Happy Nice Mall

VISTA, California — Liquid soap company known for tiny font labels preaching brotherly love and world peace, Dr. Bronner’s wants you to consider the benefits of mind-altering drugs.

The emotion is promoted in limited edition soap bottles that sing the praises. psychedelic assisted therapiesand through the whimsical remarks of David Bronner, the grandson of the company’s founder and one of its top executives, who is not afraid to share the details of his many hallucinogenic journeys.

“Let’s face it, the world would be a much better place if more people experienced psychedelic drugs,” said David, whose company was one of the first to bid in the United States in January. ketamine therapy as part of employee health insurance.

Perhaps less well known, Dr. Bronner’s role as one of the country’s biggest financial backers of winning efforts. mainstream acceptance of psychedelics and loosening government restrictions on all illegal drugs.

Since 2015, Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps – yes, that’s the official name – has donated more than $23 million to drug advocacy and research organizations. corporate documents. They include scientists who study its healing properties. club drug Ecstasyactivist groups helping decriminalize psilocybin “magic mushrooms” Oregon and Washington DC. and one small nonprofit It works to preserve habitat for the hallucinogenic cactus peyote, which is central to some Native American spiritual traditions.

Over the years, the company has also spent millions of dollars on efforts to legalize marijuana, including lawsuits that helped reverse a federal ban in 2018. industrial hemp cultivation.

The left-leaning philanthropy Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, has quietly spent millions of dollars. drug policy changesof a company It’s rare for him to embrace a controversial subject as loudly as Bronner’s.

“When it comes to corporate philanthropy, you’re going to have a hard time finding another company that has the courage to publicly stop the drug war,” said Rick Doblin, the company’s director. Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a research and advocacy group. Dr. It received approximately $6 million from Bronner and an additional $1 million was committed for each of the next five years.

The increasingly high-profile generosity of the Bronner family comes at a pivotal moment in the decades-long campaign to make it easier for the nation to simply say no. attitude towards illegal drugs. Changes have been seismic, from bipartisan congressional support for drug penal reforms to a gradual statewide embrace of recreational marijuana.

Ketamine therapy for depression has become a billion-dollar industry, and multiple states and municipalities are trying to join Denver, Seattle, and a dozen other cities in decriminalizing psychedelics. Researchers say another milestone is on the horizon: The Food and Drug Administration is considering approval MDMAor Ecstasy for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.

University of Texas, Johns Hopkins and Yale It is among solid institutions that are creating divisions to research whether psychedelic compounds can advance the treatment of anxiety, depression, addiction, and a host of other mental health disorders. “We’re really at a crossroads where the whole paradigm with these drugs is changing,” said Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, who helped build the school’s new hospital. Psychedelic Science Center.

It was established by in 1948. Emmanuel Bronner, a German-Jewish immigrant and a third-generation soap maker, Dr. In the 1960s, Bronner’s minty-scented soap became a favorite among counterculture pacifists who adored its all-natural origin and Bronner’s “All Belief in One God.” to end the tribalism behind so much human suffering. A fabricated origin story counts on Woodstock to expand its distribution. “The joke is that it turned out three times as much in VW microbuses as it did from the festival,” said his grandson, Michael Bronner.

Emil, as he was known, was a refreshing, free-spirited renegade whose talkative genius often danced on the verge of madness. (He was by no means a real doctor.) In 1945, shortly after learning that his parents had been killed in Nazi death camps, Emil landed in a Chicago mental institution where he was held by his sister, where he was electrocuted. Shock treatment according to family. After making a daring escape, he hitchhiked to California, where he embarked on a lifelong, peripatetic crusade to better humanity.

Bronner was going to hand out bottles of his product after giving his distinctive public lectures on humanity’s need to save the “Earth Spaceship,” but soon realized that most people were more interested in his free soap than in his spiritual ideology. His remedy? Started printing them philosophical bullshit. On labels that also explain the use of concentrated liquid Castile soap 18 in 1. (Teeth cleaning! Dish washing! Dog shampoo!)

While a proposed use of birth control has since been scrapped, Bronners said, much of the label’s 3,000-word verbiage remains untouched, a decision that reflects the family’s deep respect for a man whose insane existence is inevitable after more than two decades. death at 89.

