[electronic beeping, buzzing]
[indistinct chatter]
[cheering]
[metal music plays]
[narrator] After retiring from the NHL in 2015,
34-year-old Daniel Carcillo
believes his career as the Chicago Blackhawks enforcer
has left him with traumatic brain injury.
[pensive electronic music plays]
I was dealing with impulse-control issues, insomnia, slurred speech,
anxiety, depression.
[narrator] When conventional medicine doesn't seem to help,
in 2019, he turns to a controversial therapy,
psilocybin from psychedelic mushrooms.
And for him, it seems to work.
It helped to reset my brain.
It helped to break a bunch of the destructive thought patterns
that I was stuck in. Everything started to get better.
[narrator] Carcillo's story is one of many
that are challenging society's long-held opinions
about psychedelic drugs.
[psychedelic music plays]
In America,
psychedelics, including LSD, psilocybin, and MDMA
are classified as Schedule I drugs
and face the strictest regulations.
But over 30 million Americans
claim to have tried psychedelics of one kind or another.
A clinical trial for people suffering from PTSD
revealed that MDMA-assisted therapy helped 67% of participants with their problems.
And in one survey, 85% of mental-health professionals
believed the use of psychedelics in therapy
deserves more research.
Still, though the drugs themselves aren't as addictive as cocaine or opioids,
they can be confusing and overwhelming.
[music distorts]
With growing evidence that psychedelics may help treat brain injury
and psychological problems
and even improve creativity,
is it time they got a second chance?
[upbeat music plays]
In the 2010s, a new word gains widespread attention.
Microdosing.
Taking tiny doses of psychedelics
in an effort to become more productive and creative.
[woman] They're not hippies. They're tech bros, artists, investors,
even entrepreneurs.
These are the people, um, influencing the world.
These are the companies that are reaching far and wide all over.
[narrator] And it's not just young professionals
turning back on to these drugs.
Psychedelics, like MDMA, are undergoing clinical trials
to see if they might help military veterans
with post-traumatic stress disorder.
After those three MDMA sessions,
I haven't had a nightmare about the war since.
[narrator] But psychedelics are still illegal and highly controversial
and have been for half a century.
How did we get here?
Well, it's been quite a trip.
Humans have been using psychedelics for thousands of years.
The story of modern psychedelics begins in 1943
with Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann.
As he's working on a new drug for respiratory problems,
he notices something very unusual about its effect on the human body.
One day in the lab,
a small amount gets on his fingers and makes its way into his bloodstream,
putting him into a dreamlike state.
Curious, Hofmann swallows 250 micrograms,
a gargantuan dose,
and sets out for home on his bicycle.
[bike bell dings]
Hofmann's trip is disorientating at first.
He feels possessed by a demon…
[echoing evil laughter]
…and sees a witch.
[witch cackles]
But after the trip,
he experiences a profound sensation of oneness with the natural world.
The drug is named after its chemical structure,
lysergic acid diethylamide,
aka LSD.
By the 1950s,
psychologists are experimenting with the new drug,
with one Canadian clinic treating alcoholics with psychotherapy
and a dose of LSD.
They report a 50% success rate.
Doctors take notice.
This could be a huge asset
in the treatment of many serious mental-health conditions.
When properly qualified physicians use it,
I do not consider it a drug that's any more dangerous
than any other drug used in medicine.
But LSD's psychological effects are unpredictable at best.
Here's what we do know.
LSD's impact on the brain has to do with serotonin,
a chemical messenger in the body thought to regulate our mood.
The brain has at least 14 known types of serotonin receptors
that process the chemical,
moderating our emotions and perceptions.
LSD molecules latch onto one of these serotonin receptors,
influencing not only our mood
but what we see and hear…
[distant cats meow]
…even distorting our sense of the passage of time.
This is the trip.
It can be positive,
but it can also be terrible.
It seems to depend on the individual's state of mind
and the environment they're in when they take the trip.
[psychedelic music plays]
LSD isn't the only drug with these effects.
In 1960, Harvard professor of psychology Timothy Leary
is on a research trip in Mexico,
where he ingests mushrooms that contain a chemical called psilocybin.
The first experience I had was with seven little mushrooms in Mexico.
For the five hours after I ate these mushrooms,
I learned more about psychology
than I had in the preceding 16 years as a psychologist.
Since that time, I've done almost nothing but attempt to study,
to learn more about how these experiences are produced
and how they can be used for man's benefit.
[narrator] Hopeful that this natural psychedelic
might prove useful in psychotherapy,
in 1961,
Leary and his team of therapists
launch what they call the Concord Prison Experiment.
-[trap beat plays] -[sirens wail]
They work with 32 prisoners,
putting them under the influence of psilocybin.
Then, the therapists ask the prisoners
to describe their often traumatic life histories
and hopes for the future
to help them confront the root of their criminality.
Leary theorizes that this should make them less likely to re-offend.
It seems to work.
Usually, within six months of being paroled,
64% of them would commit a new crime or break parole.
