The Brave New Future of Mental Health Care
The future of mental health has finally arrived.
Meet Delic is something entirely different. It’s the world’s only event to sit at the intersection of medicine, mental health, and mind control, as a pioneering foray into the brave new world of psychedelic wellness. Its intention is to reframe the conversation around psychedelics: no small task.
This immersive, experiential gathering brings together holistic healers, psychedelic wellness thought leaders, entrepreneurs, psychonauts, and people who are trying to learn more about this new organic, medically-proven type of healing. Held at the experiential art center AREA15 in Las Vegas, the event shares the same mission of its hosts Delic Corp:
To help people heal by ‘normalizing’ the conversation on psychedelics and alternative medicines to optimize, prioritize and heal the human mind, body, and soul.
Delic was founded by Matt Stang, the writer-cum-CRO of High Times for 17 years, who was on the front lines of changing perceptions around, and guiding the assimilation and acculturation of cannabis into mainstream society. Now, he’s cast his net wider.
But before the event begins on November 6th, let’s start where psychedelic wellness began.
A Response to the War on Drugs
The legacy of Nixon’s “Public Enemy Number One” speech is a shadowy specter still haunting America, and not just in the recordings of Chuck D’s and Flava Flav’s politically-conscious hip-hop group.
This message was one of the foundations of Reagan’s “War on Drugs,” Nancy’s “Just Say No” campaign and the D.A.R.E. program. These programs are, at best, ineffective (as admitted by the US Institute of National Institute of Health), and at worst, a politically-motivated “racial crusade” targeting minority groups. Whatever the motivation, the War on Drugs became a war on people, and it’s done more harm than good.
“We started High Times as a response to the ‘War on Drugs,’ it was a push to change people’s minds around cannabis,” says Stang. “Working there for 17 years, I came to see and appreciate the link to cannabis in mental wellness as well.” And he’s stood by those beliefs, even while facing life in jail. Stang is not alone in his belief that drugs won the War on Drugs.
There have been extreme shifts in perceptions toward cannabis. Stang says, “When I started at High Times, the approval rate of cannabis was 30%. Now around 68% support recreational use, and 90% support medical.” We have seen cannabis positively alleviate symptoms, and the network effect of changing lives. Since High Times, Matt has been an adamant assailant of this war — and founding Delic is the next step.
Today: The War on Drugs’ Legacy
Though there is no proof that imprisonment leads to less drug problems, almost 50% of prison populations are related to drug offenses. Still, the War on Drugs can be linked to the rise in private prisons and the idea that prisons can serve as a repository for the socially unwanted — whether that means low-level drug offenders, or individuals suffering from mental illness.
Consider this: LA County jail is the nation’s largest treatment facility for people with mental illness.
This isn’t only a reflection on America’s prison-industrial complex, it shows how healthcare is broken, particularly around mental health — a growing, particularly urgent crisis due to Covid-19’s effect on mental wellness. Even though half of all Americans will suffer from a mental health condition in their lives, over 264 million people suffer from depression, and there are almost 1.5 million suicide attempts a year, psychiatry still hasn’t developed enough to ease these mental health problems. Current mental health treatments are only ~30% effective.
Enter: The emerging field of psychedelic wellness. Unlike psychiatric interventions, psychedelic medicines have proven benefits for individuals suffering from depression (85% effective) and suicidal ideation (95% relief).
This new approach to healing is one way to help solve the problems the War on Drugs left us with, to progress the de-stigmatization of mental illness across society, and to empower people to take control of their mental wellness.
Change Your Mind
Every experience has one thing in common: it’s mediated through your mind. Perception is our anchor to the outside world — as author Terry Goodkind said, “Reality is irrelevant; Perception is everything.”
So, if you can successfully change your mind, you change the world. Of course, this isn’t always true, but in the case of mental wellness, this is important to consider. Consider this: What is something you didn’t used to like, a movie, a food, a person; that you feel differently about now? Most people have something… because people change, things change, even your cells change every seven years… so why wouldn’t your ideas? [And, if you really want to go deeper into the nature of consciousness, check out this discussion with seminal psychedelic researcher and professor of psychiatry Dr. Rick Strassman].
