
- Dad was there.
- Good.
- Yeah.
- [Yvonne] Oh, that's lovely.
- Yeah, couple a times, actually.
Couple a times he was there.
- Yes.
- Where it was headed was dangerous to me.
It was a dangerous path, but no, no.
It's all, we're okay now, we're okay.
- [Yvonne] You're right.
- All is resolved.
- [Yvonne] Bye-bye.
- See you tomorrow.
Cheerio.
- Thank you, Monty.♪♪
Have a nice evening.
- I could feel that he
was suffering so much,
but I could also feel that
it was really important
for him to be suffering,
so I was kind of pleased
in a weird way that he was
(chuckles) going through it,
thinking, "Yes, now we're
getting to the stuff," you know?
"This is what's been causing
you so much suffering,
"so we need to get it out."
And he was really in a battle
with a large, dark, evil force
that he associated with his mum.
(opera singer vocalizing)
- [Andy] Get away.
Get away.
You're not coming in.
- There was so much
darkness and so much pain.
There were moments of thinking,
"Where is this gonna go?
"How's it gonna be by the end of the day?"
You know, what if this
doesn't get resolved?
There was a sense from the last session
of his dad being kind of wonderful,
and his mum being kind
of terrible and evil.
- (laughing) We're all done and dead.
I'm telling you, we're
all dead, we're all dead.
- What sort of evolved out of today
is that it really doesn't matter.
If there was one person doing right,
the other one doing wrong,
what actually matters
at the end is resolution and love
because that is the big thing
that came out for me today
is that the more you hate something,
the more you feed it with that hate,
the bigger it gets, and
that's what's been going on.
I've been feeding this thing,
it's been consuming me,
and now I've got to the realization
that if I stop feeding it with hate,
it evaporates, it goes away.
Shh, it's, oh, yes, yes, yes.
- [Ros] Are you out?
- Ah!
And as soon as that realization occurred,
because I had the
representation of my father
and Vonnie and the boys on my chest,
but I didn't have a representation of Mom.
So I took a picture and
brought here in to that union,
really, at the end, and
we were kinda one again,
but one helluva a battle.
I wouldn't wanna do it again.
I've been the happiest ever in my life,
and I've been the most
terrified in my life
in the same day, probably in
the space of half an hour.
- [Monty] So good.
- Mm, really good.
Exhausting, but really, really, very good.
And I mean, well, the proof
is in the pudding, you know?
Today was good, it was intense.
It was good, it was tough,
all the things I hope for,
but we will see how Andy's
feeling tomorrow, next week.
And the really key thing
is in a week, a month,
few months, that's
what's really important.
(soft music)
- Hi, good to see you, how you doing?
- All right, yeah, yourself?
- Yeah, we're all right, yeah.
- Yeah?
- Yeah.
My mind's been racing about, you know,
what could be or how could be.
- [Robin] And you have (mumbles)
- Oh yeah, yeah, but more
about what it could be
that's coming (mumbles).
- I think we should get into the room
well ahead of time and settle
down and talk to the others.
(soft music)
- Okay.
- If you remember last time.
- Okay.
- Last week we had somebody in the study
who had a particularly strong
response to psilocybin,
probably the strongest
psychedelic experience
I've ever sat with, and
that's kind of raised,
raised my kind of alertness,
really, about today.
It's just a reminder, really,
never to underestimate
the power, really, of a psychedelic drug
and the alterations in
consciousness that they can induce.
- [James] Tell us what's on your mind?
- I don't know why, it
just feels like it stopped.
It feels like it, I just wanna
go home, that's what I want.
- [James] Just wanna go home.
- Yeah.
- How come?
- I don't know, it just,
that's just, I mean.
Did you really get...
- Today John nearly left, which
was quite a dilemma for us
because on the one, we
want to keep him here
and keep him safe, but
we also didn't wanna
keep him here against his will.
And so it was difficult.
- [James] It's probably a bit
early for you to go as yet.
I mean, can you just hold
off a little bit longer?
- I don't know, just wanna go home today.
- [James] Yeah, is there anything at all?
- There was just, I think,
well, when I close my eyes and try and,
I try and sleep, I just will feel like
when a bad dream in to the next.
That what it feels like.
- It wasn't really what I
would've planned or expected.
I didn't even realize
that's what John needed,
but looking back, I see
it was what he needed.
It was like the first dose
was like lulling him into it.
It gave him a sense of
it's okay, I can do this.
And then the second dose, it's like,
right, now the real work begins.
- Okay, I probably should've left.
- And the real work isn't experiencing
some lovely feeling of
love from the world.
The work is going on a
journey within yourself,
finding that nugget of pain,
and integrating it into your life.
- I'm really hoping and
praying that it has worked.
Up until now, with John being ill,
I've been mum and dad to the kids.
And now, it might be that I can share
the load again and it won't just be me.
It's be me and John working as a team
like we used to do all those years ago.
- Your wife's over here.
- Hello!
How're you feeling?
(mumbles) 2 1/2.
- Really? (laughs)
- Yeah. (laughs)
Oh, I nearly left.
- [Maggie] Why?
- It was just, I got upset, horrible.
And then they, some very kind people
convinced me to stay in the room. (laughs)
- [Maggie] Did they tie you down?
- [John-] No, no, they...
- Really, really.
- It was physical.
- Actually...
- No physical restraint.
- I think a lot's been
sort of experienced today.
- [Maggie] Okay.
- And been, yeah, just a
little rockier than last time?
- [John] Oh, yeah, yeah.
- At one point, but I think
maybe because of that,
maybe there's more benefits
being had from this experience...
- Yeah.
- Than last week.
- Yeah, it was bad in
terms of what I experienced
but necessary for actually...
- [Maggie] Does that mean you can
get rid of the beard, John?
- No, yeah...
- Oh!
- A miner poked me and said,
"Grow it till it's down to your knees!"
- Oh!
(Robin and John laughing)
- At first, I really didn't
think it was working.
It wasn't until the very
end when I could set
and then reflect on it that I
could see what had happened.
All these things that happened
to me when I was a kid,
it made me face very single one of 'em,
and nobody wants to do that.
But yeah, so it was an
extremely horrible afternoon,
the worst experience in my life.
Sometimes I could hear bugs,
as if a bug was crawling
through the ground.
The images that I saw was of this massive
sort of black-and-red iron thing
with huge spikes pointing into it.
But the experience that it relates to was
when some (mumbles) took my T-shirt off
and threw me in this
massive patch of nettles,
and I was beat with a hawthorn branches,
and the bugs that I heard were the bugs
that I heard when I was on
the ground afterwards crying.
The sharp spikes on the
big black-and-red thing
were the thorns on the branch.
It was almost like absolutely everything
was trying its hardest to
see this is the problem.
You know, it makes me feel that depression
is a way we cope, as a kid we build up
psychological protections
for ourself (mumbles)
but at some point in your adult life,
we have to come terms with
that and deal with it,
and there is no natural part of life
that we have in modern society
that allows that to happen.
Counseling doesn't do it,
antidepressants won't do it.
But this thing does do that.
It takes you straight there,
exactly what Robin promised.
It will take you to that place.
Whatever the problem is, it
will take you straight to that,
and you have to decide there and then
whether you're going
to be a victim of that
for the rest of your life or not.
- John?
- What?
- Hi, John.
How you doing?
- Doing much better.
- Great, that's good to know.
- Good.
- What I was just thinking
was it wasn't some
external spiritual force,
or it wasn't someone's
counseling technique.
(soft music)
It's actually oneself that
does the healing in the end.
- You look at these images,
you can see the cortex.
That the outer part of the brain here.
And this is a kind of spine to the cortex,
and this seem to be particularly
implicated in depression.
Now, what psilocybin does is to introduce
a degree of chaos, if you want,
almost like a kind of scrambling effect
as a kind of resetting of the brain,
and it sort of settles in
a healthy mode of function.
- [John] Oh, that's the
reason for the scans,
for the definite...
- [Robin] That's what we're
doing now, really, yeah.
- It's really interesting.
- Yeah.
(both laugh)
(soft music)
- [Monty] Tell us whether
you'd have been able
to walk around London a month ago.
- No, I wouldn't have done that.
Coming in here, a place in London,
the corner of Oxford
Street and Regent Street
where it's so mobbed, I just
wouldn't have done that.
I'm enjoying that, you know?
It's nice, you're not sitting
thinking about yourself
or thinking about anything depressing
or bad or dark or deep.
It feels good, it feels like
there's a lightness, you know?
That is like a burden that's been lifted.
That's what it feels like.
It's like someone's just come
along, and they've taken away
everything that was weighing you down.
- Today, I just really wanna get it
over and done with, basically.
I don't really have any
hopes or predictions
or ideas about what
might happen or really...
Let's just get on with it, really, yeah.
(light orchestra music)
- I feel really tired, hungover.
Massively abnormal
feelings forming that I've,
not sure if I've ever
experienced in my adult life.
- [Monty] Do you feel like
it's something that's,
you'd want to work on?
- I kinda wanna work on it,
'cause I don't wanna
feel like this or yeah,
feel like this or how I've felt
for the majority of my life anymore.
