Open your mind! Can psychedelics heal trauma and treat mental illnesses?
On Jan. 28, in Sherman Oaks, around two dozen men and a handful of women attended the Psychedelic Symposium at The Green Room. Plush leather sofas and high-top tables surrounded a stage in a dimly lit, green room. The event was hosted by the Psychedelic Institute of Los Angeles (PILA), which holds monthly meetings on various topics. This month's focus was “Microdosing Over 50.”
Psychedelics are not new — all of the “magic mushrooms” brought up at the symposium have been taken by humans since our species was still hunter-gatherers. What is new is the growing trend of “microdosing” and the increased research from the medical community into new approaches to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to treat various mental illnesses.
According to the RAND Corporation, a global policy think tank, “Approximately 10 million U.S. adults microdosed psilocybin, LSD or MDMA in the past year.” A 2024 study by Eric Leas, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Diego, found that Google searches for “microdosing” skyrocketed nearly 1,250% from 2015 to 2023.
As of publication, the Food and Drug Administration is reviewing three psychedelics in various stages of clinical trials for combined use with psychotherapy, including MDMA for post-traumatic stress disorder, psilocybin — the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms” — for anxiety and depression, and LSD for anxiety. Ketamine has recently been FDA-approved for treating depression, which has opened the door for medical interest in drugs once associated with hippies and ravers for recreational use.
Clinical trials are slow, and the FDA’s approval process can take years, along with the time needed for the American Psychiatric Association to develop guidelines. This has led to some self-ascribed “underground therapists”— unlicensed professionals, who administer and guide users through sessions they say address trauma — distributing what they call “medicine” and evangelizing their homemade treatment plans.
Enter the PILA, founded by Paul Karasik during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Karasik said after getting diagnosed with a serious illness in late 2019, he took DMT, a powerful yet short-lasting psychedelic. Karasik said that experience inspired him to start the institute and form a community centered on spreading the word of psychedelics' potential healing properties.
“The message was that I should move forward with this, and get the medicine to people, and speak on it, and take a leadership role,” Karasik said.
The initial PILA meetings consisted of Karasik and his friends doing psychedelics at their beach houses and exchanging various mind-altering drugs. Over the years, Karasik expanded his reach to a monthly meetup open to newcomers.
Attendees on Jan. 28 were mostly older and there to learn about the event topic of microdosing over 50. Many shared their experiences with psychedelics and recommended different treatments to anyone who asked.
One attendee, who requested anonymity and will be referred to as T, said the first time he used drugs was in October 2024 to deal with depression after a friend referred him to an “underground therapist.” He said he took MDA, sometimes referred to by its street name “sass,” an amphetamine related to MDMA; it’s a more hallucinogenic plant-derived drug that produces similar euphoric feelings to MDMA.
T said the experience helped him to start the healing process in a way past treatments failed, “The first time I got to, I would say, release a lot of trauma, a lot of things that I have been holding on to for many, many years. I feel like I let go of it.” He later did seven more guided trips with either MDA or other psychedelics.
T’s story, of seeking treatment outside what is currently FDA-approved yet shows promise in clinical trials, is echoed by Karasik during the symposium. “Iboga is coming up, generally all over the place in terms of its potential. The research is coming in now. It's amazing,” Karasik said. Iboga is a plant from Central Africa in which a powerful psychedelic, Ibogaine, is synthesized. Ibogaine is currently being studied for treating patients with opioid addictions.
Karasik said reducing stigma around psychedelics is what “the Psychedelic Institute is active about, and that's our activism, and is to destigmatize, and that's by bringing it out into the public.”
However, Professor David Shirinyan, who teaches Physiological Psychology at SMC, worries that psychedelic use — similar to cannabis use — becoming normalized could lead to negative unforeseen public health issues. “It is critical that the wider population not take these research endeavors as an invitation to engage in widespread use. We are seeing a version of this phenomenon play out with cannabis. Many, particularly young, people are seeing the emergence of new or worsening mental health symptoms with widespread use of potent cannabis.”
“I am in equal parts excited about the promise of these chemicals as treatments for treatment-resistant, severe psychiatric disorders, and terrified about the normalization and widespread use of these powerful chemicals,” Shiriyan said.
He believes the rise in psychedelic use in America and the trend of microdosing go alongside other health and wellness trends, stating, “I think the increase in interest in psychedelic chemicals tracks very well with the rise of the wellness and functional medicine/health optimization trends. There are celebrities and celebrity scientists who speak openly about their use of these chemicals. Self-diagnosis and self-treatment is much more in the zeitgeist today.”
Shirinyan, who holds a doctorate in behavioral neuroscience, said his research on the neurobiological processes in schizophrenia informs his concerns about people trying psychedelics outside of a medical setting. “I know for certain that my work in the area of schizophrenia likely makes me extra worried about powerful psychoactive and mind-altering substances. I worry that the people most vulnerable, the young and those with predisposition to mental illness, are the ones who are most intrigued by these substances.”
Shirinyan also warns that federal approval does not eliminate risk. “When an extreme, psychoactive treatment becomes FDA-approved, trouble follows. See opiates, opioids, amphetamines, benzodiazepines, barbiturates.”
As clinical trials continue and psychedelics are decriminalized in a growing number of states, only time will tell what the effects of their widespread use on the population will be.