Launching its first European therapy centre in the Netherlands in early 2021, Field Trip Health is providing psychedelic healing experiences using truffles.
The Field Trip Health therapy centre in Europe focuses on the therapeutic use of psychedelic truffles – the underground sclerotia of mushrooms – legal in the Netherlands.
Co-founder and executive chairman of Field Trip, Ronan Levy, explains that the centre is advancing mental health treatment options with healing psychedelic experiences through this programme embedded in science, therapy and guidance. Its other centres, based in locations across America and North America, are also focused on developing therapies with ketamine and other psychedelics as they become legalised or approved.
“Our hope for our Netherlands location is twofold. Firstly, we want to help people in the Netherlands and Europe with access to some of the most promising options for mental and emotional health and wellbeing, and we believe we can do that through access to our therapies using legal truffles, and secondly, an essential part of Field Trip’s strategy is to constantly learn and innovate with all forms of legal psychedelic therapies,” said Levy.
“With our Netherlands location, we have been leveraging the experience, data and know-how developed by our clinical staff in our ketamine-enhanced therapy locations in Toronto, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago to develop protocols with psilocybin-containing truffles and use those insights to help evolve our therapies with ketamine and other psychedelics as they become legalised or approved.”
Levy explains that Field Trip is aiming to become the leader in the development and delivery of psychedelic therapies, wanting to help integrate all forms of psychedelic treatments into modern society.
To do this, Field Trip is developing next-generation psychedelic molecules – the first of which, FT-104, is a synthetic 5HT2A agonist similar to psilocybin. Its psychoactivity, however, only lasts two to three hours compared to the four to six hours of psilocybin, and has higher bioavailability.
“We are working to fulfil this mission by establishing a best-in-class network of Field Trip Health centres around the world, aiming to have 75 locations by 2024 and by developing the best-in-class psychedelic medicines, such as our novel psychedelic molecule, FT-104, which we believe will be an incredibly effective treatment for treatment-resistant depression and post-partum depression.”
There is an increasingly open attitude to the potential benefits of these medicines following promising clinical research results for conditions such as anxiety, depression and PTSD. Such results have generated positive stories from major news outlets that, historically, have disseminated fear-mongering reports of uncorroborated dangers throughout the 50 year War on Drugs.
The last few years have seen the Australian Government back psychedelic trials for mental health disorders with a AUD$15m (~£7.90m) grant, America’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) has provided its first grant in 50 years for research into psilocybin for smoking cessation and, more recently, Canada has opened up its Special Access Programme to help authorised patients access psychedelics. Polling of UK citizens has also demonstrated a consensus in favour of rescheduling psilocybin for research purposes.
“We believe that psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy will become the go-to form of mental, emotional and behavioural healthcare,” said Levy.
“With all the work organisations like Field Trip Health are doing with mainstream adoption and awareness, we are confident that both from a medical perspective as well as a cultural perspective, psychedelics will be embraced in the coming years.
“While there are some legacy stigmas from the War on Drugs still prevalent in our society today, we are confident that these will abate as the data and evidence about the safety and efficacy of psychedelic therapies continues to emerge.”
25 per cent of the European population lives with depression and anxiety each year, and up to 30 per cent of those with major depressive disorder have treatment-resistant depression (TRD) – meaning their condition is unresponsive to traditional treatments. In 2015, the economic impact of mental health disorders in the EU was estmainted to be €600bn.
The last few years have seen these staggering statistics compounded by the collectively traumatic experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen a rise in levels of loneliness, depression, addictive and suicidal behaviours and self-harm, as well as decreased wellbeing for frontline workers, and decreased access to mental health services. All these factors are pointing to an urgent need for new and innovative mental health treatments and services.
“The prevalence of mental health issues is at an all-time high and is being exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Levy. “The evidence shows that psychedelic-assisted therapies are effective in treating mental health, and we are seeing this firsthand in our Field Trip Health centres, with many of our clients reporting significant improvements in their mental health and well-being (according to objective questionnaires) for 120 days or more post-treatment.
“But the benefits of psychedelic therapies don’t just stop at mental and emotional health and well-being. Studies have shown that people who struggle with depression tend to consume far more medical resources than those who do not experience major depression.
“Up to 40 per cent more resources according to some studies. By offering a truly effective treatment for depression, we expect psychedelic therapies will reduce the load on our healthcare systems. Similarly, we find that following psychedelic therapies, people are more able to adopt better lifestyle habits such as eating healthy and exercise, both of which will also have a positive effect on our healthcare systems.
“The combination of these factors means that psychedelic therapies not only make great medical sense, but supporting them also makes great economic sense for employers, payors and governments.”
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