There was nothing that like linked back
to like this is what
caused your depression.
You know, you use these
tools and work it out.
And it's like it's still
a massive mystery to me.
- [Monty] And is that disappointing?
- It's no more disappointing
than every other day,
so yeah.
(soft music)
- How old were you when
you came to (mumbles)?
- I'm just trying to think.
I know the first Christmas
I had a red trike,
so I'd gotta be 3 1/2 or three.
(soft music)
Somehow it looked, it's so
much smaller than I remember.
And you saw the little
window on the ground floor.
- [Yvonne] Oh, yeah.
- That's where I used to
sit with Lynn on the stairs
listening to a (mumbles) in the lounge.
Going into the treatment, I thought, now,
is it gonna be the sort
of conflict I had at work,
or is it gonna be the family?
Strangely, I've not even thought much
about what happened at work.
Well, that was momentous for me then.
It's kind of, it's automatically
just sort of drifted back
to what went on in that house down there.
That's where the damage was done.
Just give me a minute down here.
(soft music)
- This is probably the
third or fourth time
we've been back as a couple
to see where he's lived.
And all he's ever done is
remembered it with fondness.
"This is where I grew
up, and I loved this,
"and I did this, and I did this with Dad."
And today, it's just more painful.
- A change has occurred,
there's no doubt about that.
A change has occurred, but it's not,
(chuckles) it's not the easy change
that I thought it would be.
It's a bit as though I had ingested
a really, really good therapist.
That's what it feels like.
It feels of I've got onboard
now my own therapist.
- [Yvonne] (mumbles)
- Okay.
- Cheers!
- Thank you so much,
and thanks for everything, really.
- It's a pleasure.
- I know it's a work in
progress, but you know,
I think thing's are moving
in the right direction.
I'm not sure if it's correct or not,
but the way I look at it
is that I've been unhappy
for so long that I think that unhappiness
has spilled obviously into
my life and my relationships,
and I think there's a residue
that's gotta be dealt with.
But the other thing was
this awful image that I had
with the smothering,
this awful image that...
- [Ros] That your dad didn't
want you, the rejection?
- [Andy] Yeah, yeah.
What is that?
- [Ros] Let it happen.
- [Andy] Trying to make sure
they can pull out the memory.
I could actually see the pillow,
and then suddenly the
realization was, you know,
that I'm being smothered.
(opera singer vocalizing)
Oh, no, Father, no, no.
- [Ros] Stay here with us, just let it...
- No, no, no, no, no (crying)
no, no, no, no, no.
That feeling was real,
then the realization
that it was Dad doing it was real.
(crying) Really beat up on me that badly?
All I can remember about my dad is good,
and that's why I think
I can't ever imagine him
wanting to dispatch me with a pillow.
'Cause there are lovely
memories of getting up
at sort of 4:30 in the morning
and going on his milk route,
you know, these crystal-clear
images of those times,
and they were really pleasant.
- Your mind will allow you
to remember those things,
those positive memories.
- Yep.
- Anything that is
confusing or conflictual
might be something that
you'd wanna keep away...
- Yeah, yeah.
- From your memories
and your conscious mind.
- Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
- After you, are we all going?
- Often in a psychedelic dose,
the person will experience
the same fragility, vulnerability,
overwhelming horror as
they did as a child,
so I think that's what happened with Andy.
He was stripped of his
defenses as an adult
and taken back to that vulnerable place.
What was real for Andy was his fear,
fear of annihilation and
sense, huge sense of rejection,
and that theme of rejection is something
that has plagued him his whole life.
So that feels like it's
really clinically significant.
- Bye now, bye-bye.
- Bye!
- Bye.
- Bye, Monty.
- I wish that I would be
able to work as his therapist
and it could be a longer
course of treatment
and that we could perhaps
have another dosing
and keep working on a process,
'cause then I really feel
that huge breakthroughs could be made.
I hope that from this
dose, there will also be
a significant improvement.
I think for sort of lifelong change,
I feel that further therapy
and further dosing sessions
would probably be required.
(soft music)
- Finished?
- Yeah.
- Should we head out?
- [Mark] Yeah.
(soft music)
- One of Mark's major problems
is not his depression,
but it's the fact that he
doesn't know what he wants,
and he wants other people
to sort of help him
and tell him sort of what to do.
We've really tried to encourage him to try
and work out a little bit
what he does want from life,
but he, you know, he obviously,
he still reports being quite lost.
And so it's a delicate balance really,
but in the therapy, I
think it will be all about
trying to get him to have a greater sense
of himself and what he wants.
(soft music)
- I think school was tough for everyone.
You know, I used to to in
the library and try and read
about how to act in public, how to,
and it just felt very,
very alien, the whole,
you know, the whole concept
of people having girlfriends,
people having lots of friends.
Everyone was different, but I felt
very removed from everyone.
I went to the doctor's, and he said,
"Go to Amsterdam," and I was like,
"Mate, I'm 14," you know?
This is 1984, you're telling
me to go to Amsterdam.
What you expected me to do there?
'Cause all I knew about Amsterdam
were clogs, Anne Frank,
prostitution, and drugs,
and it's, I didn't think he was telling me
to go to the Anne Frank
museum, and it was,
and I thought, "That's my GP."
And now I've been told by doctors,
"This is what it's gonna be like.
"Nothing's gonna change,
you're gonna be like this."
And then you think, or you start thinking,
"Wow, actually, what's the
fucking point, really?"
You know, thanks for that.
(soft music)
- I grew up was a valley called (mumbles)
I can still see the field and
the hawthorn sort of hedge
where it all took place.
I could take you straight
to the very place.
And the thing was it didn't happen
that far from my home, but if I ever tried
to complain about it to my
mum, she would just go nuts,
and she would give me a hammering.
And then when Dad come home
from work, he would come in.
Even if you were sleeping,
you would get woken up,
and you'd be getting
another hammerin', you know?
That was, I think, being
that I really started having
sort of emotional problems,
I think, as a kid.
- [Robin] 'Cause when these
things are experienced,
they can't be unexperienced, can they?
And the typical response
is to try and forget them.
- Yeah, (mumbles)
- Perhaps the healthiest
way to live with them
is to live with them consciously.
- Yeah, because you can't change the past.
There's no sense in wanting revenge
or no sense in being really
angry at those events
or other people that
done, but just that sense
of that's who made me who I am,
in part of what made
me who I am, you know,
- it doesn't feel like
there has been some kind
of breakthrough.
- Yeah, it does feel like that
I feel enthusiastic to just go home
and start normal things.
You know, It's like a
just a desire to get up
and get going, though,
you know, after going
- John, Maggie and that children
are sharing a single room
in a hotel while their
home is being renovated
after the flood.
- Yeah.
That's fine.
- Thank you.
It's got a motion sensor so
it just keeps flying itself
if you weren't there was
Chewbacca. You're late.
Let me wait.
(soft music)
The main imagery (mumbles)
firstly we come up here they
will not believe us ahead
of us, you know I have
a dog with a dog. Yeah
a long time ago.
Lessons efficient got bad.
And if he was nice, he
was good for laughing
I think it feels good.
Not normal anymore.
Yeah, but weird sounds negative.
You mean that you don't know.
It's weird.
It's just binge having john
here because I've been used to
live on my own for so long.
- Apparently that if you take
the full month more from me
die within six days, no, you don't
- Think that you do need to remember
that are some dangerous
mushrooms are just like it.
So it's not a good idea to agree.
The reason it works is
because it's about you,
but in sort of like
along here in the middle,
and then suddenly with depression that
it sort of becomes really bogged down
or negative things all the time.
And so what that does is
it it kind of shifts all up
and then lets it resettle
in a different way.
But the first it felt quite nice.
The second time when I took it,
it was a much higher dose.
And it was the most horrible thing
that I've ever experienced.
Might an anemia that lasts for
six hours and doesn't stop.
- Yeah, that's okay.
- And that's that's a
danger if you just to say
do you want to take it for fun?
You don't know.
I was lucky that I had Dr. Joe Novotny,
who could make sure nothing bad happened.
- Before the treatment,
yeah, we did have a Dad.
But if we did see him, it
wouldn't be for very long
for like five to 10 minutes
and you'd have to go back into his room
because you'd have a sore head.
Since the treatment,
she's got much happier.
And, but we all have to be honest.
And she's managed to spend
time with her husband
like we've gone to sleep
overs and I've gone sleepovers
and it's been mom and dad.
They've been having movie nights.
They've been sitting on the couch,
they've had a couch eat
falling asleep on the couch,
doing things that they used
to do before they had kids
before dad had depression.
That's new my dad started
and not the grumpy old fart in the corner.
- [Narrator] Six months after the trial,
the results are presented to the media
- Ctrl S control is set up a file control
as every time you change it.
Usually fine. It's the last minute.
This is a celebration as well
as it is taken four years,
yeah, four years here.
Three of those years
were kind of unnecessary.
They're just plowing
through regulatory hurdles,
but we did it.
- And so how important is today then?
- Today's the birth of a new era
in the treatment of depression.
- It's the first depression
trial with a psychedelic drug.
