This month, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) celebrated a milestone: 35 years of research and advocacy of psychedelics.
Founded in 1986, the US-based non-profit research and educational organisation has worked to develop medical, legal and cultural contexts for people to benefit from the careful uses of psychedelics.
Founder Rick Doblin sat down with PSYCH to highlight the group’s successes and challenges of the last 35 years and to take a deep dive into the present and future of psychedelic business and its path to profitability, including:
- Drug policy reform and its impact on psychedelic business
- The usefulness and morality of psychedelic patents vs. data exclusivity
- The promise of emerging shorter-acting psychedelics & market hype
- The challenge of retaining talented staff at a psychedelic non-profit and the value of non-profits to big business
- Keys to shifting cultural attitudes around psychedelics & ensuring the healthcare supply chain can meet demand
- The path to profitability in psychedelics, the timeline for medical clearance and licensed legalisation
Below is a transcript of the session and select interview clips.
PSYCH: What was the intention of the organisation on conception? How does that initial concept square with the direction it has taken?
Rick Doblin: Well, the original intention was formed not 35 years ago, but 48 years ago when I was 18 years old and confused. It was 1972, and I was confused a lot by my LSD and psilocybin experiences and I just was looking at kind of a murderous world of the Holocaust. And I grew up during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the whole idea that we could have nuclear war and destroy the world with the US and Russians and then the Vietnam War from my own country. Something that Albert Einstein was attributed to saying is that our technology has exceeded our humanity. So it was out of that despair I thought that the political implications of the mystical experience were what people needed, that we needed to realise how much we have in common with everybody, and that if we can feel that and know that, then it’ll be harder to commit genocide or murder or be racist. It was this decision I made when I was 18 after reading Stan Groff’s book Realms of the Human Unconscious. With observations of LSD research in this crazy world, the contribution that I could make would be to try to become a psychedelic therapist, in undergrad go through my own psychedelic therapy and bring psychedelic research back. So, that was the impetus ever since I was 18.
Rick Doblin: So then when it comes time to MAPS, I had learned about MDMA. I thought of it as the incredible tool – it was the most gentle and very profound, is the most gentle of all the psychedelics, but very profound. I felt that it would be the one that would make it through the society first. But the goal when I started MAPS was a non-profit pharmaceutical company. I didn’t know that no drug had ever been made into a medicine by a non-profit at that time – so, blissfully ignorant of that. That didn’t happen until 1999 and it was the abortion pill RU486. So, it was another controversial drug abandoned by pharma and funded by philanthropy by the Rockefellers. The goal of MAPS though has been twofold. The main goal is mass mental health. Humanity as a group is crazy. We’re destroying the planet. We’re destroying the climate. We’re murdering each other. There’s a lot of reasons for hope, but there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. The dual parts are to medicalise through drug development research and then also drug policy reform to move to a post-prohibition world. And so those are the two tracks that MAPS has always been on.
Rick Doblin: And so now, 35 years later, we’re on the verge of, in a couple of years, having hopefully our second phase-three study go well, having FDA approval as well as approval in Israel and Canada. We’re moving into Europe. Last Friday, we had the first MDMA session in Europe as part of our efforts to globalise, to bring MDMA through the EMA. But we’re also seeing changes in people’s attitudes towards the drug war and the recognition that mass incarceration has been racist. That’s been the political strategy to take people’s rights to vote away. It’s never been about reducing drug abuse.
Rick Doblin: I think one of the questions for people in the industry to think about is – is the medicalisation, and the business aspects of that, something that is compromised if people can buy these drugs on their own in some sort of legalisation system? Or, and this is my personal view, the more that we destigmatise these drugs, the more we make them available to people, the more that we have licensed legalisation, the more we train people and peer support, then the more we will affect mental health more broadly. But we will also make more of a demand by people for going to trained professionals covered by insurance, to get these treatments from all the different for-profit psychedelic pharma companies. But I think that there is a general sense among most of the companies that drug policy reform puts their business model at risk. And I think that it’s the opposite. I think that the drug policy reform will enhance and supercharge the business models by making even more people want therapy and treatment centrers, even though we want to train people to try to heal themselves and also use it for celebration and for couples therapy, for all different kinds of uses that aren’t specifically treatment of a disease.
PSYCH: Of all MAPS’ achievements to date, which will the group be best remembered for?
