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- In 2012, a team of British researchers asked the question,

what would happen if we treated 20 people suffering from

severe depression with magic mushrooms?

It took them three years to get permission to find out.

I've tried I think maybe six or eight different

antidepressants and have never worked.

It I can't be for patients has been four years ago,

I realized that I couldn't go in on us.

You know, she didn't say anything.

Find a way to change

About 50% of people don't respond to antidepressants

and one in six of them go on to kill themselves.

So we really should be exploring

every other treatment available.

With me, what I've always been desperate to do is to try

and find a physical reason for feeling this way.

Although I didn't want to take my life,

I didn't want to wake up.

I want to go to sleep, just not have to face severe.

Depression is so prevalent, everyone's exposed to it.

We're looking at giving psilocybin to patients

with quite severe treatment resistant major depression.

- I don't think it's normal to feel the way

I do the anxiety,

the fear the terror panic. If this

is living then it sucks. It really does.

- LSD was isolated by stolen Hoffman in a Sandoz

pharmaceutical company of Basel, Switzerland.

The door swung wide open for research

into the nature of this piece of reading process,

and in a larger sense into the biochemistry of psychosis.

between 1950 and 1965 40,000 patients were prescribed

a psychedelic drug for neuroses, schizophrenia

and psychopathy.

These trials resulted in over 1000 scientific papers.

If you have enough

Is that a beautiful experience?

I would say

- when psychedelics became available

to the wider public

in the 1960s, dramatic changes in attitudes and behavior.

- This is one area where we cannot have budget cuts,

because we must wage what I have called Total War

against public enemy number one in the United States,

the problem of dangerous drugs

in 1971, under pressure from President Nixon,

the UN declared that all psychedelic drugs

should be classified as schedule one.

- One of the difficulties in terms of schedule one drugs,

including psilocybin, is that

because they're in schedule one,

this has discouraged any research

into the middle medical value of that drug

and there's been virtually nothing in the world Research

ever since 1960s.

- With backing from the Medical Research Council,

the team at Imperial College London are conducting

the first ever clinical trial of psilocybin,

the active ingredient of magic mushrooms.

- This isn't a job to rush if you think

that somebody could have one of

the most profound experiences of their whole lives

and they're ready for the music here.

- That was taken was a winter of 2010

when it was really cold and we had a lot of snow

so happy time.

I was Yeah, yeah, it was really nice. Yeah. I mean today

going down to Imperial,

it's actually Hammersmith hospital. And

tomorrow is the first dosing day.

Can you put into words how important this is?

But sir

That's a tough one

well we woke up Mikey got a call was it

seems there was a fight so thank you

for rolling resolving that put my readers on.

And because we're gonna sleep upstairs

so we thought the price if

we wait into the kitchen for some reason

during the session there was a tickle in the kitchen.

We just thought oh well it's just not much.

We'll be we'll be fine.

And the next thing we knew that when we come

back a few hours leading up

to the step in there, how does

that affect you in the knowledge of the trial coming up,

aim right at that point I thought

I'm not going to do I can't do it.

But for me, it's the last chance.

I think this is that, you know,

I don't think there's any all medicines

that title these ones that's been made in a lab

and none of what, you know the very short term impacts

and then nothing.

Over the past 30 years,

I've had maybe 30 different types of medication,

antidepressants, some of them have worked for a short time

some work for a bit longer but they all kind of tail off

was I had a CT at 23

sessions of which I've been told worked for a period

But then the effects you know, wore off.

So I do feel like this trial is another kind of last chance

to make any kind of change for me, but I felt that before.

Robin Carhartt Harris is the trial lead

and head of psychedelic research at Imperial College.

I have suffered from clinical depression.

You know, I've been through some dark times.

So I think that kind of thing helps you have sympathy

for people who suffer from New disorders in general.

psychedelics are, for me easily the best tool

that exists to study both the mind and the brain.

I think it has the potential to revolutionize depression

treatment, if not psychiatry,

Professor David Nutt, head of neuro psychopharmacology

will oversee the trial.

This part of the brain is called the cortex.

And in the cortex, you do your hearing and your seeing etc.

but also in this part of the cortex,

particularly this bit here goes from the front

to the back here.

There's the sense of self.

It integrates what you can see and hear

and with what you can think and feel.

And serotonin is an important chemical in the brain.

It's a fundamental neurotransmitter

for regulating brain function,

particularly in the emotional sphere.

And what psilocybin and other plant products do is

to stimulate those receptors

and by stimulating them we can mimic serotonin in the brain,

and sometimes perhaps,

do more than serotonin is doing

because in some people say returning

may not be working adequately.

As it will launch

into more symbolic

one life into another.

Sometimes you think they be strong because you don't want

to come across as an emotional mess.

I woke in the early hours and I was weeping

and I don't know where it came from.

It's quite difficult. It's it's quite tough

their two days is the first time Simply

to test the volunteers tolerance to the drug.

And the treatment days will follow a week later.

Each trip lasts about six hours.

And a psychologist and psychiatrist always in the room.

The experience of taking the capsules is going

to be very significant for him.

He's never experienced anything like this at all

in his life.

And he's a scientist.