So it is it's landmark stuff.
Nice morning, everyone.
Welcome to the SMC for
some mornings briefing,
and psilocybin an option for
treatment resistant depression,
and to be published in last
psychiatry embargo is 10:30pm.
Tomorrow.
- The average duration of
the illness in this sample
was 18 years so many of
the patients have had
Depression fractionally most
of their adult lives, yet,
eight of the 12 were
essentially depression free,
one week post treatment and
five remain depression free.
Three months post treatment,
you can see some relapse
in some of the patients.
So let's not get carried away.
This isn't a magic cure.
Even so, the effects at this
stage, things look promising.
- How would you envisage this thing goes?
Would it be kind of a one off treatment?
Or would it be repeated?
- I think that's what we need to find out.
The key question is what
to do with the people
who got an initial benefit,
and then it starts to wane.
So we're thinking about trying to set up
what you might call a
more naturalistic study.
So perhaps that those people
could then be redosed every three months.
And just see if that if
the effect came back.
I mean, it might it might
not depressed people
have a view of the world,
which is that the world
is a nasty, hostile place.
And of course, they're
right, because it is,
but after psilocybin,
the progress people tend to
view the world the same way
in 3D which is is better
than it is and that's a great defense.
(soft music)
- [Narrator] What would be the process
for a drug like psilocybin
to move from schedule one to schedule two?
What are the sort of reasons
that it isn't happening?
- Yeah, I would say a major reason is
because of the United Nations
conventions and the scheduled.
Under those conventions,
that country like the UK tends to follow,
and that those conventions very
clearly includes psilocybin
within schedule one.
So to move against the UN conventions,
you really need some strong evidence.
So it's a sort of chicken
and egg situation,
if psilocybin will put
into scheduled to this
would make it much easier for researchers
to get hold of it to get a license.
You know, the whole
thing would be freed up
then have lots of research and
And if it shows that
psilocybin really help people
with depression, you'd get changed
but getting that research to happen,
while is Johnson's shadow,
it's very difficult.
(soft music)
- Do you have any regrets
about during the trial?
- I suppose really only in
the audit revealed to me,
I think with a high dose.
The experiences were were
profound and pretty dark.
It introduced me to the flag, but
it's something really
nasty could have happened.
Did my childhood and
you can't kind of think that
but it kind of leaves you
with the feeling of well,
was that a case did it, you
know, was I was I smothered
as an infant, there's two sides
of spades that is that well,
if I'd not learn that, then
maybe the recovery process
wouldn't be working hasn't worked.
Or does nothing It actually
make the whole situation worse.
But yeah, I do it again.
You know, it's, it introduces you to
a possible solution for depression.
It was a little bit empowering.
It made me well perhaps I'm
not just like a passenger
on this that he you know, merry go round.
It might be that I can
actually do something about it
could be a whole new way of
accessing the the subconscious,
the psyche, whatever, whatever it is.
John is pretty much like it
was before the trial is crap.
Put it bluntly hoped
the results on the trial
would last forever.
Because it was, it was so
nice because at the back
and to a certain extent
are my husband back
and it's gone again.
It's just, it's all gone.
That's my favorite one
ever just all together.
It was really nice.
It was a fifth of March.
And we've not been out
for a walk together since
which is kind of sad.
If you could write your
own and to be honest,
I know Robin said that the new way
He's went back as bad
as they were before but
I don't think it would take much longer
before I was back here it was
the darkness gradually came back.
The self loathing comes back,
the desire to be cut off
from the world comes back.
Then what happens is he gets
compounded you feel guilty
that you are like that.
Then you feel guilty that your family
have to suffer through that
measure he doesn't like to
have enjoyable surroundings.
Somebody in a mentally I say
living in a tenement flat
may think Mrs. Potter days I'll do that.
The only thing I want is as a room
where no windows and a door.
You know what, we're
just going to shut out
and spend the rest your life there.
You're a good boy.
(orchestra music)
So, (mumbles) 7.5.
That's for take a night sleeping.
Suppose Pan 10s.
These are for sleeping.
When I don't take us up,
learn take one of those.
Vice versa.
This is Friday four hundreds.
We'll take two of those at night.
That's lithium. This is a
mood stabilizer apparently.
So maybe people with bipolar disorder,
take that, loperamide help stop diarrhea.
So I take about eight of those a day.
- Did you have that because
of the drugs you're taking?
- Yeah, possibly duloxetine 60 mils,
this is an antidepressant
and (mumbles) 15 by
take two of these, I take 30 you know,
I want to get better,
I want to feel better I
want to give to society,
I want to be part of society.
You know, understand I've got a problem,
and I've had it for a long
time and it's just like,
you live you live daily, and
yeah, try and hide yourself
away as much as possible.
- [Narrator] Two years after the trial,
Ros has arranged for additional
reintegration therapy
for Andy to make sense
of some of the visions
he had during his high dose
was just locked into this farm
- Trying to expose me
when I was an infant.
And yeah, great.
That's why I've been depressed in my life.
So it was kind of convenient for me
to be able to blame my depression on that.
But in reality, I think
that was quite simplistic,
and I think you helped me,
but you helped me almost
turn that on its head.
You've introduced a rationale
that I can view the whole experience
when you pair of eyes and you know,
the chances of dad actually
doing that pretty remote.
It doesn't stack out with anything
because it would have been something
that mom would have written in a memoirs
which is what I've got,
you know, she would,
she would definitely
written something there
that do you realize your dad did this?
It's really, really good
because I'm not thinking
Was he dead?
Wasn't it and you know if it was to him,
or did he do it because I thought
he loved me kind of thing?
That's that thought bloopers is gone.
I can't thank you enough
for what you've done.
It has been pretty much life changing.
So, you know, really, really?
- Thank you very much. Okay.
- How was that?
- It was good. Yeah, I think
it was a good summary of what
Andrew has been going through,
but also a good example
of how this integration process works.
- In terms of the smothering,
do you think that he would
experience it all differently?
- Now, I think that the
one of the key aspects
of the integration process with Andrew was
to take some of the pressure out of having
to find the definite enter
of was it through memory or
Is it something that I
in my mind just made that
in the event itself,
what he saw is not that his
father was smothering him
is that actually became a
symbolical representation
of his whole childhood in which it looked
like his mother was trying
to present his father
as a bad figure.
- There were three parts
to Andy's high day session.
The first was about feeling unwanted
by his father as a baby.
The second was about feeling criticized
and controlled by his mother as a child.
And the third was more
about healthy adult position
of feeling, compassion
and love and acceptance
and understanding.
After the high day session,
Andy went back to that early
place of wounding feeling
unwanted by his father.
He then with marks helping integration
has been able to progress forward
and stop focusing more on his
feelings around his mother
in the criticism and
control of his childhood.
We hope with a bit of time and will work,
you'll be able to progress forward
to that third stage he did experience
which was more about the
acceptance and love for himself
and for his parents.
The wonderful thing about
this treatment is that
it's able to take you on this journey
in the space of a day actually
with the integration afterwards
whereas antidepressants
could never do that.
Antidepressants don't give you any insight
as to why you're depressed.
And once you knew why you're depressed,
you know what it is inside,
then there's a possibility
of processing it
and actually potentially getting better.
- Psychedelic therapy is
not pharmacological therapy
is not that we're going
to have an experience
and then that aggression
is going to be gone.
The task of breaching what we learned
in the psychedelic experience into changes
that actually have an
influence in our physical
and daily life.
That is the part that it's
for me extremely important
and how to do that.
It's something that we
still don't really know.
And I think that is where the challenge
for the next two years come.
- Sort of out of it.
How do you feel glad it's
done slightly exhausted,
pleased it went so well.
On the other hand, a little
frustrated that the fact
that we can't deliver this treatment,
you know when people need it
and just being here in central London
and being so busy,
they say one in 10 people are
suffering from depression.
That's likely a few people
around us right now.
It's a massive problem.
- So what are the results?
- Andy, Mark and john
Andy and john showed quite
a good initial response, especially john,
but then they did back So on average,
they were the best responders.
But if you take the whole
group at three weeks,
roughly half were in remission,
meaning essentially their depression free
After on average, about
18 years of depression,
six months six, still depression free.
So it's quite promising really.
And now they're only depression free sort
of two years later.
Yeah, yeah, there are. Yeah.
So people's lives have
just been transformed.
It suggests the treatment
seems to work at least
as well as conventional treatments.
What we want to do next is compare it
against conventional treatments.
We need bigger trials, more
rigorously designed trials,
double blind randomized control trials.
Unfortunately, that's happening now.
So a few teams around the world
are running these studies,
major investments coming
in as a multi site trial
across Europe, and the US and Canada.
15 different countries.
So for things to be expanding to the scale
that they are right
now is really exciting.
- It's definitely one.
Speaking to guys on the trial afterwards,
I said, Yeah, probably if
you'd had a stronger dose
or a third dose, you would
have had, a breakthrough.
But I don't know if I can
risk going picking a load
of these and sitting in my bedroom
tripping my nuts off and
going, I've got no support.
I don't you know, I
don't know what to do in.
I did feel as though I failed.