Rick Doblin: I think mostly it will be making MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD into a medicine. I think that’s going to have the biggest impact. I think that we are also moving forward when we open the door to LSD research. After roughly 35 years of suppression, we’ve done early work with ibogaine, even ayahuasca and the treatment of addiction. But I think we’ll be most remembered for medicalising MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD. Plus, we’ve raised over US$100 million in donations in the history of MAPS and about US$75 million of that has gone for MDMA for PTSD research.
Rick Doblin: Our ultimate goal is not to be remembered, it’s to be taken for granted. What I mean by that is, for example, a lot of women in America, when they go to vote, they just go to vote. Right? They don’t think about the people that were beaten up, who were arrested just 100 years ago to get women the vote. The ultimate success, in a way, is to be taken for granted. Oh, it’s always been this way. And of course, it should be this way. That’s what we hope, even more than being remembered, is that people just go to their psychedelic clinics and get psychedelic therapy and go get their psychedelics on the licensed legalisation and then go off to a party and that they won’t even think a second about MAPS.
PSYCH: In recent years, we’ve witnessed an evolution in funding and talent into psychedelics. How have both changed in the years since MAPS’ inception, and what has been MAPS’ role in that evolution?
Rick Doblin: In some ways we’re a victim of our own success. And by that I mean, that of the 35 years, it’s taken us 35 years to raise US$100 million. Of that, in the last two years, we’ve probably raised US$45 million, which is pretty amazing. But the for-profit companies have raised over US$1 billion. What has fundamentally changed is that for the first 31 to 32 years of MAPS as history, nobody would even think about a business model, because the regulatory obstacles were too great, the public attitudes were too fearful; it just didn’t seem like it could be done in a business way. Nobody would take that risk. So the fundamental shift that has happened as we’ve made research progress with MDMA, as other groups have made progress with psilocybin research, is that we’ve shifted key opinion leader attitudes, we’ve shifted attitudes at the regulatory agencies, we’ve changed public opinion, which has permitted now the rise of the for-profit companies. And what’s that done? When I said ‘victim of our own success’, it’s that now we are finding that a lot of people want to invest rather than donate. How we tell the story of the non-profit model and why that is worth sustaining. At the same time, we’re supportive of for-profit companies as long as they are not doing overbroad patents, aggressively trying to block other people from doing things. But I think that’s the big change that’s happened. It’s the rise of the for-profits, the fact that PSYCH even exists in your industry reports. That’s new and really exciting.
PSYCH: There has been a lot of discussion around IP ownership and patents recently. Psychedelics appear in a wide range of patent applications, and many prominent figures are vocal in their opposition from an ethical standpoint. Where does MAPS take position on the matter today?
Rick Doblin: We’re pretty nuanced, I would say. I’m not opposed to patents for new inventions. I mean, that’s a legitimate use of the patent system. And I understand also that investors want to see that. It’s very expensive to make drugs into medicines. It’s very expensive to do psychedelic clinics. People want to patent their inventions. What I see as problematic is that patents are being often used not just to patent original inventions but taken for granted. You could say in the business model, as you try for overbroad patents, you force your other people, your competitors, to spend a lot of money to try to narrow down your claims. Then you end up with something shorter, smaller than what you originally applied for. But I think that’s really not appropriate for psychedelics. I think that people should be patenting their original inventions, but not try to go beyond and use an aggressive patent strategy. I’m sympathetic with patents, but I’m also worried, for example, how many things that are prior art are being discussed as people trying to patent.
Rick Doblin: There’s another mechanism that I don’t think people recognise exists enough… that provides incentives for developing drugs into medicines without patents. It’s for drugs that are off-patent. It’s called data exclusivity. It’s a very important, different tool that doesn’t require patents or IP if you are the first to make a drug into a medicine that’s off-patent – and all the classic psychedelics are off-patent – and we’ve done a lot about the anti-patent strategy for the uses of it. If, for example, we make MDMA into a medicine for PTSD, we’ll get automatically five years of data exclusivity. And what that means is that nobody can use our data to market a generic for five years. If we do paediatric studies, we get an additional six months and it blocks a generic competitor from even applying until it’s over and it takes the FDA at least six months to review the application. So, the way it’s different from a patent is that some other company, if they wanted to generate their own data, they could do that. It doesn’t block anybody from doing anything. But since it’ll take five or six years and well over US$100-million for somebody to make their own data for MDMA for PTSD, we don’t think they’ll do that. And so we’ll have this probably six years. In Europe, it’s 10 years of data exclusivity. I think that there has been not enough attention paid to this idea of incentives that have been created for drugs that are off-patent or for uses that are in the public domain.
