Australian Couple's Influence: Rescheduling Psychedelics as Medicine

Tania de Jong and her husband influenced Australia to classify psychedelics as legitimate medicine, despite lacking scientific or medical background.

### Tania de Jong and Peter Hunt: The Unlikely Couple Behind Australia's Groundbreaking Decision to Reschedule Psychedelics
* 🇦🇺  An opera singer and her former investment banker husband with no scientific or medical background convinced Australia to become the first country to classify **psychedelics as a legitimate medicine**.
* 🧪 " The path they took is entirely different than any pharmaceutical that's ever **gotten approval in the entire world**.
* 🧠  Psychedelic drugs have been used for centuries, and recent advanced tools have shown that they **increase brain plasticity**.
* 💊  Doctors are finding astonishing results in trials, with patients experiencing **significant progress** in treating conditions like post-traumatic stress syndrome and treatment-resistant depression.
* 🦠  Tania and Peter run a charity called Mind Medicine Australia, which they founded after having a **life-changing experience with magic mushrooms**.
* 🚦  They bypassed the traditional scientific rigor required to introduce a new medical treatment by convincing an anonymous senior doctor within the TGA to **reschedule psychedelics**.
* 💉  As Australia begins to roll out psychedelic-assisted therapies, there is both **huge hope** and **cautious optimism** about the future outcomes and challenges that may arise.

You might not expect that the people behind a music video that looks like this would influence medical policy, let alone convince Australia to become the first country in the world to classify psychedelics as a legitimate medicine. But that's exactly what an opera singer and her former investment banker husband did. They have absolutely no scientific or medical background. The natural flavor of regulators is to say no. It's their natural inclination. The path that they took is entirely different than any pharmaceutical that's ever gotten approval in the entire world. You know, I couldn't believe it. We were dancing around our kitchen a little bit. It was like, wow. It's hard to predict where this is all going in Australia, but it really feels, it's a bit like the Wild West. There's lots of concerning things happening in the space and no repercussions associated with those deviations. Part of the reason why this was so surprising is

that Australia is traditionally seen as quite a conservative country. It's very, very rare that Australia actually would be the one that's leading the way, and in this case, we were the first country
in the world to do this. Australia has not formally approved MDMA and psilocybin for
post-traumatic stress disorder and treatment-resistant depression. What they've done is they've
rescheduled the compounds and acknowledged their medical benefits. And they're allowing psychiatrists,
approved psychiatrists, to prescribe them for patients. That's something that's not happening anywhere else in the world. Psychedelic drugs have
been used for centuries. The real breakthrough in the
West came in the 1950s when there was an article in Life
Magazine that brought it to the attention of the
pharmaceutical industry. Along with the promise of psychedelic therapies, there was a backlash. They became associated with counterculture and things like Vietnam War protests. And Richard Nixon really
cracked down in his war on

drugs. At that point, psychedelic use really went underground. More advanced tools that have
been developed over the past several years have been able to actually examine what's
going on in the brain. The belief is that
psychedelics really do increase brain plasticity. Some of the trial results
have been really astonishing. Doctors are finding patients
that have had no progress for years in trying to treat something like
post-traumatic stress syndrome or treatment-resistant
depression are actually getting to a place where their
doctors considered them cured, or at least in remission. Tania de Jong and
her husband Peter Hunt, in their spare time, they run a charity called
Mind Medicine Australia. They first became interested
in psychedelic assisted therapy when they had a legal
trip with magic mushrooms. And they found the experience
so transformational and life-changing for
them, that they decided that they were going to dedicate
their lives to the cause.

That was this extraordinary experience of oneness, of connection to self, to others. Really led us to saying, well, if this can heal us in this way, what sort of impact could this have on the people that we work with in all our other charities? When you have a problem as large as the mental illness problem that we have in Australia and treatments that really don't work very well, if at all, for a large number of people, the desire to actually change a system and enable people to live the sort of lives they should lead becomes a real driving force. There's the conversations happening around the potential of psilocybin and MDMA to be effective treatments for millions of Australians suffering from depression and PTSD. And yet, at the same time, people are dying at festivals from MDMA or other drugs that are contained in ecstasy. We haven't really got a good measure at the moment to

indicate as to who is going to respond well and who's not going to respond well, because of course some people don't respond to this treatment. Some people get worse, and we don't know how to prevent people from getting worse, and we don't know how to enhance the treatment to make it more effective, because we don't fully understand how it works. Breathing in and here we go. Ah, keep going. Ah. Above all else, I think a key part of Tania's personality is that she's an entertainer. One of the things that mind medicine has been really heavily criticized by the traditional medical community for is their affiliation with anti-masking and anti-lockdown groups. Tania started posting a few opinion pieces online with various different conservative outlets during the height of Covid, suggesting that she wasn't in favor of lockdowns and masks, even some posts kind of criticizing vaccines. They've come up against those

who have been working in this industry for years, really grinding, scientifically
proving the benefits, proving that the risks aren't
greater than those benefits, so that it could be
really rolled out widely. At first, they kind of flirted
with a few different ideas for how they would best be able to bring magic mushrooms to the world. They didn't know that they
were going to try the route of rescheduling with the TGA, our peak regulator in
Australia, the equivalent of the FDA in America. We started our first
rescheduling applications probably within the first year of setting
up Mind Medicine Australia. We were rejected at the interim stage. Some people were saying to us, you know, you're wasting your time. And our response was, no, not at all. Because when the TGA rejects,
they have to give reasons. And that meant the second
time around we knew the issues that concerned them. What was unusual about their approach is