I failed the test. Did it not work at all?
I mean, obviously,
I experienced a major
amount of weirdness but
it opened up a lot of questions about my
like my illness, but it never,
never really kind of pointed
me in the right direction
have any answers?
And maybe there aren't any answers.
And that's just something I got deal with.
- Has that been in the
last couple of months?
- Well, in the past couple
of months has not been
as good as it was before,
but is still the same person as he was
four or five years before.
And we just saw that same
person again, a few months back.
So it was nice that they would do again,
it would be nice to have (mumbles)
- Do you believe in psilocybin?
- Oh yeah, because
I've seen what was done and
it will make a miracle really
we never thought it would be like again
and then he took the
trial and it was great.
Yeah, was was really good.
- A few months after the
trial that was really good
and it was really good to see him happy
and the rest of us happy.
I think it made him feel happy
that everyone else was happy as well.
But I don't think it was a bad thing
that we saw it like it was nice to see it.
But and their memories
that we're all going
to keep forever asleep.
Better seeing those memories
and not having them.
- [Narrator] Every week
thousands of people
who could benefit
from interventions with
these drugs are denied access
and that means they will
continue with their depressions
and their addictions.
That is outrageous it,
there is no need to limit
access of these drugs
for medical research.
But the current regulations
make it almost impossible
for anyone to use them.
In some respects is worse than before.
And we'll some videos that
will help this frustration that
I can't really take
full advantage of that,
who's benefited from that level of benefit
because I'm (mumbles),
my children won't benefit
because I'm not walking
and showing them what proper
father a proper person
should be doing with a
life to be a productive
part of society.
Other people who need help to
and benefit because
money's been spent on me
when I can be back a work.
- You want me to do the apology
at the top the bit of golden rules.
(soft music)
Small Corrections By DvX3M
- In 2012, a team of British
researchers asked the question,
what would happen if we treated
20 people suffering from
severe depression with magic mushrooms?
It took them three years to
get permission to find out.
I've tried I think maybe
six or eight different
antidepressants and have never worked.
It I can't be for patients
has been four years ago,
I realized that I couldn't go in on us.
You know, she didn't say anything.
Find a way to change
About 50% of people don't
respond to antidepressants
and one in six of them
go on to kill themselves.
So we really should be exploring
every other treatment available.
With me, what I've always
been desperate to do is to try
and find a physical reason
for feeling this way.
Although I didn't want to take my life,
I didn't want to wake up.
I want to go to sleep, just
not have to face severe.
Depression is so prevalent,
everyone's exposed to it.
We're looking at giving
psilocybin to patients
with quite severe treatment
resistant major depression.
- I don't think it's
normal to feel the way
I do the anxiety,
the fear the terror panic. If this
is living then it sucks. It really does.
- [Announcer] LSD was isolated
by stolen Hoffman in a Sandoz
pharmaceutical company
of Basel, Switzerland.
The door swung wide open for research
into the nature of this
piece of reading process,
and in a larger sense into
the biochemistry of psychosis.
Between 1950 and 1965 40,000
patients were prescribed
a psychedelic drug for
neuroses, schizophrenia
and psychopathy.
These trials resulted in
over 1000 scientific papers.
If you have enough
Is that a beautiful experience?
I would say
- [Narrator] when
psychedelics became available
to the wider public
in the 1960s, dramatic changes
in attitudes and behavior.
- This is one area where
we cannot have budget cuts,
because we must wage what
I have called Total War
against public enemy number
one in the United States,
the problem of dangerous drugs
in 1971, under pressure
from President Nixon,
the UN declared that all psychedelic drugs
should be classified as schedule one.
- One of the difficulties in
terms of schedule one drugs,
including psilocybin, is that
because they're in schedule one,
this has discouraged any research
into the middle medical value of that drug
and there's been virtually
nothing in the world Research
ever since 1960s.
- [Narrator] With backing from
the Medical Research Council,
the team at Imperial College
London are conducting
the first ever clinical
trial of psilocybin,
the active ingredient of magic mushrooms.
- This isn't a job to rush if you think
that somebody could have one of
the most profound experiences
of their whole lives
and they're ready for the music here.
- That was taken was a winter of 2010
when it was really cold
and we had a lot of snow
so happy time.
I was Yeah, yeah, it was
really nice. Yeah. I mean today
going down to Imperial,
it's actually Hammersmith hospital. And
tomorrow is the first dosing day.
Can you put into words
how important this is?
But sir
That's a tough one
(soft music)
well we woke up Mikey got a call was it
seems there was a fight so thank you
for rolling resolving
that put my readers on.
And because we're gonna sleep upstairs
so we thought the price if
we wait into the kitchen for some reason
during the session there
was a tickle in the kitchen.
We just thought oh well
it's just not much.
We'll be we'll be fine.
And the next thing we
knew that when we come
back a few hours leading up
to the step in there, how does
that affect you in the knowledge
of the trial coming up,
aim right at that point I thought
I'm not going to do I can't do it.
But for me, it's the last chance.
I think this is that, you know,
I don't think there's any all medicines
that title these ones
that's been made in a lab
and none of what, you know
the very short term impacts
and then nothing.
(soft music)
Over the past 30 years,
I've had maybe 30 different
types of medication,
antidepressants, some of them
have worked for a short time
some work for a bit longer
but they all kind of tail off
was I had a CT at 23
sessions of which I've been
told worked for a period
But then the effects you know, wore off.
So I do feel like this trial
is another kind of last chance
to make any kind of change for
me, but I felt that before.
Robin Carhartt Harris is the trial lead
and head of psychedelic
research at Imperial College.
I have suffered from clinical depression.
You know, I've been
through some dark times.
So I think that kind of
thing helps you have sympathy
for people who suffer from
New disorders in general.
Psychedelics are, for
me easily the best tool
that exists to study both
the mind and the brain.
I think it has the potential
to revolutionize depression
treatment, if not psychiatry,
Professor David Nutt, head
of neuro psychopharmacology
will oversee the trial.
This part of the brain
is called the cortex.
And in the cortex, you do your
hearing and your seeing etc.
But also in this part of the cortex,
particularly this bit
here goes from the front
to the back here.
There's the sense of self.
It integrates what you can see and hear
and with what you can think and feel.
And serotonin is an important
chemical in the brain.
It's a fundamental neurotransmitter
for regulating brain function,
particularly in the emotional sphere.
And what psilocybin and
other plant products do is
to stimulate those receptors
and by stimulating them we can
mimic serotonin in the brain,
and sometimes perhaps,
do more than serotonin is doing
because in some people say returning
may not be working adequately.
As it will launch
into more symbolic
one life into another.
Sometimes you think they be
strong because you don't want
to come across as an emotional mess.
I woke in the early
hours and I was weeping
and I don't know where it came from.
It's quite difficult.
It's it's quite tough
their two days is the first time Simply
to test the volunteers
tolerance to the drug.
And the treatment days
will follow a week later.
Each trip lasts about six hours.
And a psychologist and
psychiatrist always in the room.
The experience of taking
the capsules is going
to be very significant for him.
He's never experienced
anything like this at all
in his life.
And he's a scientist.
He's someone that really enjoys
kind of the predictability
of testing hypotheses and problems
that can be solved without actually
so this is a huge departure from that.
I can remember being in the doctor's
and feeling absolutely
ashamed of where i was.
You know, I worked as a
scientist and as a team leader,
and out of the blue,
I was told that I had to work
in a procurement department
and this was pretty much
my vision of how Really,
there was just this a base
that was in front of me.
And I went to see the
occupational health nurse.
Before I knew it was in floods of tears
and just completely burned down.
And she said to me, there's
something seriously wrong me.
And yeah, we're, what, 13
years down the road now.
(laughs)
Real laughs a minute.
I have been thinking about it
quite a lot this afternoon.
I'm worried that he's so different,
that I take a long time to catch up,
and he loses patience with me.
So yeah, I'm a bit concerned.
I'm going to get left behind. Oh oh
Very powerful, very powerful going.
And that was that was
two capsules next week.
So five capsules
What are your thoughts
about next Wednesday?
They're probably more anxious,
actually, if I'm honest,
because of what came up
today. and that I know
that could get amplified next Wednesday.
So I think there's a battle
there that's not done yet.
- He was taken back to a
very, very difficult memory
which he didn't think was a memory.
It was kind of a new experience
that he was going through
of having his mother on the one side
and his father on the other
having to choose between them.
And he went to be with the
very calm, benevolent energy
of his dad, and he felt the
presence of this dad there.
He said he actually really
kind of met his dad again
and felt his dad wrapped around him.
He could feel the knit of the
cardigan his dad used to wear.
So that was a really difficult
but also very positive
powerful experiences.
(calm music)
- [Monty] It's a huge
responsibility for you, this.
Do you get sort of scared or nervous?
- I do, I think if you're
giving a incredibly powerful
psychoactive drug to individuals
who are especially vulnerable,
you have to think about negative
psychological responses.
You have to think about anxiety.
You have to think about
fear and potential panic.
(soft music)
- [Ros] Let's just carry
on breathing naturally.
And then I'd like you to imagine
that you're lying down
in a beautiful woodland.
