The Power of Psychedelic Assisted Therapies

0:02 A listener production. This is Crappita Happy and I am your host castunn. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist, a mindfulness meditation teacher and of course author of the Crappita Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Tanya de Jong is a trailblazing Australian soprano, global speaker, award winning social entrepreneur, creative innovation catalyst and spiritual journey woman. Tanya is one of Australia's most successful female entrepreneurs and innovators, having developed six businesses and three charities over the past three decades. And if that wasn't impressive enough, she was also appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in two thousand and eight.

0:59 She's been aimed one of the top one hundred Women of Influence and the one hundred most influential entrepreneurs in Australia, and in twenty twenty one she was named as one of the one hundred most influential people in psychedelics globally. This is what I was particularly interested in talking with her about. Tanya, alongside her husband Peter Hunt, recently co founded Mind Medicine Australia, a charity whose objective is for psychedelic assisted psychotherapies to play a major role in improving the treatments available for Australians who suffer from mental illness. Now, as we know, mental illness here in Australia and around the world was on the rise even before the pandemic, and the current best available treatments still have limitations in terms of their long term effectiveness for many people around the world. Now, psychedelic assisted therapies are on the cusp of widespread acceptance as a breakthrough therapy for key classes of mental illness. They have been shown to be very safe, non addictive when used in a medically controlled environment, and they have been trialed as treatments for things like depression, PTSD, anxiety, end of life distress, dementia, anorexia, and opioid, alcohol and smoking addictions, as well as a whole range of other illnesses.

2:23 These treatments are showing remission rates of up to eighty percent after just two to three medicinal doses in combination with psychotherapy. Now, look, this is a rapidly evolving space, and I wanted to share with you what's happening, what the current state of play is in terms of things like TGA or FDA approval, what you can do to support the cause, if this is something that's meaningful to you, or how you can learn more, for example, if you're a therapist who wants to upskill or know more about what's happening in this area, and also what you might have to look forward to in terms of treatment options, if you or somebody that you know is interested in exploring psychedelic assisted therapies. I am going to let Tanua tell you all about it. I did mention she is a very talented soprano. She's released twelve albums and she did a TED talk called how Singing Together Changes the Brain.

3:17 And we have included a piece of Tenure's music at the end of this episode, so I would love for you to stay tuned and enjoy that, and will include links down below to where you can access more of Tanya's work, including her music. Tania, Welcome to the Crappy to Happy Podcast. Thank you so much for giving us your time today. It's a pleasure and an honor. And Tanya, before we start this interview, I need to say that I had the privilege of being involved in a part of your Mind Medicine summer over the weekend just gone. You had speakers there from around the world talking about this topic of mind medicine, psychedelics in mental health treatment and it was amazing and congratulations on a really really successful event.

4:01 Thank you so much. Has It was really exciting. We had a lot of therapists at the summit, probably about I would think about seventy to eighty percent of the audience. We were therapists, you know, either doctors, psychiatrist, psychologists, psychotherapists, you know, nurses and social workers and so on. And yeah, there was just such an enormous amount of interest from them in the education and professional development side. But then we also had a lot of people who were philanthropists and investors and of course people with lived experience and consumers who were searching for solutions for their mental health challenges.

4:43 And you know, that's why Mind Medicine Australia was set up, so that we could help alleviate the enormous suffering and suicide in our communities, much of which is avoidable. Yeah right, and that is exactly what I want to talk to you about today. So first of all, we just explained for listeners what is Mind Medicine Australia and what brought you to this point of. Creating Mind Medicine Australia. Yeah. So, Mind Medicine Australia is a registered charity which were set up by my husband Peter Hunt and I in early twenty nineteen to provide more options to doctors and their patients for those suffering with mental illness. And our focus is on ensuring that psychedelic assisted therapies can become available and accessible to treat people with very difficult to treat depression, post traumatic stress disorder, addictions, and a whole range of other conditions, because psychedelic assisted therapies are now considered to be the most prospective treatment globally for a whole range of conditions that have previously been treatment resistant, and also as potentially superior treatments for compared to the treatments that have been available for the past fifty or more years. So I think, as we all probably know, in the case of depression and treatment

