‘People Should have the Fundamental Human Right To Change Their Consciousness’
WHEN PSYCHEDELIC DRUGS finally become legal in the United States and elsewhere around the world, the lion’s share of the credit will go to Rick Doblin. Since founding the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in 1986, Doblin has argued forcefully for the benefits of frequently demonized substances such as MDMA, LSD, psilocybin, and ibogaine in helping people cope with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, and other debilitating problems. For decades, Doblin and MAPS have been pushing not just for social and cultural acceptance but also for legal and medical legitimacy.
MAPS is currently sponsoring Phase 3 clinical trials of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy as a treatment for PTSD. Within the next few years, if all goes well, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to approve MDMA—a.k.a. Ecstasy, which the federal government banned in 1985 as a dangerous party drug—for use by prescription as a psychotherapeutic catalyst. Further down the line, psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin, which the FDA has recognized as a “breakthrough therapy” for depression, could undergo a similar legal transformation.
The rehabilitation of these once-vilified substances is a remarkable development that signals growing recognition of their life-enhancing uses and perhaps growing tolerance of people who choose to explore that potential. During a late-February ride from Manhattan to the John F. Kennedy International Airport, Reason Editor at Large Nick Gillespie talked with Doblin about his role in this psychedelic renaissance and the experiences that drew him to the movement.
“I’m very much a child of the Cold War,” Doblin says, recalling how he was taught to “duck and cover” at school during the Cuban missile crisis. His fear of nuclear Armageddon, ecological catastrophe, and genocide was the initial impetus for his vision of “mass mental health” facilitated by psychedelics, which he believes can have a unifying effect when used properly.
Although MAPS is doing everything by the book in seeking approval of MDMA as a prescription drug, Doblin’s vision goes beyond such doctor-approved uses. He aspires to a world in which people can use psychedelics responsibly without permission from physicians or priests. “Psychedelics are tools,” Doblin says. “They’re not good or bad in and of themselves. It’s how
