#883: How to Legalize Medical Psychedelics in Your Country — Tania de Jong on The Playbook Behind Australia's World-First Breakthrough

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. I’m Tim Ferriss, and Tanya De Jong is here because she and Peter helped Australia become the first country to permit prescription MDMA and psilocybin for psychiatric care. I wanted the nuts and bolts: luck, blueprint, or relentless step-by-step work?

I’d followed your work for ages. I’m an entrepreneur, a singer, and somebody who likes to test things myself; I’d never used drugs. Then I saw your post supporting a depression study, read Michael Pollan on psilocybin, and said to Peter, “We have to do this.”

The donation was for Roland Griffiths’ Johns Hopkins depression study in 2015. Pollan was the article that caught your eye.

We asked Robin Carhart-Harris about a European trial, but we had no diagnosis. Eventually we met a Dutch guide and went to the Netherlands. I spent six months terrified; the day before, I emailed my accountant my final wishes because I thought I might lose my mind. Then psilocybin catapulted us into an extraordinary range of consciousness. I felt joined to myself, other people, and the planet. It brought Peter and me much closer.

Integration was more like letting a snow globe settle. Difficult material arose around ancestors and lineage, and I initially thought, never again. We returned the following year, with the same guide, and it was deeper. We’d founded five charities already, so we asked: if this is healing us, what could it mean for people with depression, trauma, homelessness, violence, disability, or unemployment?

We met researchers and learned everything we could. In 2018, Rick Doblin said, “Tanya, set up a charity in Australia,” and we were mad enough to do it. Mind Medicine Australia launched in February 2019 because almost nothing was happening there.

For Americans, Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration is roughly the FDA: the body that approves medicines and controls highly restricted substances.

We sought to move MDMA and psilocybin from prohibited Schedule 9 to Schedule 8, where psychiatrists could use them clinically. Our first application was rejected. Peter studied every reason, we answered the concerns, applied again, and educated anyone who would listen. We gave thousands of talks and webinars. More than 13,000 Australians made submissions, over 98 percent supporting rescheduling—the regulator’s largest response to a medicine-rescheduling process.

We established more than 30 local chapters, giving volunteers templates to make submissions simple. In 2021, we began a psychedelic-assisted-therapy certificate and have trained more than 750 psychiatrists, psychologists, doctors, nurses, occupational therapists, social workers, and counsellors. Families, workplaces, and clinicians added momentum. The medicines were MDMA for trauma and psilocybin for depression, but the campaign had to build an ecosystem around them.

You also assembled a serious international cast, including David Nutt. How did you persuade such sought-after people to join?

I reached out and travelled. At Usona’s 2018 conference in Madison, I spoke about Australia and sang; I serenaded Roland Griffiths. One person introduced another, and our advisory panel grew to roughly 75 scientists, doctors, researchers, and advocates. David spoke at our Melbourne launch, then returned in 2022 for town halls and a TGA meeting. They expected 15 attendees; 140 people from the TGA, Health Department, and related offices came in person or online.

Before David presented the research, Vanessa spoke about her husband Franco. He developed severe depression, tried treatment after treatment, and could not access legal psychedelic care or travel safely. He died by suicide. She showed what they had tried and said she believed he might be alive with access. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

On February 3, 2023, Peter saw the decision and said it had happened. I thought there must be an error. Then we danced around the kitchen as headlines came in: Australia had made this world-first move. The point was clinics, trained teams, and patients receiving these medicines with therapy.

About 400 patients have now been treated, more often with MDMA than psilocybin—perhaps 70–30—as psychiatrists found MDMA a gentler place to begin. Reported remission rates are around 60 to 80 percent, consistent with international trials, with no serious adverse events reported to the TGA. But millions still need help; doing nothing carries risk too.

Four hundred may sound small beside the need, but even good clinical studies often have only eight, 10, or 15 participants. The question is whether authorized prescribers are generating data for a virtuous cycle.

That data is crucial. David urged real-world evidence, so we funded an independent Australian National University registry, with no control over it ourselves. It tracks patients from baseline through treatment and beyond. Our Abbotsford clinic is a best-practice test case: screening, one to three medicine sessions, and integration over three to four months. The medicine is a tiny part of the cost; therapeutic time is expensive, especially with two clinicians through a five- or six-hour dosing day.

I don’t want cookie-cutter therapy. Good preparation, trauma-informed care, nutrition, exercise, community, and changing what feeds old patterns matter. These aren’t magic bullets; you bring what you learn back into life. We made mistakes and faced conflict because Peter and I weren’t clinicians. I cried on the carpet, but as the daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, I know: if you’re pioneering change, you may get hit. You keep going.

My hope is treatment for people who are very unwell, but also curiosity and consciousness. Don’t outsource every question to chatbots and robots. Go inward sometimes. You never know until you ask. Grab your dreams, ask for help, and set them on fire—well, not in a bad way. I always muddle my metaphors.

Tanya, it’s a beautiful story: an outsider who cold-emailed, offered to sing, flew to Wisconsin—the land of cheese—and moved mountains a bit at a time. Get after it, folks. We’re dead and dust in no time flat. Find Tanya and Mind Medicine Australia through the show notes, and until next time, be a little kinder than necessary—to other people and to yourself.