Psychedelic Researcher Questions Industry's Rush to Market

Erica Rex participated in Johns Hopkins University's psilocybin research trials in 2012 as a breast cancer patient experiencing depression. She was among the first participants in clinical studies testing whether psilocybin-assisted therapy could treat depression in cancer patients. She documented that experience in a 2014 essay for Scientific American Mind titled "Calming a Turbulent Mind," providing one of the earliest first-person accounts of clinical psychedelic therapy.

More than a decade later, as psilocybin and MDMA move toward FDA approval and billions of dollars flow into psychedelic therapy startups, Rex has written a book that challenges the industry's trajectory. Seeing What Is There: My Search for Sanity in the Psychedelic Era, arriving in January 2026 through Simon & Schuster, questions whether commercialization and healing can coexist.

Rex brings both journalistic credentials and lived experience to her critique. She has reported for The New York Times, Scientific American, The Independent, Salon, and won a National Magazine Award for fiction. She has presented at the National Institutes of Health's psilocybin research series and currently serves as an advisor to the Congressional Psychedelic Therapy Caucus.

The book's central argument addresses what Rex sees as a fundamental conflict between profit and healing. When asked about the most dangerous consequence of venture capital entering the trauma industry, she responds: "Commercialization is designed to create efficiencies of scale, maximizing throughput as though humans and healing were components of computing systems. By its nature, commercialization removes all of the curative humanistic and cultural ingredients from the experience in order to maximize profit. These include: community, authentic connections with other human beings, taking part in a ritual or sacramental curative process."

She continues: "All venture capital exists to do is to extract the maximum profit out of any material or any generative system, including human relationships and cultural practices. It is murderously destructive to institutions that serve precisely the people who stand to benefit most from psychedelic treatment, and voids any consideration of the aspects of the psychedelic experience which make us human."

Rex's perspective is shaped by personal history with psychiatric systems. She is the daughter of two psychiatrists, and her mother trained under Harvard psychologist Henry A. Murray, whose controversial experiments reportedly influenced Theodore Kaczynski. Rex herself experienced childhood psychiatric treatment that resulted in Complex PTSD, a diagnosis she carries alongside her work as a science journalist.

The memoir weaves investigative reporting through personal narrative, examining what Rex describes as boundary violations, financial exploitation, and power abuses within therapeutic environments. Her book addresses why vulnerable patients — particularly women — face risks in psychedelic settings where emotional exposure is extreme and regulatory oversight remains limited.

Rex also recovered overlooked history in her research. She traces psilocybin studies back to their origins at the French Museum of Natural History, where the first clinical trials were conducted at a Paris psychiatric hospital in the 1950s—a history largely absent from American accounts of psychedelic research.

The book documents Rex's experiences with multiple substances including psilocybin, MDMA, and 5-MeO-DMT, but deliberately resists the redemptive arc common to trauma memoirs. Asked whether she intentionally avoided a conventional "healing journey" narrative, Rex states: "Yes. If you want accounts of romps with psychedelics or 'how I ate 'shrooms/went to the ayahuasca retreat/microdosed with LSD/smoked DMT and saw stuff' there are plenty of books and articles to read. This isn't one of them."

Early reviewers have noted the book's refusal to offer easy answers. Joe Moore, Co-Founder and CEO of Psychedelics Today, writes: "This important memoir critiques psychiatry and the psychedelic movement, exploring trauma, healing, and the ethical challenges of contemporary psychiatry. Through her journey with psilocybin, MDMA, and 5-MeO-DMT, Erica Rex reveals the promise of transformation while advocating for a future where true healing includes social support, equity, and community. Students of psychedelics and psychiatry would do well to read this book."

Stephen Mills, author of Chosen: A Memoir of Stolen Boyhood, calls it "an extraordinary, beautifully written account of one woman's lifelong journey out of unimaginable childhood trauma... Hers is a singular and prophetic voice, summoning the healing power of community in a culture that has pathologized human suffering."

Jeffrey Masson, author of Assault on Truth, describes the book as "brave, passionate, and powerful" and notes it "combines research and lived truth. Difficult at times, but impossible to put down—it will leave you wiser, shaken, and opened in ways few books ever do."

Seeing What Is There: My Search for Sanity in the Psychedelic Era comes out in January 2026 from She Writes Press, distributed by Simon & Schuster. The trade paperback ($17.99) and ebook ($12.99) will be available through major retailers including Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and independent bookstores nationwide.