You're in a clearing,
and the ground is covered with
green most, soft and springy.
- I think depression's
about like an addict.
You learn to hide it from people.
(mumbles) people in arms.
I don't want no sympathy.
I don't even want a lot of kindness.
And I would like to go into the bedroom
and close the curtains, put
the lights off, and just stare.
- It's a big day, probably as
big a day as our wedding day
maybe 'cause this could be the start
of a new life, fingers crossed.
(Maggie laughing)
- In mental health, you just have to go
into an inpatient ward
anywhere and realize
that we need something new.
So John and the other
patients in the trial
have got what's called
treatment-resistant depression,
which means they've tried
three different types
of treatment and nothing's worked.
I think the name
treatment-resistant depression
is really a bad name 'cause you can't say
that John's depression
is resitant to treatment.
It's just that we haven't
found the right treatments yet.
- [Monty] How are you feeling today?
- All right, certainly more
positive than I was before,
I am,
but I definitely felt
that there was something
I couldn't achieve on the first dose.
It felt like I could
identify there was a problem,
but I couldn't quite grasp
it or tackle it, you know?
It's not like I'm feeling euphoria or high
or happiness or, I just
don't feel rubbish, you know?
And so if this is all it
does, then that's fine.
But hopefully it'll do more.
(soft music)
(bell ringing)
- I'd just really like to
get to the bottom of it
or have somebody help me
get to the bottom of it.
- Difficult to know what to expect.
I sort of feel like I
don't know him well enough
as perhaps we should at this stage,
so that doesn't feel ideal.
It's the low dose today.
Essentially, I know
he'll be fine physically,
so let's just go into it
with the right attitude,
really, and support him.
- [James] Do you feel ready
to take the capsules now?
- Yeah, I'm fine to take that.
- Here's a glass of
water for you, all right?
- Mark hasn't really revealed
to us why he's depressed.
I don't think he knows, and now the taking
of this drug is about trying to understand
where this is coming
from, what this block is.
(soft music)
- I can't pinpoint a date or an event
that could possibly be the cause of it.
Over all this time, I think it
must be something biological.
I don't expect a magic wand,
to go, "Wow, you feel
all the sudden great,
"and you're you for doing anything!"
Kind of what I do expect
is just not to feel
so cripplingly negative about everything
that it infringes upon my daily life.
(soft music)
- Are you hopeful?
I am hopeful for Mark
because if I wasn't hopeful,
that would be a problem in itself.
I firmly believe that this drug
is a route out of what can
other be an insoluble problem.
- The nature of the drug
effects are that they induce
a kind of malleability or plasticity,
so like they free things
up so that they can change.
And I think what can be
characteristic of depression
is that there are things
that aren't conscious
and you don't realize the
contribution to your state.
- Yeah, that all makes, it makes sense.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Well, I hope you have a nice...
- Yeah.
- And easy evening.
If ever you're worried about anything
or you just wanna ask anything,
you can give me a call.
- Okay.
(soft music)
- There are 16 ways in which drugs
can do harm to you or to society.
There are nine ways
they can harm the user,
and those are the blues bars,
and the size of the red bar,
the harm of the drug to society.
So alcohol is the most harmful
drug in Europe and the UK,
and the reason for that is
the size of that red bar.
It's not the most
damaging drug to the user.
Being on to the right,
then you have heroin
and crack and methamphetamine.
They have bigger blue bars.
And the drugs that the
media get hysterical about,
they're on the right-hand.
They're ecstasy, LSD, magic mushrooms.
They have virtually no harm to society
and considerably less harm
to the user than alcohol.
Making these drugs illegal
stops people researching them,
even though the UN Convention said,
"Oh, no, we're perfectly happy for you
"to carry on researching them.
"You just have to comply
with the regulations."
No one has managed to get
through those regulations
to do clinical trial of LSD in 50 years.
- And what do you think
does have to happen
in order for decriminalization
to happen in the UK?
Like, is it with a politician,
or is it with the research?
Is it with the people, what...
- What has to happen is we've gotta have
completely public debate,
and you've gotta hold MPs
up to account when they are
either not discussing this
or talking rubbish about it.
And the media, too, you know?
When are people lying
about the harms of drugs,
you've gotta challenge them all the time.
(soft music)
- [Narrator] Baroness Molly
Meacher has spent 10 years
as a crossbencher in the House of Lords
campaigning for the
liberalization of drug laws.
- UK governments tend
to be very conservative
on drug policy, much more conservative
than many Western European countries
and of course the vast
majority of U.S. states.
And that's something to do
with our media, I think.
They've been very hostile
to reform in this area,
which is probably something to do
with the conservatism
of the British people.
- [Monty] So where are we off to now?
- We're gonna go and pick up the capsules.
It's the second dose now, so this is where
things get even more interesting.
It's gonna be quite a
high dose, 25 milligrams.
- [Monty] And why are they down here?
- Oh, it's in, hi, Matt, how's it going?
- All right, let's get the key out.
- Sure!
So the drug has to be stored securely.
In order to do research
with Schedule I drugs,
we a Home Office license, so
it's stored in this secure area
in a locked safe that's
actually bolted to the wall.
(soft music)
- [Monty] What exactly is this?
- This is psilocybin, so this
is the psychoactive ingredient
in so-called magic mushrooms.
- [Monty] How does that compare
to the sort of recreational dose?
- It's quite a high dose, actually,
2 1/2 grams of mushroom material
or you know, hundreds, a couple of hundred
little liberty cap magic mushrooms.
So anyone doing that,
you'd consider really
taking quite a high dose, so yeah,
there's no messing about.
(soft music)
(Andy exhales loudly)
- So I'm ready for the exam.
You can't go on living like you have done
for the last 20 years because
it doesn't get better.
It does get worse.
Yeah, when I think back to
late November last year,
that was about as bad as it had got.
And that was, that scared me.
But we're beyond that.
I'm extraordinarily lucky to be here.
(soft music)
(Andy crying)
- Please go away, please go away!
Oh, please go away, oh god, no!
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!
No, no, no, no, no!
- Hey, Andy.
- No, no!
- Andy, it's okay.
With Andy, if you asked him what had been
making him struggle or depressed,
he would say experiences with his work
and not feeling good enough there,
but that didn't even come
into the sessions at all,
and it was more about his
early childhood experiences
of suffering in pain.
- I need more spaghetti.
- Does it want to come inside?
- I need more spaghetti.
- Okay, what about letting it in?
We're here with you, Andy, now.
- No, no, no, no, no, no.
No, no.
- Okay.
These kind of early childhood experiences
will often be repressed.
People can go through their whole lives
without ever really facing those demons,
but it's not as if the
demons they've pushed down
don't cause any suffering
because they're there.
- This is so (mumbles)
- Just let it be here and see
what it's here to show you.
- Oh, god.
- And know that you're safe.
- I'm afraid it won't go away,
won't go away, won't go away.
- Just a small improvement
would be lovely,
just for him to feel
differently about things
and see the world through
a different pair of eyes.
(soft music)
- [Andy] Hello!
- Andy!
- How are you doing?
(Andy laughs)
- How was it?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Oh!
- Extraordinary, extraordinary.
- Is that different from last time?
- Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah.
You knew that this was the big ride.
This is the one that changed things.
And of course, it's left lots
and lots of questions, really,
but those I think the answers to those
will come out in good time.
- Yeah.
- Dad was there.
- Yes.
- Dad was there.
- Good.
- Yeah.
- [Yvonne] Oh, that's lovely.
- Yeah, couple a times, actually.
Couple a times he was there.
- Yes.
- Where it was headed was dangerous to me.
It was a dangerous path, but no, no.
It's all, we're okay now, we're okay.
- [Yvonne] You're right.
- All is resolved.
- [Yvonne] Bye-bye.
- See you tomorrow.
Cheerio.
- Thank you, Monty.♪♪
Have a nice evening.
- I could feel that he
was suffering so much,
but I could also feel that
it was really important
for him to be suffering,
so I was kind of pleased
in a weird way that he was
(chuckles) going through it,
thinking, "Yes, now we're
getting to the stuff," you know?
"This is what's been causing
you so much suffering,
"so we need to get it out."
And he was really in a battle
with a large, dark, evil force
that he associated with his mum.
(opera singer vocalizing)
- [Andy] Get away.
Get away.
You're not coming in.
- There was so much
darkness and so much pain.
There were moments of thinking,
"Where is this gonna go?
"How's it gonna be by the end of the day?"
You know, what if this
doesn't get resolved?
There was a sense from the last session
of his dad being kind of wonderful,
and his mum being kind
of terrible and evil.
- (laughing) We're all done and dead.
I'm telling you, we're
all dead, we're all dead.
- What sort of evolved out of today
is that it really doesn't matter.
If there was one person doing right,
the other one doing wrong,
what actually matters
at the end is resolution and love
because that is the big thing
that came out for me today
is that the more you hate something,
the more you feed it with that hate,
the bigger it gets, and
that's what's been going on.
I've been feeding this thing,
it's been consuming me,
and now I've got to the realization
that if I stop feeding it with hate,
it evaporates, it goes away.