6:14 resistant depression, the remission rates from current existing treatments are around about thirty percent, so that's from antidepressants and or psychotherapy, and in the case of post traumatic stress disorder, the remission rates from existing treatments are as low as five percent. So we're effectively not getting the majority of patients well and out of the system. And many of your listeners will know that there's huge weight lists to see you professionals in this field, and that's because most of the professionals can't get their patients well. It's not a reflection on the therapists. There's many wonderful and carrying therapists, but they just don't have the tools in their toolbox. And so what happens is mental illness tends to become a life sentence for many people and they end up taking a daily pill that reminds them of the fact that they have a mental illness and have to see therapists, often for the rest of their lives. Whereas in the case of psychedelic assisted therapies, what we're seeing is patients going into remission after two to three medicinal treatments with a short course of psychotherapy and staying in remission. That's amazing, and one hundred and sixty current and recent trials are really demonstrating both the safety and effectiveness of these treatments.

7:32 Really is remarkable. How I came to this, Well, yes, let's hear about that. I've never had any drugs in my life until about five and a half years ago. And so you know, not only did I not have any drugs, I also have never got drunk. I don't really like alcohol at all. I don't even have coffee. So singing has always been my drug of choice. And it is a super wonder drug, like it really wow living. Yeah, that's right. And singing, particularly when we sing with other people, does actually change our brain. It increases our neuroplasticity in our brain and makes us healthier, happier, smarter, more creative, improves our memory, language, and concentration. And I talk about this a lot in my TED talk how singing together changes the brain. So I've always been very interested in, you know, what makes us tick. I've always been really interested in psychology. I think in another life, I certainly wanted to be a psychologist earlier on, and so I've always been a bit of a hacker, a seeker, and a hacker. I guess. So, I've always been looking for experiences that can improve my health and well being, and also experiences that just raise my consciousness. And so I've tried everything you know, mantra tantra, in all kinds of meditation and yoga and cryotherapy, my therapy, you name it.

8:58 I've probably tried just about everything there is to try, but I've never had any drugs. So I came across a blog of Tim Ferris, who I'm a subscriber to about must be nearly six years ago now, and in it he said that he was donating one hundred thousand US dollars to Imperial College for research into silocybin to treat depression. Well, I had no idea what silo cybin was, never heard of it, and I cricked on the link, and it was to an article in the New Yorker magazine which was called The Trip Treatment by Michael Poland. And this was before Michael Poland had written his book.

9:41 This was about a trial that had been taking place at New York University for end of life terminally ill patients. So they, most of them, I think, had a cancer diagnosis, terminal cancer diagnosis, and eighty percent of the people and the trial who'd been suffering depression and anxiety went into remission after just two medicinal doses of psalo cybin with a short course of psychotherapy. And I thought this was remarkable. I couldn't believe it. And one of the patients that was profiled in this article was a Jewish man who had had some intergenerational Holocaust trauma. And my grandparents and parents were Holocaust survivors, and so I had always, you know, not been able to be in the room when anything about the Holocaust came on television or was on a film or was mentioned. And I'd also had some strange sort of dreams where I had sort of been there in the Holocaust at one of the camps, and so I thought this, you know, was something that, you know, it was very strange that this was sitting in my psyche.

