--- title: Dying Patients Are Fighting for Access to Psychedelics description: Advocates argue that terminal patients should be able to get psilocybin and MDMA through the Right to Try law. Others want to expand access further. canonical: https://time.com/6208079/psychedelics-psilocybin-access-end-of-life/ author: Tara Law article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-08-24T14:13:38.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-14T09:38:47.390Z article:section: Health og:title: Dying Patients Are Fighting for Access to Psychedelics og:description: Advocates argue that terminal patients should be able to get psilocybin and MDMA through the Right to Try law og:url: https://time.com/6208079/psychedelics-psilocybin-access-end-of-life/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfba0f6bb52a59c30/698a34d447ca3829023b9ee3/psilocybin-psychedelic.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2277 og:image:height: 1281 og:image:alt: psilocybin-psychedelic og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Dying Patients Are Fighting for Access to Psychedelics twitter:description: Advocates argue that terminal patients should be able to get psilocybin and MDMA through the Right to Try law twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfba0f6bb52a59c30/698a34d447ca3829023b9ee3/psilocybin-psychedelic.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Dying Patients Are Fighting for Access to Psychedelics > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Newsletters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME publishes seven free email newsletters, written and edited by TIME journalists, reaching more than 1.1 million engaged readers. TIME has reported on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world since 1923, and its newsletters bring that same authority directly to the inbox. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=139329f0-1f15-4f80-b610-191050e12962&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Michael Pollan on the Healing Power of Psychedelics [Watch (HLS stream): Michael Pollan on the Healing Power of Psychedelics](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Z7yskoOT.m3u8) (4:20)  _Published 2018-05-16. Author Michael Pollan explored the therapeutic properties of psychedelics for his latest book, "How to Change Your Mind." His research includes firsthand experiences with the drugs._  by [Tara Law](https://time.com/author/tara-law/)  ## Tara Law Aug 24, 2022 2:13 PM UTC  by [Tara Law](https://time.com/author/tara-law/)  ## Tara Law Aug 24, 2022 2:13 PM UTC Erinn Baldeschwiler, a 48-year-old with metastatic breast cancer, is struggling with anxiety and depression as she nears the untimely end of her life. “The last thing I want is to be terrified and scared and anxious, especially when I pass,” she says. She knows that no treatment can change the outcome of her disease. But she’s fighting for access to a different kind of therapeutic: psilocybin-assisted therapy, which past [research](https://time.com/4586333/psilocybin-cancer-anxiety-depression/) has found can ease anxiety for depression in advanced cancer patients. Psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) and other [potentially life-changing psychedelic drugs](https://time.com/6196310/michael-pollan-interview-how-to-change-your-mind/) are being researched as mental-health treatments for conditions like anxiety, depression, and trauma. Advocates are optimistic that psilocybin and MDMA—which clinical trials have shown may be effective against [post-traumatic stress disorder](https://time.com/6047283/mdma-ecstasy-ptsd-treatment/) (PTSD)—could be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) within the next few years. But Baldeschwiler and other people with terminal illnesses can’t wait that long. “I’m going to be dead by then,” she says. “It’s a time issue. If you could provide an option that would provide immediate, sustained relief of depression, anxiety, and lead to a sense of peace as \[someone is\] going through their final days—why would you not want that as an option?” **Read More**: [_Inside Ibogaine, One of the Most Promising and Perilous Psychedelics for Addiction_](https://time.com/5951772/ibogaine-drug-treatment-addiction/) Some are arguing that both psilocybin and MDMA should already be available to qualifying patients through the federal [Right to Try](https://www.fda.gov/patients/learn-about-expanded-access-and-other-treatment-options/right-try) law. The 2018 law states that patients with life-threatening illnesses who have exhausted all treatment options can access drugs that have passed through Phase 1 testing—the first phase of clinical trials that tests drugs in humans—but have not been approved by the FDA. Psilocybin and MDMA fit those criteria, and so does Baldeschwiler. But the drugs’ Schedule 1 status—meaning the DEA [deems](https://www.dea.gov/drug-information/drug-scheduling#:~:text=Schedule%20I%20drugs%2C%20substances%2C%20or,Schedule%20II) them to have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse” (a characterization that advocates for psychedelics dispute)—is keeping them back from patients. Baldeschwiler’s palliative care physician, Dr. Sunil Aggarwal, reached an agreement with a drug manufacturer to receive psilocybin. However, after Aggarwal applied to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to receive a waiver to provide the drug, the DEA refused, declaring in February 2021 that it had [no authority](https://emergelawgroup.com/2017/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/PDF-2.pdf) to waive the Controlled Substances Act. Baldeschwiler and Aggarwal are now working with Kathryn Tucker, a lawyer focused on expanding access to psychedelics for groups including terminally ill people, to compel the DEA to allow use of psilocybin under the Right to Try law, which Tucker argues should supersede the Controlled Substances Act establishing the U.S.’s drug policy. The DEA is “thwarting operation of duly enacted federal law,” says Tucker. “If a physician deems their patient to have a life-threatening condition that could be addressed with one of the eligible investigational drugs, then that physician can seek \[Right to Try\] access, and should be granted it.” Advocates argue that the law has a particularly broad mandate. “The lack of an exclusion makes it clear that there is no exclusion” for Schedule 1 substances, Tucker says. The DEA declined TIME’s request for further comment, citing ongoing litigation. **Read More**: [_I Took A Psychedelic Drug for My Cancer Anxiety. It Changed My Life_](https://time.com/4586052/psychedelic-drug-psilocybin-cancer-anxiety/) Psychedelic medicine is still an unsettled science that will require much more research before scientists fully understand how well it works, and for whom—especially given that many of the clinical trials that have tested psychedelic drugs are very small. Psychedelic drugs come with some risks, and patients who participate in trials generally meet certain health criteria. (Clinical trials for psilocybin, for instance, exclude patients who have close relatives with a history of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.) However, advocates for expanding access argue that psilocybin- and MDMA-assisted psychotherapy fit neatly within the founding principle of the Right to Try law: patients faced with potential death should have the ability to try new drugs that could help them. The advocates’ case has won them some powerful bipartisan allies. On July 20, Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced the [Right to Try Clarification Act](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/4575/text), to make it clear that the legislation encompasses Schedule 1 substances so long as they’ve been through Phase 1 clinical trials. Many advocates, like retired Marine Corp Lt. Gen. Martin Steele, believe that people who are at risk of [dying by suicide](https://time.com/6197997/988-mental-health-crisis-hotline/) and have exhausted all other treatment options should also be able to receive psychedelic assisted treatment. Steele is co-founder of the nonprofit Reason for Hope, an activist group promoting psychedelic treatment access and research. He recently testified in support of a Connecticut [law](https://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/cgabillstatus/cgabillstatus.asp?selBillType=Bill&bill%5Fnum=HB05506&which%5Fyear=2022) enacted in April establishing a pilot program to let veterans, retired first responders, and retired health care workers receive MDMA and psilocybin-assisted therapy. Nationally, people are exposed to “unprecedented levels of stress and trauma,” he says. “We all know the current treatments are inadequate, and things are only getting worse.” **Read More**: [_Psilocybin Could be a Therapeutic Breakthrough For Addiction_](https://time.com/6167638/psilocybin-addiction-therapeutic-breakthrough/) Veterans with PTSD are a particular area of focus in the fight to expand psychedelic access. “Currently, even in the best circumstances, our treatments probably help about half of the patients with PTSD,” and many also have treatment-resistant depression, says retired Brigadier Gen. Dr. Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrist who served in the Army and volunteers with Reason for Hope. The U.S. has a moral responsibility to offer them a treatment that can help, he says. Given that about [17 U.S. veterans die by suicide](https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/docs/data-sheets/2021/2021-National-Veteran-Suicide-Prevention-Annual-Report-FINAL-9-8-21.pdf) every day in the U.S., “too many people are going to die” if veterans are forced to wait for FDA approval. “All of us should be shouting from the rooftops that something has to change,” says Lynnette Averill, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Baylor College of Medicine who has studied how psychedelics can help special-operations veterans and is part of Reason for Hope. “Given the crisis that we are in, we cannot wait another year—or 2, 5, or 10—for these to be fully approved.” ## Transcript I guess the biggest misconception people have about psychedelics is that these are drugs that make you crazy. And we now have evidence that that does happen sometimes, but in many more cases, these are drugs that can make you sane, or more sane. [ MUSIC ] If you ask people about what psychedelics, or LSD, they're gonna think about the Timothy Leary, this flamboyant psychology professor. Studying psilocybin and LSD and then telling everybody they should take it. I'm very glad to be discredited, I don't want credibility. I want incredibility. [ LAUGH ] The drugs kind of escape laboratory and were embraced by the counter culture and proved to be very disruptive to society [ MUSIC ] So you had this full scale moral panic that eventually doomed the research but what people don't know is that that's 60s episode was really one small chapter in a much longer story. Psycho drugs are one kind of another have been used by different societies for thousands of years. If you compare mental health care with any other branch of medicine infectious disease, cardiology, oncology there have been very few achievements. Mental health treatment has not lengthened the human life span. So we need some new thinking, we need some new ideas and psychedelics may well be that new idea. There's a really exciting field of research underway, right now, looking at psychedelics. Especially psilocybin, the ingredient in magic mushrooms, to help people deal with mental illness of various kinds. Addiction, depression, obsession, and the fear and anxiety that surrounds a terminal diagnosis. And the feeling among the scientist is that these chemicals allow us to essentially reboot the brain. All those kind of deep grooves that lock us into patterns of both thought and behavior are dissolved and temporarily suspended in a way that allows us to break those patterns. We're now in a different world. The adults now, many of them have experience of psychedelics, they're not gonna react in such a panicky way, I don't think. Many of the people in charge of our institutions, probably regulators at the FDA, people at the American Psychiatric Association, they have personal experience of psychedelics. And they're, I think, gonna bring a more rational, Attitude toward them. I learned that there is a thriving underground of psychedelic therapists. These are serious professionals but they're doing something illegal. And I was able to find my way into this. Community and after interviewing several of them I found a couple people I felt comfortable enough to entrust my mind to. This isn't doctors giving you a pill and sending you out into the world. You are, for a period of four or five hours, in a room that's decorated like a kind of cozy den or study, you're lying down on a couch, you have eye shades on. And headphones, which are playing a very carefully curated playlist, to make you go inside, to have an internal experience. And you're with two guides at all times. Some people are put in touch with childhood trauma. Some people have encounters with death and I mean, it can be very dark. But with the help of the guides, you use that material and try to understand it. So after the session, you always come back the next day and have what's called a period of integration. Where the guides, who are trained therapists, help you interpret what happened and figure out ways to put it to good use in changing your life. My best journey was this fairly high dose [ INAUDIBLE ] journey. I had with a guide. What was stunning about it was I did have an experience of ego disillusion. I reached a point where myself kind of fell apart into these paper post its. That just got scattered into the wind. I saw myself. And I know that sounds weird. Who's the I that saw myself, but there is this split in consciousness that happens. But I saw myself scattered to the wind, but I was all right with it and I learned a really important lesson in that moment, which is that I'm not identical to my ego. [ MUSIC ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6208079/psychedelics-psilocybin-access-end-of-life/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6208079/psychedelics-psilocybin-access-end-of-life/"},"headline":"Dying Patients Are Fighting for Access to Psychedelics","datePublished":"2022-08-24T14:13:38.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-14T09:38:47.390Z","description":"Advocates argue that terminal patients should be able to get psilocybin and MDMA through the Right to Try law. 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