The study claims
that this treatment reduces the likelihood of returning to prison
by almost two-thirds.
[upbeat synth music plays]
Leary seems to be on the verge
of proving that psychedelics have real value in psychotherapy,
but his experimental methods are questioned
and word gets out
that some of the research team are taking the drug as well.
The Harvard administration fires Leary.
His academic career may be over,
but Leary will be a psychedelic icon for decades to come.
Meanwhile, in California, over in the Bay Area,
another group is experimenting with LSD
to see if it might be useful for mind control
or as a truth serum.
The CIA.
One of their test subjects, novelist Ken Kesey…
-[vocalizing] -[laughter]
The CIA brought LSD into the USA. [chuckles]
It was the government. The government's giving us drugs.
It's bound to be good stuff. It was, the best stuff of all.
[narrator] Kesey is so inspired
by the drug's creative and spiritual potential,
he steals some to share with his friends.
They call it acid.
[Kesey] What you have here is the gathering of the tribe.
Well, the acid tribe.
Everyone here has been through the whole scene.
[jam rock music plays]
[narrator] By 1965,
they begin making their own LSD,
sharing it at parties in the Bay Area.
Kesey's house band, The Warlocks, begin drawing larger and larger crowds
and change their name to the Grateful Dead.
[reporter] The Grateful Dead themselves acknowledge they have used LSD.
[narrator] The band and the crowd take acid not just to have fun
but to liberate their consciousness.
We would all like to be able to live an uncluttered life,
a simple life, a good life, you know,
and, like, think about moving the whole human race ahead a step.
And one of the ways of achieving that being is drugs.
-[man] Through expanding your… -Consciousness.
[man] Consciousness.
[narrator] Kesey and his entourage even head out across the US
in an old school bus,
spreading the news about LSD.
By the mid '60s,
psychedelics are on their way to the heart of pop culture,
and by 1967, even the biggest band in the world is doing it.
[man] Paul, how often have you taken LSD?
About four times.
[narrator] It's no surprise musicians and artists are intrigued by the stuff.
Psychedelics affect how we see and hear,
similar to a neurological phenomenon found in some highly creative individuals,
synesthesia.
Synesthesia is where one sense stimulation blends with another sense in the brain.
Like when colors are heard as well as seen…
[high-pitched tones play]
…or music is seen as well as heard.
[music overlapping with tones]
LSD users can experience similar phenomena,
like seeing shifting patterns of color when listening to music.
And in one experiment,
when a blind person on LSD listened to Bach,
he felt liquid cascade over him, as if he were standing under a waterfall.
A state of mind thought only to be available
to those born with synesthesia.
[jam rock music plays]
Inspired by LSD activists like Leary and Kesey,
more and more young people are starting to turn on, tune in,
and drop out.
[reporter] These people are hippies.
They represent a new form of social rebellion.
[narrator] Nearly 100,000 young people
flock to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood
for the Summer of Love.
A communal celebration of hippie music,
free love, the anti-war movement,
and LSD.
A backlash is almost inevitable.
[ominous music plays]
[reporter] Their diversions might seem to be harmless enough
were it not for one thing.
The drug is extremely dangerous.
[narrator] America's fears about the hippies and their favorite drug
are stoked by sensational news stories.
[sirens wail]
[reporter] There is a steady flow into San Francisco hospitals
of young people who have "freaked out"
and been picked up by the police in a state of desperate terror.
[sirens wail]
[narrator] 1968 is a violent year in America.
Civil unrest erupts over the Vietnam War,
and tragic assassinations traumatize the nation.
That November, Richard Nixon wins the presidency
on a platform of law and order
with an electoral mandate
to put the psychedelic-loving hippies in their place.
Despite LSD still being used in clinical research into the late 1960s,
the writing is on the wall for psychedelics.
America's public enemy number one in the United States
is drug abuse.
In order to fight and defeat this enemy,
it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive.
[narrator] In 1970,
the Nixon Administration adds LSD and psilocybin
to the most restricted list of Schedule I drugs,
alongside heroin,
slamming the brakes on psychedelic research in the US.
The next year,
the United Nations extends restrictions across the globe
with their Convention on Psychotropic Substances.
For scientists around the world trying to understand
whether psychedelic therapy can help treat mental illness,
this is a major setback.
[upbeat music plays]
With LSD off-limits for use in psychotherapy,
scientists are on the lookout for a legal alternative
so they can continue their research.
And in the late 1970s,
a drug-enforcement-agency-approved chemist finds what they're looking for.
Federal officials call it an underground drug
that's going nationwide.
[man] The LSD of the '80s.
[dance music plays]
[narrator] MDMA was originally created in 1912 to control bleeding.
Although not a classic psychedelic like LSD,
it does have psychedelic effects,
but it also creates intense feelings of empathy
and even euphoria.
By the mid-'80s,
up to 150 American therapists find it useful in psychotherapy sessions.
If you're dealing with couples or groups who have emotional bonds,
this is a way of deepening.
It creates a state of what I call high empathy.