Rick Doblin: There are process patents, that are for how you make the drugs, but in general, I think they’re more of an illusion of value. I think investors like to see that. But there’s so many different inventive chemists that could figure out different ways to make things and that even if you have optimised the cost of it, and reduced it to make it in some way, most of the cost of this treatment is going to be to the therapists, not to the drug. And so maybe you have a marginally different cost structure if you make it and you’ve patented some production processes. But I don’t think it’s actually that significant when it comes to the patients and to the insurance companies.
PSYCH: Many companies are actively attempting to raise capital for research and product development. It’s taken 35 years for MAPS to get to its current position – is what these new companies are promising to do possible within their projected timelines and capacities? What questions should smart money be asking?
Rick Doblin: Well, one of the things that I think has really contributed to MAPS’ success and also to our competitive cost structure, you could say, is that we have built our own drug development company. We’re 130 people now. Around two thirds of them are in the MAPS Public Benefit Corp. (that’s the pharmaceutical arm) and the others are in the MAPS non-profit. But most pharmaceutical companies, most of these new companies, can contract out with what are called CROs (Contract Research Organisations). A lot of these for-profit companies, you don’t need to have your own drug development team. You contract that out, companies that do this all the time. So, I think what smart investors really need to be thinking about is, first off, the cost structure. It is more expensive when you contract out like this than when you build it on your own. But that’s a lot of work. The other part is really to think about what is the niche, what is the actual product that people are talking about and how does it really relate to the other products in the space. So, for example, there are several companies now trying to develop new molecules that they can patent. And several are trying to develop new MDMA-like molecules. If they succeed, you need to question if they can get a patent on it, but how different is it going to be from MDMA? And maybe it’s shorter-acting? Or maybe they figure that they can do it milder, so the idea would be to take it at home on your own and you process stuff without a therapist? That seems very dubious to me, but I think you can make a great story about what you’re going to develop with these new molecules. But how is it fundamentally different from what’s going to be available from psilocybin? Field Trip, for example, have talked about how they have a shorter-acting psilocybin-like molecule and they’ve got a patent on it and they’re going to develop it. It’s an interesting thought, you know, can you have a two-hour session instead of a six-hour session? And how productive will that be? Will you need three two-hour sessions to equal one six-hour session? It’s not clear to me that shorter-acting molecules are going to be a big breakthrough. But maybe, so there’s a bit of a gamble there.
Rick Doblin: The other part I think smart investors need to realise is that there’s so many fundamentals that are shifting. Right now, insurance companies don’t have a code for an eight-hour session, meaning we’re going to have to create new agreements with insurance companies to get them to cover an eight-hour MDMA session. But I think that’s going to come because what they’re going to look at is the outcomes. And if the outcomes are really good and if the outcomes are cost-effective, they will find a way to cover it. I think some of these stories about ‘we’re going to get a shorter-acting molecule’, it’s unclear to me whether that’s going to really be a great business model. But it could be. So I won’t say that it couldn’t be.
I think there is a limit to what people can do with apps or with treating people through telemedicine. We already know because of COVID, everybody has learned a lot in research how to move as much as possible online. But for psychedelic psychotherapy, for us, for PTSD, I think there’s always going to be a human component in-person for the actual dosing sessions. But that’s going to be a question. Is it a business model to give people these drugs to take home on their own and do through telemedicine? That’s not clear to me. I mean, people are doing that with Spravado, with ketamine, that’s happening. Whether it’s as effective, it’s unclear.
Rick Doblin: I think also people need to really look at, and this is kind of a difficult thing, but there seems to be a lot of hype and froth in the market. So there has been an enormous increase in some of these companies’ values, you know, 10x over what they were just six months ago. How much of that is based on actual earning potential and stories? How much of that is based on hype? You can make a lot of money during a bubble, but how do you know when the bubble is going to end? What’s the underlying value? And I think also people should be really thinking about cost-effectiveness and insurance coverage, whether that’s going to happen. But the thing that people need to be wary of there is that the pressure is going to be to reduce the cost, to reduce the amount of therapy and try to make it more cost-effective. But then what’s going to happen? Are people going to be given sufficient support for the integration? Are there going to be people who have brought stuff to the surface and then they’re not held in as supportive a way, and then they go off and commit suicide or decompensate? So, I think people have to be wary of these stories of how we’re going to do one-dose miracle cures or people can just take the drug and do it on their own. There are a lot of challenges. But I also think that there’s an enormous opportunity because the mental health crisis is, I’d say, the key crisis that we have in the world behind even climate change. It’s about people’s fears and anxieties that become irrational. And then they don’t want certain kinds of change, prejudice, war. So, I think people really have to be aware that the need is great and that there can be multiple companies doing the same thing and they can all succeed.