Shh, it's, oh, yes, yes, yes.
- [Ros] Are you out?
- Ah!
And as soon as that realization occurred,
because I had the
representation of my father
and Vonnie and the boys on my chest,
but I didn't have a representation of Mom.
So I took a picture and
brought here in to that union,
really, at the end, and
we were kinda one again,
but one helluva a battle.
I wouldn't wanna do it again.
I've been the happiest ever in my life,
and I've been the most
terrified in my life
in the same day, probably in
the space of half an hour.
- [Monty] So good.
- Mm, really good.
Exhausting, but really, really, very good.
And I mean, well, the proof
is in the pudding, you know?
Today was good, it was intense.
It was good, it was tough,
all the things I hope for,
but we will see how Andy's
feeling tomorrow, next week.
And the really key thing
is in a week, a month,
few months, that's
what's really important.
(soft music)
- Hi, good to see you, how you doing?
- All right, yeah, yourself?
- Yeah, we're all right, yeah.
- Yeah?
- Yeah.
My mind's been racing about, you know,
what could be or how could be.
- [Robin] And you have (mumbles)
- Oh yeah, yeah, but more
about what it could be
that's coming (mumbles).
- I think we should get into the room
well ahead of time and settle
down and talk to the others.
(soft music)
- Okay.
- If you remember last time.
- Okay.
- Last week we had somebody in the study
who had a particularly strong
response to psilocybin,
probably the strongest
psychedelic experience
I've ever sat with, and
that's kind of raised,
raised my kind of alertness,
really, about today.
It's just a reminder, really,
never to underestimate
the power, really, of a psychedelic drug
and the alterations in
consciousness that they can induce.
- [James] Tell us what's on your mind?
- I don't know why, it
just feels like it stopped.
It feels like it, I just wanna
go home, that's what I want.
- [James] Just wanna go home.
- Yeah.
- How come?
- I don't know, it just,
that's just, I mean.
Did you really get...
- Today John nearly left, which
was quite a dilemma for us
because on the one, we
want to keep him here
and keep him safe, but
we also didn't wanna
keep him here against his will.
And so it was difficult.
- [James] It's probably a bit
early for you to go as yet.
I mean, can you just hold
off a little bit longer?
- I don't know, just wanna go home today.
- [James] Yeah, is there anything at all?
- There was just, I think,
well, when I close my eyes and try and,
I try and sleep, I just will feel like
when a bad dream in to the next.
That what it feels like.
- It wasn't really what I
would've planned or expected.
I didn't even realize
that's what John needed,
but looking back, I see
it was what he needed.
It was like the first dose
was like lulling him into it.
It gave him a sense of
it's okay, I can do this.
And then the second dose, it's like,
right, now the real work begins.
- Okay, I probably should've left.
- And the real work isn't experiencing
some lovely feeling of
love from the world.
The work is going on a
journey within yourself,
finding that nugget of pain,
and integrating it into your life.
- I'm really hoping and
praying that it has worked.
Up until now, with John being ill,
I've been mum and dad to the kids.
And now, it might be that I can share
the load again and it won't just be me.
It's be me and John working as a team
like we used to do all those years ago.
- Your wife's over here.
- Hello!
How're you feeling?
(mumbles) 2 1/2.
- Really? (laughs)
- Yeah. (laughs)
Oh, I nearly left.
- [Maggie] Why?
- It was just, I got upset, horrible.
And then they, some very kind people
convinced me to stay in the room. (laughs)
- [Maggie] Did they tie you down?
- [John-] No, no, they...
- Really, really.
- It was physical.
- Actually...
- No physical restraint.
- I think a lot's been
sort of experienced today.
- [Maggie] Okay.
- And been, yeah, just a
little rockier than last time?
- [John] Oh, yeah, yeah.
- At one point, but I think
maybe because of that,
maybe there's more benefits
being had from this experience...
- Yeah.
- Than last week.
- Yeah, it was bad in
terms of what I experienced
but necessary for actually...
- [Maggie] Does that mean you can
get rid of the beard, John?
- No, yeah...
- Oh!
- A miner poked me and said,
"Grow it till it's down to your knees!"
- Oh!
(Robin and John laughing)
- At first, I really didn't
think it was working.
It wasn't until the very
end when I could set
and then reflect on it that I
could see what had happened.
All these things that happened
to me when I was a kid,
it made me face very single one of 'em,
and nobody wants to do that.
But yeah, so it was an
extremely horrible afternoon,
the worst experience in my life.
Sometimes I could hear bugs,
as if a bug was crawling
through the ground.
The images that I saw was of this massive
sort of black-and-red iron thing
with huge spikes pointing into it.
But the experience that it relates to was
when some (mumbles) took my T-shirt off
and threw me in this
massive patch of nettles,
and I was beat with a hawthorn branches,
and the bugs that I heard were the bugs
that I heard when I was on
the ground afterwards crying.
The sharp spikes on the
big black-and-red thing
were the thorns on the branch.
It was almost like absolutely everything
was trying its hardest to
see this is the problem.
You know, it makes me feel that depression
is a way we cope, as a kid we build up
psychological protections
for ourself (mumbles)
but at some point in your adult life,
we have to come terms with
that and deal with it,
and there is no natural part of life
that we have in modern society
that allows that to happen.
Counseling doesn't do it,
antidepressants won't do it.
But this thing does do that.
It takes you straight there,
exactly what Robin promised.
It will take you to that place.
Whatever the problem is, it
will take you straight to that,
and you have to decide there and then
whether you're going
to be a victim of that
for the rest of your life or not.
- John?
- What?
- Hi, John.
How you doing?
- Doing much better.
- Great, that's good to know.
- Good.
- What I was just thinking
was it wasn't some
external spiritual force,
or it wasn't someone's
counseling technique.
(soft music)
It's actually oneself that
does the healing in the end.
- You look at these images,
you can see the cortex.
That the outer part of the brain here.
And this is a kind of spine to the cortex,
and this seem to be particularly
implicated in depression.
Now, what psilocybin does is to introduce
a degree of chaos, if you want,
almost like a kind of scrambling effect
as a kind of resetting of the brain,
and it sort of settles in
a healthy mode of function.
- [John] Oh, that's the
reason for the scans,
for the definite...
- [Robin] That's what we're
doing now, really, yeah.
- It's really interesting.
- Yeah.
(both laugh)
(soft music)
- [Monty] Tell us whether
you'd have been able
to walk around London a month ago.
- No, I wouldn't have done that.
Coming in here, a place in London,
the corner of Oxford
Street and Regent Street
where it's so mobbed, I just
wouldn't have done that.
I'm enjoying that, you know?
It's nice, you're not sitting
thinking about yourself
or thinking about anything depressing
or bad or dark or deep.
It feels good, it feels like
there's a lightness, you know?
That is like a burden that's been lifted.
That's what it feels like.
It's like someone's just come
along, and they've taken away
everything that was weighing you down.
- Today, I just really wanna get it
over and done with, basically.
I don't really have any
hopes or predictions
or ideas about what
might happen or really...
Let's just get on with it, really, yeah.
(light orchestra music)
- I feel really tired, hungover.
Massively abnormal
feelings forming that I've,
not sure if I've ever
experienced in my adult life.
- [Monty] Do you feel like
it's something that's,
you'd want to work on?
- I kinda wanna work on it,
'cause I don't wanna
feel like this or yeah,
feel like this or how I've felt
for the majority of my life anymore.
There was nothing that like linked back
to like this is what
caused your depression.
You know, you use these
tools and work it out.
And it's like it's still
a massive mystery to me.
- [Monty] And is that disappointing?
- It's no more disappointing
than every other day,
so yeah.
(soft music)
- How old were you when
you came to (mumbles)?
- I'm just trying to think.
I know the first Christmas
I had a red trike,
so I'd gotta be 3 1/2 or three.
(soft music)
Somehow it looked, it's so
much smaller than I remember.
And you saw the little
window on the ground floor.
- [Yvonne] Oh, yeah.
- That's where I used to
sit with Lynn on the stairs
listening to a (mumbles) in the lounge.
Going into the treatment, I thought, now,
is it gonna be the sort
of conflict I had at work,
or is it gonna be the family?
Strangely, I've not even thought much
about what happened at work.
Well, that was momentous for me then.
It's kind of, it's automatically
just sort of drifted back
to what went on in that house down there.
That's where the damage was done.
Just give me a minute down here.
(soft music)
- This is probably the
third or fourth time
we've been back as a couple
to see where he's lived.
And all he's ever done is
remembered it with fondness.
"This is where I grew
up, and I loved this,
"and I did this, and I did this with Dad."
And today, it's just more painful.
- A change has occurred,
there's no doubt about that.
A change has occurred, but it's not,
(chuckles) it's not the easy change
that I thought it would be.
It's a bit as though I had ingested
a really, really good therapist.
That's what it feels like.
It feels of I've got onboard
now my own therapist.
- [Yvonne] (mumbles)
- Okay.
- Cheers!
- Thank you so much,
and thanks for everything, really.
- It's a pleasure.
- I know it's a work in
progress, but you know,
I think thing's are moving
in the right direction.
