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Reset. Heal. Grow.
When MDMA Cracked Open a White Supremacist: What One Study Reveals About Psychedelic Healing
A man named Brendan walked into a research lab in early 2020. He was, at that point, a known figure in American white nationalism — he'd helped organize the Charlottesville rally three years earlier, and his name was already a liability in his own life. The study he signed up for had nothing to do with hate or healing. The researchers wanted to know whether MDMA made human touch feel more pleasant. That was it. A small, almost banal question. Then Brendan took the dose. And somewhere in the next few hours, something in him cracked open. He went home, wrote a note to the team, and told them — in so many words — that he was done. Done with the movement. Done with the worldview. He wrote that he now knew what he needed to do, and suggested they Google him to understand why that mattered. They did. And the researchers were, understandably, alarmed before they were astonished. This story keeps surfacing in conversations about psychedelics, addiction, and the broader question of whether plant medicines and synthetic compounds like MDMA can actually shift the architecture of a person's beliefs. It's a striking anecdote. It's also wildly easy to misread. So let's slow down and look at what happened, what it might mean, and what it almost certainly doesn't. The trial, run by Harriet de Wit at the University of Chicago, wasn't a therapy protocol. There was no facilitator guiding Brendan through trauma, no integration coach waiting on the other side. It was a touch-perception study — neutral, clinical, fluorescent-lit. Brendan received MDMA and did the tasks. The transformation, such as it was, happened on his own time, in his own head. What he reported afterward was simple and almost embarrassed: the drug made him feel love, and in the warmth of that feeling, the rigid scaffolding of his ideology stopped making sense. He described asking himself, in the middle of the experience, why am I doing this? The question wasn't intellectual. It came from somewhere lower, somewhere more honest than argument. He didn't renounce his beliefs that afternoon in any dramatic public way. The shift was quieter, and it unfolded over months. He distanced himself from his old network. He started talking, carefully, to people he'd previously written off as enemies. The researchers, who only learned about his background after the fact, ended up watching one of the strangest case studies in psychedelic science assemble itself in real time. No. And anyone who tells you it does is selling something. Here's the thing about MDMA and the classical psychedelics — ayahuasca, psilocybin, LSD, San Pedro, ibogaine. They don't carry content. They don't have politics. They amplify whatever is already inside a person and crank up the emotional volume on it. A 2021 paper in Frontiers in Psychology made this point bluntly: psychedelics are non-specific amplifiers. Give the same dose to a hateful person and a generous one, and you'll get more hate or more generosity, not a clean reset. What seems to have happened with Brendan is more interesting than a chemical exorcism. The MDMA didn't delete his beliefs. It opened a window — briefly, vividly — onto another way of feeling about other people. And once you've felt something, you can't quite un-feel it. The seed of doubt gets planted. Whether it grows depends on everything that happens after. Researchers studying MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD have noticed something similar. The drug's role is to soften the defensive crust around painful material so the person can actually look at it. The looking is what does the work. The compound is the door, not the room. If you've ended up on this page, there's a decent chance you're carrying something heavy — an addiction that won't budge, a depression that's settled in like weather, a pattern in your relationships you can see clearly and still can't change. The Brendan story matters to you for one specific reason: it suggests that even deeply embedded ways of being can sometimes shift faster than we think. Plant medicines and psychedelics — including ayahuasca and the so-called master plants of the Amazon — work on a similar logic. They don't deliver answers. They loosen the grip of a worldview just enough for the person to glimpse alternatives. People in ceremony describe seeing their addiction from the outside for the first time, or recognizing that a story they've been telling themselves since childhood was never actually true. Ayahuasca, in particular, has a reputation for showing people themselves with uncomfortable clarity. What's worth saying out loud: this softening is real, and it's also dangerous if it happens in the wrong setting. Brendan got lucky. The researchers were thoughtful, the dose was clean, and he had enough inner ground to do something constructive with the experience. Plenty of people don't. A weekend retreat without proper screening, or a ceremony led by someone with more charisma than skill, can leave a person more raw than healed. I've sat in a lot of ceremonies and talked to a lot of facilitators, and the honest version of the retreat conversation looks like this: Costs vary wildly. A week-long ayahuasca retreat in Peru might run anywhere from $1,500 to $4,000 depending on the center, the lineage, and the level of medical and psychological support on-site. Ibogaine programs — which are used specifically for opioid addiction in some clinics — tend to run higher because they require medical monitoring. Psilocybin retreats in legal jurisdictions like the Netherlands or Jamaica sit in a middle range. Brendan's story isn't a feel-good fable about a magic pill that fixes broken people. It's something quieter and more useful. It's a reminder that the human capacity for change isn't always proportional to the size of the problem. Sometimes a person carries a worldview for decades and then, in the space of a few hours, sees through it. That doesn't happen because of a chemical. It happens because the chemical briefly lifts the defenses we use to avoid feeling things — and what's underneath those defenses, in most of us, is closer to love than to hate. Closer to grief than to anger. Closer to a desire to belong than to a need to be right. Whatever you call it — the self, the soul, the deeper layer — it tends to be more humane than the personality we've built on top of it. For people considering plant medicine to address addiction, depression, or patterns that feel cemented in, this is the honest promise. Not a cure. Not a guarantee. Just the possibility that what feels permanent might be more porous than it looks, given the right setting and the right support. For readers who want to take this further, a range of vetted ayahuasca and plant-medicine retreats can be browsed on our marketplace here. Brendan, last anyone heard, was still doing the work. That's the part of his story that gets quoted least and matters most. The drug opened a door. He's the one who kept walking through it.
