This week’s Psychedelic Titan is Mary-Elizabeth Gifford, Executive Vice President of Psyence Group. Psyence is a life science biotechnology company pioneering the use of natural psychedelics in mental health and wellbeing with a focus on palliative care. She is Chair of the Global Wellness Institute’s Psychedelics & Healing Initiative.
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?
In the autumn of 2019, I was seated at Chris Blackwell’s kitchen table with his CEO and life partner, Marika Kessler, when I was introduced to Dr. Amza Ali, MD, an internationally recognized neurologist with a research focus on mushroom-derived psilocybin.
Blackwell, the founder of Island Records, is known for having discovered Bob Marley, Bono and U2, Stevie Winwood, Traffic, and Cat Stevens. I was to learn that Dr. Ali had recently founded Psyence Therapeutics with Justin Grant, Ph.D./MBA, a prominent pharmaceutical research scientist and faculty member at the University of Toronto.
At the time I was leading public policy for the Washington, DC, nonprofit, The Center for Mind-Body Medicine, global experts in population-wide trauma healing. But when Chris Blackwell makes an introduction, you follow the proverbial white rabbit trail wherever that leads. And that meant heading to Toronto on a frigid day in January, which is what happened next. Marika Kessler, Blackwell’s CEO, and I packed mittens and flew up to visit the lab. We arrived to discover Toronto’s “Medical Discovery District” covered in snow.
Yet despite the frozen weather, we instantly warmed to the spirit and vision of these two Psyence Therapeutics founders, Dr. Ali and Dr. Grant. Their dedication to equity, access, and natural psilocybin mushrooms, came shining through as did their commitment to mental wellness, not just for some, but for all. So when Psyence then asked me to join as the first American hire, I said yes.
Do you, or have you taken, psychedelic substances?
My first exposure to psychedelics happened in an unexpected way; I was a little kid and my parents took us to a Grateful Dead concert. Jerry Garcia threw handfuls of saltwater taffy into the audience. I caught a piece. My parents made me throw it back “in case it had LSD” in it.
So I immediately wanted to know what LSD was. As this was pre-internet and I was growing up in a house with wonderful books, I got to work reading, starting with Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception.
Did I discover about 11 dried wizened mushrooms in a wrinkled paper bag on the top shelf in our kitchen and eat them? Yes, I did. Fortunately, the mushrooms were culinary.
Obviously, I do not believe children should trip; and to this day hold deep reservations about recreational use. I count myself lucky that the only downside to this early curiosity was that there were no shiitake left when my parents got out the wok to cook stir-fry. I also count myself lucky that we live at a time when safe medicinal psilocybin will soon be legally available. It’s why we do this work.
What’s your favorite psychedelic compound?
Psilocybin mushrooms, psilocybe cubensis if in the context of spiritual practice, community support, a non-criminalized jurisdiction, and therapeutic guidance. It’s not the trip. It’s the journey. My psychedelic-adjacent favorites are meditation and breathwork as alternative pathways to achieving neural plasticity, connection to nature, and many of the same outcomes described in the Communitas Study.
Do your parents/family members know what you’re doing?
My parents worked with Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ken Kesey, so my work today is very much in the spirit of family tradition.
My mother had hired Dr. Leary and Dr. Alpert, later known as Ram Dass, for a research project, but later came to believe their advocacy of LSD did far more harm than good. She died unexpectedly young, but if she were still alive, I believe she would support this new generation’s evidence-based approach to psychedelic healing.
My father, a champion of the avant-garde, worked with Ken Kesey of Acid Test and Merry Prankster fame to bring Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over The Cukoo’s Nest to off-Broadway, before the Jack Nicholson movie. Given his collaboration with Kesey, no doubt my late father would be in full support of philanthropist, activist, and cosmic contrarian David Bronner.
Have you had an experience with mental health/chronic pain?
Every one of us has someone in our lives who has experienced the sheer human misery of mental illness, and I am no exception. I do too. For me, it’s a sibling who has suffered extreme life-limiting anguish. So I know first-hand how limited and inadequate treatment options can be.