Psychedelics — a term coined in 1950 from Greek for “mind-manifesting” — help you with healing personal traumas, creative problem solving and transforming awareness — quite literally, changing your mind. They allow you to work within yourself, rather than introducing an outside substance to do the work for you. They free your mind from the long-ingrained thought patterns that are only bringing you down. To shake the shackles and give you the opportunity to build yourself back together. The tools are in your head. According to Dr. Strassman, his research into psychedelics has shown they can help with reducing:
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Substance abuse
- OCD
- PTSD
- Antisocial and borderline personality disorders
- Rates of recidivism (as well as the repetition of destructive patterns — not dissimilar to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy)
It is time to reevaluate our relationship with psychedelics. But we also have to change our mindset around something even more pressing: mental health. In the last few months alone, prominent personalities like Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles have made personal sacrifices in the interest of making mental health less taboo.
This is a big step, but it’s still not enough — especially when 1 in 5 Americans experience a diagnosable mental illness. Just like medicine is endlessly evolving, so too should our perceptions of it.
The time is now to take our mental health more seriously.
Change Your Life
If perception is everything, and your perception is negative, so is the world around you. This [often paralyzing] mindset can be as debilitating as any physical malady, if not more so. Yet even today, our unwillingness to confront mental health makes us suffer. Take this:
Individuals who use psychedelic interventions report a 60–80% efficacy after one year of use.
In fact, many believe that psychiatric interventions do more harm than good — some psychiatric medicines have side effects like dependence, withdrawal, or things even worse than the affliction they treat. Coping with the effects of medicines can add to the difficulty we already face.
What’s even worse for our mind, yet sometimes considered more socially acceptable, is self-medication. But self-medication simply isn’t working. We’ve known this for years, but we’re only now just discovering the positive effects of psychedelics. Even back in 1935, the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson, believed psychedelics were the cure to alcoholism.
But if you’re in a bad place and looking to get better, you’ll try anything. Startups like Headspace, BetterHelp, or Actually are great, but they only provide talk therapy, while doesn’t always yield tangible improvements. As a result, people seek out remedies for the mind wherever they can. The days of Snake Oil Salesmen are far from over. But you really don’t have to go outside the medicinal community to find things that work. Delic founder Matt Stang has seen it firsthand. His wife, Delic cofounder, Jackee Stang has benefited from psychedelic treatment herself.
Like almost 20% of American adults, Jackee lived with anxiety disorder. Because many of the medications used to treat anxiety can be dangerous, Jackee did not want to go too far down that road. Looking for something that could treat her symptoms, she found ketamine — which has been well-known within health care communities to effectively treat severe anxiety and depression for years.
Her husband, Matt, said that using a controlled amount of professionally-administered ketamine has had profound effects. “Seeing how happy Jackee has been over the last two years is so incredible, so powerful and amazing. I’m so grateful that we found this medicine, and that it’s legal. That’s why we’ve gone on this mission. We think there are millions of people out there, just like her, who have no idea this is available to them.”
It improved her life so much that she wanted to share this revelation with others. The story is so impactful that Joe Rogan invited Jackee Stang to share her experience with his 11 million listeners.
Change The World
Through his 17-year cannabis cultural crusade at High Times, Stang has been on the precipice of massive socio-cultural change. He thinks that “tipping point has tipped,” and that it’s time for us to recognize the widespread medicinal effects of psychedelics — just as the medical community already has.
In fact, psychedelic wellness has been gaining traction across the country. Oregon legalized psilocybin — outside of the FDA — the cities of Denver and Santa Cruz have already decriminalized “magic mushrooms.” The medicine movement is making headway, with 38% of Americans supporting the legalization of psilocybin.
“In the last election, it seemed like the country couldn’t agree on anything. The only thing that seemed to get bipartisan support was that the war on drugs should be over (see: almost every referendum on psychedelic initiatives). He believes psychedelic interventions can have stronger, more positive effects than short-term psychiatric medications, and millions of people agree with him (even Gwyneth Paltrow likes psychedelic medicines).
If we can change our minds, we can change our lives. If we can change our life, we can help change the lives of others. If we can change lives, we can change the world. This is a watershed moment, an opportunity to reframe how we observe and treat mental wellness, individually and as a society.
Acceptance is upon us, and adoption is knocking on the door. To the benefit of ourselves and the world around us, we can’t afford to wait any longer. It’s time to let it in.
Just like you need a healthy body, you need a healthy mind. Mental health is the key to living a happy, fulfilled life.
No one, and nothing, is a universal healer. We’re all different, in our minds, our bodies, our chemical levels. But if we want to be happy, we have to take mental health seriously, we have to address it.
Psychedelic medicine is just another option in a sea of wellness and healing methods. And, just like with other medicines, when it’s used under the guidance of a professional in a calibrated dosage and controlled environment, it’s one that works.
You just have to understand what works best for you… and the only way to do that is to take your wellness into your own hands.
Just say now.