10:58 And so when I read this story of this man who basically said he'd come to terms and resolved and accepted what had happened to his family in the Holocaust, because of course, you know, the majority of my relatives were killed in the Holocaust, and this is just absolutely tragic. I mean that this could even happen, and I, yeah, it's not that I want to go and watch lots of Holocaust movies now or anything like that. But gradually, through working with these medicines, I have actually resolved that intergenerational trauma. Anyway, So what happened was I read this article. I said to my husband, we should go and try this. Could do you think we could get into one of the healthy Patients trials? And so we tried to get into some of the healthy Patients trials, but there weren't any at the time. We were going to Europe and as we don't qualify for having a specific mental illness or anything, we were then directed to a guide in the Netherlands and we flew to the Netherlands and we underwent this incredible silo cybern experience. And I should say to the listeners, you know, silo cyburn is actually legal in the Netherlands, as it is in some other countries around the world. This is the craziness of the world we live in, you know, where substances that have been with humanity since the beginning of human civilizations are actually illegal in so many countries. It's just a bizarre situation.

12:27 And we can talk about why that happened. Silos syburn for listeners is LSD, right. No, silo cybn is a psychoactive component of magic mushrooms. LSD is a synthesized It's got some similarities to silo cybn certainly, but it's not the same. So when you go and pick a mushroom in a field, provided it's the right mushroom, it has silocin in it, which gives you these incredible altered states. And it's in these non ordinary states, and literally, I mean for my husband and I, we were transported into multiple different realms of consciousness, you know, bounded awareness, this sense of oneness and connection to self, to others, to the planet. That was just extraordinary, Like I felt like I was part of everything, that everything was part of me. I mean, it was truly mind blowing.

13:22 And it made me realize that you know, what we see on this material plane is only a tiny fraction of what is really here. And it's from that place where of this extraordinary, mind altering non ordinary state that skilled therapists can then work with patients, where a patient's brain is so much more neuroplastic coming out of this experience, and it creates a real window of opportunity for trained therapists to then work with patients to start to really manage whatever anxiety or depression, addictional or other condition they're struggling with. And it allows the patient to then start to not only become more empowered for their own healing, but to bring the insights and learnings from that medicine experience back into their lives and make the changes that they need to make, whether it's in their life, their work, their community, their relationships, whatever it happens to be. And I mean, I can honestly say that this was the most profound experience in our lives, you know, like my husband described it as you know, on a part with the birth of these children, and many people do. If you look at the research, you'll see that most people will describe asalo cybin experience in the right environment, and this is very important. The right set and setting is critical.

14:50 And if you have this experience in the right set and setting, well, most people will describe it in the top five most meaningful experiences in their life. In fact, many people describe it as the single most important and meaningful experience in their life. Now, whoever says that about a medicine exactly. You know, it's really remarkable and this really did change a lot of things for us. I mean, my husband. We all carry trauma, you know, if it's not our own trauma, it's ancestral trauma. In the case of my husband, his father had committed suicide when he was thirteen, and so this had been something that he'd been carrying with him, you know, and he thought that he dealt with a lot of it. But actually, you know, the medicines show you what you haven't necessarily fully dealt with and in combination with therapy. And this is why these treatments are cooled psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, because it's the combination of the medicine with the therapy that creates these incredible healing outcomes. That's why people are seeing those remission rates sixty to eighty percent across one hundred and sixty recent trials, because it's not just the medicine on its own.

16:07 And I just need to say to all your listeners, you know, you could go out and try medicine, but if you don't do it in combination with the right set setting and proper integration with a psychologist or psychotherapist or a trained therapist or counselor of some kind, then you're probably not going to get the full benefits of this experience. And of course a lot of people now are hearing about psychedelic assisted therapy because it's been on the front cover of Newsweek and Time magazine and Forbes and you know, the New York Times and many of the leading publications around the world. So more and more people are seeking out these experiences underground, and there are some wonderful underground therapists. But of course there's also a risk that you won't get the full integration that is needed for you to experience as much here as you could.

