I emailed [IRISH DOCTORS FOR PSYCHEDELIC ASSISTED THERAPY

](https://www.idpat.ie/) about psychedelic assisted therapy and they gave me the following response:

Thanks for reaching out to us! Unfortunately, psychedelic assisted therapy is still unavailable in Europe. It is predicted that MDMA will be medically licensed in USA by the end of this year and Psilocybin the year after. A proper evidence base is needed before psychedelic assisted therapy can be rolled out to the public as a HSE funded treatment. After decades of hiatus due to it being made Schedule 1 (illegal even for researchers to obtain) by FDA, research is now progressing as quickly as possible and is very promising.

There was a recent trial running out of Tallaght Hospital as part of an international, multi-centre phase 2 study looking at Psilocybin for the treatment of Treatment Resistant Depression. This research was led by Dr Veronica O’Keane and carried out by researchers from Trinity College Dublin (TCD). To be included in this study, participants had to have a long standing diagnosis of Depression and been previously trialled on two or more different anti-depressant medications without any improvement in symptoms. There was an article in The Irish Times recently regarding this trial, you can find a link on our website under Media. Fortunately, there are several trials currently being set up in Galway looking at Methylone for the treatment of PTSD and Psilocybin for Treatment Resistant Depression, with other possible trials looking at 5-MEO-DMT.

In the meantime, if you are looking to work through some psychological issues, psychotherapy is an excellent place to start. Psychedelic medicines work to break down egoic defences and allow us access to repressed memories and feelings in order to process them. But this can also happen without psychedelics, just at a slower pace, when we are motivated to develop our introspective faculties in a safe psychotherapeutic relationship.

Our egoic defences can often be difficult to get around in talk therapies. Somatic therapies can bypass these egoic defences by focussing on how our bodies hold on to repressed stress and offering a conduit to releasing this stored tension. Releasing tension from our bodies sparks a positive feedback loop that can lead to the freeing of tension from our mind. You might be interested in somatic therapies like trauma yoga, as advocated in books like Bessel Van Der Kolk's 'The Body Keeps The Score'.

There are underground outfits offering psychedelic assisted therapy in Ireland. These practices are unregulated and therefore can be risky. Psychedelics are powerful medicines that must be respected and we are uncomfortable with the idea of these being administered without proper safety protocols in place and without a well thought out and structured psychotherapy programme. It is possible to have a psychologically damaging experience if these medicines are handled incorrectly, administered in insecure environments by untrained untrustworthy sitters, without proper integration sessions. The psychedelic substances they administer are likely illegally obtained and may be of questionable purity.

There are also organisations abroad such as those in The Netherlands that use legal psilocybin containing truffles. Most of these are unregulated and are not embedded in psychotherapy sessions that would help integrate the insights had during the psychedelic experience.

Holotropic breathwork is a method proposed by Stan Grof that uses deep breathing and hyperventilation instead of drugs to occasion psychedelic experiences. There are places in Ireland that offer workshops in this, though not as part of a psychotherapy programme. It would be important to have a therapist to help integrate experiences had during these sessions. Although it is a legal practise, it is not strictly regulated and there is currently not enough evidence base for us to recommend this as a therapy.

We highly recommend mindfulness practice. Studies have shown that experienced meditators have similar fMRI brain activity to those on psychedelics, i.e. decrease in default mode network activity (please see our blog post re: same). Daily mindfulness practices are simple and can have a huge impact on how we relate to our emotions. Combining this awareness with mindfulness practices will help process these painful emotions and soothe their intensity. You can check out books by Thich Nhat Hanh such as ‘No Mud No Lotus’, 'Fear', or ‘Reconciliation’, or The Plum Village app to start practicing this.

You could have a start with these therapies. In the meantime we will continue to advocate for the Irish public to gain access to psychedelic assisted therapy as soon as possible.

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Their suggestions might be helpful. I have read Bessel Van Der Kolk's book before and it is impactful. I would hesitate to go down the unregulated root.