Psychedelic Evolution | Asheville Journalist Daniel Walton

It should surprise no one that Asheville and other parts of Western North Carolina have become launching pads for a nascent industry of psychedelics. What is surprising is the recent state-sanctioned research into psychedelics and the legislative openness to legalization.

My guest today is Daniel Walton, an Asheville journalist who reported and wrote an engaging story about this for the online publication The Assembly of North Carolina. 

We talk about how the culture around psychedelics has evolved over the past half-century. Daniel tells us about the increasing interest in psychedelic therapy and a utopian retreat in Mars Hill for guided psychedelic exploration. We also discuss pioneering efforts in Oregon and Colorado to decriminalize psychedelics and potentially provide a roadmap for legalization here.

00:47 Understanding the Role of Psychedelic Guides
01:54 Legal Status of Psychedelics
04:17 Psychedelics and Mental Health
04:47 Psychedelic Practices in North Carolina
07:40 The Psychedelic Society of Asheville
09:02 The Role of Research in Psychedelic Acceptance
22:56 The Cost and Accessibility of Psychedelics
25:04 The Future of Psychedelics
26:51 Conclusion: The Potential of Psychedelics

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Transcript

Matt Peiken: How did you even get turned on to the idea of doing a story about psychedelics?

Daniel Walton: I've had a personal interest in psychedelics for years, since early grad school, but this particular story had its genesis when I was still working for Mountain Xpress.

My colleague Jess Wakeman did a story about this time last year, actually talking about Mushrooms in particular as a mental health strategy that a lot of people around Asheville had been pursuing. I was very taken by that piece as I was editing it, and was particularly struck by one of the people who she had interviewed, Ehren Cruz, who became the central point of the story I just wrote for the Assembly.

Matt Peiken: Yeah, so he's really the linchpin of it, or at least the heart of it. What did you already know about his work through Jess's article and what did you learn through yours? What didn't you know about what he was doing? 

Daniel Walton: Sure. Well, I knew that he was working as what he likes to call a psychedelic ceremonial facilitator somebody who guides clients through Mushroom trips in a therapeutic or personal growth container.

I knew that he was operating pretty darn publicly with a website explaining his services. I knew that he was a real presence on LinkedIn really promoting this as a professional path. I did not know the extent to which he's serving clients, pretty darn steady stream of people coming to his door.

I didn't know about the Psychedelic Society of Asheville, which he co founded with a number of other guides and enthusiasts, and now has over 750 members. I didn't know about the level of training that Is now becoming available to people who want to be psychedelic guides through organizations like third wave in california. There's really a true psychedelic renaissance underway. 

Matt Peiken: It's funny because when we talk about the legalization of drugs in this country or the decriminalization of drugs, We often talk first of all about marijuana. States are legally Passing marijuana and there's dispensaries happening.

I don't hear much about legalizing psychedelics or what the criminality of that is. In your article, you mentioned that there was a federal ban on psychedelics in 1968. Can you clarify where we stand legally, nationally, and if there are any states that have chipped away at that legalization or criminalization of psychedelics?

Daniel Walton: Sure. So psilocybin, the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms, remains a Schedule I substance under federal law. That means that It has, quote, no legitimate medical use. It is illegal for anyone to possess unless you have special permits for research. That's at the federal level. At the state level, Oregon last year began a legal adult use program.

It's a weird setup, halfway between recreational and medicinal in that anyone can do it, but you have to have mushrooms administered in a licensed service center by a licensed therapist. You can't just buy them from a dispensary and go take them at home. Colorado also is developing a program.

They passed a bill to decriminalize and provide a legal Path for mushrooms. That program is still getting spun up. They're still working on the regulations So that's still a little bit down the pike, but they will have a personal use provision. So a little bit more Free wheeling then than the Oregon law.

Matt Peiken: Yeah, if there's a federal ban on psilocybin if there is a Statute about that. How can these states legalize it? 

Daniel Walton: It's the same as marijuana legalization. I mean if your state Has the laws to allow it, the feds are generally not cracking down on it, just like they're not cracking down on every single dispensary in Colorado. 

Matt Peiken: Now North Carolina has not legalized it yet. Although your article talks about the state legislature is considering a bill to put five million dollars aside for experiments on psilocybin and MDMA. What is MDMA? Is that an acronym for something? 

