Phil Wolfson

Phil Wolfson
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Born	1943
Nationality	United States of America
Alma mater	Brandeis University, BA; New York University School of Medicine, MD
Organization	The Ketamine Research Foundation And The Center For Transformational Psychotherapy
Known for	Psychedelic Psychotherapy, Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy, Consciousness And Spirituality, and Social Justice Activism
Children	2, 1 Surviving
Website	ketamineresearchfoundation.org; theketaminetrainingcenter.com; philwolfsonmd.com

Phil Wolfson MD, (born 1943), is a pioneer in the use of the medical ketamine as an alternative to conventional psychotherapy, especially in the provision of clinical ketamine assisted psychotherapy. A graduate of Brandeis University, and New York University School of Medicine, Wolfson is a noted psychotherapist, psychiatrist, psychedelic therapy pioneer, writer, entrepreneur, and social activist. He has authored two books, one of which being the seminal work; The Ketamine Papers, as well as numerous articles on psychedelic medicine and psychotherapy. His authorship began in 1986, fusing both research and clinical perspectives.

Wolfson graduated from Brandeis University in 1964, and went on to study at the New York University School of Medicine, receiving his medical doctorate in 1968. He was licensed to practice medicine in New York, California and Washington, DC. Wolfson began practicing psychotherapy in 1966, psychiatry in 1972, and has since become a keen researcher and advocate of the nature of mind, spirit and mental health. This unwavering focus on consciousness, community, social justice, and the spirit has been the hallmark of his presence in the psychedelic world for the entirety of his career.

General life and career

Phil Wolfson grew up in upper Manhattan and Queens, attending the public Martin Van Buren High School. As a student in the 1960’s, he developed the speakers’ program for the Student Humanist Society. In 1968, Wolfson married Alice Jacoby and did a medical internship at NY Medical College/Metropolitan Hospital. On his elective, the pair visited Cuba at the invitation of the Ministry of Public Health and on return, organized the first health brigade to Cuba that winter.

Opposing the war in Vietnam, Wolfson was a leading figure in the New York Medical Committee to End the War in Vietnam, Student Mobe and the Medical Committee for Human Rights. Wolfson’s advocacy for the welfare of people and social justice in medicine included his leadership in the development of the Student Health Programs. This promoted education and novel programs in community medicine and equalization of access to health care - with nursing, dental, and medical student organizations forming at many schools nationwide. At NYU School of Medicine, Wolfson collaborated with Nobel Prize winner Dickinson W. Richards, and his Hartford Foundation, to organize the first formal lecture series on Community Medicine. This series emphasized the racism, sexism, and classist nature of healthcare, and was supported by the New York Academy of Medicine.

Completing his tour of duty in the USPHS (U.S. Public Health Service), Wolfson began working as a psychiatrist in the DC area in 1971, attending programs at the Washington School of Psychiatry, including three years of group therapy training. He went on to complete four years at the Woodburn Mental Health Center in Annandale, Virginia, ending in 1977.

By 1975 Wolfson had become a contributor to the emerging family therapy and systems movement that was democratizing and energizing psychotherapy. Also, reflective of the work of RD Laing, the humanization of both the view and the treatment of mental illness became more prominent in the field. Wolfson participated in the Anti-Psychiatry Movement, as well as its second (and final) Anti-Psychiatry Conference in Cuernavaca (1978). This movement embraced social, anti-repressive, and cultural aspects of human lives with regards to psychotherapy.

Moving to the Noe Valley area of San Francisco in 1977 with his wife and two sons, Wolfson started working as a psychiatrist first in Richmond and then as Director of I Ward in the Contra Costa County Hospital Mental Health System. He played a leadership role in the building of a progressive multiracial collective there. The I Ward, a unit of the county hospital, treated first psychotic break patients with low, or no-dose medication in a family process inpatient program that explored the manifestations of mental illness as meaningful and personal. It was one of a handful of demonstration programs in the Bay Area (Diabasis, Soteria, Emanon) that sought to heal severe mental illness through process work, rather than suppression.

Wolfson entered private practice and in 1988-95 the psychiatry staff of Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City, California. Between 1986 and 2009, he taught at UCSF Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry, and was on faculty at California Institute of Integral Studie's'.

Wolfson has commented that the best thing he ever did was having, and raising children. He has been an advocate for truly involved fathering. In 1981 the family took a year off to camp across Europe and Israel, living in Florence, Italy for the winter, and homeschooling their children. It was around two years after their return to Noe Valley when Wolfson’s oldest son, Noah, at age twelve, contracted acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL). After four years of intermittent treatment and two relapses, Noah died in his sixteenth year in 1988. As explained in his book; Noe-a Father/son Song of Love, Life, Sickness, and Death, this experience shaped Wolfson’s life and his exploration of loss and grief in himself and his work with others.