17:01 And so the reason why we set Upmind Medicine Australia was to make sure that these experiences could occur in clinical environments under the supervision of trained therapists, so that they were perfectly safe and that they were as effective as possible. And when I say clinical environments, I don't mean, you know, really bland and horrible clinical environments. I mean, in general, the rooms that are used in all the trials and all the research that have been done have been made to look much more comfortable than a normal clinical room. You know, they're made to look personable and friendly, and they have beautiful things on the walls and on the floors, and a patient anyway is usually has an eyemask one because this is very much an internal journey into your own mind. And you're also usually having headphones on because there's a curated playlist that matches the different stages of this experience. Actually, I love creating curative playlists because, of course, my background as a musician means that I'm very interested in the sort of music that can help those who are having these experiences to go deeper into these experiences, and music has a fundamental place in these sorts of ceremonies and experiences. But yeah, that's sort of what happened. And then Peter and I were so blown away by this experience, literally blown away that we immediately started to read all the articles, we could watch all

18:33 the videos. Then about a year later, we had a second experience, even stronger dose, and it was even more powerful, and then we were like, if this is affecting us in this way, imagine what it could do for those who are suffering with serious mental illnesses. And that's when we really started to connect with a lot of the leading researchers around the world. We started attending a lot of the conferences and events in this field, and then it really became obvious to us that Australia didn't have an ecosystem set up to ensure that these could become medical treatments within the medical mental health system in Australia, and that's when we set up Mind Medicine Australia as a registered charity. And Peter and I had already set up four previous charities, so I'd set up the Song Room which brings music and creative learning to schools around Australia, and also with One Voice program led by Creativity Australia, which a social inclusion quires again to alleviate loneliness, isolation and mental illness and bring communities together. And my husband Peter had set up women's community shelters for homeless women, so we were no strangers to working with people who were disadvantaged, with people who were particularly suffering with mental illnesses.

19:53 And if you think about it, pretty much every kind of disadvantage, whether it's someone who's unemployed or someone and who's experiencing homelessness, whatever it happens to be usually mental illness lies at the heart of that disadvantage. So if we can start treating people with you know, and getting them well from their mental illness, then a lot of the other problems in our community and society will actually go away. So that's what we felt, and so we launched a charity back in the start of twenty nineteen, Mind Medicine Australia as you know, as we all know now, and we've put together an incredible group of not an incredible board, but a wonderful community of ambassadors and advisory panel, people with LIFT experience, many many clinicians. I mean, we probably have well over ten thousand clinicians around Australia who are wanting every kind of education and professional development that they can get in this field. And psychedelic assisted therapist is probably one of the most sexy new careers around.

21:01 And we've started the first certificate and psychedelic assisted therapies in the Southern Hemisphere and the demand is through the roof. I mean we have psychiatrists, psychologists, GPS, physicians of all kinds, nurses, paramedics, social workers, occupational therapists and others applying for the course because people want to add this as an adjunct to their other skills, because most caring therapists want to get their patients. Well, yeah, I hope that you're enjoying this conversation and realizing the benefits of positivity in your own life. If you are enjoying the show, please be sure to like and subscribe so that you get notified when you apps drop and head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and leave us a rating and review. It's so so interesting and obviously this is really there's obviously so much research accumulating to support the power of these medicines.

22:09 But you did mention before that in many countries they are illegal. Are you able to just share a little bit of background about how they came to be illegal in some countries? In the nineteen fifties and sixties, these were seen as the next big thing for psychiatry, and over fifty thousand patients went through therapeutic medical sessions and clinical environments with psychiatrists in the US and Australia and other places. Many psychiatrists remember that period as the most exciting in their careers, when they were really getting people well and out of the system. And so what happened was, you know, we had people like stan Groff saying things like psychedelics would be for psychiatry, what the microscope is for biology and medicine, or the telescope is for astronomy. That's how they were viewed.

23:04 But unfortunately, in nineteen seventy one, President Nixon was trying to conscript people to the Vietnam War movement and you know, to go and fight in Vietnam, and all these people, young people in particular, had dropped out because you know, they were having these medicines and they didn't want to go to war with people. And so effectively, what happened was he politicized the drugs, had his War on drugs and basically made this whole class of drugs illegal. He banned them altogether. And what that did was not only did it bound the use of the drugs, but it also pretty much stopped all research because all research fundings stopped.

