His cancer was treatable, but he felt there was no way to tackle the almost overwhelming depression that came with it -- until he discovered psychedelics.
One Man's Psychedelic Journey to Confront His CancerPradeep Bansal considered the five capsules he was about to swallow. Together they made up a 25 milligram dose of a substance that, in another setting, could have landed him in federal prison.
One study from Johns Hopkins University tracked the effects of a single guided dose of psilocybin in terminal cancer patients with anxiety and depression. More than 80% had a"significant decrease" in symptoms -- even 6 months after treatment -- with more than 60% of the group remaining in the normal mood range.
Maybe he would feel"funny," he thought. Maybe he would have some hallucinations. But how would that change the reality of his cancer? How would it lift the black dread and anxiety he felt about his future?Bansal had first noticed blood in his urine -- a lot of it -- in September 2019. But a routine scan in June 2020 revealed more cancer in his lung. Within a couple of months, it was in his bladder too.As doctors scheduled surgery to remove part of his lung, Bansal started on painful immunotherapy for his bladder.
As he searched for something to ease his mental anguish, Bansal recalled some psychedelic research on end-of-life anxiety and depression that he'd read about in Michael Pollan's 2018 book on psychedelics,The studies were small and the research was new, but Bansal was impressed enough with the results to take a chance. He called a lead researcher of one of the studies, a fellow New York doctor, and eventually found himself accepted into a new study.
Bansal met several times with at least three therapists in the days leading up to his dosing. He attended 4-plus hours of therapist-led group sessions with other people who would get a dosing on the same day. Together, they talked about what to expect during the experience and what to do in the face of fear or panic.
The dose, 25 milligrams, had been carefully calibrated to induce a psychedelic experience sufficient for therapy. Much less than that, say 10 milligrams, isn't enough for most people to enter this state. A double dose, 50 milligrams, though not physically unsafe, may leave you too incoherent to have the useful insights key to therapeutic value.
He had seen too many of his patients mentally wrecked by a cancer diagnosis, and he often felt helpless to comfort them. To Agrawal, psilocybin-assisted therapy was the first thing that looked like it could really make a difference. "It was as if a million stained glass windows had suddenly come to life and were dancing in front of my vision," Bansal says.
All the while, Bansal says, he was well aware that it was simply his mind creating these images, thoughts, and ideas. He knew he was in a safe room wearing eyeshades and headphones. "That's what they tell you: If you see anything frightening, you face it. And that's the whole point of this exercise. And so, I stood and walked forward, and it just blew off in a puff of smoke."Around 3 hours into the experience, Bansal started to feel an immense sense of peace, happiness, and even comfort.
This was partly due to the fact that he hadn't eaten much during the session. But mostly, says Bansal, it was due to the searing emotional intensity of the experience.It's hard to put into words, says Bansal, what this treatment has done for his life. He feels as if he has stumbled onto something very precious that had been right in front of him all along. He wrote of his change in perspective almost obsessively in his journal in the days and weeks after treatment.
The experience, he says, gave him something far more important than mere ease. It gave him a sense of meaning. A psychologist with decades of experience, Richards and his colleagues figure that, with few possible exceptions, he has helped treat more people with psychedelic therapies than anyone alive in Western medicine today. At Aquilino, he works directly with patients and oversees the therapy protocol that goes along with the psilocybin dosing sessions."You meet someone who's very depressed and scared and isolating from family and having all kinds of physical complaints.
Agrawal's trial at the Bill Richards center added something new: group therapy. Not only did Bansal meet with his therapist, he also met with a group of three other people in the trial who had their dosing the same day. In fact, he continues to meet regularly with his therapy group, even though it's long since past the requirements of the study.Bansal still has tough days with his cancer. Recently, immunotherapy treatment for his bladder caused side effects -- pain, bleeding, fever, and chills -- for most of the night. He felt like he was"passing razor blades" when he peed.
The complexity of mental health issues in underserved communities like people of color, LGBT, and the financially disadvantaged are the very things that could bar some members from the current round of clinical trials. Careful screening, Huang says, has led to a homogenous group that is overwhelmingly upper middle class, middle-aged, and white.
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