Patrik’s writings and image are scattered throughout the company’s headquarters in Vista, California, about 40 miles north of San Diego. An eerily large explosion of his grinning face greets visitors in the lobby. Nearby is a papier-mâché figure wearing a leopard-print Speedo, a silly homage to her propensity to do business in skimpy swimsuits. (Fun fact: For decades, the phone number printed on soap bottles ended up in a series of red rotary phones that Emil Bronner answered hourly from his living room recliner.)

The company remains a family affair. Michael chairman, who describes himself as the “brother with the button”; her sister, Lisa, helps promote the brand’s work in environmental sustainability and fair trade; and their mother, Trudy, is the chief financial officer. The eldest child, David, is the CEO – Cosmic Engagement Officer.

According to company documents, last year Dr. Bronner’s revenue soared from $4 million in 1998 to nearly $170 million a few years after the company emerged from bankruptcy with the help of Emil’s two sons, Jim and Ralph.

This convergence of corporate death is Emil’s “All One God Faith, Inc.” It was linked to the decision to register his company. as a religious non-profit organization. The Internal Revenue Service was dissatisfied and issued an overwhelming fine.

But the founder’s unusual business approach lives. The highest salaries in the company cannot exceed five times that of the lowest-paid worker who has spent five years on the job; This means that Michael and David each make about $300,000 a year. Its 300 employees receive a number of benefits, including childcare benefits of up to $7,500 and annual bonuses of up to 10 percent of their annual salary. The cafe’s vegan meals, Zumba lessons, back massages, and solar-powered electric vehicle charging stations are free of charge.

The company regularly turns down buyout offers of the sort demanded by other independent brands such as Burt’s Bees (now part of Clorox), Tom’s of Maine (Colgate-Palmolive) and Kiehl’s (L’Oréal). The brothers say the offers went straight to the trash. In a good year, the company donates 45 percent of its profits, or about $8 million, according to the company’s annual report. “If we made money, we would be less effective as a charitable engine,” David said.

Her own love affair with psychedelics began shortly after college at a dance club in Amsterdam, where she was introduced to confectionery, a combination of LSD and Ecstasy. The journey included visions of Jesus, his grandfather, and “dialogue with the deeper self”; all of which helped him overcome what he described as a crippling toxic masculinity and a troubled relationship. “I’ve died five times but this one got me out of my dark hole and got me on my way,” said 49-year-old David, who prefers hemp clothing and is particularly fond of the adjective “rad.”

He also has an entertainer’s eye for attention-grabbing moves, which got him arrested twice; once for planting cannabis seeds in the Drug Enforcement Administration’s front yard and another for grinding cannabis oil while locked in a cage in front of the White House.

The company’s move to tie much of its corporate identity to psychedelics and drug reform policies hasn’t always gone well, especially with 79-year-old Trudy, a former middle school math teacher and regular Methodist churchgoer who shudders when she remembers excesses. of the 1960s. “I had friends who did trippy stuff, and it wasn’t always good,” she said. On the other hand, this country has a lot of mental health issues that need to be addressed.”

His continued skepticism dissipated with Michael’s recent return to psychedelics. The shift came last year when the drugs he had long relied on to treat his anxiety and depression stopped working. It was then that she decided to try talk therapy paired with ketamine, a legal anesthetic and party drug that is gaining more and more acceptance among mental health professionals.

He likened the experience to a brain massage, which helped relieve much of his nerves and despair. “I don’t want to exaggerate the ketamine cure as a miracle cure but it just took the rust off, gave me a reset and got me into a really good place,” she said.

So far, 21 employees or their dependents have signed up for treatments that can cost several thousand dollars.

A battlefield anesthetic also used in veterinary medicine, ketamine has only recently gained popularity as a therapy for intractable depression and suicidal ideation. Although the drug does not have FDA clearance for mental health conditions, doctors are allowed to prescribe it for so-called off-label use when they think it will benefit a patient.

Enthea, health plan assistance manager for treatments, says that 10 more companies have Dr. He said he was following in Bronner’s footsteps. Enthea founder and CEO Lia Mix said many are driven by reduced spending on mental health coverage as well as increased employee productivity.

Emil Bronner was drug-free and distrustful of Western medicine, refusing to go to the doctor despite starting to lose his eyesight in his 60s. But their descendants are confident that they will approve of their decision to make psychedelics a central component of the family business.

“Our grandfather was all about changing consciousness and opening hearts and minds,” David said, pausing to comic effect and with a mischievous grin: “He would probably put LSD in his soaps.”