He's someone that really enjoys kind of the predictability

of testing hypotheses and problems

that can be solved without actually

so this is a huge departure from that.

I can remember being in the doctor's

and feeling absolutely ashamed of where i was.

You know, I worked as a scientist and as a team leader,

and out of the blue,

I was told that I had to work in a procurement department

and this was pretty much my vision of how Really,

there was just this a base that was in front of me.

And I went to see the occupational health nurse.

Before I knew it was in floods of tears

and just completely burned down.

And she said to me, there's something seriously wrong me.

And yeah, we're, what, 13 years down the road now.

Real laughs a minute.

I have been thinking about it quite a lot this afternoon.

I'm worried that he's so different,

that I take a long time to catch up,

and he loses patience with me.

So yeah, I'm a bit concerned.

I'm going to get left behind. Oh oh

Very powerful, very powerful going.

And that was that was two capsules next week.

So five capsules

What are your thoughts about next Wednesday?

They're probably more anxious, actually, if I'm honest,

because of what came up today.and that I know

that could get amplified next Wednesday.

So I think there's a battle there that's not done yet.

- He was taken back to a very, very difficult memory

which he didn't think was a memory.

It was kind of a new experience that he was going through

of having his mother on the one side

and his father on the other having to choose between them.

And he went to be with the very calm, benevolent energy

of his dad, and he felt the presence of this dad there.

He said he actually really kind of met his dad again

and felt his dad wrapped around him.

He could feel the knit of the cardigan his dad used to wear.

So that was a really difficult

but also very positive powerful experiences.

- It's a huge responsibility for you, this.

Do you get sort of scared or nervous?

- I do, I think if you're giving a incredibly powerful

psychoactive drug to individuals

who are especially vulnerable,

you have to think about negative psychological responses.

You have to think about anxiety.

You have to think about fear and potential panic.

- Let's just carry on breathing naturally.

And then I'd like you to imagine

that you're lying down in a beautiful woodland.

You're in a clearing,

and the ground is covered with green most, soft and springy.

- I think depression's about like an addict.

You learn to hide it from people.

people in arms.

I don't want no sympathy.

I don't even want a lot of kindness.

And I would like to go into the bedroom

and close the curtains, put the lights off, and just stare.

- It's a big day, probably as big a day as our wedding day

maybe 'cause this could be the start

of a new life, fingers crossed.

- In mental health, you just have to go

into an inpatient ward anywhere and realize

that we need something new.

So John and the other patients in the trial

have got what's called treatment-resistant depression,

which means they've tried three different types

of treatment and nothing's worked.

I think the name treatment-resistant depression

is really a bad name 'cause you can't say

that John's depression is resitant to treatment.

It's just that we haven't found the right treatments yet.

- How are you feeling today?

- All right, certainly more positive than I was before,

I am,

but I definitely felt that there was something

I couldn't achieve on the first dose.

It felt like I could identify there was a problem,

but I couldn't quite grasp it or tackle it, you know?

It's not like I'm feeling euphoria or high

or happiness or, I just don't feel rubbish, you know?

And so if this is all it does, then that's fine.

But hopefully it'll do more.

- I'd just really like to get to the bottom of it

or have somebody help me get to the bottom of it.

- Difficult to know what to expect.

I sort of feel like I don't know him well enough

as perhaps we should at this stage,

so that doesn't feel ideal.

It's the low dose today.

Essentially, I know he'll be fine physically,

so let's just go into it with the right attitude,

really, and support him.

- Do you feel ready to take the capsules now?

- Yeah, I'm fine to take that.

- Here's a glass of water for you, all right?

- Mark hasn't really revealed to us why he's depressed.

I don't think he knows, and now the taking

of this drug is about trying to understand

where this is coming from, what this block is.

- I can't pinpoint a date or an event

that could possibly be the cause of it.

Over all this time, I think it must be something biological.

I don't expect a magic wand,

to go, "Wow, you feel all the sudden great,

"and you're you for doing anything!"

Kind of what I do expect is just not to feel

so cripplingly negative about everything

that it infringes upon my daily life.

- Are you hopeful?

I am hopeful for Mark because if I wasn't hopeful,

that would be a problem in itself.

I firmly believe that this drug

is a route out of what can other be an insoluble problem.

- The nature of the drug effects are that they induce

a kind of malleability or plasticity,

so like they free things up so that they can change.

And I think what can be characteristic of depression

is that there are things that aren't conscious

and you don't realize the contribution to your state.

- Yeah, that all makes, it makes sense.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

- Well, I hope you have a nice--

- Yeah. - And easy evening.

If ever you're worried about anything

or you just wanna ask anything, you can give me a call.

- Okay.

- There are 16 ways in which drugs

can do harm to you or to society.

There are nine ways they can harm the user,

and those are the blues bars, and the size of the red bar,

the harm of the drug to society.

So alcohol is the most harmful drug in Europe and the UK,

and the reason for that is the size of that red bar.

It's not the most damaging drug to the user.

Being on to the right, then you have heroin

and crack and methamphetamine.

They have bigger blue bars.

And the drugs that the media get hysterical about,

they're on the right-hand.

They're ecstasy, LSD, magic mushrooms.

