Dylan Beynon: The Future of Psychedelic Therapies

Today, Commander Divine speaks with Dylan Beynon, founder and CEO of Mindbloom, a new telemedicine company for clinician-prescribed psychedelic therapy. Dylan has been named a Top 25 Consumer Health Tech Executive, and is one of the top 100 Most Influential People in Psychedelics. Dylan shares his thoughts on the future of psychedelics, how his upbringing inspired him to found Mindbloom, the benefits of ketamine therapy vs. mainstream therapies, and more. Key Takeaways: Why psychedelic therapy? Mental healthcare is the #1 public health crisis in the United States. Yet when you dig into the clinical research around existing treatment options, they just aren’t good enough. SSRIs only work 40-47% of the time, and over 50% of people have severe side effects. Plus, it takes 6-8 weeks to work, if it works at all. At-home ketamine therapy gets immediate results 80% of the time, with less than 5% of clients having mild side effects like nausea. How does ketamine therapy work? Patients are sent a flavored ketamine tablet that absorbs directly into the bloodstream. You keep the tablet under your tongue for 7 minutes while listening to a guided meditation. Then, you spit it out and go through a guided therapy session with a provider via video chat for about an hour. How can we make psychedelic therapy mainstream? By radically increasing access to treatments and creating a product that gives people better outcomes and experiences. In order to see widespread adoption of psychedelic therapies, we need to do 3 things: 1. Educate and make it approachable for people since it’s so stigmatized; 2. Make it less expensive so more people can afford it; 3. Use telemedicine to make it accessible to people no matter where they live. What does the future of psychedelic therapy look like? Assisted psychedelic therapies are growing rapidly. Oregon recently passed a law that has started the process to enable the prescription and administration of therapeutic medical psilocybin. Therapeutic MDMA is just about a year out from FDA approval. The Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) has also been working on psychedelic advocacy, legalization, and medicalization for over 50 years. It’s all happening, and Dylan believes that psychedelic therapies will eventually overtake existing treatment options as the predominant treatment.