Inside the underground world of psychedelic therapy and the controversial charity striving to bring the treatment into the mainstream.
Nine unknown relatives are about to embark on a psychedelic journey into the woods outside of Sydney.
Its organizer is a guru who offers healing and hope in the form of bags of green-gray powdered cactus dust: mescaline, the psychedelic drug.
The drug is illegal in Australia, but people here seem impatient. They say the benefits are worth the risks.
Some are simply here for an adventure, but for many there is something deeper.
Mescaline is illegal in Australia. (Four Corners: Nick Wiggins. Images: US National Archives, Library of Congress, State Library of Queensland, Biodiversity Heritage Library, NASA)
They are traumatized, struggling with life and hoping to overcome the pain.
“It’s like a big reset of your brain,” explains one participant, Jenny.
“It’s like you’re a computer that’s gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, and then you just hit the reset button and start over.”
It’s not the first time she’s sought healing through psychedelics, but it’s her first with mescaline. It is clear that he is anxious.
She lines up with the others and quickly swallows a mixture of gluggy cactus powder and organic apple juice. The group plans to walk through the national park until nightfall.
After an hour Jenny will feel the effects.
“It’s kind of a big life reset,” he offers.
“I think this medicine, what it does, takes the logic out of it. You just go into your body and you forget what it’s like to be in your body because we fall into these…” he trails off, looking off into the distance.
“Ah, I can’t do that.” She is crying.
Psilocybin is one of the psychedelic drugs that have been tested. (Four Corners: Nick Wiggins. Images: Biodiversity Heritage Library, State Library of New South Wales and courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd, NASA)
Across the country, people like Jenny are drawn to the hope and hype of psychedelic drugs like psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms), LSD, and MDMA (commonly known as ecstasy).
The hope that psychedelics hold the key to treating a range of mental health problems, from anxiety to depression to PTSD, is not without merit. There are clinical trials underway around the world, including in Australia, showing promising results.
But some scientists say there is much more work to be done before these powerful drugs can be safely made available to the masses.
The banker and the opera singer
At a health and wellness retreat on the Sunshine Coast, investment banker Peter Hunt and his wife, opera singer Tania de Jong, have been fasting for several days and hope to regain their mission.
Their psychedelic journey began on a trip to the Netherlands a few years earlier, where they ingested a large legal dose of the psychedelic drug known as “Psilohuascha” through a private therapist.
“It was wild,” says Peter.
“It was like nothing I had ever experienced before.”
Peter Hunt and Tania de Jong. (Four Corners: Nick Wiggins. Images: Biodiversity Heritage Library and Four Corners)
Tania describes it as “one of the most profound experiences of our lives”.
It inspired them to found the only registered charity in Australia advocating the use of psychedelic therapy to treat mental illness, Mind Medicine Australia (MMA).
In just three years, they have established a for-profit training institute, a hotline, and are lobbying to legalize psychedelics for therapeutic use in clinical settings.
“We see a lot of people out there suffering and we’re determined to get these therapies into the medical system so that psychiatrists can use them with their patients,” says Peter.
But the MMA is mired in controversy, with former employees alleging internal chaos, allegations of underground links and claims it has used threats and intimidation to silence critics.
The drug cook
The MMA’s mission to bring psychedelic therapy to the masses faces a major hurdle: getting Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) to reschedule the drugs.
So far this obstacle has not been overcome.
Tania says that with state and federal regulations involved, the process has been complicated.
“And often, you’re dealing with bureaucrats who are quite challenged by change,” he says.
“Because you know, this is a paradigm shift.”
The charity’s TGA application would have allowed both MDMA and psilocybin to be used in therapeutic settings.
The application was drafted with the help of key scientific adviser Victor Chiruta, who until recently was listed on the charity’s website under the heading “management team”.
“Victor has great scientific knowledge,” says Peter.
Victor Chiruta is also a convicted drug cook.
Producing drugs such as MDA, MDMA or psilocybin is illegal in Australia. (Four Corners: Nick Wiggins. Images: Biodiversity Heritage Library, Public Domain Pictures, NASA)
Court documents obtained by Four Corners reveal earlier this year he pleaded guilty to manufacturing 57 grams of the drug MDA, a drug similar to MDMA. He was arrested in 2014 after police allegedly uncovered a commercial-scale illegal drug lab in the Blue Mountains.
