Psychedelic Therapy: Beginning to AWAKN
At a street corner in the charming Clifton village, Bristol, I stand in front of a half-demolished building, of what used to be an Indian restaurant, under reconstruction. This once quaint meeting place for poppadom-eating and mindless dinner chats is now a hub standing at the forefront of a revolution in both psychiatry and the war on drugs.
Led by Dr Ben Sessa and Professor David Nutt, Awakn Life Sciences is a company whose mission is to combat the global mental health crisis epidemic by integrating psychedelic medicine into mainstream healthcare. With at least 17% of the population affected by mental health issues, the pioneering team aims to bring tried and tested compounds, which produce effective and transformative outcomes, into conventional medical practice. These compounds include ketamine, psilocybin, and MDMA. With years of drug policy laws preventing patient's access to such compounds, the team behind Awakn is finishing establishing the UK's first clinic for legal and fully licensed ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. Currently, ketamine is the only licensed "psychedelic" compound now available to use clinically. However, the clinic will eventually expand to using psilocybin, MDMA, and other psychedelic compounds in their treatment, which, with the growing rate of drug policy reformists, we expect to see shortly.
A photo of the new clinic from outside in construction
Despite 15 years of existing robust safety and efficacy data, for psychedelic treatments to become mainstream, further trials are still required before the MHRA licenses the medicines so they become available for free on the NHS. By opening the clinic as a private practice, the team will gather this data in the hope to show the governing bodies psychedelic therapy is worthwhile eventually leading towards free and open treatment for all of those in need. To tackle accessibility issues with privatisation, the team will look at reducing payments for certain patient groups. However, with alarmingly increasing numbers of those suffering from psychiatric disorders, opening a private practice will action the urgently needed push in psychedelic treatment. Dr. Sessa quotes:
"Eventually we will see these treatments on public health, but we don't know when and we can't sit and wait for the NHS to catch on and get started."
The clinic will be open to patients struggling with a whole host of mental health disorders, including depression, eating disorders, anxiety, OCD, and PTSD. However, patients will not be treated as a categorical diagnosis. The treatment model of therapy at Awakn will push the boundaries of psychiatry in terms of drugs being used and offer a forward approach to mental health treatment that works on the individual, not the disease. Whereas conventional medicine can often have a "one-size-fits-all" approach, with patients pigeon-holed into categorical diagnoses, the model at Awaken will take patients on a case-by-case basis. The treatment programs will be designed in a bespoke fashion, with both clinicians and patients themselves writing their care plans, and as the patient moves through the program, the treatments can be changed according to how they respond. Moving from an "off-the-shelf" to a patient-led and patient-centred approach could potentially change the whole paradigm of psychiatry itself that looks beyond just labelling a patient with a diagnosis.
Dr. Ben Sessa inside the building for the new clinic
Helping a patient heal using altered states of consciousness goes far beyond the drug experience itself. There will be extensive preparation for the drug-sessions, so patients can learn about the drug and plan what they would like to talk about in the drug-state. There will also be extensive integration, where considerable time in non-drug sessions will be dedicated to reflecting upon, discussing, and learning from the psychedelic experiences. Outside of talk therapy, the integration will include activities like yoga and meditation, offering patients various tools to help incorporate outcomes of the psychedelic experiences into their daily lives and well-being.
The building itself will consist of a staff room, reception, three patient drug-session / talk therapy rooms, and a relaxed and comfortable chillout area with soft lighting and music for patients in recovery. There will also be a research unit with an observation window for data collection so researchers outside Awakn can use the building to investigate their own psychedelic-psychotherapy research, for example looking at novel compounds in mental health treatment such as DMT, 5-MeO-DMT and other emerging clinical possibilities. The team is hoping to have the building fully established by January. Once the Bristol base is established, they plan to extend their services to London, Manchester, Birmingham, and Brighton.
Sessa looking through the soon-to-be research observation window
Beyond the clinic, the team at Awakn are both leading and have led pioneering clinical trials in the psychedelic renaissance, including investigating MDMA-for-Alcoholism, MDMA for PTSD, Ketamine for reduction of Alcoholic Relapse, and psilocybin for the treatment of tobacco addiction. They are also offering the first-course training course in Europe for pre-registered clinicians and psychotherapists to become psychedelic therapists. With psychedelic therapy rapidly growing, increasing the number of trained therapists available will support the movement through upskilled hands.
Meeting with Ben and visiting the new clinic, I can confidently say that Awakn is a trailblazer and a key figurehead in colonising new lands of psychiatry. With a trinity of new therapy, new research and newly trained specialists, this once-an-Indian-restaurant, will be a pioneer in our society's battle with mental health.
Myself (the blog author) and Sessa inside the Awakn clinic building