Career and research

Beginning in the 1983, Wolfson closely collaborated with Alexander Shulgin, the foremost American psychopharmacologist, and author. Their collaboration explored the potential of psychedelic psychotherapy largely based on work with MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) assisted psychedelic psychotherapy. Wolfson published the first paper on MDMA and family treatment with psychosis. Working with couples suffering from conditions such as depression or trauma, they led a dedicated group of psychotherapists and psychiatrists with the support and hosting of Richard Price, co-owner of the Esalen Institute and the psychologist Leo Zeff.

Another important area of research was a paper Wolfson published for the ARUPA, the Association for the Responsible Use of Psychedelic Agents. An informal and ever-expanding group which came together to explore the potential forms of therapy these medicines could provide. When the DEA put these substances into Schedule I, making them illegal and unavailable for clinical or research work, Wolfson and his colleagues mounted a campaign to keep MDMA legal. The DEA overruled their own Administrative Law Judge, who had found that the medical utility of MDMA would have enabled continued exploration of viable treatments. This legal outcome plus the Analog Drug Bill, made further open exploration and research of alternative substances impossible and illegal. After exhaustive clinical studies, the indication of MDMA's utility in the treatment of PTSD is finally moving towards an FDA approval for clinical use. Wolfson has written extensively on the merging of psychedelic medicines, spiritual practice, and consciousness work. In the 1990s, Wolfson entered the study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism, focusing on Dzogchen with Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, eventually turning to Steven Batchelor’s work practicing and writing on secular Buddhism.

Wolfson’s first exposure to the power of the ketamine molecule took place in 1990, but it was a decade later that his full exploration of ketamine’s potential as a psychotherapeutic medicine began. It took years before he felt he was ready to offer it in a psychotherapeutic format. In 2014, he opened a clinic in Marin County, California, dedicated to the application of ketamine assisted psychotherapy (KAP). This practice has been elaborated in numerous publications including the groundbreaking The Ketamine Papers in 2016 with Glenn Hartelius.

In 1993, Wolfson was a founding member of the Heffter Research Institute - with its focus on basic research with psychedelic medicines, especially psilocybin. In this oeuvre, Wolfson has continually emphasized the necessity for practitioners of ketamine and alternative medicines to know these powerful substances personally before administering them to patients. Similarly, he emphasized the importance of doing so within the embrace of psychotherapies that are methodologically developed for these medicines.

Ketamine Research Foundation

In 2017, recognizing the power of KAP, Wolfson founded and became the CEO of the non-profit Ketamine Research Foundation (KRF). The organization is dedicated to training, educating, and researching with ketamine, as the first legally available psychedelic medicine for prescription of a psychoactive and psychedelic psychotherapy. Its subsidiary, the Ketamine Training Center (KTC) has been the leading organization in training practitioners in Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) with, as of 2023, over eight hundred practitioners participating in its international trainings. The Ketamine Psychotherapy Associates membership organization continues the educational and collaborative basis for KAP’s development worldwide.

KRF is engaged in an FDA-approved, five site study of KAP entitled: Conscious Dying/Conscious Living, and is a study for those who are aware of having a year or less to live. The study's goal is to humanize practice in hospice and palliative care settings. Additionally, KRF has created a template for training veterans to be co-facilitators for the group treatment of PTSD, which is intended to positively affect the facilitation of treatment for veterans. Having a veteran as a co-leader in groups for veterans suffering with PTSD is a step towards a more successful model for treatment.

In 2023, Wolfson published the paper: Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy in Adolescents with Multiple Psychiatric Diagnoses, which followed his earlier work describing a KAP study with 235 patients (Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP): Patient Demographics, Clinical Data and Outcomes in Three Large Practices Administering Ketamine with Psychotherapy Journal of Psychoactive Drugs March 2019).

Business Affiliations

Wolfson has embarked on several different corporate ventures. The first was in 1988 as Founder and Director of Fiberstars, later Energy Focus, Inc (EFOI) formerly the largest developer and manufacturer of fiberoptic lighting to promote energy efficient lighting solutions. The company went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange in 1994, with Wolfson leaving the Board of Directors in 2011.

Between 1988 and 1993, alongside Alexander Shulgin, he founded and was a director of the Scientific Advisory group of Neurobiological Technologies, Inc, a biotechnology development corporation, that also went public on the NASDAQ exchange in 1994, and was one of the developers of the anti-Alzheimer drug, Namenda.

