Dr Ben Sessa’s greatest conversation stopper: psychedelics are a ‘psychic antibiotic’ capable of statistically curing mental diseases

“Psychiatry is a pretty desperate and miserable place to work.”

Dr Ben Sessa’s been at the frontline of mental health services since 1997, and deserves a rant. “Where are we going wrong? We've had modern psychiatry around for 100 years. And we’re not getting the kind of clinical outcomes we want,” he opines, “younger people get given the SSRIs, can’t work the therapy, and kill themselves.”

‘Psychic antibiotic’ is another of Sessa’s bravura catchphrases. Mental health treatment’s in a miserable state of affairs comparable to general medicine in the late 1800s, says Sessa who first presented his vision that psychedelic medicine could be revived to the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2006.

“Doctors were losing the battle to the infectious diseases, leprosy, smallpox, tuberculosis, people dying post-operatively,” he continues, flexing his storytelling skills in a swaggering lecture, “Back then, were very good at our statistical analysis and epidemiology too. We knew that people were dying, but it wasn't clear what was going on.”

Things changed when a joint German-Japanese team discovered a cure for… syphilis in 1908, and Nobel prizes ensued.

“Where is our treatment that gets to the heart of disorders?”

‘Antibiotics’ as they were called, ‘cos they killed bacteria, include any micro-biological treatment for bacterial infection, not just other bacteria bred to fight against their microscopic kin.

Penicillin, invented by Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928, is derived from a fungus secretion… just saying. Specifically a mould, which are traditionally used for their anti-infection properties.

“Where is our antibiotic?” bellows Sessa in the general direction of the gods, “Where is our treatment that gets to the heart of disorders, and actually cures them? We write these voluminous tomes,” he continues, hitting his stride, “The ‘DSM’ and ‘ICD’. We track who gets depression, and anxiety, and eating disorders, and personality disorders, and addictions, and affective disorders,” here it comes, “…but we're not very good at treating them.”

Dr Sessa’s allowed to ham it up like this because he is legit as any clinician, researcher or spokesperson.

“The idea that healing patients would be a bad business model is sick”

It’s almost like the anthropology reports from the Amazon… where researchers are struck by the animist doctrine that you’re only allowed to talk shit about stuff you’ve actually done…

Tell us why our ailments continue to vex us so, oh unlikely shaman returned from the darkest depths of the forest with knowledge?

“Because we treat them symptomatically,” answers Dr Sessa, “We provide a whole plethora of daily maintenance drugs that mask the symptoms. Which the pharmaceutical industry queued up to provide us with.”

Yet there is hope. Way back in 2012’s breakthrough Psychedelic Renaissance, Sessa’s book which coined the phrase, he was already declaring psychedelic medicine the ‘psychic antibiotic’ that his profession and his patients crave.

In his Vital presentation during the course’s second module covering psychedelic therapy styles, Sessa beams with pride after battering his return key to reveal a graph showing MDMA-AT thrashing a combination of the best anti-addiction treatments money can buy, plus 12-step and more, by a 73% to 21% recovery rate.

“We're not going to cure everyone and therefore put ourselves out of business”

Sessa’s surging Awakn chain though, is a listed company. Like other private medical providers, doesn’t he have a duty to shareholders to drag treatment plans out too?

“The idea that healing patients would be a bad business model is sick,” and he doesn’t mean in the same way he dryly describes my wannabe-hipster home town of Bristol as ‘extremely sick’ in his introduction, “sustaining poor treatments with poor outcomes in order to maintain a customer base is absurd.”

Accident wards don’t keep your leg held up in traction forever. “There's plenty of work out there for orthopaedic surgeons mending broken legs,” explains Sessa to an enquiring Vital student in the Q&A, “plus there are plenty of people out there who could do with their mental disorders being completely cured. We're not going to cure everyone and therefore put ourselves out of business.”