PSYCH: Some MAPS alumni have moved on to other projects and ventures in psychedelics. How does that work align with MAPS’ principles and are there any alumni works you’d recommend keeping an eye on?
Rick Doblin: Yeah, there is Fluence, which is a group for training therapists. They are doing good. The challenge for us is that we don’t have stock options. We’re still in a non-profit. We still are paying non-profit salaries, even in the Benefit Corp. For-profit companies have been trying to hire away our staff because they’ve got the experience and specialised experience with psychedelic-assisted therapy and regulatory agencies. And they can pay right now more than we can pay. So that’s a challenge for us. But I think that not all of them have gone to for-profit psychedelic companies. Moderna has hired a couple of our people away in the drug development process and then the actual CMC, the chemistry manufacturing controls, and project management. So I think that the MAPS membership, which is what we’re hoping to build, is thousands of people. We’re trying to build the base not just to have the big donor strategy, but get 10,000 –20,000 members to build the organisation that way.
Rick Doblin: But for the MAPS alumni, mostly now in training of therapists is where it’s happening. I think we’ve had a lot of very mission-oriented people and now that we’re getting closer and closer to FDA approval, people are getting more and more excited. Plus, we’re learning more. And what we’re trying to tell people is, ‘At some point you may want to make a transition to other for-profit companies, but your value is only going to increase over the next couple years as we get to the point of FDA approval.’ Once we’ve got FDA approval, then we’ve demonstrated success. We’ve all learned more. And so I think there will be a lot more interest in people hiring away and people going to other companies. But we’re hoping to keep the team relatively intact as we go forward over the next couple of years.
PSYCH: What needs to happen for a significant cultural change to occur in our approach to healthcare?
Rick Doblin: Well, it’s already happening. The first thing that needs to happen to really bring psychedelics has been this attack on the drug war and this demonstration that the drug war is counterproductive. It’s racist. So the drug war is what’s been suppressing psychedelic research, and it’s been the kind of willingness of the FDA to open the door to that, that has been so important. But people relate to stories, more than to data. So what’s really going to be changed in culture is more and more stories of people who are helped by psychedelic therapy, by ketamine, by psilocybin, by ayahuasca, by ibogaine. So, for example, we are now working with two members of Congress, Dan Crenshaw, who’s a Republican from Texas, and Tim Ryan, who’s a Democrat from Ohio, on a bill to try to give US$25 million to the Department of Defence for psychedelic research and US$25 million to the VA for psychedelic research for PTSD. That’s only possible because these members of Congress have heard from so many people. Dan Crenshaw’s a former Navy SEAL and there are loads of Navy SEALs who have been going down to Mexico for ibogaine and 5-ME0-DMT and ayahuasca and for MDMA in our studies. So what’s going to primarily change culture is stories of healing, from a broad cultural base. Also, we need the key opinion leaders for that – we need the science, we need the data. So when the FDA says ‘yes’ to MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD, assuming that happens roughly two years from now, that’s the first key proof of principle, that psychedelic-assisted therapy can make it through the regulatory system. That will change a lot.
Rick Doblin: Now, there’s also neuroscience research. So, the FDA doesn’t require evidence of a mechanism of action. They just require evidence of safety and efficacy. But the more that we have this neuroscience research funded by others and ideally by governments too, the more the mechanisms of action will be understood. It looks miraculous and dubious from the outside that people have a few experiences with psychedelics and they’ve had PTSD for sometimes decades. In our first Phase 3 study, roughly one third of the people had PTSD for 20 years or more, and yet two thirds of them no longer have PTSD at the end of the study. So how does that happen? It’s hard to understand. The more that neuroscience research can show neuroplasticity and new neural connections, people can then give credence. People – meaning regulators, key opinion leaders – can give credence to these changes, not only can they happen, but they can be durable. I think we’re going to really see more of that developing.