Daniel Walton: It is. And I don't, don't ask me to expand the acronym.

It's the drug more commonly known in like party context is ecstasy. It's not really a classical psychedelic, but it has similar mind expanding mood altering effects and a lot of medical professionals have found it to be helpful in therapy, particularly treating cases of PTSD or depression, et cetera, those kinds of relatively intractable mental disorders. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. So how are Ehren Cruz and others able to get around the fact that North Carolina has not established a formal legality around this? 

Daniel Walton: Ehren and other guides in the area are very clear that they, as guides, do not provide mushrooms or other psychedelic substances to clients.

If a client is able to find or source these mushrooms, and wants to take them under an experienced guide, somebody who knows The path of the trip, how to work with challenging experiences, that's what these people are here for. Ehren is very clear, what I do is legal harm reduction, and because I'm not actively providing substances that's my legal angle.

Matt Peiken: So Ehren has established a facility in Mars Hill, where he lives, that is called SPARC. S P Capital A R C. What does that stand for? 

Daniel Walton: Don't ask me. 

Matt Peiken: Okay, that's all right. So he has established SP, capital A R C, and what did you see when you were out there? I know you toured the facility. You spoke at least to one person who has utilized it.

What did you discover out there? 

Daniel Walton: Sure. There are two buckets of this. The first is his home, where he and his family lives, has a space specifically dedicated as like a temple for Mushroom Journeys. It is a gorgeous log cabin home, and this temple space is lots of wood, lots of sacred and ceremonial objects from traditions around the world, like a giant crystal singing bowl. Radio audience, I'm gesturing like to the width of my shoulders here. Medicine drum from native American traditions, these beautiful polished crystal balls arranged in the shape of a Kabbalistic symbol, a bookshelf full of occult and mystical literature that perhaps in your mushroom trance, you might be able to peruse and draw inspiration from, just really rich with meaning.

He has also built a very large extension onto this house, which he's calling the Communitas Sanctuary that's scheduled to open in the spring. That's Entirely meant for hosting events, not only psychedelic experiences, but also yoga, breath work, creativity workshops, men's supports groups, all kinds of more community based, group based ceremonies, still aimed at mind expanding or consciousness expanding enterprises, but not necessarily all psychedelic. 

Matt Peiken: On the surface of it and as somebody who does not partake in this world, I can only look from the outside looking in. That seems almost like a stereotype of Asheville, that the kind of hippie, woo Psychedelic adjacent community here.

You touched on in your article the psychedelic Society of Asheville, which he is a co founder. It was just established in 2022. I'm surprised it took until 2022 to establish a psychedelic society of Asheville. What is this society?

Daniel Walton: All right, so the society started as a group on meetup, but is now a regularly meeting conglomeration of people. I actually just attended a meeting on Sunday at Haw Creek Commons and every month, call it 40 to 50 people we'll meet somewhere to hear from a psychedelic thought leader, to share their own experiences with these substances, to talk with each other about the meaning of what they've gone through.

Matt Peiken: Is this like a support group? Is it just discussion that happens around psychedelics?

Daniel Walton: Yeah. Kind of education support. There's a trend that's now happening to maybe get some advocacy going. No consumption is practiced at these meetings. Let's make that clear. 

Matt Peiken: I find this interesting that there are these, to varying degrees of formal groups now that are forming in the last couple of years.

And also, I was surprised that the state legislature is considering this bill to put 5 million aside to look into this. And there's also the UNC School of Medicine. There's a researcher there that you touched on in your story as being the first state sanctioned study of psilocybin since the ban in 68. Why is the legislature, why is academia now giving serious looks to this in a way that they might not have ever considered even ten years ago?

Daniel Walton: Kind of the current wave of interest in psychedelics sparks off in the late 2010s, a group of researchers at Johns Hopkins who had carried the torch of psychedelic research throughout, from the 60s through the dark ages to now published some very compelling studies about the efficacy of psilocybin for treating depression in particular.

I've talked to a couple of researchers from Duke and from UNC who said this is astounding data, you do not see these kinds of treatment effects for a single session of psilocybin-assisted therapy that you would for years of talk therapy.

It like, it's really compelling science. And when you see that, you get the research community interested, you get people who are really seeking healing interested, and when you get those Pillars of the establishment interested. Then you start to see maybe a little bit of movement at the legislative front.

