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Dr. Bronner’s Campaign Extols Healing Powers of Psychedelic Therapies

The company’s limited-edition “Heal Soul!” label on its 32oz. Castile Liquid Soaps aims to educate the public about these life-saving therapies, and the advocacy organizations and ballot initiatives that are advancing this work.

Published 5 years ago | About a 3 minute read

Image: Pretty Drugthings/Unsplash

This month, Dr. Bronner’s — family-owned maker of the top-selling natural brand of soap in North America — launched its “Heal Soul” campaign to support public education efforts, advocacy organizations and political campaigns around the country working to mainstream psychedelic-assisted therapy and medicines to treat depression, PTSD, addiction, and end-of-life anxiety. The company has donated over $3 million this year to support these efforts, and the organizations and ballot initiatives that are advancing this work.

Image credit: Dr. Bronner's/Facebook

Available from September through December of 2020, the limited-edition “Heal Soul!” label on Dr. Bronner’s 32-oz. Castile Liquid Soaps aims to educate the public about the power of psychedelic-assisted therapy and medicines (read the “Heal Soul!” label in its entirety here). Dr. Bronner’s has also produced a series of blog posts and short videos to support the campaign.

“Used in the right settings — in combination with good diet, fitness and other healthy lifestyle choices — psychedelic-assisted therapies and medicines offer dramatic healing for many people suffering from depression, end-of-life anxiety, PTSD and other mental health conditions,” said Michael Bronner, President of Dr. Bronner’s. “Our ‘Heal Soul’ message and campaign is about mainstreaming this conversation in a rational and compassionate way, to help enable access to these life-saving therapies as soon as possible with the goal of evaporating the misguided stigma that these medicines face.”

In recent years, Western medicine has been re-evaluating its stance on various psychedelic therapies, many of which were vilified or banned by the US government back in 1970 — when President Nixon launched his “war on drugs.” We’ve seen a massive, ongoing shift away from pharmaceutical solutions in favor of newly legal medicines such as cannabis for a vast array of mental, physical and emotional issues; and in-depth research continues into the potential of psychedelic-assisted therapies including MDMA, DMT and psilocybin to facilitate the emotional processing of trauma, rather than conventional medication’s emphasis on suppressing symptoms. They’re also the subject of Michael Pollan’s best-selling 2018 book, How to Change Your Mind.

Psychedelic-assisted therapies have shown great promise in clinical trials at John Hopkins, NYU, UCLA and elsewhere for treating severe psychological disorders. In 2017 and 2018, the FDA granted “breakthrough status” for MDMA-assisted therapy for treatment-resistant PTSD; and psilocybin-assisted therapy for treatment-resistant depression, respectively. And Canada recently approved psilocybin-therapy for people who are terminally ill and grappling with severe end-of-life anxiety.

Dr. Bronner’s Heal Soul campaign builds upon the company’s track record of more than two decades of advocacy and financial support of drug policy reform; and honors the longstanding history and culture of Indigenous Peoples who have, for millennia, practiced sacred healing and traditional rites with use of psychedelic plant medicines.

Dr. Bronner’s has donated over $3 million this year to psychedelic healing efforts, but the Heal Soul campaign is focused on a few key representative efforts and organizations, including: