In crowded field of psychedelic startups, Filament CEO makes case for 'natural' drugs

abcnews.go.com:

More drugmakers are seeking to harness the medical potential of psychedelics for treating depression, addiction and other hard-to-treat conditions

A recent boom in psychedelic research has given way to a bumper crop of startups seeking to harness the potential of mind-altering drugs for treating depression, addiction and other conditions.

In this crowded field, Vancouver-based Filament Health has a unique approach: extracting drugs like psilocybin and mescaline from natural sources, including mushrooms and cacti, rather than synthesizing the ingredients in a laboratory.

Filament is studying its mushroom-based psilocybin as a treatment for opioid and stimulant use disorder. And more than a dozen other companies and academic centers are using the company's drugs in trials of depression, chronic pain and other disorders.

Filament CEO Benjamin Lightburn spoke with The Associated Press about the ethical, therapeutic and medical case for using naturally derived psychedelics. The answers have been edited for length and clarity.

A: It means we’re deriving them from natural sources, like plants and fungi, because that is in fact the way that humanity has been interacting with these substances in their natural form for thousands of years. It’s only recently that we had access to synthetic chemical manufacturing techniques.

Since our products come from natural sources, we believe it allows people to maintain a certain connection to how humans have been ingesting these substances for years and years and to important aspects of many traditional communities.

A natural product contains much more than just one single active compound, right? And so in the case of magic mushrooms, for instance, they contain much more than just psilocybin.