I'm not sure if it's correct or not,
but the way I look at it
is that I've been unhappy
for so long that I think that unhappiness
has spilled obviously into
my life and my relationships,
and I think there's a residue
that's gotta be dealt with.
But the other thing was
this awful image that I had
with the smothering,
this awful image that...
- [Ros] That your dad didn't
want you, the rejection?
- [Andy] Yeah, yeah.
What is that?
- [Ros] Let it happen.
- [Andy] Trying to make sure
they can pull out the memory.
I could actually see the pillow,
and then suddenly the
realization was, you know,
that I'm being smothered.
(opera singer vocalizing)
Oh, no, Father, no, no.
- [Ros] Stay here with us, just let it...
- No, no, no, no, no (crying)
no, no, no, no, no.
That feeling was real,
then the realization
that it was Dad doing it was real.
(crying) Really beat up on me that badly?
All I can remember about my dad is good,
and that's why I think
I can't ever imagine him
wanting to dispatch me with a pillow.
'Cause there are lovely
memories of getting up
at sort of 4:30 in the morning
and going on his milk route,
you know, these crystal-clear
images of those times,
and they were really pleasant.
- Your mind will allow you
to remember those things,
those positive memories.
- Yep.
- Anything that is
confusing or conflictual
might be something that
you'd wanna keep away...
- Yeah, yeah.
- From your memories
and your conscious mind.
- Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
- After you, are we all going?
- Often in a psychedelic dose,
the person will experience
the same fragility, vulnerability,
overwhelming horror as
they did as a child,
so I think that's what happened with Andy.
He was stripped of his
defenses as an adult
and taken back to that vulnerable place.
What was real for Andy was his fear,
fear of annihilation and
sense, huge sense of rejection,
and that theme of rejection is something
that has plagued him his whole life.
So that feels like it's
really clinically significant.
- Bye now, bye-bye.
- Bye!
- Bye.
- Bye, Monty.
- I wish that I would be
able to work as his therapist
and it could be a longer
course of treatment
and that we could perhaps
have another dosing
and keep working on a process,
'cause then I really feel
that huge breakthroughs could be made.
I hope that from this
dose, there will also be
a significant improvement.
I think for sort of lifelong change,
I feel that further therapy
and further dosing sessions
would probably be required.
(soft music)
- Finished?
- Yeah.
- Should we head out?
- [Mark] Yeah.
(soft music)
- One of Mark's major problems
is not his depression,
but it's the fact that he
doesn't know what he wants,
and he wants other people
to sort of help him
and tell him sort of what to do.
We've really tried to encourage him to try
and work out a little bit
what he does want from life,
but he, you know, he obviously,
he still reports being quite lost.
And so it's a delicate balance really,
but in the therapy, I
think it will be all about
trying to get him to have a greater sense
of himself and what he wants.
(soft music)
- I think school was tough for everyone.
You know, I used to to in
the library and try and read
about how to act in public, how to,
and it just felt very,
very alien, the whole,
you know, the whole concept
of people having girlfriends,
people having lots of friends.
Everyone was different, but I felt
very removed from everyone.
I went to the doctor's, and he said,
"Go to Amsterdam," and I was like,
"Mate, I'm 14," you know?
This is 1984, you're telling
me to go to Amsterdam.
What you expected me to do there?
'Cause all I knew about Amsterdam
were clogs, Anne Frank,
prostitution, and drugs,
and it's, I didn't think he was telling me
to go to the Anne Frank
museum, and it was,
and I thought, "That's my GP."
And now I've been told by doctors,
"This is what it's gonna be like.
"Nothing's gonna change,
you're gonna be like this."
And then you think, or you start thinking,
"Wow, actually, what's the
fucking point, really?"
You know, thanks for that.
(soft music)
- I grew up was a valley called (mumbles)
I can still see the field and
the hawthorn sort of hedge
where it all took place.
I could take you straight
to the very place.
And the thing was it didn't happen
that far from my home, but if I ever tried
to complain about it to my
mum, she would just go nuts,
and she would give me a hammering.
And then when Dad come home
from work, he would come in.
Even if you were sleeping,
you would get woken up,
and you'd be getting
another hammerin', you know?
That was, I think, being
that I really started having
sort of emotional problems,
I think, as a kid.
- [Robin] 'Cause when these
things are experienced,
they can't be unexperienced, can they?
And the typical response
is to try and forget them.
- Yeah, (mumbles)
- Perhaps the healthiest
way to live with them
is to live with them consciously.
- Yeah, because you can't change the past.
There's no sense in wanting revenge
or no sense in being really
angry at those events
or other people that
done, but just that sense
of that's who made me who I am,
in part of what made
me who I am, you know,
- it doesn't feel like
there has been some kind
of breakthrough.
- Yeah, it does feel like that
I feel enthusiastic to just go home
and start normal things.
You know, It's like a
just a desire to get up
and get going, though,
you know, after going
- John, Maggie and that children
are sharing a single room
in a hotel while their
home is being renovated
after the flood.
- Yeah.
That's fine.
- Thank you.
It's got a motion sensor so
it just keeps flying itself
if you weren't there was
Chewbacca. You're late.
Let me wait.
(soft music)
The main imagery (mumbles)
firstly we come up here they
will not believe us ahead
of us, you know I have
a dog with a dog. Yeah
a long time ago.
Lessons efficient got bad.
And if he was nice, he
was good for laughing
I think it feels good.
Not normal anymore.
Yeah, but weird sounds negative.
You mean that you don't know.
It's weird.
It's just binge having john
here because I've been used to
live on my own for so long.
- Apparently that if you take
the full month more from me
die within six days, no, you don't
- Think that you do need to remember
that are some dangerous
mushrooms are just like it.
So it's not a good idea to agree.
The reason it works is
because it's about you,
but in sort of like
along here in the middle,
and then suddenly with depression that
it sort of becomes really bogged down
or negative things all the time.
And so what that does is
it it kind of shifts all up
and then lets it resettle
in a different way.
But the first it felt quite nice.
The second time when I took it,
it was a much higher dose.
And it was the most horrible thing
that I've ever experienced.
Might an anemia that lasts for
six hours and doesn't stop.
- Yeah, that's okay.
- And that's that's a
danger if you just to say
do you want to take it for fun?
You don't know.
I was lucky that I had Dr. Joe Novotny,
who could make sure nothing bad happened.
- Before the treatment,
yeah, we did have a Dad.
But if we did see him, it
wouldn't be for very long
for like five to 10 minutes
and you'd have to go back into his room
because you'd have a sore head.
Since the treatment,
she's got much happier.
And, but we all have to be honest.
And she's managed to spend
time with her husband
like we've gone to sleep
overs and I've gone sleepovers
and it's been mom and dad.
They've been having movie nights.
They've been sitting on the couch,
they've had a couch eat
falling asleep on the couch,
doing things that they used
to do before they had kids
before dad had depression.
That's new my dad started
and not the grumpy old fart in the corner.
- [Narrator] Six months after the trial,
the results are presented to the media
- Ctrl S control is set up a file control
as every time you change it.
Usually fine. It's the last minute.
This is a celebration as well
as it is taken four years,
yeah, four years here.
Three of those years
were kind of unnecessary.
They're just plowing
through regulatory hurdles,
but we did it.
- And so how important is today then?
- Today's the birth of a new era
in the treatment of depression.
- It's the first depression
trial with a psychedelic drug.
So it is it's landmark stuff.
Nice morning, everyone.
Welcome to the SMC for
some mornings briefing,
and psilocybin an option for
treatment resistant depression,
and to be published in last
psychiatry embargo is 10:30pm.
Tomorrow.
- The average duration of
the illness in this sample
was 18 years so many of
the patients have had
Depression fractionally most
of their adult lives, yet,
eight of the 12 were
essentially depression free,
one week post treatment and
five remain depression free.
Three months post treatment,
you can see some relapse
in some of the patients.
So let's not get carried away.
This isn't a magic cure.
Even so, the effects at this
stage, things look promising.
- How would you envisage this thing goes?
Would it be kind of a one off treatment?
Or would it be repeated?
- I think that's what we need to find out.
The key question is what
to do with the people
who got an initial benefit,
and then it starts to wane.
So we're thinking about trying to set up
what you might call a
more naturalistic study.
So perhaps that those people
could then be redosed every three months.
And just see if that if
the effect came back.
I mean, it might it might
not depressed people
have a view of the world,
which is that the world
is a nasty, hostile place.
And of course, they're
right, because it is,
but after psilocybin,
the progress people tend to
view the world the same way
in 3D which is is better
than it is and that's a great defense.
(soft music)
- [Narrator] What would be the process
for a drug like psilocybin
to move from schedule one to schedule two?
What are the sort of reasons
that it isn't happening?
- Yeah, I would say a major reason is
because of the United Nations
conventions and the scheduled.
Under those conventions,
that country like the UK tends to follow,
and that those conventions very
clearly includes psilocybin
within schedule one.
So to move against the UN conventions,
you really need some strong evidence.
So it's a sort of chicken
and egg situation,
if psilocybin will put
into scheduled to this
would make it much easier for researchers
to get hold of it to get a license.
