🫠 Psychonaut POV

PRESENTED BY ALTHEA 🤝

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter that goes big and goes home. Seriously, home is the best. Who doesn’t want to go home? 🛌

After CBD saved her son’s life, Heather Jackson helped 22 states pass cannabis legislation in two years. (Nothing like a mother’s love to drive policy reform, right?) Now she's applying those hard-won lessons to psychedelic advocacy through her nonprofit, Unlimited Sciences.

We asked Heather if any lessons from cannabis legalization could help steer the psychedelic movement, what real-world data suggests about psychedelic safety, and why doctors themselves are referring patients to Unlimited Sciences' hotline.

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Can you tell us the story of how you became an advocate for plant medicine?

It started with my son Zaki, who has a rare, catastrophic form of early childhood epilepsy. His seizures started at four months old and quickly escalated to hundreds per day. By age nine, he was in hospice care. Emergency meds are nice band-aids, but when you use them over and over, they stop working. We'd tried 17 pharmaceuticals, special diets, and every alternative therapy imaginable.

Through Colorado's hospice program, our counselor Ms. Cate told us about another little girl similar to Zaki. She said, "I would not forgive myself if I don't tell you what's going on with her. She's using cannabis." This was 2012. No one could pronounce cannabidiol. It was all very hush-hush through Colorado's medical marijuana program.

The very first time I gave him CBD, his normal full-body electrocution-type seizures that happened every two to ten minutes just didn't start. Within four months, a child who'd had 500,000 seizures by age five had complete seizure remission. That other little girl was Charlotte Figi. Charlotte's Web was named after her, and Zaka was the second success story.

I became very passionate about cannabis and started Realm of Caring in 2013 for research, education, advocacy, and a free call center. We helped 22 states pass cannabis legislation in just two years. My son enjoyed 1,420 days of seizure freedom.

But when puberty hit, Zaki's seizures returned. It was like a dark night of the soul. I started having neurological symptoms: loss of strength in my hands, trouble finding words, saying the opposite of what I wanted to say. After going down the same broken medical path that didn't serve my son, I researched natural solutions and psilocybin came up.

I had a curated psilocybin experience that changed everything, including my relationship with my son and how I viewed what he was experiencing. It allowed me to continue thriving instead of floundering. That led to founding Unlimited Sciences in December 2018 to do for psychedelics what we'd done for cannabis.

What key lessons from building Realm of Caring did you apply when founding Unlimited Sciences?

The biggest lesson is that this is not an industry; it's a cause. With Unlimited Sciences, I knew we needed research immediately. We started using cannabis in 2012 but didn't begin our research with Johns Hopkins until 2016. The very first thing we did with Unlimited was launch our research registry because data is the ribbon that runs through everything.

Another key lesson was bringing doctors on early. With Realm of Caring, we had over 500 very medically fragile children show up at Colorado Children's Hospital without giving doctors a heads up. They were overwhelmed. Some even fired patients, saying "I won't see anybody using cannabis."

I learned you have to play nicely in the sandbox. I have this personality where I have a goal and if you're in my way, you're collateral damage. But that doesn't work because doctors are actually members of the team. The doctor in all their incarnations, is fundamentally motivated by a desire to help others. They just may not have the tools, so you need to include them in research and educate them. We started educational seminars, and most of the attendees were doctors wanting to learn about mechanisms of action, drug interactions, and dosing.

Why focus on real-world data instead of controlled clinical trials? What has your collaboration with Johns Hopkins revealed so far?

Because that's how 99.9% of the population uses psychedelics. I've been to Hopkins where they do these controlled studies and it's beautiful, but that's not how most people take psychedelics. They’re not putting on their blindfold and playlist in a very curated setting the vast majority of the time.

Clinical studies are very narrow with small numbers looking at something very specific. We're more interested in what signals we see so we can chase those down. We want thousands of people versus 30. Our approach is to collect baseline data prior to experience, then a couple days before, day of, couple days after, weeks after, and months after. That's the most rigorous way to do prospective observational research.

I was surprised how many participants were either first-time users or had only used psychedelics a couple times. Usually observational studies capture people who've used psychedelics a lot, but this was big enough that we had a nice cohort of first-time users. We were also able to publish comparative results between people of color versus white participants.

What really stands out is how little harm actually occurs. Some people did feel like they needed psychological support afterward, but it's a very low occurrence. Even people using psychedelics on their own aren't experiencing the kind of harm that people (outside the Tricycle Day bubble) expect.

What are the most common questions people call your hotline with, and what does that tell you about where people need the most support?

The vast majority are first-time users, or people who maybe tried psychedelics as teenagers and this is the first time they're doing it with intention. Maybe they didn't have a good experience, so they want to be more prepared this time.

Our service is different from what Fireside Project does so well. We're your first stop before having your trip, whereas Fireside takes calls if you're in the middle of having a challenging experience or need integration support afterward.

The most common questions are about drug interactions because they might be on pharmaceuticals and don't want to do anything dangerous. All our information is research and data-centric. We're telling you what published peer-reviewed research suggests, not our opinion. We don't give medical advice, so another frequent question is "how can I have this conversation with my doctor, counselor, or psychiatrist?".

Dosing is another big one. We don't tell anyone how much to take, but we say here's what the research suggests and give them a range. They want to know how to mitigate harm and have the best experience, so we talk about set and setting. We can also talk about quality issues. There's research about “mushroom” chocolate bars that contain synthetic research chemicals, so we help them navigate that lack of transparency.

A top referral source is doctors because they don’t always have the time, confidence, or fluency for these conversations. So they send people to us.

What mistakes from cannabis legalization do you hope the psychedelic movement can avoid?

First of all—and we believe this organizationally—there's no way nature should be illegal. Decriminalizing just makes so much sense. We need to continue stepping toward that because we know the war on drugs has failed, and we know disproportionately who it affects.

I think psychedelics are different from cannabis. The medicalization we're seeing is good, but we need to keep it affordable so access is available for everybody. In Colorado, when recreational cannabis happened, we lost the medical market because businesses could make more money selling it recreationally. Psychedelics will want to be careful about that.

I'm not opposed to recreational use. People should have full autonomy to do what they want. Decriminalization takes care of that. But through the medical model, we need to make sure it continues to be widely available and affordable. Some people are comfortable using psychedelics outside the clinical context. But there are many people who will need that "prescription pad.” They want their doctor involved. We should allow for all of that.

What we need to make sure of is that there's corporate social responsibility and companies are giving back—that it isn't just a cash grab. Both cannabis and psychedelics stand on the shoulders of people who have used these medicines indigenously for thousands of years. So let’s give back to those communities.

Want more from Heather?

Get free, one-on-one psychedelic education from Unlimited Sciences by calling their Info Line.

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DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. The use, possession, and distribution of psychedelic drugs are illegal in most countries and may result in criminal prosecution.