Rick Doblin: And then I think in the stock market, when people see people making money on this, that’s going to be a big motivating factor as well. And that will bring more capital into the field. Ideally, the critical factor is going to be national healthcare coverage or insurance coverage. That’s going to really open it up because we can do all we can to get it approved. But if it’s only to self-pay people, it’s going to be a smaller market and smaller amounts of money will be made. So it’s going to be demonstrating this in a cost-effective way and getting insurance coverage.
PSYCH: What needs to occur within the healthcare supply chain to bring psychedelic medicines and therapies to patients in a significant way?
Rick Doblin: Well, we’re already having discussions with various health insurance companies about it. I think that’s going to be key. The good thing for us in Europe is that the national healthcare is there to pay for treatment, but they also pay for disability payments. And so for PTSD, when you consider severe PTSD is very disabling depression as well, the economic cost-effectiveness study makes more sense. In Europe, they pay for both. In the US, it’s only the VA that pays for therapy and disability. Generally, insurance companies don’t pay for it.
Rick Doblin: The other thing I’d say in the healthcare supply, we’re going to need networks of clinics. And one of the things that multiple different companies are going to be doing is this building out of these networks of clinics. The idea that for us it’s not necessary, but we found it to be helpful, for people to have overnight stays so that you have an eight-hour session. It’s very exhausting. We have people that do integrative psychotherapy the next day, so if you have to go home and then come back and drive – it’s going to be optional. We have several of our Phase 3 sites that don’t have overnight stays, so that it is optional. Developing the clinics that are optimised for therapy would be really important. That needs to really happen.
As far as supply chains for the drugs, that part’s easy. We’ve just now got 16 kilograms of GMP-MDMA. People are doing the same for psilocybin. The distribution is going to be easy. The thing that is important is going to be the negotiations with the regulatory agencies on what’s called the REMS, which is Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies. Those are customised policy tools for the risks and benefits of each specific drug. They’re going to say that the only people that can work with a patient are therapists who have been through the training programme from the sponsor. So what we’re going to really need for the supply chain, you could say, is a supply of trained therapists. We’re predicting in our modelling that by 2028, we hope to have trained 23,000 psychedelic therapists for MDMA for PTSD, and then they will set up all these clinics.
Rick Doblin: But what is really important is to recognise that even though there are separate companies that are doing different individual drugs – some companies doing psilocybin, some doing ibogaine, some doing MDMA like us – that really the field is psychedelic psychotherapy. And that’s what we’re trying to do. And we’re trying to give these therapists tools to customise and personalise psychedelic medicine to their patients. We’re going to need to train therapists in MDMA, psilocybin, ketamine, LSD – cross-trained therapists. And so the big step is going to be getting schools of psychiatry and schools of psychotherapy embedding in their training programmes for degree credit. There are now a few, like the California Institute for Integral Studies, with a certificate programme, but it’s not part of their degree programme. We need to embed in degree programmes, psychedelic psychotherapy training. And then I would say that the early psychedelic therapists of the past, the ones right now who are operating, will all agree that therapists are more effective if they’ve done the drug themselves. It doesn’t mean that if you’re a therapist who’s done MDMA, you’re better than a therapist that’s not done MDMA. It just means that you’re better than you would have been otherwise. And so we need to also figure out ways in a protocol, in a legal way, to give therapists training with their own experiences, but in a way that’s not so expensive, that’s not heavily protocolised and lots of data gathering. So that’s going to be a real thing. Embedding training programmes in schools of psychiatry and psychotherapy, including the opportunity for therapists to experience the drugs themselves, that’s going to be a real big limiting factor. Getting all of the clinics laid out and optimised, that’s going to be a big thing.
Rick Doblin: And then the other big thing to share is group therapy. We’re now in the near final protocol development stages of a protocol for a group therapy to take place at the Portland VA. What that means is that these clinics – which may initially be set up for individual therapy, small rooms, and patients and therapists together – we’re going to need to optimise also for group therapy. Some of these clinics are going to need larger spaces for groups. But we haven’t proven the group therapy model yet. But I think that’s going to be a big one going forward.
PSYCH: We have many investors, operators and those generally interested in advancing the industry and improving access watching. How can people get involved today to help research and industry evolve and progress?
