Psilocybin Needs To Be Rescheduled: Here's What You Can Do About It
In 2021, we must reschedule Psilocybin. Here's what you can do about it.
Psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, has the potential to save people from the brink of suicide, it can aid the undoing of years of negative behaviour and thought patterns, and has the capacity to heal both physical and psychological illness. The drug has proven effective for patients who don't respond to current treatments, and therapeutic effects persist for much longer, with fewer harmful side-effects, than conventional medications.
However, psilocybin is under Schedule 1 license, which means that it is more threatening and less therapeutically valuable than heroin in the eyes of the law. Such legal status raises considerable barriers in making it available as a medical therapy, which leaves patient groups seeking effective, alternative medical solutions at the risk of criminal sentences. It is clear we must take vital action to reschedule this drug.
Psilocybin containing mushrooms psilocybe semilanceata and psilocybe cubensis
Despite the vast amount of research throughout the 50s and 60s, which shows psychedelics to have a host of psychological and physical benefits, the Controlled Substances Act (1970) saw all psychedelic drugs brought under schedule 1 licensing. This license means the government has assigned them "no or little therapeutic value", making psychedelic research both time-consuming and expensive. Obtaining the license required to conduct research alone, can cost anywhere between £3000 and £20,000. And this doesn't even include the cost of the drugs themselves. In 2015, the cost for licensed psilocybin was an extortionate £100,000 for a gram. Considering a gram of psilocybin mushrooms contains approximately 1% psilocybin, the legal cost of psilocybin is one thousand times greater than it's street price (roughly £10 per gram of mushrooms).
In cases where patients have had access to psilocybin, whether through clinical trials or by visiting countries where the drug is legal, psilocybin-assisted therapy has had profound impacts on people's quality of life. One of these patients was Michael Bourne, who took part in the Imperial College London psilocybin for depression trial in 2016. He shared his experience in a short video:
“After my first treatment, everything changed, and literally within the same day. The experience transformed the way I thought; it put a whole new perspective on things. I felt alive, joyous, wanting to engage with everyone, and everything [...] I felt about 40 years younger. I don’t just mean while having the experience, I mean afterwards.”
The antidepressant relief that Michael felt from one psilocybin dose lasted a year, contrastive to the current one-a-day antidepressants commonly prescribed. And despite spending years on medication, Michael now hasn't taken antidepressants for over five years.
Michael's story is just one of many. A study in 2020 administered two doses of psilocybin to depression patients and found that over half the patients could no longer be categorised as clinically depressed one month following the treatment. A study in 2016 in cancer patients with a terminal diagnosis showed that a single psilocybin dose, in conjunction with psychotherapy, caused a 60-80% reduction in anxiety and depression symptoms. Furthermore, a small study in 2006 found that psilocybin could successfully treat OCD.
The results of a study experiment showing the average decrease in a patient's Hamilton depression score (a measure of depressive symptoms) 2-4 weeks following psilocybin therapy.
The breadth of the therapeutic potential of psilocybin also stretches beyond psychological diagnosis. A crucial example of this is cluster headaches. Cluster headaches are an excruciatingly painful physical condition where repeated attacks are likened to being stabbed in the eye. With no adequate current treatment for the condition, suicide rates for those suffering from cluster headaches are significantly higher than the average. However, anecdotal and scientific findings have pointed to psilocybin as a solution. For example, one small survey found that psilocybin could stop attacks in 85% of patients, and halt the cluster headache cycle period altogether in 50% of study patients.
Indications from a host of sources have highlighted the benefits of psilocybin, from treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to tinnitus. If scientific evidence can support such claims, we could easily predict psilocybin being brought to mainstream healthcare, providing people with access to a potentially life-changing medicine. But with the current scheduling law, doing the necessary research is challenging.
Founded by Reigate MP Crispin Blunt, the Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group (CDPRG) is an organisation devoted to drug policy reform, including the rescheduling of psilocybin with evidence-based and public-health focus. By gathering and presenting evidence from several important and relevant groups, including medicine, law enforcement, economics and human rights, they advocate for a change in drug policy, and highlight the urgency of the matter to centrist and right-wing political groups. Under a UK Conservative government, they are pushing the issue at the front lines of change.
The Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group logo and their report on medical uses of psilocybin which is available online
In efforts to see psilocybin rescheduled, the CDPRG published a report on the medical uses of psilocybin in July 2020. Now, they are urging people to write to their MP. Unlike signing a petition, writing a letter or email humanises your actions, showing that you are a real person, from a real address. Even if there is policy disagreement, it is the job of an MP to represent you. The more people who write to their MPs raising their concerns about current psilocybin scheduling, the more pressure MPs from across the country will have to raise the issue with the relevant ministers and departments, meaning the more likely that change will occur.
Writing to your MP is not a long process. The CDPRG even has written template available, making the process minimal effort. Yet, the effect that sending these letters can have is significant. With as many people as possible demanding reconsideration of psilocybin as a schedule 1 drug, alongside effort from the CDPRG and similar campaign groups, policy makers won't be able to ignore our messages. Regardless of cognitive liberty, regardless of harms caused by stigmatisation, and regardless of the marginalisation people have faced by prohibition, changing the UK psilocybin scheduling laws is a medical necessity. That's why we must take action, manifest public pressure and demand a more hopeful future.