“We’re aware that he’s struggling and we’ve given character references,” explains Peter, noting that Chiruta is also disabled after suffering burns to his body.
Tania tells Four Corners she is not worried about Victor’s role in the charity.
“Actually, I’m not sure why you’re making such a big deal about it,” he says.
“We’re trying to focus on making the people who suffer well, so it seems like this is a bit of water.”
“Try the Medicines”
Although the use of psychedelic drugs in therapy is illegal in Australia, outside of strictly controlled trials, MMA has started to run a training certificate for psychedelic therapists.
Tania says that finding participants is not a problem.
“Being a psychedelic therapist is probably one of the hottest and, I guess, sexiest professions out there right now,” he says.
For $9,000, these hopeful psychedelic therapists can take a four-month, mostly online training course run by MMA’s for-profit Mental Medicine Institute (MMI).
People have paid $9,000 for MMI’s primarily online training course. (Four Corners: Nick Wiggins. Images: Biodiversity Heritage Library, NASA, Navy Medicine)
They receive the MMI Psychedelic Assisted Therapy Certificate.
Melbourne psychotherapist Yury Shamis signed up for the first registration, hoping for an accredited course.
“[The] the reality was that it was a good course, but it was not accredited at all. So the certificate didn’t really mean anything,” he said.
PhD student Kayla Greenstein enrolled last year, when the course was plagued with delays due to COVID.
“It was certainly presented as if this would become legal in Australia … that Mind Medicine would be the one to certify people.
“I now recognize that if I had spent more time on YouTube, I could have found much of the same information I learned in that course, and I certainly didn’t get anything practical out of it.
“[I] I finally decided to leave and received a partial refund.”
One of the issues raised in the psychedelic community was a “major healthy people trial” that MMA announced it would fund earlier this year, in which 200 participants could “experience the drugs.”
An email sent by the charity stated that it had secured MDMA for the trial and that “this trial will give graduates and participants of our Certificate in Psychedelic Assisted Therapies (CPAT) program the opportunity to undergo psychedelic assisted therapy in a clinically controlled setting.”.
MMA announced a trial in which participants could “experience the drugs.” (Four Corners: Nick Wiggins. Images Unsplash/am JD, Biodiversity Heritage Library, NASA)
Dr Emma Tumilty, a bioethicist at Deakin University, says the publicity raised suspicions “that the research was being used partly as a vehicle to provide access to the drug so that MMA could provide training that included this expertise”.
“That would, of course, be ethically and scientifically inappropriate.” she says.
Ultimately, the ethics committee which conditionally approved the trial ordered the charity to withdraw an advertisement for the study. MMA says “a violation has been committed innocently”.
After inquiries from Four Corners, the ethics committee reported that the trial was being withdrawn late last week.
“That would be the end of charity”
Former MMA employees Diego Pinzon and his partner Scarlet Barnett worked on fundraising and PR for the charity.
A few weeks after starting work, they were called into a meeting with Tania de Jong after Scarlet became upset at work.
Scarlet Barnett (Four Corners: Nick Wiggins. Images: Biodiversity Heritage Library, NASA, Four Corners)
The couple says they started asking if Scarlet had any trauma or other issues.
“And then he suggested, ‘Because if you have abuse, you might consider MDMA therapy. I think this could be really beneficial for you. And here is someone you can call or contact. You can arrange a session with them. ‘” Scarlet says.
Scarlet claims she was given Yury Shamis’ number.
“He offered MDMA and psilocybin together as a session. And I think it would cost about $2,000,” recalls Scarlet.
“He told me that if he decided to go ahead, I would have to let him know very soon, because he books about four months in advance.”
Peter and Tania strongly deny that they have ever referred anyone to underground psychedelic therapy and say they do not encourage people to break the law.
“We know there are good psychedelic therapists working underground. And yet we can’t refer these people to these people,” explains Peter.
“If we did that, and if we were caught doing that, that would be the end of charity.”
Yuri
Yury Shamis’ therapy rooms are located above a shared house in the Melbourne suburb of Balaclava. In the front yard, his sign has been defaced and reads “Dr Psycho Sham.”
Yury is a…