The psychologists signing up for psychedelic therapy training: ‘Amazing things can happen’

The global renaissance of psychedelic drugs in the treatment of mental health gains further legitimacy in Australia as psychologists sign up for clinical trials

When growing up in Yea, in rural Victoria, Campbell Townsend took a dim view of drugs.

My parents were born in the shadow of Nixon's war on drugs, and I was a very simple country boy," the psychologist says, sitting in his cottage outside Castlemaine. I grew up with stories from my parents about friends of theirs at university going crazy just from one choof of a bong."

Townsend's fears persisted until he read journalist Michael Pollan's 2018 book, How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics. The book found favour in the most mainstream of media, from Time magazine to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and became a New York Times No 1 best-seller as the so-called renaissance in psychedelic research took hold around the world.