PHOENIX — Robert Steele was taking more than 300 pills a month after his wartime service in Iraq.
"It's time that we have an alternative for treatment, just another option," Steele said Tuesday at a Capitol news conference.
"It might not work for everybody. But another option is all we're really requesting here."
For Steele, that option was traveling out of state for PTSD treatment with psychedelic mushrooms.
Steele's 17-year-old daughter, Alyssa, saw the difference they made.
"You could completely tell he was just a different person, and just not so angry," she told a reporter.
"And it's just sort of beautiful to see my Dad be able to find peace again."
The Steeles joined military veterans, first responders and Republican state lawmakers who gathered to promote legislation allowing for the limited use of mushrooms, currently illegal under federal law.
Later in the day, the Senate's Committee on Health and Human Services voted unanimously to advance the bill to the full Senate.
Here's what the bill would do:
- By 2026, the state would allow clinical trials on psychedelic mushrooms.
- The state Department of Health Services would license the clinics.
- Only federally licensed mushrooms could be used to treat seven specific disorders.
"This will have been vetted before it reaches the governor's desk," said Republican state Sen. TJ Shope of Coolidge, the bill's sponsor and the committee chair.
"That is something we did not do with the experimentation on whether or not medical marijuana or legalized marijuana was going to be good or bad or indifferent."
The Arizona legislation comes against the backdrop of state experiments nationwide with permitting the use of mushrooms to help treat conditions like PTSD and chronic pain.
The states are responding, in part, to growing dissatisfaction and disgust with opioid medications found to contribute to addiction and even death.
Dr. Sue Sisley, lead investigator of the Scottsdale Research Institute, says she understands why many people might be skeptical about a mind-bending drug like mushrooms.
"Mushrooms are definitely not to be played with," Sisley said in an interview.
"There are a lot of cautionary tales from folks who have attempted to use mushrooms either in inappropriate settings or overdosing on them."
Sisley is best known for her fight to clinically test the effects of marijuana on PTSD.
Now she is preparing for clinical trials of psychedelic mushrooms, also known as psilocybin mushrooms.
"That's where the research comes in - to be able to finally document in a methodical way what potential harms can occur," she said.
Sisley says she has "piles of emails" from people who want to be part of a clinical trial.
"There's so much suffering in our community," she said. "We don't have a really good handle on how to treat these folks."
One unanswered question: Where the money's coming from to help support the clinical research?
This year's state budget had included $5 million for mushroom research. But that money has apparently been clawed back as the state faces a two-year budget deficit that could total $1 billion.
Sisley pointed to the $1.1 billion opioid settlement that Arizona received from drug makers and pharmacies as a possible funding source.
"Our opioid settlement funds are sitting there stagnating, waiting for good priorities," she said.
"I would say uncovering new treatments for addictions is probably the best thing we could be doing with opioid settlement funds."
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