Healing of the Nation

Approach

Become a tree, mushroom, bee or flower with pollination models and mycelial economics

By Tabita Rezaire in Black Fantastic at the Southbank Heyward Gallery, London till September 18

Psychedelics have been totally colonised, of course. But mushrooms even have the answer for that.

Dr Zelner didn’t just quit the rat race. He found a way to disable the money trap.

‘The Pollination Approach’ that he originally outlined in a landmark article for MAPS is a new community based healthcare structure, inspired by the vastly successful Frome Model that you can read about in this issue’s Medical section.

He further acknowledges that if community, business, economics and health are interconnected, then it’d only truly work if systems other than healthcare change too. Especially if we’re to avoid a psychedystopia like that set out in illustrated story We Will Call it Pala, which my Reichian body work coach would call ‘evocative’.

Wielding his understanding of biomimetics, Dr Zelner says “Fungi control the allocation of resources to plants, and they don’t set it all up so one can get much bigger than the others,” he says, “The social shift is from a disconnected pattern to a connected pattern, where people in social organisations are linked in multiple ways – which is also nature’s pattern, the mycelial network, the root networks if you will, of mushrooms. Resources are circulated through the entire system, keeping money local and creating economic multipliers.”

It’s the kind of thing both Banksy and my dad would agree on.

Dr Zelner’s Transformative Capital Institute is allocating funds to those kind of projects.  

“None of us needs to take on the responsibility to change the world. Incremental, emergent change is how life’s process works”

Regenerative economics, the ‘community and wellbeing first’ business strategy has also been completely colonised. You can do an MSc in it. Zenner says, “I’m not anti-capitalist, but in regenerative economics shareholders can’t be prioritised above all. I saw the phrase crop up in a traditional venture capital firm report, saying they like my pollination approach and it could help double their profits. Obviously there’s a conflict there.”

He continues, “Wellness has been colonised,” of course, “any change we can make through the policy process is incremental at best.” Ranting at your Twitter feed about the latest moral-political infraction is finally over.

“None of us needs to take on the responsibility to change the world, says Dr Zelner, “Incremental, emergent change is how life’s process works. Positive action at a micro level is regenerative. Individual behaviours quickly become a pattern shift. You are a pollinator.”

And yes, psychedelics could still be the healing of the nation as ‘The first lady of LSD history’ Dr Erika Dyck stated in this rallying Charcuna piece. “Psychedelics help people question their beliefs, and we are socially constructing this reality. They shift people from disconnection to connection. It’s an embodied experience of the regenerative pattern.”

We don’t need to get everyone on board immediately. “Tipping points happen only at 15-20% of a network,” advises Dr Zelner.

Switching to ‘steward ownership’ is one way socially-minded firms new and old can limit their exposure to extracting finance. The format allows a business to legally put purpose over shareholder returns, capping revenue-based financing returns after eight years. Late in 2021 Europe’s Synthesis Institute raised its Series A round of $7.25 million investment funding under a stewardship model becoming the first psychedelic company to do so.

Back around the neighbourhood, Dr Zelner’s local Brooklyn Psychedelic Society are drawing up a Frome-style health co-op to great excitement. 

I grew up near Frome, and my parents remain active in community life: amateur dramatics, parish council, village hall management committee, ‘walking football’ for the boomers. The internecine clashes within village life have inspired endless hours of situation comedy over the years, plus recently a lockdown viral sensation. 

Research from Imperial College, no less, says psilocybin treatment for depression increased nature awareness and softened any authoritarian politics amongst the test group. I ask Dr Zelner if psychedelics can even heal neighbourly squabbles. 

“I don’t have as many funny stories as I’ll probably have this time next year,” he grins, “The Brooklyn project is very new and run by a guy called Colin Pugh. They’re still at the phase where they’re figuring out if to be a traditional co-op, versus a non-profit co-op, how to engage the existing membership of their traditional psychedelic society…” 

Maybe a dose of non-dual thinking will still be required before life’s committee meetings.

Till then, we can but dream.

Village Green Preservation Society

Medical

A radical healthcare program centred on human interaction emerges in Somerset

Frome stained glass artist Jo Eddleston

Here in Albion a new psychedelic model of healthcare is saving the National Health Service millions.

“What we should be doing is spreading wellbeing with an integrative approach, not just treating diseases,” says Dr Zelner, "Wellbeing is an inherently holistic concept. You can only create it with an integrative approach.”

Glorious Somerset is the supposed site of King Arthur’s Camelot and the 4,500 year-old stone circles in Stanton Drew where Currunos and The Wild Hunt roam (it is also reasonably close to glastonbury and Stonehenge, yes). It’s also a hotbed of middle-class flight from post-COVID London. Property prices are going through the thatched roof. Born within this liminal fuzzbox is The Frome Model of Enhanced Primary Care. In place for over a decade it’s saved the NHS £6 for every £1 spent on it.

This gently radical approach to public health provision is focussed on community interaction, especially including the most vulnerable. Over its 12 years in progress, the sleepy West Country town of Frome’s accident and emergency admissions have reduced by 16% while the local average has risen 30%. 

“It proves community improves wellbeing”

‘Primary care’ is health work intended to prevent disease before it requires any treating. Face-to-face contact has proven to be the most effective way to do this. The model mixes primary care innovations with organic community development programs. 

Dr Zelner explains, “Around fifteen years ago the health workers in Frome observed a lot of patients coming in were suffering from loneliness. They decided to treat loneliness as a medical condition: training up health connectors who’d look out for people who seemed lonely, and community connectors who connected them with community organisations.”

‘Why buy when you can borrow?’ is A Library of Things’ slogan

Further innovations followed in what Compassionate Communities director Dr Julian Abel, former vice president of Public Health Palliative Care International, calls ‘Integrated well being networks that enhance naturally occurring ones.’

“They set up ‘talking cafes’ where you could chat to strangers freely,” expands Dr Zelner, “in-person visits for hospital dischargees, and hubs inside the surgeries. It became known as ‘Compassionate Frome’. There’s been enough time for empirical evidence and all admissions have declined by 30-40% relative to neighbouring areas. It proves community improves wellbeing.” Indeed, 81% of patients felt their wellbeing increase and 94% said they found it easier to mange their health.  

The programme is being rolled out across the UK.

Echoing Stanislav Grof’s view of the Freudian mental health model, Abel writes, “‘Survival of the fittest’ is not a phrase that accurately reflects our evolution. Instead, ‘survival of the kindest’ describes how animals, especially humans, have evolved to be social creatures. We are dependent on each other, and how we treat the people around us has a profound effect on us all’.”