Rick Doblin: Well, one of the things is still reducing stigma for this. So I think we need a vast psychedelic ‘coming out’ process of people that have benefited from psychedelics, to further change the culture. Just before this, I was doing an interview for a German magazine because we’re bringing MDMA-PTSD research to Germany. The fellow was telling me about how attitudes are changing. His mother in her 70s was a Holocaust survivor and was in a concentration camp. But now she’s finally thinking she might be ready for psychedelic therapy. So, we need more of that. I think also we need people who lobby Congress. What we really would ideally want is more federal money for research, particularly for mechanism of action research and things like that. So, people can be effective in that way. And I do think that this whole field is held back by prohibition. So, I think that the more people can get involved in state and local efforts to either move towards decriminalisation or the legalisation to the Oregon Psilocybin Initiative, things like that. I think that can be very effective because it’s been the prohibition and the stigma that has sort of blocked the acceptance of this, where there are still pockets of research.
Rick Doblin: I think the other part is religious freedom… but there should be a way for people to legally make the case that if you want to have a spiritual experience, but you want to do it independently, you don’t need a religion as part of it. All of that is on the theme of ending prohibition. The other is mental health parity and insurance. If we can get that across more and more, that will fuel all of these companies, because if they’re just relying on self-pay people, it’s going to be limited, as we said before. I think this idea of mental health parity in health insurance, if people can be working on that aspect, that will have a ripple effect throughout the whole industry of psychedelic businesses.
PSYCH: In your estimation, what does the world of psychedelic access and the future of MAPS look like in another 35 years?
Rick Doblin: Well, I am so glad you asked that, because actually we do think about what’s happening in 2050. But I’ll start by 2035. So, right now, 2021, attitudes have shifted. Everything is open. But I think we’re going to need a decade of psychedelic clinics rolling out. Already it’s happening with ketamine clinics, then in 2023 we hope MDMA for PTSD, and 2024, 2025, 2026 we hope psilocybin comes online and other things as well. There’s people working on mescaline, but I think that we’re going to need to have roughly 10 years of rollout of psychedelic clinics, and that will end up being hundreds of thousands and, eventually, millions of people treated. That will change public attitudes. And in 2035 is when I think we’ll move to what we call ‘licensed legalisation’, where you have a licence to do these drugs in any context. It’s like a driver’s licence, but it’s different. So, for example, alcohol, I think is regulated too lightly. You can buy a bunch of alcohol, get in your car, drive drunk, get pulled over, you lose your driver’s licence, but you still can go anywhere and buy alcohol as long as you’re of a certain age, get in your car and you kill people. There should be a (psychedelic) licence that can be taken away if you misbehave. And I think that will happen in 2035. We’ll get licensed legalisation for psychedelics.
Rick Doblin: We also need to change the attitudes towards what we do about young people. So, these licences will be for adults. But I think that there should be a parental override. If you want to give your kids psychedelics, you should be able to do it. And that is the way it’s done with the Native American Church, with peyote, with ayahuasca. The cultures that have successfully integrated psychedelics don’t have age limits. I was at a Native American peyote ceremony and a Navajo man brought his nine-year-old son, who stayed up the whole night. He took smaller amounts of peyote, but we need to bring this back to the family. So, 23 states in America have laws where parents can give alcohol to their children. You can override the laws against minors. So, we’re going to need that. I think 2035 is when we move to this licensed legalisation. And then I think by 2050, the goal is to have a more spiritualised humanity.
Rick Doblin: And we’re talking so much about climate change and people are talking about net zero carbon. What we need is a world of ‘net zero trauma’. And I think if we can really globalise access to psychedelic healing, destigmatise it and globalise this post-prohibition world by 2050 and a little bit less than another 35 years, we should have a net-zero-trauma world. And also we do need a big shift from fundamentalism to mysticism. So, we’ve got people killing each other over different religious ideas. You can’t force anybody to have these experiences, but hopefully if we have enough of a cultural context where people have had psychedelic mystical experiences, psychedelic unitive experiences, we will see kind of a move from fundamentalism, which is literalism, to symbolic metaphorical mysticism. So, hopefully, that’s by 2050.
Rick Doblin: I’ll make an appeal for membership. But I would make an appeal to all these for-profit companies that are making billion-dollar market caps or making a fortune, that they should realise what made this transition happen was the non-profits, the Beckley Foundation, Heffter, USONA, MAPS. Then it made it so that now the for-profits could come into the environment. And, hopefully, there will be some sense that as long as the non-profits are leading the way, that will make it easier for everybody. I’d like to encourage newly wealthy, for-profit psychedelic investors to make donations as well.
