Doctors, psychiatric nurses, social workers and community leaders were clear on the urgent need for effective, easily available treatments during their personal introdcutions in the first Vital remote sessions.

Dispatching from the frontline, they believed psychedelic medicine could be the answer. But they met cost and even time frustrations where available, and prohibition otherwise.

“The mental health crisis is real” said a fellow student earlier this week highlighting a growing volume of patients in desperate need, and a healthcare sector under siege. 

Currently available treatments, including those available at UK ketamine clinics are famously dear. Likewise an Amsterdam session or more exotic retreat. I’m a big believer in psychedelic medicine but for that money I’d prefer a hair transplant. Maybe that’s because I haven’t got major depressive disorder. 

Lots of others do. In particular, the poor. An extensive  2020 report for MIT Economics cites that, internationally, ‘Rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide correlate negatively with income. Those with the lowest incomes in a community suffer one and a half to three times more frequently from depression, anxiety and other common mental illnesses.’

“We see competing, profit-seeking ways of turning psychedelics into something that are going to be less accessible”

Dr Erica Dyck

My ADHD meds are more effective than anti-depressants from what I can tell and I’m fortunate to have them. Lots of others don’t – and they’re in prison. The Justice Select Committee Inquiry into Mental Health in Prisons here in the UK were told recently in an expert witness report ‘An estimated 25% of prisoners have ADHD. Despite the disproportionate prevalence, ADHD remains critically under-diagnosed. Furthermore, there is insufficient commissioning of ADHD care pathways across the system.’ A 2010 report from Sweden registered 40% only two of whom had received diagnoses as children and went for a figure of ’40% of adult male longer-term prison inmates. Further, ADHD and coexisting disorders, such as substance use disorder, anti-social behaviour, personality disorders plus mood and anxiety disorders, severely affected prison inmates with ADHD. Nearly 80% of adults with ADHD, present with at least one coexisting psychiatric disorder.’

Depression and anxiety are indeed more achievable diagnoses, here in the UK for adults at least. When my ADHD was identified after the best part of fifty years, I was first prescribed Elvanse after a rigorous process by a noted expert, at significant expense. My National Health Service GP refused to take on the ‘shared care agreement’ that provides a subsidised prescription, and told me that the surgery he runs doesn’t deal with it at all. 

‘Primitive psychology has produced no methods for solving crime, conflict, alienation, prejudice, stupidity, boredom, aggression, unhappiness…’

Dr Timothy Leary

Fortunately I found another doctor. Or I wouldn’t be able to afford it. Even though it’s essentially speed. While we’re on the subject my psychiatrist told me ketamine treatment was “expensive”, the only time I’ve heard him use the word. 

Vital’s lecturer this week was Canadian historian Erica Dyck. Among her specialities is the early research of Abram Hoffer and Humphry Osmond, the British scientist who turned on Aldous Huxley and coined the term ‘psychedelic’. During the Q&A I asked her what she learned about human nature through her research.

“The early researchers definitely were trying to align a health access point within a publicly funded system,” she responded, “That is certainly not on the horizon today. We see lots of competing, profit-seeking ways of turning psychedelics into something that, I would argue, are going to be less accessible.”

‘Keeping ADHD prisoners in jail costs the UK £74 million, but it’d only cost £30,000 to treat them’

Dr Phil Anderton, police oficer turned therapist

Consciousness is policed by an old boys’ club with a mighty pen (if famously shit handwriting). The medical consensus-cum-caper fills its boots from patented versions of otherwise cheap chemicals, or narrative-approved, victim-blaming re-education sessions. Both of which continue to make it wealthy, at the considerable expense of the less fortunate. And the taxpayer. Keeping ADHD prisoners in jail costs the UK £74 million, but it’d only cost £30,000 to treat them.

Dr Leary, who was once on a path to being the Sigmund Freud of his generation, in Exo-Psychology:

“Primitive psychology, in spite of its enormous, state-supported bureaucracy and its priesthood mystique, has produced no verifiable theory for explaining human behaviour, nor any methods for solving the classic problems of human society: crime, conflict, alienation, prejudice, stupidity, boredom, aggression, unhappiness, and philosophic ignorance about the meaning of life.”

Yet plant medicines remain forbidden, exclusive, or gate-kept by bureaucracy, ignorance, banality and greed.

Even though they grow in the garden. And the healthcare workers we claim to value are insistent they can help address this mental health crisis, which is real.