They have virtually no harm to society

and considerably less harm to the user than alcohol.

Making these drugs illegal stops people researching them,

even though the UN Convention said,

"Oh, no, we're perfectly happy for you

"to carry on researching them.

"You just have to comply with the regulations."

No one has managed to get through those regulations

to do clinical trial of LSD in 50 years.

- And what do you think does have to happen

in order for decriminalization to happen in the UK?

Like, is it with a politician,

or is it with the research?

Is it with the people, what--

- What has to happen is we've gotta have

completely public debate, and you've gotta hold MPs

up to account when they are either not discussing this

or talking rubbish about it.

And the media, too, you know?

When are people lying about the harms of drugs,

you've gotta challenge them all the time.

- Baroness Molly Meacher has spent 10 years

as a crossbencher in the House of Lords

campaigning for the liberalization of drug laws.

- UK governments tend to be very conservative

on drug policy, much more conservative

than many Western European countries

and of course the vast majority of U.S. states.

And that's something to do with our media, I think.

They've been very hostile to reform in this area,

which is probably something to do

with the conservatism of the British people.

- So where are we off to now?

- We're gonna go and pick up the capsules.

It's the second dose now, so this is where

things get even more interesting.

It's gonna be quite a high dose, 25 milligrams.

- And why are they down here?

- Oh, it's in, hi, Matt, how's it going?

- All right, let's get the key out.

- Sure!

So the drug has to be stored securely.

In order to do research with Schedule I drugs,

we a Home Office license, so it's stored in this secure area

in a locked safe that's actually bolted to the wall.

- What exactly is this?

- This is psilocybin, so this is the psychoactive ingredient

in so-called magic mushrooms.

- How does that compare

to the sort of recreational dose?

- It's quite a high dose, actually,

2 1/2 grams of mushroom material

or you know, hundreds, a couple of hundred

little liberty cap magic mushrooms.

So anyone doing that, you'd consider really

taking quite a high dose, so yeah,

there's no messing about.

- So I'm ready for the exam.

You can't go on living like you have done

for the last 20 years because it doesn't get better.

It does get worse.

Yeah, when I think back to late November last year,

that was about as bad as it had got.

And that was, that scared me.

But we're beyond that.

I'm extraordinarily lucky to be here.

- Please go away, please go away!

Oh, please go away, oh god, no!

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

No, no, no, no, no!

- Hey, Andy.

- No, no! - Andy, it's okay.

With Andy, if you asked him what had been

making him struggle or depressed,

he would say experiences with his work

and not feeling good enough there,

but that didn't even come into the sessions at all,

and it was more about his early childhood experiences

of suffering in pain.

- I need more spaghetti. - Does it want to come inside?

- I need more spaghetti.

- Okay, what about letting it in?

We're here with you, Andy, now.

- No, no, no, no, no, no.

No, no. - Okay.

These kind of early childhood experiences

will often be repressed.

People can go through their whole lives

without ever really facing those demons,

but it's not as if the demons they've pushed down

don't cause any suffering because they're there.

- This is so

- Just let it be here and see what it's here to show you.

- Oh, god. - And know that you're safe.

- I'm afraid it won't go away, won't go away, won't go away.

- Just a small improvement would be lovely,

just for him to feel differently about things

and see the world through a different pair of eyes.

- Hello!

- Andy! - How are you doing?

- How was it?

- Yeah, yeah. - Oh!

- Extraordinary, extraordinary.

- Is that different from last time?

- Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah.

You knew that this was the big ride.

This is the one that changed things.

And of course, it's left lots and lots of questions, really,

but those I think the answers to those

will come out in good time.

- Yeah. - Dad was there.

- Yes. - Dad was there.

- Good. - Yeah.

- Oh, that's lovely.

- Yeah, couple a times, actually.

Couple a times he was there. - Yes.

- Where it was headed was dangerous to me.

It was a dangerous path, but no, no.

It's all, we're okay now, we're okay.

- You're right.

- All is resolved.

- Bye-bye.

- See you tomorrow.

Cheerio.

Have a nice evening.

- I could feel that he was suffering so much,

but I could also feel that it was really important

for him to be suffering, so I was kind of pleased

in a weird way that he was going through it,

thinking, "Yes, now we're getting to the stuff," you know?

"This is what's been causing you so much suffering,

"so we need to get it out."

And he was really in a battle with a large, dark, evil force

that he associated with his mum.

- Get away.

Get away.

You're not coming in.

- There was so much darkness and so much pain.

There were moments of thinking, "Where is this gonna go?

"How's it gonna be by the end of the day?"

You know, what if this doesn't get resolved?

There was a sense from the last session

of his dad being kind of wonderful,

and his mum being kind of terrible and evil.

- We're all done and dead.

I'm telling you, we're all dead, we're all dead.

- What sort of evolved out of today

is that it really doesn't matter.

If there was one person doing right,

the other one doing wrong, what actually matters

at the end is resolution and love

because that is the big thing that came out for me today

is that the more you hate something,

the more you feed it with that hate,

the bigger it gets, and that's what's been going on.

I've been feeding this thing, it's been consuming me,

and now I've got to the realization

that if I stop feeding it with hate,

it evaporates, it goes away.

