Jay Godfrey spent fifteen years building a fashion house with his own name on it, dressing Jennifer Lopez and Viola Davis, selling across five continents. Then the creativity curdled into a grind of twelve collections a year, and it landed him in a therapist's office for the first time in his life. Three years and a small fortune in weekly sessions later, he hit a wall.
"After three years of forking out 300 bucks a week, I recognized there was something beneath it all that I was unable to access."
That gap is where Nushama was born. Today Godfrey is co-founder and CEO of the New York psychedelic therapy clinic, and he's sitting dead center in the strangest moment his field has ever had.
Getting Back to "Factory Settings"
Godfrey's entire philosophy runs on one metaphor. Watch a baby, he says, and you see a human at default: awe, joy, wonder, no walls. Then somewhere between zero and seven, trauma lands, capital-T or lowercase, and the child draws a single conclusion that hardens into everything that follows.
"There's a spark in each of us that's generous and kind and peaceful. Trauma convinces a kid he isn't good enough, and that becomes the basis for depression, anxiety, PTSD, and addiction. The walls we build so we never get hurt again become the disorder."
Nushama, a riff on the Hebrew word for soul, treats mostly treatment-resistant patients, many of them heavily medicated and numbed out, using IV ketamine and Spravato, the FDA-approved esketamine nasal spray.
The goal, he says, is to quiet the ego long enough for someone to feel what it was like to be a kid again.
The Saturday the Psychedelic Hurricane Hit Washington
Then the ground moved. On April 18, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order titled "Accelerating Medical Treatments for Serious Mental Illness," directing the FDA to fast-track review of psychedelics and signaling a sharp policy shift.
It earmarked $50 million in federal funds and named psilocybin and ibogaine specifically. Within six days, the FDA issued three priority vouchers, to Compass Pathways and the Usona Institute for psilocybin and to Transcend Therapeutics for a methylone-based PTSD treatment.
"It came through the industry like a hurricane. You woke up one Saturday and suddenly RFK, Joe Rogan, Trump, and a bunch of vets were all talking about ibogaine and psilocybin."
Godfrey's read is that the order finally buried the 1970s premise that these molecules have no medical use and nothing but abuse potential. The caveat is real, though. The order approves nothing, the drugs remain Schedule I, and experts stress the compounds carry very different safety profiles. But the signal is loud.
Why He Doesn't Want Psychedelics Leaving the Clinic
For all the enthusiasm, Godfrey is adamant about one thing. The mistake of the 1960s, he argues, was letting the molecules escape the lab into a recreational free-for-all.
"This third wave shouldn't repeat that. These belong in clinics, supervised, with real screening. The danger usually isn't the drug. It's what the drug can make someone feel capable of doing."
He's betting the access question sorts itself out, too. Ketamine is cash-pay and skews wealthy, but Spravato is covered by insurance and Medicaid, and he expects approved psychedelics to follow, since they're cheaper for insurers than endless hospitalizations.
So the question his whole field is now scrambling to answer: if Washington has finally said yes, is anyone actually ready for who comes knocking?
Jay Godfrey is co-founder and CEO of Nushama, a psychedelic therapy clinic with locations in New York and Miami. He spent fifteen years as CEO of his eponymous fashion label, sold at Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and Bloomingdale's and worn on the red carpet by Jennifer Lopez, Viola Davis, and Laverne Cox, after starting his career in investment banking at Citigroup. He holds degrees from McGill University and Parsons School of Design and lives in New York City.
.png?w=600)
