Richard Schaefer took part in a clinical trial of psilocybin as a treatment for addiction. (Photo courtesy of Richard Schaefer)

It was a day like any other when Richard Schaefer entered a Madison health care clinic to receive harm reduction supplies. Over 10 years, Schaefer had tried recovering from what began with dependence on a prescription for the pain killer Percocet and later spiraled into an all-consuming heroin addiction. As Schaefer waited for his supplies, he noticed an advertisement seeking volunteers for a study into whether therapy assisted by psilocybin – the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms – could unshackle people from addiction. 

“I’ve tried all types of rehabs,” said Schaefer when he spoke recently with the Wisconsin Examiner. Schaefer is 42, off heroin and training to be a peer support specialist. But from rehab clinics in Oshkosh and Wauwatosa to a 30-day program in the Racine County Jail, old-school complete abstinence and medication-assisted treatment using suboxone, Schaefer had tried it all. “I don’t know if it was more of the timing of being ready to quit or just finding something that actually works for me,” he said. “Something different, an alternative route…This study really changed my life, to tell you the truth.” 

Although overdose deaths are down in every state and the District of Columbia for the first time since the fentanyl crisis began, millions of people continue to struggle with opioid use disorder nationwide. With demand for treatment still high, the University of Wisconsin Transdisciplinary Center for Research in Psychoactive Substances (TCRPS) is working on finding solutions. Using psilocybin, the team at UW-Madison is developing groundbreaking new therapies tailor-made for people like Schaefer. Advertisements for the study, which focuses on opioid and methamphetamine addiction, can be found in Madison health care clinics like the one Schaefer visited and even on signs on city buses.  

“We already have seen evidence that psilocybin can do some remarkable things to improve the patients’ ability to gain and process important insights about their lives and experiences,” Paul Hutson, a professor and founding director of TCRPS, told UW News in 2023. “We’re excited to see what it can do along those same lines for patients struggling with substance abuse, many of whom have overlapping mental health conditions.” 

A bipartisan bill that began circulating last session in the Wisconsin Legislature aimed to make psychedelic drug treatment available to veterans suffering from PTSD. Commenting on a psilocybin study at UW-Madison that aims to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in combat veterans, UW researcher and professor Dr. Cody Wenthur told Wisconsin Examiner that conducting trials with an inclusive cross-section of subjects is important. 

Although funding cuts by the Trump Administration have undermined research efforts across the country, UW’s psilocybin study is not at risk, university officials say. A university spokesperson said that the study’s funding does not come from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and thus is “insulated” from cuts to NIH funding. 

Research has shown that psilocybin has the potential to rewire the human brain, for people with depression. The creation of new neuro-pathways aided by psilocybin, combined with therapy, could help treat substance use disorder, which also changes the brain over time to reinforce addictive behavior.

Nationwide millions of people struggle with an opioid use disorder of some kind. Wisconsin alone annually loses thousands of lives to drug overdoses, with a large portion of those deaths linked with variants of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. By 2038, Wisconsin is expected to receive over $780 million in settlement funding from lawsuits against the companies that seeded the overdose crisis by funneling large volumes of addictive medications into communities. That funding could be used to repair the lives of people and the health of their communities. 

Before he started taking Percoset, Schaefer was a college-educated operations manager at a furniture company, who’d grown up in Racine County. A husband, father and homeowner, he was climbing the ladder in his company when he was prescribed the pain killers. “Everything just kind of quickly fell apart,” said Schaefer, “within about six months to a year I lost all that.” 

During those six months his use of the medication became a recreational habit, then developed into a heroin addiction. Once needles came into the picture, “then it’s just no going back,” Schaefer said. “I ended up going down the drain. I lost my marriage, I lost custody of my kids on an overdose, and then I lost my job — my career I was at for 10 years. And then I lost my house to a foreclosure.” The degradation of his life was swift. He recalled  being kicked out of two sober houses. Eventually, he said, “I ended up on the streets.”

The doors of perception 

Schaefer was immediately intrigued when he saw an advertisement for the psilocybin study. He was already on a suboxone regimen in December 2023, which he said helped him get “on the other side of the wall” from his addiction. He entered the study the following month after contacting the research team. Numerous physical health assessments, phone calls, interviews and meetings followed. 

Schaefer was connected with “two really great therapists,” Travis Fox, a doctor in psychology and Nikki Zellner, a licensed clinical social worker. Their compassion and patience formed the bedrock for his recovery. He had to meet them once a week for a month, in addition to meeting other requirements. 

