What happened in this episode?
Tim Ferriss speaks with Australian advocate and Mind Medicine Australia co-founder Tania de Jong about how Australia created a regulated pathway for psychedelic-assisted therapies. De Jong traces the campaign from her and her husband’s early personal experiences with psilocybin overseas to the formation of Mind Medicine Australia in 2019 and a multi-year effort to persuade the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) to reschedule MDMA and psilocybin from prohibited status to controlled medical use. She describes repeated knock-backs, a large public submission campaign that she says produced more than 13,000 responses, and targeted outreach to clinicians, politicians and the regulator. De Jong recounts a 2022 TGA briefing featuring scientist David Nutt and a suicide-bereavement testimony, which she says drew unexpectedly large attendance.
She claims that, following the February 2023 rescheduling decision, psychiatrists can apply for authorised prescriber status with protocols reviewed by the TGA and ethics committees, and that more than 20 clinics are now operating. De Jong provides early rollout figures she says show around 400 patients treated and 60–80% remission rates with no serious adverse events reported, while acknowledging costs remain high due to therapist time. She says Mind Medicine Australia funded an independent outcomes registry at the Australian National University to generate real-world evidence, and argues payer coverage is emerging via Veterans’ Affairs, the NDIS and Medibank. The conversation also touches on training models, group integration, concerns about ketamine dependence, and de Jong’s criticism of some researchers whom she alleges sought to slow clinical access.