23:46 Many people described that as the worst censorship of medicine and science in the history of humanity, because in the intervening period between nineteen seventy seventy one and today, there's been this massive spike in loneliness and social isolation, and a whole range of mental illnesses. This renaissance of research in this field has only started again over the last ten to fifteen years, so these one hundred and sixty or so trials have taken place in that time. So it's been like this lost period in a sense where we've seen a lot of suffering, a lot of disconnection in our communities. And one can only imagine how much healthier our world would be and happier and more united, less divided if these medicines had have remained as treatments, and also if there'd been further research between then and now.

24:43 Oh absolutely imagine how far along we would be by now, I know. And unfortunately, also what that did you know, that whole period of time and that war on drugs is that created this whole stigma around these treatments. So you know, psychedelics were stigmatized and there's you know, quite a bit of taboo around them. And we're still working very hard today to educate people on the data and science because it's the data and science itself which is so compelling and so conclusive that chows just how effective and safe these treatments can be. And in fact, even in recreational environments, these substances in their pure form are actually extremely safe.

25:28 I mean they're way safer than Certainly, alcohol is by far the most dangerous drug to self and others, and many many research studies have shown this, but many of the other drugs are also far, far more dangerous. So silocybin and MDMA, even in recreational environments, in their pure form, are considered very safe. It's almost impossible to overdose from silo cybern. I think you have to have something like forty kilograms of it or something which physically impossible to ingest. But what happens is they get a bad name because they're often mixed with other drugs and alcohol and dehydration at dance parties and rays, and that can lead to terrible outcomes. And that's what leads to headlines like more mdmay deaths. But in actual fact, they're very safe. Now in medically controlled environments, they're extremely safe. There's not been a single death, there's been no heart attacks, there's been no adverse events of any significance across thousands and thousands of patients who've been trialed in these recent trials. Indeed, their side effect profile is also very good, so they have very few side effects as well. So these medicines, you know, have enormous potential and now there's a trillion dollar market growing around the world, which far exceeds the market for cannabis, because these medicines are also now being trialed for a range of other conditions, not just depression and post traumatic stress disorder, but a whole way of addictions,

27:01 so nicotine, opioid, alcohol addiction. Plus they're being trialed for obsessive compulsive disorder, anorexa and eating disorders, dementia and Alzheimer's, fibromelga stroke, Parkinson's, and they're even starting to investigate these treatments for schizophrenia, which you know, as you know, is extremely difficult to treat. So the future looks bright. And the medicines MDMAY and ssalo cybin in particular have been granted breakthrough therapy status by the Food and Drug Administration of the USA, just a very rare designation only granted to medicines that could be vastly superior to existing treatments to fast track their approval process to prescription medicine. It's highly likely that because of the incredible Phase three trial results for MDMA, which are showing you know, sixty seven percent remission rates after just three medicinal treatments for patients who've had treatment resistant PTSD for around an average of fourteen years. So you can imagine the suffering of those patients and sixty seven percent of them are now in remission.

28:13 I mean they no longer qualify for a clinical diagnosis of PTSD, and you know, Cass as a psychologist just how significant that is. So it's very likely that MDMA is going to be prescribable in the next twelve to eighteen months in the US and psilocybin will follow soon after. So psilo psilocybin is in Phase two B trials as well or in trials around the world. So it is a very exciting time. And we're also starting to see these therapies being granted special access compassionate use approvals in a number of jurisdictions around the world, including in Australia, which is where a psychiatrist or specialist physician who has a patient whose treatment resistant can get approvals through the regulators to treat patients on a case by case basis with either psalo cyber or mdmasistic therapy. Wow, And so that's also very exciting. We're still dealing with state barriers in Australia because in Australia, these medicines are still Schedule nine, which means that the states have them as prohibited substances.

