Why Some in the Music Industry Are Advocating for Psychedelic Drugs — This Time as Therapy

Trending on Billboard For decades, psychedelic drugs have occupied a familiar place in music culture: as muse; as menace; as shorthand for rebellion, transcendence or self-destruction. They’ve been folded into rock mythology, rave-culture folklore, countless albums and the language of artistic reinvention. But in 2026, as more and more artists speak openly about trauma, burnout and self-medication, the conversation around psychedelics is starting to revolve around how these drugs might work as therapy. This conversation has only accelerated in the wake of President Donald Trump’s April 18 executive order aimed at accelerating the research, review and approval of psychedelic drugs for serious mental illnesses, including PTSD, treatment-resistant depression and addiction. That includes growing attention to substances such as ketamine, LSD, psilocybin — the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms — and ibogaine, an alkaloid derived from the iboga shrub that has powerful hallucinogenic effects. The move was a sign that substances long kept on the fringes are moving, however slowly, toward the medical mainstream. Related In the music world, Melissa Etheridge has become one of the most vocal advocates for the study of psychedelics in therapeutic settings, driven in part by the 2020 death of her 21-year-old son, Beckett Cypher, from causes related to opioid addiction. Through the Etheridge Foundation — which will host its inaugural R.I.S.E. Summit on Nov. 12 in Irvine, Calif., including a fireside chat between Etheridge and addiction expert Dr. Gabor Maté — she has pushed for psychedelic-assisted treatments to be studied more seriously as possible tools for addiction and recovery. “I was part of what I know that hundreds of thousands of families go through, where you have a family member who is addicted, and you know it, and it really starts tearing the family apart,” Etheridge tells Billboard. “You want to fix them. You want to save them.” Etheridge is not alone in her advocacy. Artists including Grimes, Kacey Musgraves, MGK, Margo Price and Jon Hopkins have helped bring conversations about psychedelic-assisted therapy more visibly into the music world. Grimes, who has spoken publicly about ketamine, microdosing and the potential mental-health benefits of psychedelics, is quick to warn that the use of such substances can sometimes blur into misuse. “Artists are significantly more prone to abusing substances and escapism,” she says. “I’ve seen a lot of people dealing with fame start abusing healing substances [like psychedelics].” For that reason, Grimes is perhaps most enthusiastic about ibogaine, noting, “It’s apparently very not fun, so I don’t feel any concern about endorsing that.” She adds that she’s been “extremely impressed” by clinical results in trials of the drug for those suffering from untreatable depression, addiction and PTSD. Melissa Etheridge photographed in Joshua Tree, Calif., on Oct. 22, 2025. (Photo credit: Candace Lawler) For Mariah Jeremiah, LCSW, founder of The Wellness Roadies, a collective providing mental health and wellness programming for artists, crews and live-music communities, the appeal of these therapies among music professionals can’t be understood without first understanding what the music industry does to the people inside it. “I’ve seen more levels of burnout with music industry professionals than any other industry I think I’ve worked with,” says Jeremiah, a clinical social worker who comes from a family of musicians in Oklahoma. She says her work with music-industry clients deepened through her professional experience with Backline, the mental-health nonprofit that supports music workers. “The burnout level with musicians is similar to ER doctors,” she adds. “It’s a really high [level], just because of the stress itself.” Related Touring artists are often cut off from the people, places and routines that could otherwise keep them grounded. Crew members, managers and production workers move from city to city through high-intensity environments with little time to process what the work is doing to them physically or emotionally. In Jeremiah’s view, that strain is both severe and normalized. “The music industry is like a nervous system experiment that no one prepared anybody for,” she says. Myriam Barthes, CEO of Journey Clinical — a mental-health platform that partners with licensed therapists and medical providers to offer ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and related psychiatric care — sees something similar. “The artists have a very specific set [of struggles],” she says. “There is a lot of uncertainty, like you don’t have a paycheck at the end of the month. You’re very vulnerable because you put yourself out there. You have no idea if people are going to like and respond to your art.” That burnout often shows up as exhaustion and also disconnection — from self, from joy and from the reasons someone entered music in the first place. Jeremiah says the pressure to keep producing — even while exhausted, isolated or financially unstable — can hollow artists out over time. “A lot of what I see is they don’t actually feel their passion towards music like they used to,” she says. “They get disillusioned with what the music industry actually does to people. It will just take all the energy that you have to offer if you let it.” That pressure shows up across the industry, including among tour managers, audio engineers and production workers. “A lot of the crew don’t have the ability to be vulnerable and get support from their team at work,” Jeremiah says. To her, one of the most overlooked realities in the music world is grief. “There’s a lot of grief in the music industry, and there’s just no time to process it,” she says. “Someone could die backstage, and a day later they have to do full production. There’s nobody often checking on these people, debriefing them. They just have to move on.” Related These are exactly the kinds of conditions that make psychedelic-assisted therapies feel newly urgent, Jeremiah says. In her view, these treatments can help loosen rigid mental and emotional patterns and allow people to “take back their spirit and their soul and their reason for coming into all of this” — and feel, even briefly, that they “can just exist and breathe instead of have to do something and be the best every day.” However, she is adamant that these treatments are not casual tools, and not for everyone, including people with a personal or family history of severe psychosis. For this reason, she worries about the growing number of lightly trained facilitators presenting themselves as psychedelic “coaches” or “sitters” without rigorous clinical preparation. “When this is done well, it is amazing,” she says. “When it is done not well, it can be really harmful.” Barthes says one of the field’s biggest challenges now is what she calls “literacy” — learning how to talk about psychedelics without “either demonizing psychedelics or presenting psychedelics as a magic pill that is going to solve all your problems.” For now, access to psychedelic therapies in the U.S. largely remains limited to clinical trials, though in at least two states — Oregon and Colorado — adults can access state-licensed psilocybin treatment centers. Still, Juliana Todeschi Paer, an associate attorney at Vicente LLP, says access to psychedelic therapies can be difficult for music professionals with hectic touring schedules, even in states where it’s legal. “When we consider the touring schedule of musicians, these are services that require intentional planning,” she says. For example, she adds, “Colorado requires a preparation session, an administration session and an integration session as part of a single series.” Related Of course, the advocacy of artists like Etheridge and Grimes isn’t limited to music professionals; like the industry’s more freewheeling proponents of psychedelic use in the ‘60s and ‘70s, their mission pertains to the broader public. And as in many arenas, celebrity artists can help destigmatize the subject of psychedelics via their outsized platforms. But as Joshua Kappel, a founding partner at Vicente LLP, suggests, visibility is not the same thing as safety, and cultural acceptance is not the same thing as care. “Celebrities have platforms, and their stories are powerful,” Kappel says. “But there’s a real risk here: Not everyone has a good experience [with psychedelic therapy].” Still, as far as Etheridge is concerned, psychedelics can be a vital, even lifesaving, treatment option for those who struggle with addiction and mental health. In her mind, this makes the issue an urgent one: “If my son had had that, if that option had been there 10 years ago, eight years ago, five years ago, he may be here.”