Shh, it's, oh, yes, yes, yes.

- Are you out?

- Ah!

And as soon as that realization occurred,

because I had the representation of my father

and Vonnie and the boys on my chest,

but I didn't have a representation of Mom.

So I took a picture and brought here in to that union,

really, at the end, and we were kinda one again,

but one helluva a battle.

I wouldn't wanna do it again.

I've been the happiest ever in my life,

and I've been the most terrified in my life

in the same day, probably in the space of half an hour.

- So good.

- Mm, really good.

Exhausting, but really, really, very good.

And I mean, well, the proof is in the pudding, you know?

Today was good, it was intense.

It was good, it was tough, all the things I hope for,

but we will see how Andy's feeling tomorrow, next week.

And the really key thing is in a week, a month,

few months, that's what's really important.

- Hi, good to see you, how you doing?

- All right, yeah, yourself?

- Yeah, we're all right, yeah.

- Yeah? - Yeah.

My mind's been racing about, you know,

what could be or how could be.

- And you have

- Oh yeah, yeah, but more about what it could be

that's coming .

- I think we should get into the room

well ahead of time and settle down and talk to the others.

- Okay. - If you remember last time.

- Okay.

- Last week we had somebody in the study

who had a particularly strong response to psilocybin,

probably the strongest psychedelic experience

I've ever sat with, and that's kind of raised,

raised my kind of alertness, really, about today.

It's just a reminder, really, never to underestimate

the power, really, of a psychedelic drug

and the alterations in consciousness that they can induce.

- Tell us what's on your mind?

- I don't know why, it just feels like it stopped.

It feels like it, I just wanna go home, that's what I want.

- Just wanna go home.

- Yeah. - How come?

- I don't know, it just, that's just, I mean.

Did you really get--

- Today John nearly left, which was quite a dilemma for us

because on the one, we want to keep him here

and keep him safe, but we also didn't wanna

keep him here against his will.

And so it was difficult.

- It's probably a bit early for you to go as yet.

I mean, can you just hold off a little bit longer?

- I don't know, just wanna go home today.

- Yeah, is there anything at all?

- There was just, I think,

well, when I close my eyes and try and,

I try and sleep, I just will feel like

when a bad dream in to the next.

That what it feels like.

- It wasn't really what I would've planned or expected.

I didn't even realize that's what John needed,

but looking back, I see it was what he needed.

It was like the first dose was like lulling him into it.

It gave him a sense of it's okay, I can do this.

And then the second dose, it's like,

right, now the real work begins.

- Okay, I probably should've left.

- And the real work isn't experiencing

some lovely feeling of love from the world.

The work is going on a journey within yourself,

finding that nugget of pain,

and integrating it into your life.

- I'm really hoping and praying that it has worked.

Up until now, with John being ill,

I've been mum and dad to the kids.

And now, it might be that I can share

the load again and it won't just be me.

It's be me and John working as a team

like we used to do all those years ago.

- Your wife's over here.

- Hello!

How're you feeling?

2 1/2 .

- Really?

- Yeah.

Oh, I nearly left.

- Why?

- It was just, I got upset, horrible.

And then they, some very kind people

convinced me to stay in the room.

- Did they tie you down?

- No, no, they--

- Really, really. - It was physical.

- Actually-- - No physical restraint.

- I think a lot's been sort of experienced today.

- Okay.

- And been, yeah, just a little rockier than last time?

- Oh, yeah, yeah.

- At one point, but I think maybe because of that,

maybe there's more benefits being had from this experience--

- Yeah. - Than last week.

- Yeah, it was bad in terms of what I experienced

but necessary for actually--

- Does that mean you can

get rid of the beard, John?

- No, yeah-- - Oh!

- A miner poked me and said,

"Grow it till it's down to your knees!"

- Oh!

- At first, I really didn't think it was working.

It wasn't until the very end when I could set

and then reflect on it that I could see what had happened.

All these things that happened to me when I was a kid,

it made me face very single one of 'em,

and nobody wants to do that.

But yeah, so it was an extremely horrible afternoon,

the worst experience in my life.

Sometimes I could hear bugs,

as if a bug was crawling through the ground.

The images that I saw was of this massive

sort of black-and-red iron thing

with huge spikes pointing into it.

But the experience that it relates to was

when some took my T-shirt off

and threw me in this massive patch of nettles,

and I was beat with a hawthorn branches,

and the bugs that I heard were the bugs

that I heard when I was on the ground afterwards crying.

The sharp spikes on the big black-and-red thing

were the thorns on the branch.

It was almost like absolutely everything

was trying its hardest to see this is the problem.

You know, it makes me feel that depression

is a way we cope, as a kid we build up

psychological protections for ourself

but at some point in your adult life,

we have to come terms with that and deal with it,

and there is no natural part of life

that we have in modern society that allows that to happen.

Counseling doesn't do it, antidepressants won't do it.

But this thing does do that.

It takes you straight there, exactly what Robin promised.

It will take you to that place.

Whatever the problem is, it will take you straight to that,

and you have to decide there and then

whether you're going to be a victim of that

for the rest of your life or not.

- John?

- What? - Hi, John.

How you doing?

