The NYU dental school was the unlikely setting for New York University’s psilocybin cancer trial: a clinical room made to feel domestic, located in a dental college because other parts of the medical institution were reluctant to be associated with psychedelic research. It became the place where Patrick Mettes underwent a six-hour session in 2011, and later a measure of the trial’s changing status: after favorable results, New York University moved the treatment room into its main hospital and planned a further room at its cancer center.

A provisional clinical setting

The trial room was designed to soften the hospital environment without concealing it. A couch long enough for a patient to lie down faced an abstract painting; art and mythology books shared shelves with native crafts and spiritual objects, including a ceramic mushroom, a Buddha, and a crystal. The arrangement suggested a comfortable private interior, but medical infrastructure remained in view: tracks for hospital curtains crossed the acoustic-tile ceiling, and the oversized bathroom had fluorescent lighting and safety fittings. The setting held two purposes in the same space. It was meant to support an inward, psychologically demanding session, yet it remained unmistakably part of a modern hospital complex.

That provisional quality extended beyond the room’s furnishings. In January 2011, Patrick Mettes traveled from his apartment in Brooklyn to the NYU dental school on First Avenue and Twenty-fourth Street. His wife, Lisa Callaghan, had an important work meeting that morning, so he attended alone. At the time, both Bellevue and New York University’s cancer center wanted to keep their distance from a trial involving psychedelics; the dental college provided a place for the work to proceed without placing it directly inside either institution’s cancer-care setting.

Patrick Mettes’s session

Tony Bossis and Krystallia Kalliontzi, the guides for Mettes’s session, welcomed him and reviewed the plan for the day. At 9:00 a.m. they presented him with a chalice containing a pill. The trial’s blind meant that neither the guides nor Mettes would know for at least thirty minutes whether it contained psilocybin or a placebo. Before the session, he stated that he wanted to cope better with the anxiety and depression associated with his cancer and to work on what he called his regret in life. He placed photographs of himself and Lisa on their wedding day, along with a photograph of their dog, Arlo, around the room.

At 9:30, Mettes lay on the couch, put on headphones and eyeshades, and began the session. He later described an initially difficult transition giving way to calm. The room was therefore not merely a backdrop: the couch, the objects he brought, and the guides’ planned procedure formed the immediate setting for a structured clinical experience. The trial also required volunteers to write about their journeys soon afterward. Mettes took that task seriously, spending the weekend after his Friday session trying to make sense of what had happened. Lisa shared his account and gave Bossis permission to share his session and follow-up notes with the book’s narrator.

From tolerated trial to hospital program

The dental college’s role changed as the research gained recognition. In December 2016, the results of the New York University and Johns Hopkins cancer studies were published together. Across the two trials, about 80 percent of patients showed clinically significant reductions in anxiety and depression, with effects lasting at least six months; the strength of the reported mystical experience closely tracked the degree of symptom relief. The studies were small, with eighty participants altogether, and the findings required larger trials before they could support a regulatory change. Even so, the results brought new attention and cautious support from the mental health community.

New York University’s response made the institutional shift visible in the movement of the room itself. The university, which had once only grudgingly tolerated the trial, invited Stephen Ross to move the treatment room from the dental college into the main hospital. The cancer center, which had initially been reluctant to refer patients, then asked him to establish a room on its premises for a future trial. The dental school was thus both a practical refuge for the research and a temporary address: its function diminished as the therapy became more acceptable within the institution.

The room and the therapeutic model

The location also embodied a broader challenge to conventional psychiatric practice. Psychedelic therapy was organized around a single high-dose session intended to produce a profound psychological change, rather than an extended sequence of weekly appointments. That approach called for a different understanding of the roles of patient and therapist, and it made the setting and the guidance surrounding the session part of the treatment model. At the dental school, the domestic furnishings and spiritual objects coexisted with hospital fittings and trial procedures; neither side of that combination could be removed without changing the character of the room.

The trial’s institutional setting did not settle what place psychedelic experiences should have beyond treatment. Researchers and advocates differed over whether medical acceptance should be the destination or an initial step toward wider, carefully supported use. The NYU dental school belongs to the clinical side of that debate: it offered a supervised research environment at a moment when established hospitals were still cautious, and its eventual displacement into the main hospital registered a change in institutional confidence. Its significance lies not in the building alone, but in the contrast between the improvised, provisional location of the early trial and the more prominent medical setting the research later secured.