[narrator] But as with previous psychedelics,
the temptation to use MDMA as a recreational drug is hard to resist,
especially on the dance floors of the 1980s,
where it's known as ecstasy.
[woman] It's instant love.
It's like bein' on a cloud.
It's indescribable. You have to be there. It's just really ecstasy.
Investigators say the use of ecstasy is growing at an alarming rate
on college campuses across the country.
[narrator] Just as with LSD,
officials look on the new psychedelic as a public-health threat.
We have enough cocaine and heroin and marijuana out there, and LSD and PCP
and abuse of legitimate drugs. We don't need another drug out there.
[narrator] In 1985, the US outlaws MDMA,
adding it to Schedule I, alongside LSD and psilocybin,
as well as marijuana and quaaludes.
And the following year,
MDMA is heavily prohibited by the UN around the world.
And just as with LSD,
further research on MDMA's benefits for psychotherapy
is put on the back burner.
[electronic dance music plays
From the mid-'80s into the '90s,
psychedelics may be underground, but they're still popular.
As of 1997,
one in 16 American high schoolers claims to have tried ecstasy,
but their illegality
still makes scientific research practically impossible.
Then, in the late 1990s,
the birthplace of the Summer of Love bears witness to a new revolution.
The titans of technology, Apple and Microsoft,
are flourishing in what's known as Silicon Valley.
[rock music plays]
It's a golden age of tech innovation,
where creative, out-of-the-box thinking defines success.
In an interview in 2005,
Apple's CEO Steve Jobs reveals that taking LSD in his youth
was one of the most important things he'd done in his life.
A new generation asks the big question.
Could psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin be useful,
not as party drugs, but as smart drugs?
Normally, neurons, the cells used for communication within the brain,
fire in predictable patterns of activity.
In particular, visual information is processed
in the back of the brain, in an area called the visual cortex.
But if a person takes a psychedelic like LSD,
something unusual happens.
Visual information now appears to be processed
in additional areas of the brain…
which suggests that psychedelics enable communication
between parts of the brain that don't usually connect,
allowing the brain to work more freely.
Psychedelics could fuel a coder's great new idea,
but there's a very real downside to them.
They can be a real problem if taken in too large an amount.
In 2011,
psychologist James Fadiman proposes a radical idea.
What if these beneficial effects of psychedelics could be harnessed
without the drawbacks?
The idea is simple,
reduce the dose of the psychedelic to one-tenth of the usual amount
so that your brain receives the benefits of the drug
without the hallucinations.
He calls it microdosing.
Microdosing, it turns out, makes you feel better.
People basically have improved work,
amount, discrimination, flow, quality.
Also I have a couple of notes that say,
"Boy, if people knew what it did for your libido,
you would have a product!"
[man laughs]
[narratorBy 2015, a growing number of Silicon Valley professionals
are microdosing psychedelics like psilocybin,
LSD, and other drugs.
About 45 minutes after I microdose,
I notice just a general mood enhancement. It's a little bit easier to smile.
I'm a little bit more extroverted. I'm less in my head
and more engaged in my outer world,
so generally, it just… it kinda smooths things out.
[narrator] Because psychedelics are illegal,
it's hard to study these effects and others scientifically.
But in the 2010s,
as the combative policies of the War on Drugs
start to face serious opposition from doctors,
social-justice advocates, and the general public,
scientists start taking a fresh look at the benefits of psychedelics.
Up to one in five military veterans suffers from PTSD,
a leading cause of suicide among former service members.
I stabbed myself in the neck and the wrist with a knife.
I just wanted the pain to stop.
[narrator] Many, like ex-US Marine Scott Ostrom,
have suffered suicidal thoughts
and uncontrollable anger since they left the war zone.
And conventional therapy doesn't always work.
The standard treatments for PTSD
tend not to really solve the problem for most people.
[narrator] In a new clinical trial, combining therapy with doses of MDMA,
Ostrom finds himself better able to face his traumatic memories
so he can work through them verbally.
It really did change my life.
In a short period of time, in six months.
[narrator] Ostrom becomes one of the 67% of the trial's participants
whose PTSD is successfully treated.
The results from the latest Phase 3 trial of MDMA were just astounding.
I would absolutely call this a breakthrough.
[narrator] Across the US and Europe,
psychedelic research projects on LSD, psilocybin, and MDMA
are increasing in number.
We hear patients saying,
"I've seen the light. I can see my problems in a new light."
[narrator] And this growth in research is accompanied by changing laws
across the US.
In 2019,
Denver, Colorado, decriminalizes psychedelic mushrooms for personal use,
followed a month later by the city of Oakland, California.
Then in 2020,
Oregon becomes the first state to legalize psilocybin for therapeutic use
and decriminalizes possession of small amounts of LSD,
MDMA, and psilocybin, alongside other drugs.
And they likely won't be the last.
The road to full approval for psychedelic-assisted therapy
may prove long,
but while humanity may not be ready for another outbreak of hippie mania,
future historians may well look upon the coming decades
as a new age of psychedelics.
[psychedelic music plays]