You know, the whole
thing would be freed up
then have lots of research and
And if it shows that
psilocybin really help people
with depression, you'd get changed
but getting that research to happen,
while is Johnson's shadow,
it's very difficult.
(soft music)
- Do you have any regrets
about during the trial?
- I suppose really only in
the audit revealed to me,
I think with a high dose.
The experiences were were
profound and pretty dark.
It introduced me to the flag, but
it's something really
nasty could have happened.
Did my childhood and
you can't kind of think that
but it kind of leaves you
with the feeling of well,
was that a case did it, you
know, was I was I smothered
as an infant, there's two sides
of spades that is that well,
if I'd not learn that, then
maybe the recovery process
wouldn't be working hasn't worked.
Or does nothing It actually
make the whole situation worse.
But yeah, I do it again.
You know, it's, it introduces you to
a possible solution for depression.
It was a little bit empowering.
It made me well perhaps I'm
not just like a passenger
on this that he you know, merry go round.
It might be that I can
actually do something about it
could be a whole new way of
accessing the the subconscious,
the psyche, whatever, whatever it is.
John is pretty much like it
was before the trial is crap.
Put it bluntly hoped
the results on the trial
would last forever.
Because it was, it was so
nice because at the back
and to a certain extent
are my husband back
and it's gone again.
It's just, it's all gone.
That's my favorite one
ever just all together.
It was really nice.
It was a fifth of March.
And we've not been out
for a walk together since
which is kind of sad.
If you could write your
own and to be honest,
I know Robin said that the new way
He's went back as bad
as they were before but
I don't think it would take much longer
before I was back here it was
the darkness gradually came back.
The self loathing comes back,
the desire to be cut off
from the world comes back.
Then what happens is he gets
compounded you feel guilty
that you are like that.
Then you feel guilty that your family
have to suffer through that
measure he doesn't like to
have enjoyable surroundings.
Somebody in a mentally I say
living in a tenement flat
may think Mrs. Potter days I'll do that.
The only thing I want is as a room
where no windows and a door.
You know what, we're
just going to shut out
and spend the rest your life there.
You're a good boy.
(orchestra music)
So, (mumbles) 7.5.
That's for take a night sleeping.
Suppose Pan 10s.
These are for sleeping.
When I don't take us up,
learn take one of those.
Vice versa.
This is Friday four hundreds.
We'll take two of those at night.
That's lithium. This is a
mood stabilizer apparently.
So maybe people with bipolar disorder,
take that, loperamide help stop diarrhea.
So I take about eight of those a day.
- Did you have that because
of the drugs you're taking?
- Yeah, possibly duloxetine 60 mils,
this is an antidepressant
and (mumbles) 15 by
take two of these, I take 30 you know,
I want to get better,
I want to feel better I
want to give to society,
I want to be part of society.
You know, understand I've got a problem,
and I've had it for a long
time and it's just like,
you live you live daily, and
yeah, try and hide yourself
away as much as possible.
- [Narrator] Two years after the trial,
Ros has arranged for additional
reintegration therapy
for Andy to make sense
of some of the visions
he had during his high dose
was just locked into this farm
- Trying to expose me
when I was an infant.
And yeah, great.
That's why I've been depressed in my life.
So it was kind of convenient for me
to be able to blame my depression on that.
But in reality, I think
that was quite simplistic,
and I think you helped me,
but you helped me almost
turn that on its head.
You've introduced a rationale
that I can view the whole experience
when you pair of eyes and you know,
the chances of dad actually
doing that pretty remote.
It doesn't stack out with anything
because it would have been something
that mom would have written in a memoirs
which is what I've got,
you know, she would,
she would definitely
written something there
that do you realize your dad did this?
It's really, really good
because I'm not thinking
Was he dead?
Wasn't it and you know if it was to him,
or did he do it because I thought
he loved me kind of thing?
That's that thought bloopers is gone.
I can't thank you enough
for what you've done.
It has been pretty much life changing.
So, you know, really, really?
- Thank you very much. Okay.
- How was that?
- It was good. Yeah, I think
it was a good summary of what
Andrew has been going through,
but also a good example
of how this integration process works.
- In terms of the smothering,
do you think that he would
experience it all differently?
- Now, I think that the
one of the key aspects
of the integration process with Andrew was
to take some of the pressure out of having
to find the definite enter
of was it through memory or
Is it something that I
in my mind just made that
in the event itself,
what he saw is not that his
father was smothering him
is that actually became a
symbolical representation
of his whole childhood in which it looked
like his mother was trying
to present his father
as a bad figure.
- There were three parts
to Andy's high day session.
The first was about feeling unwanted
by his father as a baby.
The second was about feeling criticized
and controlled by his mother as a child.
And the third was more
about healthy adult position
of feeling, compassion
and love and acceptance
and understanding.
After the high day session,
Andy went back to that early
place of wounding feeling
unwanted by his father.
He then with marks helping integration
has been able to progress forward
and stop focusing more on his
feelings around his mother
in the criticism and
control of his childhood.
We hope with a bit of time and will work,
you'll be able to progress forward
to that third stage he did experience
which was more about the
acceptance and love for himself
and for his parents.
The wonderful thing about
this treatment is that
it's able to take you on this journey
in the space of a day actually
with the integration afterwards
whereas antidepressants
could never do that.
Antidepressants don't give you any insight
as to why you're depressed.
And once you knew why you're depressed,
you know what it is inside,
then there's a possibility
of processing it
and actually potentially getting better.
- Psychedelic therapy is
not pharmacological therapy
is not that we're going
to have an experience
and then that aggression
is going to be gone.
The task of breaching what we learned
in the psychedelic experience into changes
that actually have an
influence in our physical
and daily life.
That is the part that it's
for me extremely important
and how to do that.
It's something that we
still don't really know.
And I think that is where the challenge
for the next two years come.
- Sort of out of it.
How do you feel glad it's
done slightly exhausted,
pleased it went so well.
On the other hand, a little
frustrated that the fact
that we can't deliver this treatment,
you know when people need it
and just being here in central London
and being so busy,
they say one in 10 people are
suffering from depression.
That's likely a few people
around us right now.
It's a massive problem.
- So what are the results?
- Andy, Mark and john
Andy and john showed quite
a good initial response, especially john,
but then they did back So on average,
they were the best responders.
But if you take the whole
group at three weeks,
roughly half were in remission,
meaning essentially their depression free
After on average, about
18 years of depression,
six months six, still depression free.
So it's quite promising really.
And now they're only depression free sort
of two years later.
Yeah, yeah, there are. Yeah.
So people's lives have
just been transformed.
It suggests the treatment
seems to work at least
as well as conventional treatments.
What we want to do next is compare it
against conventional treatments.
We need bigger trials, more
rigorously designed trials,
double blind randomized control trials.
Unfortunately, that's happening now.
So a few teams around the world
are running these studies,
major investments coming
in as a multi site trial
across Europe, and the US and Canada.
15 different countries.
So for things to be expanding to the scale
that they are right
now is really exciting.
- It's definitely one.
Speaking to guys on the trial afterwards,
I said, Yeah, probably if
you'd had a stronger dose
or a third dose, you would
have had, a breakthrough.
But I don't know if I can
risk going picking a load
of these and sitting in my bedroom
tripping my nuts off and
going, I've got no support.
I don't you know, I
don't know what to do in.
I did feel as though I failed.
I failed the test. Did it not work at all?
I mean, obviously,
I experienced a major
amount of weirdness but
it opened up a lot of questions about my
like my illness, but it never,
never really kind of pointed
me in the right direction
have any answers?
And maybe there aren't any answers.
And that's just something I got deal with.
- Has that been in the
last couple of months?
- Well, in the past couple
of months has not been
as good as it was before,
but is still the same person as he was
four or five years before.
And we just saw that same
person again, a few months back.
So it was nice that they would do again,
it would be nice to have (mumbles)
- Do you believe in psilocybin?
- Oh yeah, because
I've seen what was done and
it will make a miracle really
we never thought it would be like again
and then he took the
trial and it was great.
Yeah, was was really good.
- A few months after the
trial that was really good
and it was really good to see him happy
and the rest of us happy.
I think it made him feel happy
that everyone else was happy as well.
But I don't think it was a bad thing
that we saw it like it was nice to see it.
But and their memories
that we're all going
to keep forever asleep.
Better seeing those memories
and not having them.
- [Narrator] Every week
thousands of people
who could benefit
from interventions with
these drugs are denied access
and that means they will
continue with their depressions
and their addictions.
That is outrageous it,
there is no need to limit
access of these drugs
for medical research.
But the current regulations
make it almost impossible
for anyone to use them.
In some respects is worse than before.
And we'll some videos that
will help this frustration that
I can't really take
full advantage of that,
who's benefited from that level of benefit
because I'm (mumbles),
my children won't benefit
because I'm not walking
and showing them what proper
father a proper person
should be doing with a
life to be a productive
part of society.
Other people who need help to
and benefit because
money's been spent on me
when I can be back a work.
- You want me to do the apology
at the top the bit of golden rules.
(soft music)
Small Corrections By DvX3M