On the North Carolina side in particular I understand that we got bipartisan agreement on this bill, by a bit of a fluke. It was originally sponsored by a Democrat representative Autry from Mecklenburg County, but, a number of Republicans have co sponsored this legislation.

One of them because one of his old army buddies said, Hey, I've been really helped by this stuff. You need to look into this at least as a research thing, at least let us have some more study to see how this could benefit people like you and me, veterans in particular.

So there, there's a personal connection that has pushed it a little forward here.

Matt Peiken: You mentioned that the data is compelling. Are there only relatively recent studies that have been conducted by Recognized scientific centers? That before going back decades, even centuries, it's merely anecdotal evidence. Hey, this works. This takes me to a place that talk therapy just couldn't do. Who's been leading this research that now therapists, scientists, legislators, policy makers are now taking seriously.

Daniel Walton: The first wave of Western psychedelic research takes off in the 50s, that's the age of Timothy Leary and The Grateful Dead, et cetera. When really, the scientific establishment is just trying to get a handle on what these things are and what they can do. There were inklings of their potential for changing people's minds, of creating powerful psychotropic effects, long lasting effects but not really, to my knowledge, quite as systematized for, treating specific conditions like depression or PTSD.

That initial thrust of research in the fifties and sixties got all shut down in sixty eight after, the cultural reaction against the whole psychedelic counterculture. But then you have a new wave of researchers who see those 50s and 60s studies, see the potential, want to try and see what these compounds can do if they're applied in a therapeutic container to treat specific conditions.

And of course, For hundreds, millennia of years these psychedelics have been used by indigenous cultures for healing and also for spiritual exploration. So let's not ignore that, that long, long tradition that just sits entirely outside of the Western canon. 

Matt Peiken: But that's a key point, isn't it? That all this stuff that has sat outside the Western canon. It's easy for Western medicine, Western thinking to write that off, to say it's just crackpot medicine, it's not legit. I know there are countless people who adhere to and ascribe to Eastern medicine. Would this fall under the rubric of Eastern medicine? 

Daniel Walton: I don't think that's a fair assessment. I mean, the Western strain of this comes from Mexico, from the Quandara Maria Sabina, who inducted almost a couple of Western explorers into mushroom ceremonies.

They brought them back, published a big life article, set off the whole mushroom explosion in the U. S. in the 50s and 60s. There are Eastern traditions, too. There's a tradition of psychedelic mushroom use in Siberia, but that's a whole different thread.

Matt Peiken: I want to point out that in the expansion of legitimacy here, of the growing sense that this is a legitimate pursuit of study, you have the North Carolina Psychedelic Policy Coalition, which you wrote about. It's an advocacy group of 70 therapists, counselors, and doctors.

Is that also relatively new? 

Daniel Walton: Yeah, it's either 2022 or 2023, but that group founded by a couple of people from the Students for Sensible Drug Policy expanded to include a lot of the medical, mental health counselor community, these people who have seen the research or who have experimented with these substances themselves, seen what they can do to heal clients with problems that have been intractable, and are really wanting the legislative side to catch up with what the research is suggesting.

Matt Peiken: Now, one of the hurdles that I would see to this is the unknown of what happens to any singular person in a psychedelic trip. That every dose is different for every person, that every person's reaction, and I would think that critics of this would say, how can you manage this? Certain drugs that are legalized, that are produced by recognized labs, There, there's a consistency there, time and time again, and that you can't predict that, or can you, with psilocybin and other psychedelics?

Am I reading this wrong, that the unknown of it is a potential hurdle and a scary point for a lot of people? 

Daniel Walton: Sure, it is not a completely predictable. Guides that I have talked to say, there, there is a lot that you can do to make a trip meaningfully therapeutic by Giving people a very comfortable setting to have their experience in, to do a lot of preparation before, to help people understand, these are some of the effects that you might feel, if it feels scary, lean into it. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah, Ehren Cruz even said in your article, he talked about bad trips are not to be steered away from, that that is part of the legitimate pursuit of this kind of therapy. 

Daniel Walton: Bad trip is a relative term, but I think he would prefer like challenging experience. The idea being that you can encounter amplified feelings of fear or paranoia or or anxiety through the use of psychedelics and under skilled guidance, you can be encouraged to face those experiences to feel in a metaphorical or spiritual way, what might be underlying them and to face them in a state of mind that you would not be able to.