- Doing much better.

- Great, that's good to know. - Good.

- What I was just thinking was it wasn't some

external spiritual force,

or it wasn't someone's counseling technique.

It's actually oneself that does the healing in the end.

- You look at these images, you can see the cortex.

That the outer part of the brain here.

And this is a kind of spine to the cortex,

and this seem to be particularly implicated in depression.

Now, what psilocybin does is to introduce

a degree of chaos, if you want,

almost like a kind of scrambling effect

as a kind of resetting of the brain,

and it sort of settles in a healthy mode of function.

- Oh, that's the reason for the scans,

for the definite--

- That's what we're doing now, really, yeah.

- It's really interesting.

- Yeah.

- Tell us whether you'd have been able

to walk around London a month ago.

- No, I wouldn't have done that.

Coming in here, a place in London,

the corner of Oxford Street and Regent Street

where it's so mobbed, I just wouldn't have done that.

I'm enjoying that, you know?

It's nice, you're not sitting thinking about yourself

or thinking about anything depressing

or bad or dark or deep.

It feels good, it feels like there's a lightness, you know?

That is like a burden that's been lifted.

That's what it feels like.

It's like someone's just come along, and they've taken away

everything that was weighing you down.

- Today, I just really wanna get it

over and done with, basically.

I don't really have any hopes or predictions

or ideas about what might happen or really...

Let's just get on with it, really, yeah.

- I feel really tired, hungover.

Massively abnormal feelings forming that I've,

not sure if I've ever experienced in my adult life.

- Do you feel like it's something that's,

you'd want to work on?

- I kinda wanna work on it,

'cause I don't wanna feel like this or yeah,

feel like this or how I've felt

for the majority of my life anymore.

There was nothing that like linked back

to like this is what caused your depression.

You know, you use these tools and work it out.

And it's like it's still a massive mystery to me.

- And is that disappointing?

- It's no more disappointing than every other day,

so yeah.

- How old were you when you came to ?

- I'm just trying to think.

I know the first Christmas I had a red trike,

so I'd gotta be 3 1/2 or three.

Somehow it looked, it's so much smaller than I remember.

And you saw the little window on the ground floor.

- Oh, yeah.

- That's where I used to sit with Lynn on the stairs

listening to a in the lounge.

Going into the treatment, I thought, now,

is it gonna be the sort of conflict I had at work,

or is it gonna be the family?

Strangely, I've not even thought much

about what happened at work.

Well, that was momentous for me then.

It's kind of, it's automatically just sort of drifted back

to what went on in that house down there.

That's where the damage was done.

Just give me a minute down here.

- This is probably the third or fourth time

we've been back as a couple to see where he's lived.

And all he's ever done is remembered it with fondness.

"This is where I grew up, and I loved this,

"and I did this, and I did this with Dad."

And today, it's just more painful.

- A change has occurred, there's no doubt about that.

A change has occurred, but it's not,

it's not the easy change

that I thought it would be.

It's a bit as though I had ingested

a really, really good therapist.

That's what it feels like.

It feels of I've got onboard now my own therapist.

- Okay.

- Cheers! - Thank you so much,

and thanks for everything, really.

- It's a pleasure.

- I know it's a work in progress, but you know,

I think thing's are moving in the right direction.

I'm not sure if it's correct or not,

but the way I look at it is that I've been unhappy

for so long that I think that unhappiness

has spilled obviously into my life and my relationships,

and I think there's a residue that's gotta be dealt with.

But the other thing was this awful image that I had

with the smothering, this awful image that--

- That your dad didn't want you, the rejection?

- Yeah, yeah.

What is that?

- Let it happen.

- Trying to make sure they can pull out the memory.

I could actually see the pillow,

and then suddenly the realization was, you know,

that I'm being smothered.

Oh, no, Father, no, no.

- Stay here with us, just let it--

- No, no, no, no, no

no, no, no, no, no.

That feeling was real, then the realization

that it was Dad doing it was real.

Really beat up on me that badly?

All I can remember about my dad is good,

and that's why I think I can't ever imagine him

wanting to dispatch me with a pillow.

'Cause there are lovely memories of getting up

at sort of 4:30 in the morning and going on his milk route,

you know, these crystal-clear images of those times,

and they were really pleasant.

- Your mind will allow you to remember those things,

those positive memories.

- Yep.

- Anything that is confusing or conflictual

might be something that you'd wanna keep away--

- Yeah, yeah. - From your memories

and your conscious mind. - Yeah, yeah.

Okay. - After you, are we all going?

- Often in a psychedelic dose, the person will experience

the same fragility, vulnerability,

overwhelming horror as they did as a child,

so I think that's what happened with Andy.

He was stripped of his defenses as an adult

and taken back to that vulnerable place.

What was real for Andy was his fear,

fear of annihilation and sense, huge sense of rejection,

and that theme of rejection is something

that has plagued him his whole life.

So that feels like it's really clinically significant.

- Bye now, bye-bye. - Bye!

- Bye. - Bye, Monty.

- I wish that I would be able to work as his therapist

and it could be a longer course of treatment

and that we could perhaps have another dosing

and keep working on a process, 'cause then I really feel

that huge breakthroughs could be made.