When I was desperately seeking mental wellness resources, I came to know the generosity of Rick Doblin of MAPS and Dick Simon of the Psychedelic Science Funders Collaborative and Sensorium Therapeutics.
Rick Doblin and Dick Simon both set a gold standard for decency and kindness. They are leaders in our field, and healers, too. I owe them both a debt. Yet, these kinds of debts are un-repayable. So now I try my best to pay it forward, in support of this industry, and in support of all the families in need of new solutions.
What’s your vision for the industry in 20 years?
Delmore Schwartz has written that in dreams begin responsibilities. So my vision for a psychedelic-informed approach to health looks to build a psychedelic industry that is informed by responsibility.
We have a unique chance to reverse this generation’s shameful demographically- driven health disparities in lifespan. Many early deaths are due to what have been called, the “Diseases of Despair,” which have mental health or mental wellness co-morbidities. The intention guiding our work is that one day our field will use an epidemiological yardstick to assess global public health improvement and measure success. Two word answer? Safety and access.
What are your biggest worries for the industry?
Stigma is not the issue; my worry is hype. Evidence-based science is guiding psychedelic medicine development and I look forward to the day when evidence-based science also guides public expectation. There are magic mushrooms. But no magic solutions.
Who are your heroes?
1. Louie Schwartzberg who has forged a visual vocabulary that is as eloquent as his own words. I love that he says: “mushrooms can shift your consciousness and make you feel this ultimate connection with all living things on the planet.”
2.Hanifa Nayo Washington, Founder and Chief of Strategy for Fireside, for cultivating beloved community and placing equity front and center.
3. Patrick Moher of Wonderland who quietly cultivates the mycelial filaments that connect us with each other and strengthens the forest floor so we all flourish.
4. Melissa Lavasani, cofounder of Psychedelic Medicine Coalition, for securing the Good Housekeeping Seal of approval for psilocybin mushrooms by publishing her first person account in that legacy magazine of how plant medicine allowed her to heal from postpartum depression. And for passing Initiative 81 in my hometown of Washington DC with 74% of the vote to decriminalize plant medicine.
5.Sa’ad Shah, cofounder of the Noetic Fund, both for his focus on healing Central Nervous System issues and for being unashamed to champion “spiritual capitalism” and “social impact.”
6. Dr. Dingle Spence, MD, oncologist and palliative care activist who works to democratize medical care and psychedelic access for those who need it most.
7. Kathryn Tucker of Emerge Law, the attorney who is a psychedelic Clarence Darrow; she uses integrity, the law, and evidence-based science to fight human suffering and fight for patient access by honoring U.S. federal and state “right to try” laws.
8.Professor Anne Harrington, Harvard professor of the History of Science and author of The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine and Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness. These two meticulously documented and lyrically written works are a kind secular scripture for our field.
If you could create a psychedelic to do anything you wanted, what would it do?
My idea for a new psychedelic would be named, Anti-Anosognosia, a word rooted in the Greek, gnosis, a word for knowledge. Anosognosia was first used by a French Neurologist in 1914 to convey our lack of awareness of our own limited insights.
These many years later, our culture may have much more information, but much less wisdom than when this term was coined in 1914. And so to me, Anosognosia, a word that conveys how deeply we remain unaware of our own limitations, seems more relevant than ever.
In the absence of elders there are books, in the absence of kivas, there are libraries, in the absence of libraries, there could be a psychedelic that works as an Anti-Anosognosia, and my hope is that such a medicine would encourage a renewed emphasis on the generosity of shared wisdom.
This imaginary psychedelic would open the door to healing while also grounding us in a way that would nurture and strengthen the timeless truths that build our own mental wellness – just as surely as it helps to rebuild community for all.
We’d like to thank Mary-Elizabeth Gifford for being a part of the Psychedelic Titans series. Stay tuned for more profiles on leaders in the psychedelic industry.
Would you like to participate in this series? Fill out this form and we’ll follow up with a review of your application.