29:22 But we're working really hard with the Therapeutic Goods Administration Australia. So we put in rescheduling applications last year and there's going to be an announcement on our rescheduling applications in the next couple of weeks. So fingers crossed that they are rescheduled Schedule eight controlled medicine, which is where they should rightly have been sitting anyway. So ketamine sits in Schedule AID, as does cannabis. And it doesn't mean that this opens the floodgates. It doesn't mean that patients can get to take the medicines home and pick them up at the pharmacy. But it does mean that in cont old environments there can be access granted to patients, and that's really important because there's a lot of suffering in this country, an incredible amount of suicide. You know, the mental health statistics in our country were terrible pre COVID.

30:16 We had the second worst mental health statistics in the world of all OECD nations, just ahead of Iceland. Wow, and we have way more sunshine than Iceland. So pre COVID one in five Australians had a mental illness. It's now suggested that four out of five australians mental health has severely deteriorated through this crisis. Pre COVID one in eight Australians were on antidepressants, one in four older adults and one in thirty children as young as four. Those figures have exacerbated terribly. So we really need to do something about this because this is personal for every one of us. If it's not us, it's someone who's close to us, a family member or work colleague, someone we care about, who's suffering and who current treatments are not working for. And that's not to say that current treatments don't work for some patients. They do work for some patients, but just not enough patients.

31:10 No, well exactly. And you know, as I said, Tanya, I sat in on the summit. I couldn't stay for the whole event, but for what I did see the research is it's incredible the results that are coming out of these studies, and I think that the population is so used to treatment is long and slow and not that helpful. There is that idea that if you have these mental illnesses, that you have them for life, and people are very skeptical. I think about this, how rapidly things can turn around, and the idea that something could actually be curative, you know, like it can be cured in two to three sessions. Yes, people just have a hard time grasping that. And you're right, it takes a real lot of education.

31:58 Well, that's right. So most of the treatments that are around at the moment tend to be palliative. You know, they're managing someone's condition. And someone who can speak very well about that is Andrew Robb, the former Minister for Trade for the Australian government who's on our board, and he's been suffering with treatment resistant depression for forty three years and at last count, I think was on his thirteenth antidepressant. And you know what often happens is the antidepressant may give a bit of uplift and you know, may work for a time, but then often it plateaus out and then the doctor might say, we have to increase your dose or try a different one, and so it tends to be a bit of a lucky dip and a lot of the time that is just managing the condition. Yeah, it means that the person can function, but are they functioning at their full potential? Not really, And also what that often means is that a person has a numbing of their full emotional landscape, so that a person can feel more in a gray zone and they're not feeling the full peaks and troughs of what it means to be human being with the full range of emotional experience that is part of our human birthright.

33:15 So Andrew is rightly really angry that he can't get access to this therapy, particularly psilocybin assisted therapy, to treat him with his treatment resistant depression. And doctor Simon Longstaff, who's on our board, who's the head of the Ethics Center, says that it's unethical for these treatments not to be available to Australians who are suffering and medically controlled environments. And so we're working really hard with the regulators with communities around Australia to really educate and create awareness of the data and science around these medicines. I mean it's very important to say that there was a study done earlier this year directly comparing cybern assisted therapy with estelepram, which is one of the leading SSRI antidepressants, and what that trial showed was that the patients who had just two doses of silas cybn versus a daily dose of estelepram for six weeks, well, the silo cybn group twice as many of them went into remission as the antidepressant group, and they had far less side effects and less suicidal ideation.

34:30 So this really just goes to prove just how effective these treatments are and how many more patients they could be getting well and out of the system. That was in the New England Journal, which is one of the leading medical journals. So we're starting to see these really leading trials from leading institutions around the world. And you know, now Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Impure College, you know, and in Australian mon S University and many of the other universities are starting to really lead in research and development in this field because everyone, i think is cottoning on to the fact that this is the next big thing. Yes, it's been a delay of fifty years. But once again, we're at a stage where we could reduce the suffering in our communities, enormously in our families, and wouldn't that be wouldn't that be wonderful? Everyone deserves the chance to lead a meaningful and happy life.