I hope that from this dose, there will also be

a significant improvement.

I think for sort of lifelong change,

I feel that further therapy and further dosing sessions

would probably be required.

- Finished? - Yeah.

- Should we head out?

- Yeah.

- One of Mark's major problems is not his depression,

but it's the fact that he doesn't know what he wants,

and he wants other people to sort of help him

and tell him sort of what to do.

We've really tried to encourage him to try

and work out a little bit what he does want from life,

but he, you know, he obviously,

he still reports being quite lost.

And so it's a delicate balance really,

but in the therapy, I think it will be all about

trying to get him to have a greater sense

of himself and what he wants.

- I think school was tough for everyone.

You know, I used to to in the library and try and read

about how to act in public, how to,

and it just felt very, very alien, the whole,

you know, the whole concept of people having girlfriends,

people having lots of friends.

Everyone was different, but I felt

very removed from everyone.

I went to the doctor's, and he said,

"Go to Amsterdam," and I was like,

"Mate, I'm 14," you know?

This is 1984, you're telling me to go to Amsterdam.

What you expected me to do there?

'Cause all I knew about Amsterdam

were clogs, Anne Frank, prostitution, and drugs,

and it's, I didn't think he was telling me

to go to the Anne Frank museum, and it was,

and I thought, "That's my GP."

And now I've been told by doctors,

"This is what it's gonna be like.

"Nothing's gonna change, you're gonna be like this."

And then you think, or you start thinking,

"Wow, actually, what's the fucking point, really?"

You know, thanks for that.

- I grew up was a valley called

I can still see the field and the hawthorn sort of hedge

where it all took place.

I could take you straight to the very place.

And the thing was it didn't happen

that far from my home, but if I ever tried

to complain about it to my mum, she would just go nuts,

and she would give me a hammering.

And then when Dad come home from work, he would come in.

Even if you were sleeping, you would get woken up,

and you'd be getting another hammerin', you know?

That was, I think, being that I really started having

sort of emotional problems, I think, as a kid.

- 'Cause when these things are experienced,

they can't be unexperienced, can they?

And the typical response is to try and forget them.

- Yeah,

- Perhaps the healthiest way to live with them

is to live with them consciously.

- Yeah, because you can't change the past.

There's no sense in wanting revenge

or no sense in being really angry at those events

or other people that done, but just that sense

of that's who made me who I am,

in part of what made me who I am, you know,

- it doesn't feel like there has been some kind

of breakthrough.

- Yeah, it does feel like that

I feel enthusiastic to just go home

and start normal things.

You know, It's like a just a desire to get up

and get going, though, you know, after going

- John, Maggie and that children are sharing a single room

in a hotel while their home is being renovated

after the flood.

- Yeah.

That's fine.

- Thank you.

It's got a motion sensor so it just keeps flying itself

if you weren't there was Chewbacca. You're late.

Let me wait.

The main imagery

firstly we come up here they will not believe us ahead

of us, you know I have a dog with a dog. Yeah

a long time ago.

Lessons efficient got bad.

And if he was nice, he was good for laughing

I think it feels good.

Not normal anymore.

Yeah, but weird sounds negative.

You mean that you don't know.

It's weird.

It's just binge having john here because I've been used to

live on my own for so long.

- Apparently that if you take the full month more from me

die within six days, no, you don't

- Think that you do need to remember

that are some dangerous mushrooms are just like it.

So it's not a good idea to agree.

The reason it works is because it's about you,

but in sort of like along here in the middle,

and then suddenly with depression that

it sort of becomes really bogged down

or negative things all the time.

And so what that does is it it kind of shifts all up

and then lets it resettle in a different way.

But the first it felt quite nice.

The second time when I took it,

it was a much higher dose.

And it was the most horrible thing

that I've ever experienced.

Might an anemia that lasts for six hours and doesn't stop.

- Yeah, that's okay.

- And that's that's a danger if you just to say

do you want to take it for fun?

You don't know.

I was lucky that I had Dr. Joe Novotny,

who could make sure nothing bad happened.

- Before the treatment, yeah, we did have a Dad.

But if we did see him, it wouldn't be for very long

for like five to 10 minutes

and you'd have to go back into his room

because you'd have a sore head.

Since the treatment, she's got much happier.

And, but we all have to be honest.

And she's managed to spend time with her husband

like we've gone to sleep overs and I've gone sleepovers

and it's been mom and dad.

They've been having movie nights.

They've been sitting on the couch,

they've had a couch eat falling asleep on the couch,

doing things that they used to do before they had kids

before dad had depression.

That's new my dad started

and not the grumpy old fart in the corner.

- Six months after the trial,

the results are presented to the media

- Ctrl S control is set up a file control

as every time you change it.

Usually fine. It's the last minute.

This is a celebration as well as it is taken four years,

yeah, four years here.

Three of those years were kind of unnecessary.

They're just plowing through regulatory hurdles,

but we did it.

- And so how important is today then?

- Today's the birth of a new era

in the treatment of depression.

- It's the first depression trial with a psychedelic drug.

So it is it's landmark stuff.

Nice morning, everyone.

