Psychedelic Australia with Dr. Martin Williams
For the 2021 Mushroom day, EGA, PRISM and APS teamed up for this interview with Jonathan Carmichael, co-founder and President of EGA, and Martin Williams, PhD, a research fellow in Medicinal Chemistry at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne. Martin is founding and current President of the DGR-registered health-promotion charity, Psychedelic Research in Science & Medicine (PRISM), founding and current Vice-President of the botanical/education charity, Entheogenesis Australis (EGA), and co-lead investigator of the upcoming Melbourne psilocybin trials at St Vincent’s Hospital.
Through PRISM, Martin and his colleagues have been advocating since 2011 for mental health research using psychedelic compounds in Australia, and in doing so, have established connections with researchers in the USA, Canada, the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. In the course of planning and seeking approvals for two clinical trials, one of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for the treatment of PTSD, and the other of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for the treatment of anxiety and depression associated with terminal illness, Martin has become familiar with the Australian regulatory and research governance landscape. Martin and the Palliative Care team at St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, recently achieved the requisite Human Research Ethics and state and federal government approvals for their proposed phase 2 psilocybin trial, which began in late January 2020. He is currently working with another interdisciplinary research group on plans for a clinical trial of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for treatment-resistant depression. See the full interview below:
