This week’s Psychedelic Titan is Ben Sessa, Chief Medical Officer, Consultant Psychiatrist, and MDMA & Ketamine Therapist for Awakn Life Sciences. Awakn Life Sciences is a biotechnology company with clinical operations; researching, developing, and delivering psychedelic medicine to better treat addiction.
What’s this article series about? Psychedelic Titans is a get-to-know-you-style blog series interviewing some of the psychedelic industry’s most influential and impactful individuals.
When did you first become involved in the psychedelic industry and why?
I first became interested in psychedelics and their medical and cultural use as a teenager, before attending medical school. As I progressed through medical school, then went onto specialist training in psychiatry, I became aware that the rich history of psychedelic research and clinical uses in the 1950s and 1960s was completely absent from the medical education curriculum; as if the whole subject had been wiped out of medical history. I set about addressing this publishing the first academic piece on psychedelics in a British medical journal in 2005. I then started attending psychedelic conferences from 2006, then met David Nutt and Robin Carhart-Harris when I joined the Bristol psychopharmacology department in 2007. I became the first person to be legally administered a psychedelic drug in the UK since the sixties when I was injected with intravenous psilocybin by David Nutt in 2009. I then spent the next 15 years involved in multiple psychedelic projects, with LSD, DMT, psilocybin, ketamine and MDMA – mostly out of the Imperial College London team, which David had moved to in 2011. I published a landmark textbook on psychedelics called _’the psychedelic renaissance’_ in 2012 (a term which has since become widely used) and the second edition of that book in 2017. The ‘psychedelic industry’ is something that has started to emerge in the last 2-3 years, as we have seen psychedelics moving gradually away from research/academia, towards multiple companies forming to provide delivery of psychedelics for clinical (not only research) populations. I joined Awakn as Chief Medical Officer in July 2020 and am currently involved in seeing Awakn becoming the premier international platform for the continued development and delivery of psychedelic healthcare.
Do your parents/family members know what you’re doing?
Yes. They are extremely supportive and proud of my work. I also have a large cohort of supportive friends and colleagues who have stuck with me throughout my career with psychedelics. In the early days I felt very much on my own – and often faced criticism and cynicism from medical colleagues, some of whom advised me against the subject, calling it ‘career suicide’. How wrong they were! So, it is terrifically validating to now see that psychedelics are increasingly mainstream and knowing that I was there since the early days!
Have you had an experience with mental health/chronic pain?
Lots of clinical experience, as a psychiatrist, obviously. But my own mental health is very good. I also have personal experience of a serious, near-death accident when I fell off a mountain aged 15 years old, broke both my legs, and spent a year in a wheelchair and many years of painful recovery. It was this childhood experience that spurred me on to study medicine – the first doctor in my family.
What’s your vision of the industry in 20 years?
To see Awakn establish its place at the forefront of the industry. To move away from expensive, exclusive, privately-funded treatments towards a model whereby psychedelic medicine is funded for free by the NHS for the wider public health.
I also campaign for drug policy reform and am committed to seeing new evidence-based policies that allow for the non-clinical population to buy and use drugs from a regulated market for recreational purposes, as this is by far the safest way to manage the ‘drug problem’ – indeed, it only exists as a problem because of its prohibition. Prohibition is a terrible mechanism for managing any activity that carries any degree of risks (e.g. horse riding, driving cars, scuba diving, etc). Regulation is much better.
What are your biggest worries for the industry?
That the industry fails to provide free public healthcare accessibility to everyone.
Who are your heroes?
Primarily my patients. But also: Numerous sixties psychedelic rock gods and goddesses, Rick Doblin, David Nutt, the whole Awakn team, my family, friends, my children, my ex-wife, and my girlfriend.
If you could create a psychedelic to do anything you wanted, what would it do?
No need. There are hundreds of molecules out there. The problem is not developing new ones, but rather developing platforms by which existing chemicals can be used for clinical and non-clinical experiences of personal growth and development. However, a shorter-acting entactogen (like MDMA) that had a 2-hour window of activity would be a useful clinical tool. So we are exploring exactly such a thing at Awakn.
We’d like to thank Ben for being a part of the Psychedelic Titans series. Stay tuned for weekly profiles on leaders in the psychedelic industry.
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