When Manheim Township firefighter Ryan Gardill returned in 2011 from serving in Afghanistan, he was no longer the same man he had been when he left.
A prior marriage and child custody case both “fell apart,” leading Gardill to seek help within his service branch, the U.S. Marine Corps, which deemed him unfit for duty in 2013. After two years of treatments for depression and post-traumatic stress failed to help, Gardill said his wife intervened to prevent him from taking his own life.
“I now take my experiences and what I went through to try and advocate to those around me that this is a serious issue,” Gardill told a panel of state lawmakers Tuesday. “It’s a silent issue. It’s not talked about. There is a stigma, but we can get through the stigma and work our way through all of this.”
Gardill, working as a support coordinator at Pennsylvania’s firefighters association, testified before the House Democrats’ policy committee in support of alternative methods to treating depression and post-traumatic stress injury. Specifically, Gardill spoke about the benefits of taking very small amounts of psilocybin, a chemical often found in mushrooms, particularly the types referred to as “magic mushrooms” because of their hallucinatory effects.
“In my line of work, we use unconventional tools to fix a complex problem, and I feel that mental health is the complex problem that we need to use unconventional methods on,” Gardill said. He told a reporter that he had not personally used psilocybin.
Gardill’s testimony fell upon encouraging ears.
Many of the Democrats spoke in support of bipartisan legislation introduced in May by Delaware County state Reps. Jennifer O’Mara, a Democrat, and Craig Williams, a Republican, to legalize psilocybin treatments in Pennsylvania, but only if they are approved by the Food and Drug Administration and rescheduled by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
O’Mara and Williams wrote in a memo to legislators that they see legal use of psilocybin “on the horizon” and that their proposal would ensure “timely access to groundbreaking new treatments” once they could become available.
A growing body of research has shown that microdoses of psilocybin could be an effective tool for treating mental health illnesses. A 2022 study from researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine found that such treatments have an antidepressant effect that may last more than a year for some patients.
This is not the first time lawmakers have weighed the potential benefits of psilocybin.
In 2022, Montgomery County Republican Sen. Tracy Pennycuick, then a state representative, championed a bill to establish clinical studies for psilocybin-assisted therapies. The legislation stalled in committee and has not been introduced in the current two-year legislative session.
Pennycuick also sought support last year for a “right-to-try” psilocybin treatment proposal for veterans, but she did not formally introduce it. Her spokesman on Wednesday said she may propose the idea again later this year.
Changing course
Brett Waters is a New York attorney who co-founded the nonprofit Reason for Hope, which has advocated for psychedelic research legislation in Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina and Florida. He told the panel of House Democrats that psilocybin has helped him overcome his fight with depression, anxiety and eating disorders.
After losing his mom to suicide in 2018, Waters said he used traditional antidepressants for about five years. He said he grew “dependent” on the medications and would suffer bouts of withdrawal if he missed doses.
“We believe psilocybin will be safer, more effective, more durable and with lower abuse potential,” Waters said. He pointed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics that nearly 50,000 people died by suicide in 2023 to argue that a major change in mental health treatment is urgent.
State Rep. Mike Schlossberg, D-Lehigh, who has been vocal about his personal struggle with depression and anxiety, asked witnesses how to reduce the stigma of fighting mental health that he expects will prompt some GOP lawmakers to oppose psilocybin use.
Both Gardill and Waters said the issue transcends party.
Several other supporters of psilocybin treatments also testified, including Daniel Orr, a doctor working with the Pennsylvania Academy of Family Physicians; Michael Thase, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine; and two representatives from Compass Pathways, a biotechnology company that develops psilocybin medications.