Matt Peiken: I have an artist friend of mine, and she is very into mushrooms, and in her art she's into mushrooms. And she was encouraging me to try mushrooms. And she said, let's get you started on a very small micro dosing. And, This is the only time I ever tried.

She wanted to put me on a 30 day plan of four days on, three days off, with both a capsule with mushrooms that was weighed out to be like .08 grams or something, a very small dose, and then some other pill that helps your body absorb, better absorb the mushrooms. I tried it for four days.

And I just felt like a slight buzzing in my body, but I didn't feel good and I stopped doing it. Did I shortchange myself? I imagine there's different strategies. You would talk for every Ehren Cruz, there'll be somebody else who would tell you try this or try that, or don't microdose.

I had a friend tell me, no, you needed to go a full on dose. None of this microdosing stuff. What do you hear about that? There's no consistency, is there? 

Daniel Walton: The effects with any drug or substance are dose dependent, there are plenty of people who have a micro dosing practice as a way to encourage what's called neuroplasticity, this idea that your brain under consistent doses of mushrooms is able to form new neural connections more easily without necessarily feeling The full effects of, whoa, I just saw God and talked to angels.

On the flip side, there, there is the possibility of taking a larger dose under guidance to talk to God and see angels, et cetera. It just depends on what you're looking for, what you feel prepared for.

Matt Peiken: Now that you've talked to so many people and you've done your own research, how important for somebody entering this for the first time is it to have a guided journey into this? 

Daniel Walton: I would say that if one has any hesitation or worry or fear about taking a psychedelic, a guide is a fantastic idea. You look at the indigenous tradition and indigenous people do generally not take these substances unless it is in a guided or rituals situation. Obviously we had in the 50s and 60s in the hippie counterculture a lot of people who are just like screw that, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go and trip balls, and we see where that ended up. I think this latest wave of psychedelic exploration has really cemented a greater respect for these substances and their power, and a greater understanding that there should be some sort of ritual or ceremonial or therapeutic container at least for the maximum benefit.

Matt Peiken: You just said something I think is really germane, how our country's consciousness of psychedelics, how it was initially shaped in the 60s and 70s, that it was seen as like you're either a kook to try this or it's not legit, and it seems like all these practitioners, Ehren Cruz, Sarah Levine of the Psychedelic Society of Asheville, and others. We didn't bring up the Pearl Psychedelic Institute in Waynesville, which you also mentioned in your story, how their main challenge, I imagine, is shedding the stigma From the 60s and 70s, and that this can be done in an educated, controlled, learned manner.

Daniel Walton: I was just talking to my mom about this article, herself a child of the 60s, and she told me, I think people who do this stuff have rocks in their head. So the stigma still remains.

Matt Peiken: So she said that. Okay, so how do you talk with your mom about this? Obviously have an openness to this.

You've studied this. Your mom thinks anybody who tries this has rocks in their head. What do you tell somebody who says anybody who tries this has rocks in their head? 

Daniel Walton: I would encourage anyone with that attitude to spend some time looking at the research, at the benefits that people have experienced. Under guidance you see a lot of people reporting positive experiences.

You don't necessarily see people freaking out, jumping out of windows, et cetera, et cetera. When things are placed in an intentional guided container, there's a lot more potential for good and a lot less potential for bad stuff to happen. 

Matt Peiken: We're in a community and a lot of communities are undergoing a really bad explosion of fentanyl and opioid use.

Has anybody talked about using psychedelics or psilocybin to help wean people off of fentanyl and opioids if they want to do this kind of class of drugs under guidance? Is there any talk of that?

Daniel Walton: I know there's been some talk about the use of psychedelics, particularly ketamine, as a way of treating addiction.

And it goes back to that idea of neuroplasticity, the idea that under the influence of a psychedelic, your brain is more able to make new connections, to shift around, establish neural circuitry. Theoretically, if you have these ingrained habits or addictions under a guided psychedelic journey, you might be able to shift those around in ways that you could not do in a fully conscious, lucid state.

Matt Peiken: People who work in addiction and reducing harm in this way, are they talking about leaning into ketamine as a way to help legalize, to formalize the use of psychedelics, whether it's recreationally or in therapeutic uses for people who are already suffering addiction.

