Psychedelic healing around Austin and beyond
Jesse Gould had traveled from Tampa, Florida, to Iquitos, Peru, then up the Amazon by boat to this tiny settlement, a clearing beside the river in the heart of the jungle.
When it was his turn, Gould walked forward and took the glass from the maestro. He prayed into it as he had been instructed, speaking his intention, asking for relief from anxiety and depression and anger. He drank down the ayahuasca.Gould waited. He had never taken a psychedelic before. “I was completely nervous, apprehensive, thinking I was crazy,” he remembered. “It was like certain things in the military, like the day before Ranger school. Like, I don’t want to do this.
Something was wrong but Gould didn’t know what. He began to speculate that he’d suffered a traumatic brain injury from hisof the mortars – something that is common for soldiers who do this work. He knew some of his symptoms matched those caused by traumatic brain injury: insomnia, depression, rage, confusion, poor balance, unraveling memory.
“I was engaging in risky behavior. Just putting myself in dangerous situations with a nihilistic sort of view. I wasn’t necessarily suicidal in my thought process, but I did put myself in situations where it was like I didn’t really care what happened to me.”Justin LaPree had been a Marine for only a week when the World Trade Center towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001. Eighteen months later he was racing toward Baghdad as an infantryman in the invasion of Iraq.
The unresolved trauma and the fog from the medications took a toll on LaPree’s personal relationships. His marriage fell apart. His access to his two kids was restricted. He began to lose hope. During a shift at the station on Veterans Day, 2018, he resolved to kill himself. But Gould’s binge drinking was beginning to affect his work. He sensed that he was on the verge of collapse. So he studied the scant data available on psychedelic therapy and found the retreat in the Amazon jungle. Feeling there was nothing in his life worth saving, he sold or gave away his possessions and bought a one-way ticket to Peru. He made his way to the center, where, over the course of a week, he ingested ayahuasca in four all-night ceremonies.
“And then the third ceremony started off just as challenging as the last. I was getting beat up psychologically and I was like, 'I don’t know if I can handle much more.’ But then when I was just beaten down – and it was almost like there was a visual of it – there was like a hand that pulled me through and instantly put me into this serene, quiet, peaceful spot. Just complete calmness.
. He read some of the studies described in the book from Johns Hopkins University, the leading psychedelic research center in the States, demonstrating the effectiveness of psychedelics for depression and anxiety.LaPree took three and a half grams of psilocybin mushrooms, what is sometimes called a “heroic dose,” on that first trip. “I had visions of different experiences in Iraq that I had forgotten about,” he said. “I cried for the first time.
After the experience, LaPree’s symptoms from the traumatic brain injury gradually decreased. “My memory came back, my balance came back, I didn’t have a speech impediment anymore. And since then, I’ve been off of all my medications. I haven’t taken a pharmaceutical since I tapered off in late 2018.”Scientists have been aware of the potential benefits of psychedelics since the 1950s, when they first began to be studied.
Heroic Hearts provides the therapy free of charge and transports vets and their spouses to its chosen healing centers in countries where the ceremonies are legal, like Peru, Mexico, Jamaica, and Costa Rica. Participants agree to a 12-week program with three phases. The first is preparation: Vets meet in private and group sessions with a coach to help set goals and get questions answered.
The Center for Psychedelic Research and Therapy was co-founded in late 2021 by Greg Fonzo, a clinical psychologist who has worked with veterans his entire career, assessing depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Fonzo studies neurocircuitry and plasticity in the brain, especially how emotions are processed and regulated, with the goal of identifying new treatments for people suffering mental illness.
Doss told us that MINDS is in discussions with the center to fund research expanding on a 1966 study into the use of psychedelics to enhance creativity, the last such research before drug prohibition. TheDoss said that neuroscientists don’t understand how, or if, psychedelics enhance cognitive processes like creativity. But in his previous research he identified one small area where they might.
Justin Lapree Mental Health Mushrooms UT-Austin
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