Welcome to the SMC for some mornings briefing,

and psilocybin an option for treatment resistant depression,

and to be published in last psychiatry embargo is 10:30pm.

Tomorrow.

- The average duration of the illness in this sample

was 18 years so many of the patients have had

Depression fractionally most of their adult lives, yet,

eight of the 12 were essentially depression free,

one week post treatment and five remain depression free.

Three months post treatment,

you can see some relapse in some of the patients.

So let's not get carried away.

This isn't a magic cure.

Even so, the effects at this stage, things look promising.

- How would you envisage this thing goes?

Would it be kind of a one off treatment?

Or would it be repeated?

- I think that's what we need to find out.

The key question is what to do with the people

who got an initial benefit,

and then it starts to wane.

So we're thinking about trying to set up

what you might call a more naturalistic study.

So perhaps that those people

could then be redosed every three months.

And just see if that if the effect came back.

I mean, it might it might not depressed people

have a view of the world,

which is that the world is a nasty, hostile place.

And of course, they're right, because it is,

but after psilocybin,

the progress people tend to view the world the same way

in 3D which is is better

than it is and that's a great defense.

- What would be the process

for a drug like psilocybin

to move from schedule one to schedule two?

What are the sort of reasons that it isn't happening?

- Yeah, I would say a major reason is

because of the United Nations conventions and the scheduled.

Under those conventions,

that country like the UK tends to follow,

and that those conventions very clearly includes psilocybin

within schedule one.

So to move against the UN conventions,

you really need some strong evidence.

So it's a sort of chicken and egg situation,

if psilocybin will put into scheduled to this

would make it much easier for researchers

to get hold of it to get a license.

You know, the whole thing would be freed up

then have lots of research and

And if it shows that psilocybin really help people

with depression, you'd get changed

but getting that research to happen,

while is Johnson's shadow, it's very difficult.

- Do you have any regrets about during the trial?

- I suppose really only in the audit revealed to me,

I think with a high dose.

The experiences were were profound and pretty dark.

It introduced me to the flag, but

it's something really nasty could have happened.

Did my childhood and

you can't kind of think that

but it kind of leaves you with the feeling of well,

was that a case did it, you know, was I was I smothered

as an infant, there's two sides of spades that is that well,

if I'd not learn that, then maybe the recovery process

wouldn't be working hasn't worked.

Or does nothing It actually make the whole situation worse.

But yeah, I do it again.

You know, it's, it introduces you to

a possible solution for depression.

It was a little bit empowering.

It made me well perhaps I'm not just like a passenger

on this that he you know, merry go round.

It might be that I can actually do something about it

could be a whole new way of accessing the the subconscious,

the psyche, whatever, whatever it is.

John is pretty much like it was before the trial is crap.

put it bluntly hoped the results on the trial

would last forever.

Because it was, it was so nice because at the back

and to a certain extent are my husband back

and it's gone again.

It's just, it's all gone.

That's my favorite one ever just all together.

It was really nice.

It was a fifth of March.

And we've not been out for a walk together since

which is kind of sad.

If you could write your own and to be honest,

I know Robin said that the new way

He's went back as bad as they were before but

I don't think it would take much longer

before I was back here it was

the darkness gradually came back.

The self loathing comes back,

the desire to be cut off from the world comes back.

Then what happens is he gets compounded you feel guilty

that you are like that.

Then you feel guilty that your family

have to suffer through that

measure he doesn't like to have enjoyable surroundings.

Somebody in a mentally I say living in a tenement flat

may think Mrs. Potter days I'll do that.

The only thing I want is as a room

where no windows and a door.

You know what, we're just going to shut out

and spend the rest your life there.

You're a good boy.

So, 7.5.

That's for take a night sleeping.

Suppose Pan 10s.

These are for sleeping.

When I don't take us up, learn take one of those.

Vice versa.

This is Friday four hundreds.

We'll take two of those at night.

That's lithium. This is a mood stabilizer apparently.

So maybe people with bipolar disorder,

take that, loperamide help stop diarrhea.

So I take about eight of those a day.

- Did you have that because of the drugs you're taking?

- Yeah, possibly duloxetine 60 mils,

this is an antidepressant and 15 by

take two of these, I take 30 you know,

I want to get better,

I want to feel better I want to give to society,

I want to be part of society.

You know, understand I've got a problem,

and I've had it for a long time and it's just like,

you live you live daily, and

yeah, try and hide yourself away as much as possible.

- Two years after the trial,

Ros has arranged for additional reintegration therapy

for Andy to make sense of some of the visions

he had during his high dose was just locked into this farm

- Trying to expose me when I was an infant.

And yeah, great.

That's why I've been depressed in my life.

So it was kind of convenient for me

to be able to blame my depression on that.

But in reality, I think that was quite simplistic,

and I think you helped me,

but you helped me almost turn that on its head.

You've introduced a rationale

that I can view the whole experience

when you pair of eyes and you know,

the chances of dad actually doing that pretty remote.

It doesn't stack out with anything

because it would have been something

that mom would have written in a memoirs

which is what I've got, you know, she would,

she would definitely written something there

that do you realize your dad did this?

It's really, really good because I'm not thinking

Was he dead?

Wasn't it and you know if it was to him,

or did he do it because I thought he loved me kind of thing?