Daniel Walton: I think a lot of the therapy and mental health community is excited about the potential and I know that there are some people who are currently using ketamine in that way. Ketamine is a lot more accessible, it is legal to prescribe, it's not a labeled use to use ketamine for this kind of psychedelic assisted therapy, but it's not illegal to do. 

Matt Peiken: Is ketamine itself a psychedelic? 

Daniel Walton: You know, It depends on who you ask and what kind of dose you take. But It can, under the right circumstances, at the right dose, have a similar type of dissociation and neuroplasticity, visual field stuff going on so it is similar in experience, yes.

Matt Peiken:  Is cost a factor here? Are psychedelics expensive? Are they out of reach of people who are struggling financially? 

Daniel Walton: That's a sticky wicket. The short answer is right now, yes. Guided services can be a bit expensive. Ehren Cruz and other guides that I've talked to do operate on sliding scales. One of the like intensive coaching services, multiple integration and preparation sessions, a guided journey, through the spArc, a price I saw quoted is $2,500. Ketamine assisted psychotherapy sessions can be like $600 a pop. You go out Oregon, a psychedelic session can be anywhere from 1, 000 to 4, 500. Depends on how much you want to pay. The drugs themselves are not expensive. Mushrooms literally grow out of compost and poop, if you want them to. Most psilocybin mushrooms are known for growing literally out of cow patties.

Matt Peiken: So what are you paying for? 

Daniel Walton: You're paying for a trained professional to guide you through the experience. Ehren And I talked about this and he's it's a full day's work for me to guide somebody through a trip.

It's six to eight hours of constant supervision of someone. And that's just the trip itself. If you are doing the full nine yards, you're meeting with a guide three or four times for up to an hour before you do the trip, you are meeting a couple of hours after to integrate what happened to make sense of it.

At the spArc, you're staying overnight and in Airbnb on the Mars Hill property, so you don't have to go anywhere after your mushroom experience. So there's a lot of container that goes into it. You're not just paying for the drug. And I think that's important.

Matt Peiken: I imagine also you're paying for the guide to vet the drug, that this is not an unknown mushroom or unknown dosage, that they're on top of it. 

Daniel Walton: Yeah, mushrooms are a lot less risky than other drugs when it comes to Toxicity. Nobody is spiking mushrooms with fentanyl. 

Matt Peiken: Is there an industry waiting to crop up, waiting for legalization, just like with marijuana?

Are there known players, are there commercial outlets that right now, like Ehren Cruz is on the front end of it as an independent agent. But is, are there more known entities that are waiting for the legalization to come in and monopolize or command the industry here? 

Daniel Walton: I think it's still an open question.

We're seeing in Oregon, a bit of a gold rush mentality around psychedelic services. In Canada, where the legal landscape is, who knows, there are open dispensaries on the streets of Vancouver where you can get four grams of mushrooms for $35 Canadian.

Obviously in Europe there's been a market in mushrooms for a while. And I know that some of the Dutch companies who have been involved in that have been eyeing the U S market, seeing what could happen in terms of legalization. So there's certainly a lot of interest and we're seeing in the jurisdictions where these substances are either legal or Decriminalized, interest in making it a business.

Matt Peiken: So you talked about the state legislative bill, or at least that's under consideration. What happens next? Is this going to be taken up this year, or is it going to sit? 

Daniel Walton: So everyone that I've talked to is pretty confident that it will pass during this short session. This was introduced last year. It got unanimous approval from the house health committee, both sides of the aisle, everybody loved it. It went to the appropriations committee and got stuck there because, the whole budget was a mess this year and they didn't get around to it essentially. But during the short session, which starts in April but everyone I talked to from the psychedelic policy commission and from local advocates seems very confident that this will go through.

Matt Peiken: Is there anything you haven't talked about around your article or just your research that you think is important for people to understand or know? 

Daniel Walton: I do want to give a little bit more attention to the Pearl Psychedelic Institute in Waynesville. Under the direction of a Dr. Ray Turpin they were one of the sites to do a federal trial of MDMA to treat PTSD.

And by all accounts the FDA got the results that they wanted and it is expected that MDMA will be approved for PTSD treatment, prescribable by the end of 2024. So that's likely to be the first real crack in the wall of allowing psychedelic and psychedelic adjacent compounds to be used by prescription for the treatment of mental health.

Matt Peiken: I guess the next step is to learn what MDMA means. 

Daniel Walton: It's like methoxydribo. I don't know. It's a long word.