Before he turned his focus to psychedelic medicine, Dr German Ascani felt disenchanted with his psychiatric practice. Since the biological revolution in psychiatry in the ’70s and ’80s, after which most mental disorders came to be seen as chemical imbalances in the brain, psychiatrists have been talking less and prescribing more. The absence of relational therapy and the overreliance on medications like Prozac made Ascani feel “dead inside going to work.”

Exposure to the research of Philip Wolfson, who was experimenting with ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, provided a breath of fresh air. When an opportunity presented itself to work with Wolfson and Julane Andries in 2017, at the Center for Transformational Psychotherapy, Ascani jumped at the chance. “It was a game changer,” Ascani explained to me. “It really infused my practice and [reinvigorated] my curiosity for psychiatry and mental health again.” He now works at Evolve Mind Wellness in Sebastopol, California, where he does ketamine-assisted therapy and “integrative psychiatry,” which incorporates the use of natural substances into psychiatric care. “It’s so much richer and more fulfilling for me than the way I was practicing before,” Ascani concluded.

Ascani is now preparing to add MDMA-assisted psychotherapy to his range of offered services. And like many psychedelic doctors, he’s actively training through the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, to do so. In Ascani’s view, ketamine laid the “infrastructure, the groundwork for practicing psychedelic medicine in general,” but it will soon be one of many tools — including MDMA, psilocybin, and LSD — in the psychedelic practitioner’s tool belt. MDMA, for instance, is on track for a 2023 FDA approval, and the Biden administration is already preparing for the imminent legalization of MDMA and psilocybin therapies. Psychedelic Bidenism seems to be in our immediate future.