that they completely sidestepped the scientific rigor that's generally needed in order to get a new medical treatment onto the market. To ask a regulatory body whose job is to make sure the medicines are safe and effective, to make a positive ruling when the scientific results aren't in yet, that's just a huge lift. That's lovely. Australia has a very unique system, to say the least, when it comes to rescheduling substances. The decision to reschedule a substance or not is ultimately made by an individual called the delegate. Now, the delegate is an anonymous official, a senior doctor within the TGA. Nobody knows who the delegate is to this day, apart from a handful of medical officials. Tania and Peter didn't need to convince the scientific minds and the researchers and all of the standard regulators who make these decisions. They only had to sway one person. Now, we tried hard and we were unable to find out who the delegate is.

And Tania and Peter say
they also don't know who the delegate is. In the end, that regulator was swayed and decided to reschedule psychedelics. By February 2023, Mind
Medicine would receive the news that their application actually
had been approved by the TGA, and they had succeeded in
rescheduling psychedelic-assisted therapy in Australia. We interviewed Dr. John Skerritt, who was the
head of the TGA at the time that these substances were rescheduled. He actually said, contrary
to what Tania De Jong and Peter Hunt think, their lobbying and aggressive campaigning to the TGA actually did
more harm than good in some instances. The decision to reschedule essentially
caught everyone off guard. The peak body for psychiatrists
in Australia and New Zealand and Prism had both advised
against the rescheduling. The only group of people that weren't caught off guard
were Mind Medicine itself. For years prior to the
decision being made,

they started running their
certificate in psychedelic-assisted therapy. Medical officials can come in and take this course for about
11,000 Australian dollars. As far as is this a
viable training approach, there really isn't a lot of
other training available. And this is one area where
Australia really will be able to become first in the world. Tuesday was the first time
I'd prescribed MDMA for someone to assist them with therapy,
and so it was a full day. It's pretty intense, obviously,
most intense for the patient. The patient had a lot of
interesting experiences where they could sort of
experience a lot of the feelings that they'd blocked up for a long time, pushed away some difficult
memories that they had also kind of packed away. But it
did go as I expected. I've been seeing this person
for a while in therapy, and the person definitely made some breakthroughs in that day. In retrospect, I think it
had to be someone like them.

I'm a doctor. I understand something about trauma and trying to help people with trauma and difficult emotional experiences. I don't know anything about trying to market something or networking or pushing something through. I'm cautiously optimistic about the rollout of these therapies post the TGA decision. I think we will see some negative media in the near future as either patients are harmed as a consequence of the treatment. The outcomes that they receive are not aligning with their expectations. They skipped a lot of the steps that you would traditionally take to be able to get this application put through. They didn't go through the phase three trials. They went through rescheduling instead. There is huge hope, and we'll see if the reality lives up to that hype, but we're going to get the answers.

Why Australia Is Experimenting With Psychedelics

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The Unlikely Influence on Australia's Psychedelic Medicine Classification

An opera singer and her husband, without a scientific background, influenced Australia to classify psychedelics as a legitimate medicine, a rare move for a conservative country.

Australia's decision allows approved psychiatrists to prescribe MDMA and psilocybin, marking the first of its kind in the world.

The use of psychedelic drugs has a long history, but their classification as medicine is a significant breakthrough, especially considering their past association with counterculture.

Advanced tools have revealed that psychedelics can increase brain plasticity and have produced astonishing results in treating PTSD and depression.

Tania de Jong and Peter Hunt's transformative experience with psychedelic therapy led them to establish Mind Medicine Australia.

The use of psilocybin and MDMA for treating depression and PTSD is gaining attention, despite the current risks associated with these drugs.

The Impact of Mind Medicine on Mental Health Treatment

Mind Medicine's treatment doesn't work for everyone, and there are challenges in understanding how to enhance its effectiveness.

The organization has faced criticism for its affiliation with anti-masking and anti-lockdown groups during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Despite initial rejections, Mind Medicine Australia persisted in their efforts to bring magic mushrooms to the world, eventually making progress with the TGA.

The Unconventional Rescheduling of Psychedelics in Australia

A unique system in Australia allows an anonymous delegate to make the decision to reschedule substances, without the need to convince a panel of scientific experts.

Despite opposition from medical officials and psychiatrists, Mind Medicine successfully lobbied the delegate to reschedule psychedelic-assisted therapy.

The decision, which took others by surprise, was criticized by the former head of the TGA, suggesting that the lobbying efforts had mixed effects.

The Rise of Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy in Australia

A certificate course in psychedelic-assisted therapy is now available in Australia for around 11,000 Australian dollars, with a lack of alternative training options in the country.

The use of MDMA for therapy is increasing, leading to intense and transformative experiences for patients, with a doctor expressing cautious optimism about the future of these therapies.

The rapid rollout of the treatment has raised concerns about potential negative outcomes and the bypassing of traditional clinical trial phases.