Hey y’all, Happy New Year’s Eve and welcome back to Think Wilder. In this blog post I’m going to cover the latest psychedelic news from 2020.
I think it goes without saying that this year has been absolutely insane. There were a lot of events that happened outside the world of psychedelics that directly impacted the shape of the psychedelic landscape, and there was also a ton of psychedelic-specific news as well.
Here is a video recap version that is available for those who prefer an easier-to-digest option:
Without further ado, let’s jump into the news.
COVID-19 Challenged Literally Everything
Kicking things off, no 2020 recap would be complete without a mention of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the coronavirus was first detected in 2019, it didn’t really go viral until March of this year. But it damn sure put a damper on pretty much everyone’s plans for 2020.
Right out of the gate, some states in America deemed marijuana to be “essential”, people all over lined up to stockpile weed, regulations in the cannabis industry started to relax, remote psychedelic therapy entered the scene, and drug policy reform efforts struggled to collect signatures.
As the initial months of the pandemic unfolded, we learned of people getting stuck at ayahuasca retreats, several drug policy reform initiatives had to throw in the towel, psychedelic holidays like Bicycle Day and 420 were celebrated online, and researchers started exploring the idea of using psychedelics like cannabis and ketamine to treat COVID-19.
But eventually both the psychedelic community and the world at-large adjusted to the new normal. And while the pandemic hasn’t ended yet, life is still carrying on.
I’d love to say that the pandemic will be a thing of the past by the time 2021’s psychedelic news recap goes live, but one thing’s for sure—it ain’t over yet.
Racial Justice Protests Highlighted Problems With the Drug War
In addition to the global COVID-19 pandemic, one of the other major events this year involved a series of protests that attempted to expose the existence and effects of systemic racism, especially highlighting evidence of racially-motivated police violence.
These racial justice protests included public demonstrations against the deaths of Breonna Taylor and Elijah McClain, two young Black people who were killed by police officers.
Breonna was shot to death by police during a no-knock raid at her boyfriend’s home in Louisville, Kentucky earlier this year, and Elijah died in August 2019 after being placed in a chokehold by police and forcefully injected with ketamine by paramedics in Aurora, Colorado.
Examples like these, involving police violence against Black, indigenous, and people of color and often using the drug war as an excuse to perpetrate what would otherwise be illegal discrimination, are unfortunately a common occurrence.
While it is sad that countless others have suffered the same fate as Breonna and Elijah, hopefully the level of awareness surrounding this issue will continue to increase and we will see some meaningful change in the very near future on this issue.
An Absolute Slew of Successful Drug Policy Reform Efforts
Even though a handful of drug policy reform efforts met their untimely end due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, there were even more that succeeded.
Prior to the 2020 U.S. election in November, Virginia legalized medical marijuana and decriminalized cannabis, Canada granted an exemption for psilocybin therapy, and Ann Arbor decriminalized psychedelics.
And when it came to the 2020 U.S. election, drugs pretty much won the whole damn thing. In fact, every single marijuana and drug policy ballot measure passed!
Oregon legalized psilocybin therapy and became the first state in the country to decriminalize all drugs, Washington D.C. decriminalized natural psychedelics, voters in five states approved a grand total of seven major marijuana legalization initiatives, and four cities in Ohio decriminalized cannabis.
On a global scale, the Mexican Senate passed a bill to legalize marijuana nationwide but the Supreme Court once more extended the deadline to actually do it, Vancouver decriminalized all drugs, Argentina expanded its medical marijuana program, and Israel and North Macedonia are considering legalizing cannabis.
And that’s not all—there’s also been some more movement in America since the election happened. The U.S. House of Representatives voted to federally legalize cannabis (although it’s not expected to pass the Senate) and New Hampshire’s Supreme Court approved the religious use of magic mushrooms.
It’s clear that this has been the busiest year for psychedelic policy reform in recent history.
Psychedelic Research Is Booming
In addition to the changes in psychedelic policies all over the world, the field of psychedelic research has been booming as well.
Kicking things off is a followup study that found that a single dose of psilocybin mushrooms is capable of reducing anxiety for nearly five years.
An interim analysis of MAPS’ Phase 3 clinical trials of MDMA-assisted therapy for the treatment of PTSD found a 90% or greater chance of finding statistically significant difference in symptoms after treatment.
Adding to the idea that MDMA-assisted therapy is effective at treating PTSD, another study found that not only does the treatment hold strong for more than a year, but patients also continue to improve as time goes on.
A first-of-its-kind trial exploring the pain-relieving effects of microdosing LSD indicated that extremely low doses of the psychedelic drug could be an effective analgesic.
A team of researchers figured out how to grow psilocybin from yeast, which is not only a more economical and scalable solution for producing the psychedelic chemical, but also it’s also pretty dang cool.
One of the other issues that has come to light this year involved sexual abuse in psychedelic research studies involving therapists and their patients. Considering that psychedelics are capable of increasing one’s vulnerability, it’s understandable that this is a potential risk for the field, but attempts to silence it have prevented it from being as widely known as it should be.
Rounding out this year’s psychedelic research news, MAPS raised an unprecedented amount of money this year and UC Berkeley launched a dedicated center for psychedelic science and public education.
The Emerging Psychedelic Industry
If you go back five years, the term “psychedelic industry” would have seemed quite strange and unrealistic. But in 2020 it started to really take shape.
COMPASS Pathways became the first psychedelic company to go public on a U.S. stock exchange and PsyIndex.com launched as the world’s first psychedelic stock index.
The non-profit company known as Usona Institute put its new psilocybin synthesis method into the public domain where it cannot be patented.