35:27 Yeah. Absolutely. And you reminded me of Johann Hari, who obviously was involved in the summit, and he also has spoken and written. His book, Lost Connections was all about how he was put on antidepressants at a very young age and it did make him feel better temporarily, and as he got older, of course, the depression came back. And the answer was just to give him a higher dose, and to give him a higher dose, and to continue to give him a higher dose. And so I think there are a lot of people who really relate to that scenario. There are a lot of people living in those circumstances. Well, that's exactly right. And the interesting thing about Johann Hari and his Lost Connections book, which is wonderful and I recommend it to everyone listening, is that he talks about seven different types of disconnection that we can have, and that could be disconnection to self, you know, to others, the community, to work to the planet. And the wonderful thing about these medicines is they connect you to all of those things and they really do create this window of opportunity for patients to get well and you don't have to keep dosing yourself up on pharmacological drugs that effectively have quite a lot of side effects and are also very difficult to withdraw from. The remarkable thing about these medicines, as I said, is that after just two to three treatments in the right set, you know, the right safe, warm, supported setting, with the right therapeutic support.

37:03 When people have that, they are able to get well and they're able to feel connected again to all the things that they've felt disconnected from. And this is so important. It's a wonderful gift. The work you are doing, Tanya is just incredible. We are so grateful to you and Peter for launching mind Medicine Australia, obviously much needed in this country. I did want to ask you just one question before we wind this up, and for somebody listening, I'm really keen to know, well, what is the next step. When will these medications, When will these medicines be available to me or to somebody that I know and love who is suffering. You mentioned twelve to eighteen months in the States. How far behind do you think Australia will be in terms of getting these regulated.

37:51 Well, firstly, just to say, psychiatrists and specialist physicians in Australia have already been getting Special Access Scheme be approved through the Therapeutic Goods Administration, so they're getting federal approvals. But we're still having obstacles in the States because of the scheduling of the medicines and the fact that they don't recognize the medicines for medical use. However, we're working hard to get over those barriers. So the rescheduling decision will hear more about in December, and then in terms of the actual prescription of these medicines, the Therapeutic Goods Administration has indicated that, you know, they will follow very soon after whatever happens with the FDA and the US and whatever happens in Europe as well, So I think they're going to be pretty front footed in making sure that these treatments are available to Australians as soon as possible, and we're working closely with a number of the organizations around the world to make sure that they do become available as soon as possible, and also with the Therapeutic Goods administration, so it's not long ago. And I just want to say to everyone out there, if you're suffering with mental illness or someone close to you is, or you're a therapist who's got lots of patients who is, there's just not that long to go. There is hope

39:21 on the horizon, and please do support Mind Medicine Australia in any way that you can. You know, there's so many things that people can do, you can volunteer for us, there's so many ways to get involved, and we really welcome you to learn more mind Medicine Australia dot org and we'd love to hear from you and hear about what you're doing in your communities and work with you to create a healthier and happier Australia. Absolutely, Antanya, I'll make sure that we put all over the links, you know, for people to find out more information in the show notes for this episode. We could talk about this for a lot longer. I really was interested in just really getting this whole concept, just this idea out to a lot more people who perhaps weren't even aware that this was a possibility, that this option was out there and available for them, because I think many people are really are in the dark about it.

40:20 So thank you very much, thank you, thank you for tuning in. It is a fascinating topic. I think you will agree. Mind Medicine dot org dot au is the website if you're after more information about that topic, and I'll include that link in the show notes. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends. Please do take a moment to leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with the rankings so that we get in the ears of more listeners. And hit the plus button on Apple Podcasts, or follow on Spotify to subscribe and make sure you never miss an episode.

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