“They really got to know me and really bring out, or work on, issues that I had suppressed in my life, going back to childhood.” Schaefer said. Fox and Zellner “helped me to learn to love myself again,” he added. It was an alternative approach to therapy that Schaefer hadn’t seen in other recovery programs. “They accepted me for who I am, and helped me to learn that it’s OK to be myself,” he said. “To find the freedom of making a choice, it wasn’t all about abstinence, which a lot of programs are.” Schaefer said that “somehow, with making it my choice, I’ve become a new person and really found a new freedom with that, and really blossomed and come a long ways.” 

By April, Schaefer was ready to step into the experience of psilocybin-based therapy. Early in the morning he caught a cab to the UW nursing school. After one final physical check-up and conversation with doctors, Schaefer was led to a space which he called “the sacred room there.” In that comfortable room surrounded by artwork and with a couch and spaces for Schaefer and the therapists to sit, Schaefer took “the medicine” and his journey began. 

“They didn’t tell me what to call it,” said Schaefer, speaking of the psilocybin he took. “When you look at it as medicine rather than a drug, then we can have a different view on it.”

Taking his shoes off as he entered the room, Schaefer lay back on the couch, took a tablet, donned a blindfold and waited as about 20 minutes passed. 

“I remember the first session for me was kind of like a movie,” he said. “Like different scenes kept coming to me, you know? Different waves kept coming to me. And some of it was different scenes from life, some of it made sense, or some of it I’m still trying to make sense of what they were. But I realized a lot of things in that first session alone.”

“I think I was learning to find myself,” he said of the experience. A persistent sense of comfort, peace and acceptance stayed with Schaefer after that first session. His ego had been muted, “and I just had this new sense that things were OK,” he said. “I began to have a new outlook on life then.”

Sometimes participants in the psilocybin trials need a bathroom break or to pull out and communicate about what is happening. Zellner and Fox were never far away, and were open to talking to him while he was undergoing the journey. “It’s hard to put words on things while you’re having the medicine in you,” said Schaefer. “I go into it and would like to tell them all these things going on, and to be recorded, and jot down and stuff, but it’s like you can’t find the words to say it.”

“You’re kind of in another world,” he added, saying there may not actually be human language to describe some of the experience. The second dose was even more profound. The “scenes” returned with astonishing vividness. Schaefer recalled going through stages of what felt like collective “human sadness” as well as happiness and joy. 

“There was like a buildup from down and dark to the absolute most bright light and loving energy that I’d ever experienced,” he said. It was in that peak moment “when I felt that I was in the presence of a higher power,” which manifested as a sort of “god” or “energy that was in front of me.” He said he felt a distinctly separate, intelligent presence throughout his sessions, “like things were being taught to me and shown to me.” 

Whatever it was, the presence gave him “the most awesome comforting feeling I’ve ever felt in my life,” Schaefer recalled. The feeling melted away as Schaefer descended from that blissful state. 

Integration 

In many ways, the hard work begins after the psychedelic experience ends. With the help of their therapists, study participants must attempt to integrate and process what they learned during the sessions. “The integration was powerful because of the therapists being there, to immediately process things coming to your mind,” said Schaefer. 

After each session, Schaefer was walked back to the hospital where he was given some alone time for the night. He never interacted with any other study participants. The next morning, Schaefer met with Fox and Zellner again for a clearer, deeper dive into the prior day’s session. Another follow up came about a week later. “And again, man, that has been such a life-changing experience having a psychedelic medicine with therapists,” Schaefer said, emphasizing that without proper integration and therapy after psychedelic experiences, “you’re lost.” 

Today, Schaefer is clean from heroin and opioids and living a healthier life. Undergoing the psilocybin study at UW-Madison has inspired him to pursue a career as a certified peer support specialist, for which he’s currently finishing training. He aims to become an advocate for harm reduction medications and alternative psychedelic therapies for addiction recovery.

“I would say it’s not for everybody, but for some people who’ve tried different approaches and it hasn’t worked, and they’re serious about changing their life and having an open mind, then this could really be a profound experience to help them go in a new direction,” said Schaefer. 

He hopes that both treatment providers and people struggling with addiction remember that recovery takes patience, compassion, and that it doesn’t have to rely on an abstinence-only philosophy. “It might take 20 times … trying different approaches,” he said. 

Yet in Wisconsin, alternative options are not widely available. States like Colorado are already working to expand psychedelic-based treatment centers, as well as to legalize and decriminalize psilocybin. Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Legislature remains reluctant to explore bills to even legalize medicinal cannabis. Schaefer hopes that more people struggling with opioid addiction get the chance that he did. “I’d say it’s already changed my life in so many ways.” 

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