Inside Oregon's Legal Psilocybin Experiment: What It Means for Psychedelic Retreats
Something quietly historic is happening in Oregon. While most of the United States still treats psilocybin mushrooms as a Schedule I substance, this one state on the Pacific coast is busy building the country's first legal, regulated framework for psilocybin services. Not decriminalisation. Not a research carve-out. An actual, licensed system where adults can sit with psilocybin under the care of a trained facilitator. For anyone weighing a psychedelic retreat — especially folks who've been reading about psilocybin for depression, end-of-life anxiety, or stubborn patterns that no amount of talk therapy has shifted — Oregon matters. It's the closest thing we have to a working blueprint. And the people building it are doing so in real time, in public, with all the messiness that involves. Back in 2020, voters passed Measure 109, the ballot initiative that authorised the creation of a legal psilocybin services program. It didn't legalise mushrooms in the supermarket sense. What it did was open a narrow but very real door: adults aged 21 and over could, eventually, consume psilocybin at licensed service centres under the supervision of trained facilitators. No prescription required. No specific diagnosis required. That last part is what makes the Oregon model genuinely novel. Other psychedelic pathways being developed in the U.S. — MDMA for PTSD, psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression — are medical models, gated by diagnosis and FDA approval. Oregon's program is a services model. The state regulates training, product, and venues, but the experience itself sits closer to a ceremony than a clinic visit. That distinction matters more than it first appears. Two main bodies have done the heavy lifting. The Oregon Psilocybin Advisory Board drafted recommendations covering everything from facilitator training requirements to product testing standards. The Oregon Health Authority, through its Oregon Psilocybin Services division, turned those recommendations into actual rules. The first legal sessions began taking place in 2023, and the program has been expanding — and learning hard lessons — ever since. A program like this doesn't appear out of nowhere. It's the product of a small, identifiable group of people — campaign organisers, attorneys, regulators, therapists, and entrepreneurs — who spent years pushing the boulder up the hill. A few names worth knowing if you're trying to understand how this market actually works. Tom Eckert and the late Sheri Eckert were the chief petitioners behind Measure 109. Tom went on to chair the advisory board during the early rulemaking, then stepped away amid questions about board-member conflicts of interest — an early reminder that this industry has the same political mess as any other. He now directs work at InnerTrek, one of the larger psilocybin-facilitator training programs in the state, and at the Sheri Eckert Foundation, which funds scholarships for people who want to train as facilitators but can't afford the tuition. Sam Chapman managed the Measure 109 campaign and now leads the Healing Advocacy Fund, a nonprofit that's stayed deeply involved in implementation. David Bronner — yes, the soap guy — poured roughly $2 million of Dr. Bronner's money into passing the measure and has continued funding training programs, harm-reduction work, and equity initiatives. His company has put tens of millions into drug-policy reform over the years, which is not the kind of detail you forget once you've seen it on a bottle of peppermint castile. On the regulatory side, André Ourso and Angela Allbee at the Oregon Health Authority have been the people actually translating a ballot measure into a working program. Ourso previously oversaw the rollout of Oregon's cannabis market, which gave the state at least some institutional muscle memory for standing up a regulated controlled-substance industry. Allbee manages day-to-day operations of Oregon Psilocybin Services, which is the part of state government that issues the licences and writes the rules. One of the most interesting fights inside Oregon's program has been about facilitators — who they are, how they're trained, and how much it costs to become one. This isn't a side debate. It's the whole ball game. Jon Dennis, an attorney and cofounder of the Entheogenic Practitioners Council of Oregon, has been a persistent voice arguing that religious, spiritual, and community-based practitioners should have a meaningful role in the legal program. His worry — and it's a reasonable one — is that if facilitator training is structured like a graduate degree, with the price tag to match, the only people serving clients will be affluent therapists, and the cost of a session will price out the people who most need access. Angela Carter, a vice chair on the advisory board, has pushed similar equity and harm-reduction priorities from inside the regulatory process. At the same time, organisations like Fluence — cofounded by Ingmar Gorman and Elizabeth Nielson, both psychologists who worked on MDMA-assisted therapy trials — have been building rigorous clinical-style training programs aimed at therapists who want to add psilocybin work to their practice. Both visions are defensible. Both are getting built. How they coexist will shape what an Oregon psilocybin session actually feels like. Here's the practical takeaway for someone in the research phase. Oregon's legal program is not a retreat in the Costa Rica or Peruvian-jungle sense. Most licensed service centres offer a single session — preparation meeting, dosing day, integration meeting — rather than a multi-day immersive experience. Prices have settled in the rough neighbourhood of $1,000 to $3,500 for the full arc, depending on the facilitator, the venue, and the dose. That's lower than some international retreats and considerably higher than others. If you're weighing your options, a few honest things worth holding in mind: Colorado followed Oregon's lead with its own psychedelic-services initiative, passed in 2022 and now rolling