That's that thought bloopers is gone.

I can't thank you enough for what you've done.

It has been pretty much life changing.

So, you know, really, really?

- Thank you very much. Okay.

- How was that?

- It was good. Yeah, I think

it was a good summary of what Andrew has been going through,

but also a good example

of how this integration process works.

- In terms of the smothering,

do you think that he would experience it all differently?

- Now, I think that the one of the key aspects

of the integration process with Andrew was

to take some of the pressure out of having

to find the definite enter of was it through memory or

Is it something that I in my mind just made that

in the event itself,

what he saw is not that his father was smothering him

is that actually became a symbolical representation

of his whole childhood in which it looked

like his mother was trying to present his father

as a bad figure.

- There were three parts to Andy's high day session.

The first was about feeling unwanted

by his father as a baby.

The second was about feeling criticized

and controlled by his mother as a child.

And the third was more about healthy adult position

of feeling, compassion and love and acceptance

and understanding.

After the high day session,

Andy went back to that early place of wounding feeling

unwanted by his father.

He then with marks helping integration

has been able to progress forward

and stop focusing more on his feelings around his mother

in the criticism and control of his childhood.

We hope with a bit of time and will work,

you'll be able to progress forward

to that third stage he did experience

which was more about the acceptance and love for himself

and for his parents.

The wonderful thing about this treatment is that

it's able to take you on this journey

in the space of a day actually

with the integration afterwards

whereas antidepressants could never do that.

Antidepressants don't give you any insight

as to why you're depressed.

And once you knew why you're depressed,

you know what it is inside,

then there's a possibility of processing it

and actually potentially getting better.

- Psychedelic therapy is not pharmacological therapy

is not that we're going to have an experience

and then that aggression is going to be gone.

The task of breaching what we learned

in the psychedelic experience into changes

that actually have an influence in our physical

and daily life.

That is the part that it's for me extremely important

and how to do that.

It's something that we still don't really know.

And I think that is where the challenge

for the next two years come.

- Sort of out of it.

How do you feel glad it's done slightly exhausted,

pleased it went so well.

On the other hand, a little frustrated that the fact

that we can't deliver this treatment,

you know when people need it

and just being here in central London

and being so busy,

they say one in 10 people are suffering from depression.

That's likely a few people around us right now.

It's a massive problem.

- So what are the results?

- Andy, Mark and john Andy and john showed quite

a good initial response, especially john,

but then they did back So on average,

they were the best responders.

But if you take the whole group at three weeks,

roughly half were in remission,

meaning essentially their depression free

After on average, about 18 years of depression,

six months six, still depression free.

So it's quite promising really.

And now they're only depression free sort

of two years later.

Yeah, yeah, there are. Yeah.

So people's lives have just been transformed.

It suggests the treatment seems to work at least

as well as conventional treatments.

What we want to do next is compare it

against conventional treatments.

We need bigger trials, more rigorously designed trials,

double blind randomized control trials.

Unfortunately, that's happening now.

So a few teams around the world are running these studies,

major investments coming in as a multi site trial

across Europe, and the US and Canada.

15 different countries.

So for things to be expanding to the scale

that they are right now is really exciting.

- It's definitely one.

Speaking to guys on the trial afterwards,

I said, Yeah, probably if you'd had a stronger dose

or a third dose, you would have had, a breakthrough.

But I don't know if I can risk going picking a load

of these and sitting in my bedroom

tripping my nuts off and going, I've got no support.

I don't you know, I don't know what to do in.

I did feel as though I failed.

I failed the test. Did it not work at all?

I mean, obviously,

I experienced a major amount of weirdness but

it opened up a lot of questions about my

like my illness, but it never,

never really kind of pointed me in the right direction

have any answers?

And maybe there aren't any answers.

And that's just something I got deal with.

- Has that been in the last couple of months?

- Well, in the past couple of months has not been

as good as it was before,

but is still the same person as he was

four or five years before.

And we just saw that same person again, a few months back.

So it was nice that they would do again,

it would be nice to have

- Do you believe in psilocybin?

- Oh yeah, because

I've seen what was done and it will make a miracle really

we never thought it would be like again

and then he took the trial and it was great.

Yeah, was was really good.

- A few months after the trial that was really good

and it was really good to see him happy

and the rest of us happy.

I think it made him feel happy

that everyone else was happy as well.

But I don't think it was a bad thing

that we saw it like it was nice to see it.

But and their memories that we're all going

to keep forever asleep.

Better seeing those memories and not having them.

- Every week thousands of people

who could benefit

from interventions with these drugs are denied access

and that means they will continue with their depressions

and their addictions.

That is outrageous it,

there is no need to limit access of these drugs

for medical research.

But the current regulations make it almost impossible

for anyone to use them.

In some respects is worse than before.

And we'll some videos that will help this frustration that

I can't really take full advantage of that,

who's benefited from that level of benefit

because I'm ,

my children won't benefit because I'm not walking

and showing them what proper father a proper person

should be doing with a life to be a productive

part of society.

Other people who need help to

and benefit because money's been spent on me

when I can be back a work.

- You want me to do the apology

at the top the bit of golden rules.