More companies—and even the U.S. government, in the form of DARPA, are working on creating so-called trip-free psychedelics that they hope will be capable of treating patients without them needing to experience the psychedelic effects that us psychonauts know and love.
The psychedelic industry is still getting its bearings and there are a lot of questionable things going on, so a group known as North Star put together an ethical pledge for psychedelic companies to take that is intended to help guide their decisions so their actions will be helpful to the movement rather than harmful.
William Leonard Pickard Was Released From Prison
This next story brings a big smile to my face and a warm feeling to my heart. And honestly, when I started thinking about this year’s recap this was the very first story that came to mind. As a long-time psychonaut, it was really meaningful and welcome news to hear when the story first broke earlier this year.
So what am I talking about? Well, back in July two LSD chemists and longtime drug war prisoners were granted compassionate release from prison.
William Leonard Pickard and his partner, Clyde Apperson, were given this gift of freedom due to a combination of factors including their old age, poor health, the COVID-19 virus’s disastrous effects in the prison system, and contributions to an understanding of the ongoing fentanyl epidemic in America.
I encourage you to learn more about Pickard and Apperson and invite you to read Leonard’s brilliant masterpiece, The Rose of Paracelsus: On Secrets and Sacraments.
From my understanding, both of these men are enjoying their newfound freedom and gradually adjusting to life on the outside.
I can’t over-exaggerate how happy I was to hear that they had been released from prison and I want to personally wish them the best of luck in the next chapter of their lives.
New Evidence of Ancient Psychedelic Use
Every once in a while we get some more information about how psychedelics were used in the past, and this year we learned two interesting things.
First up was a story about some new evidence of early Christians drinking hallucinogenic wine that emerged in the form of a book called The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku. Can you imagine Jesus’s followers getting crunk on psychedelic booze? I know I can! Sounds like a good time if you ask me.
And secondly, some followup tests on a plant sample taken from artwork depicted in a cave in California found that it’s quite likely that teenagers were using datura ceremonially in caves in the area. Researchers suspected this might be the case but now we have hard evidence supporting this theory.
However, not everyone is convinced that people have been using psychedelics for thousands of years.
A recent VICE article came out attempting to debunk ancient psychedelic use, and although I think the two aforementioned stories help disprove that line of thinking, it’s nonetheless worth exploring the idea.
I’m excited to see more and more information about past psychedelic use come to light over the coming years so that we can settle this argument once and for all.
The First-Ever Thank You Plant Medicine Day
When it comes to psychedelic holidays, there are actually quite a few already—Bicycle Day for LSD, 420 for weed, 710 for cannabis concentrates, and 920 for psilocybin mushrooms, but this year a new holiday was created to celebrate the healing powers of psychedelics.
The first-ever Thank You Plant Medicine Day happened on February 20th, and it was a chance for people to publicly share their experiences of working with psychedelics as medicine.
It’s a day for coming-out of the psychedelic closet, if you will.
If you’ve experienced any benefits of working with psychedelics or plant medicines then maybe you’d like to participate in next year’s Thank You Plant Medicine Day to share your story. If so, you can go to ThankYouPlantMedicine.com to learn more.
Thank you plant medicine!
Honoring 2020’s Fallen Psychedelic Elders
Although there have been a lot of positive events in the world of psychedelics this year, we did lose some of our beloved psychedelic elders in 2020 and I wanted to make sure that I honored them for their contributions as the last news section in this video.
The psychedelic community lost one of its more ambitious and experimental elders in April when legendary macrodoser Kilindi Iyi passed away. Hailing from Detroit, he routinely worked with extremely large doses of psilocybin mushrooms and was part of a community of students and peers that explored the outer reaches of consciousness. He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind and lived like a true warrior.
If you’re not familiar with Kilindi Iyi then you should definitely check out some of his talks on YouTube. You won’t be disappointed. May you rest in peace, Kilindi.
In August the psychedelic research field lost one of the most prolific ayahuasca researchers. Dr. Jordi Riba spent more than two decades of his life studying the jungle brew. He published almost 80 scientific articles and was an active speaker at conferences around the world. In fact, Dr. Riba conducted the world’s first clinical trial with ayahuasca as well as the first neuroimaging studies involving the brew.
And he didn’t exclusively study ayahuasca—he also investigated other psychedelics, including 5-MeO-DMT, salvia divinorum, and cannabis. Dr. Riba will be greatly missed, no doubt, but the work that he contributed to the psychedelic community will live on forever. Thank you for your service, and may you rest in peace.
And just earlier this month the psychedelic community lost one of its most influential activists when Sheri Eckert unexpectedly passed away. Sheri was one of the founders of the Oregon Psilocybin Society, which helped pass legislation in November that will legalize psilocybin therapy under Oregon state law.
In addition to fighting for legal psilocybin therapy, she was also a practicing therapist. Her husband is requesting that those who would like to show their condolences can donate to the charity that they co-founded. Thank you for your contributions to the field, Sheri, and may you rest in peace.
Conclusion
2020 was yet another exciting year for psychonauts. With tons of new psychedelic research studies, a slew of drug policy reform wins, the emerging psychedelic industry, and several important developments in psychedelic culture, all taking place over the backdrop of a global pandemic and racial protests, this year was certainly a lot to take in. Hopefully 2021 will be a good year for the psychedelic movement and the world at large, and encourage you to keep your eyes open for the weekly roundups that are published on this blog as well as the monthly recaps that go up on my YouTube channel so you can stay up-to-date with everything that is happening in this space.
Previous Years in Psychedelics
That’s all for this year’s update. Remember to always test and weigh your drugs and until next time—keep thinking wilder.
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