In 1999, Wolfson and Shulgin founded a nutraceutical company, Phytos Inc, to potentially manufacture MDMA, should it have become available legally. The company also aimed to research new plant medicines. Wolfson wrote and had five USPTO issued patents that included a Mexican root for flavoring and taste sensation, Gold Root, which was developed in a blinded study at the University of the Pacific Dental School. Additionally, patents were issued for an herbal smoking cessation product and for Scutellaria lateraflora-Skullcap - as a high concentration anxiolytic and sedative. Alongside a peer author, Wolfson published a paper describing its scientific study in Alternative Medicine, titled: An investigation into the efficacy of Scutellaria Lateriflora in Healthy Volunteers.

Patents and Pending Patents

As part of his decades of work, Wolfson authored and was the originator of numerous patents for nutraceuticals and ketamine. In 2017, Wolfson submitted a patent that is pending for luteal phase menstrual symptoms of PMS and PMDD (citation U.S. Patent Application No.: 16/464,383), recognizing the unique potential of low dose ketamine for women’s health and well-being. The patent continues under examination with the USPTO and abroad.

!n 2019, in awareness of the potential for mass distribution to women in obtaining an FDA indication for this use, Wolfson became the Chairman of the Board and Medical Director of Progressive Therapeutics Inc (PTI). A second patent created by KRF for Postpartum disorders (U.S. Patent Application No.: 62/882,858) was assigned to PTI. Progressive Therapeutics Inc, Wolfson, and the CEO Dawn McCullough are engaged in the development of ketamine-based products for the benefit of women’s well-being and general mental health issues.

Acclaim

Wolfson’s work has attracted national attention, first in 2018 with Wired Magazine, then the New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. In addition to national media outlets, Wolfson has been interviewed numerous times, including:

• Horizons 2017: PHILIP E. WOLFSON, MD "Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy and the Ketamine Opportunity"
• 2021 Interviewing Philip Wolfson on Psychedelic-Assisted Treatment
• 2020 Ketamine and Telepsychiatry: David Rabin and Phil Wolfson
• PANEL: Ketamine Therapy w/ Wolfson, Bennett, Abdallah, Roston & McInnes
• 2017 - Phil Wolfson & Julane Andries: MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy for Anxiety in Life-Threatening Illness

Publications

• The Ketamine Papers (Book)
  • Wolfson first experimented with the ketamine molecule in 1990 and understood its potential. However, it was some years of exploration before he felt it ready to be offered in a healing psychotherapy format. His clinical exploration of ketamine began in the early 2000s, was formalized in a dedicated clinic setting in 2014, and led to the publication of The Ketamine Papers with Glenn Hartelius in 2016.
• Noe-a father-son song of love, life, illness and death (Book)
  • In 2011, after four years of battling leukemia, Dr. Wolfson’s oldest son Noah passed away. This tragedy became the catalyst for Wolfson’s next book: Noe-a Father-son Song of Love, Life, Illness and Death.
• Dreidel-a-gram
• Secular Buddhism and the Quest for Lived Ethics
  • A piece that explores what secular Buddhism is and how it can be applied to healing.
• The Varieties of Ketamine
  • This summarizes a study from April 2013; “The Varieties of Ketamine Experience”, at the Psychedelic Science 2013 conference. This examines the clinical use of Ketamine with regard to depression, trauma and personal transformation.
• The Soiled Men Want Your Vote
  • In May 2013, Wolfson explored Anthony Weiner and other self-redeemed politicians in a HuffPost Politics blog entry.
• Psychedelics, Spirituality, Activism and Transformation.
  • In October 2011, the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research published Wolfson's article: “A Longitudinal History of Self-Transformation: Psychedelics, Spirituality, Activism and Transformation.”
• The United States is in a Tailspin
  • A commentary about the political tumult of the Obama administration as described by Wolfson.
• Keep It in Your Pants
  • This article from 2011, is a perspective about how underlying emotional conditions affect politicians. This essay was one of three articles about the media circus surrounding the resignation of former Rep. Anthony Weiner.
• Suggested Rules for the Road: Conscious Parenting in this Time of Psychoactive Substance Use
  • The principles that work for child rearing in the context of substances in a family, with a discussion about the suggested guidelines.
• Cuba Sí
  • Author of this essay about three trips to Cuba in 1968, 1988 and 2010.
• Marijuana: A Review with Emphasis on Medical Marijuana and Use Patterns in the USA
  • A presentation given at a conference in Lima, Peru, about the impacts of America’s War on Drugs on the rest of the world.
• The Varieties of Ketamine
  • This study titled; “The Varieties of Ketamine Experience” was presented at the Psychedelic Science 2013 conference. It examines the clinical use of Ketamine with regard to depression, personal transformation and openness.
• MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy for Treatment of Anxiety and Other Psychological Distress Related to Life Threatening Illnesses
  • A randomized pilot study which explores the great need for new treatment options to address the psychological distress associated with LTIs. Published in Scientific Reports, 2020.

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