out. Other states are watching closely, drafting bills, and quietly preparing legislation. The federal picture remains murky — psilocybin is still Schedule I, and the DEA hasn't softened its public stance — but the state-level momentum is real, and it's not slowing down. What Oregon proves, more than anything, is that a regulated psychedelic services market is possible. Not easy. Not without its conflicts of interest, equity gaps, and growing pains. But possible. For readers who've spent years assuming plant medicine meant flying to South America or knowing the right underground guide, that's a meaningful shift. It's also worth saying plainly: a legal framework doesn't make psilocybin right for everyone. People on certain antidepressants, people with personal or family histories of psychosis, people in acute crisis — these are situations where a thoughtful provider will tell you to wait, or to look at other tools first. The most useful question isn't where to do this work but whether now is the time, and with what kind of support around you. If you're somewhere in that weighing phase, it can help to see what's actually on offer — different settings, different traditions, different price points — before committing to anything. A curated set of psilocybin and plant-medicine retreats can be browsed on our marketplace here, which is a low-pressure way to compare what's out there while you keep doing your homework. Oregon's experiment is young. The facilitators are still learning. The regulators are still adjusting. But the door is open in a way it wasn't five years ago, and the people who pushed it open deserve some credit for that — even when the politics behind the scenes have been less than tidy.
Ketamine for Depression: What the Latest Trial Results Mean
Ketamine, a medication primarily used as an anesthetic, has been explored as a potential treatment for severe forms of depression. Its fast-acting nature makes it an attractive option for patients experiencing sudden bouts of suicidality. However, the latest trial results from Atai Life Sciences, a leading company in the field of psychedelics, have raised questions about its efficacy. The trial, conducted by Perception Neuroscience, a subsidiary of Atai, involved 102 patients with treatment-resistant depression. These patients were administered either a 60mg dose of PCN-101, a 30mg dose, or a placebo. The results showed that patients who received the 60mg dose did not experience significant improvement in their depression symptoms compared to those who received the placebo. This outcome is particularly noteworthy given the current landscape of depression treatment. With many patients not responding to traditional therapies, the search for alternative treatments is urgent. Ketamine, with its unique mechanism of action, had been seen as a promising candidate. The failure of this trial, however, underscores the complexity of treating depression and the need for continued research. The trial's methodology involved administering the drug intravenously and then assessing the patients' depression symptoms 24 hours later using the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale. The lack of significant improvement in the treatment group compared to the placebo group is a critical finding. It suggests that, at least in the context of this study, ketamine may not offer the therapeutic benefits that were hoped for. The implications of this trial are multifaceted. For patients and their families, the news may be disappointing, especially for those who have been waiting for new treatment options. For the field of psychedelic research, this trial serves as a reminder of the challenges involved in developing effective treatments. It highlights the need for rigorous scientific testing and the importance of not overstepping the bounds of current evidence. Atai Life Sciences has announced plans to continue reviewing the data from the trial to determine the next steps. This approach is prudent, given the potential that subgroup analyses or further research could uncover beneficial effects that were not immediately apparent. Ketamine is not the only psychedelic compound being explored for its therapeutic potential. Psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, and MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, are also under investigation for their possible roles in treating mental health disorders. The journey of these substances from recreational drugs to potential therapeutic agents is a complex one, marked by both promise and challenge. The approval of Spravato, a drug based on ketamine, by the FDA in 2019 for the treatment of severe depression, marked a significant milestone in this journey. It demonstrated that, with rigorous testing and regulatory approval, psychedelic-derived medicines could enter the mainstream of psychiatric treatment. However, the path forward is not without its obstacles. Regulatory hurdles, public perception, and the need for high-quality clinical trials are just a few of the challenges that must be overcome. The recent trial results, while disappointing, are a part of this process. They contribute to the growing body of evidence that will eventually guide the development and use of psychedelic medicines. The latest trial results on ketamine's effectiveness in treating depression are a sobering reminder of the complexities and challenges inherent in psychiatric research. While they may dampen some of the enthusiasm surrounding psychedelic medicine, they do not diminish the potential that these substances hold. Instead, they underscore the importance of a cautious, evidence-based approach to developing new treatments. As the field of psychedelic medicine continues to evolve, it is crucial that researchers, clinicians, and patients remain committed to the principles of rigorous scientific inquiry and patient safety. The future of psychedelic medicine is promising, but it must be built on a foundation of solid evidence and careful consideration of both the benefits and the risks of these powerful substances.
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