The liquid soap company that preaches brotherly love and world peace would like you to consider the benefits of mind-altering drugs.
The company's founder and one of its top executives, David Bronner, grandson of the company's founder, is not shy about sharing details of his many accomplishments.
David, whose company in January became one of the first in the United States to offer ketamine therapy as part of its employee, said that the world would be a better place if more people experienced psychedelic medicines.
One of the country's biggest financial supporters of efforts to win mainstream acceptance of psychedelics and to loosen government restrictions on all illegal drugs is Dr. Bronner.
According to corporate documents, Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps has donated more than $23 million to drug advocacy and research organizations. They include scientists researching the healing properties of the club drug Ecstasy, activist groups that helped decriminalize magic mushrooms in Oregon and Washington, D.C., and a small nonprofit working to preserve habitat.
The company has spent millions of dollars on cannabis legalization, including litigation that helped reverse a federal prohibition on the cultivation of industrial hemp.
Although Open Society Foundations has quietly spent millions on drug policy changes, it is rare for a company to embrace an issue as contentious as Dr. Bronner's has.
Rick Doblin, who runs the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic, said it would be hard to find another company with the courage to publicly back an end to the war on drugs. An additional $1 million will be pledged for each of the next five years.
The campaign to ease the nation's just-say-no attitude toward drugs comes at a pivotal moment in the decades-long campaign. Drug-sentencing reforms, the cascading state-by-state embrace of recreational marijuana, and bipartisan congressional support for drug-sentencing reforms have all changed.
Denver, Seattle and the dozen other cities that have decriminalized the use of drugs are among scores of states and cities that are seeking to do the same. The FDA is considering approving MDMA for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.
The University of Texas and the other institutions have created divisions to explore whether the use of compounds from the plant kingdom can improve the treatment of a range of mental health disorders.
Dr. Bronner's tingly peppermint soap became a favorite in the 1960s among counterculture peaceniks who were enamored with its all-natural provenance. The joke is that Woodstock left the festival in three times as many VW microbuses as it arrived in.
He was a free-spirited, loquacious genius who often danced on the edge of madness. He wasn't an actual doctor. According to his family, in 1945, after learning of his parents' murder in Nazi death camps, his sister forcibly committed him to a mental asylum in Chicago, where he was given electric shock therapy. He began his crusade to heal mankind after escaping from prison.
After giving out bottles of his product, Bronner realized that most people were interested in his free soap than in his spiritual beliefs. His remedy? He began printing the idiosyncrasy on the labels, which explained the 18-in-1 uses for his soap. The teeth are being cleaned. It's dish washing! Dog wash!
The family has left much of the label untouched, reflecting their deep reverence for a man whose presence is inescapable more than two decades after his birth.
The company's headquarters is in Vista, Calif., about 40 miles north of San Diego. Visitors are greeted in the lobby by a large blowup of his smiling face. There is a figure wearing a leopard-print Speedo that is a goofy homage to his penchant for conducting business in skimpy swimming trunks. For a long time, the phone number printed on soap bottles rang through to a collection of red phones that the man called from his recliner.
The company is a family affair. Michael is the president, his sister, Lisa, helps promote the brand, and their mother is the chief. David is the Cosmic Engagement Officer.
According to company documents, the company earned $170 million in revenues last year, up from $4 million in 1998.
The decision to register All One God Faith, Inc. as a religious nonprofit was tied to the near brush with corporate death. The Internal Revenue Service levied a huge fine.
The founder's unconventional approach to business continues. Michael and David each make $300,000 a year, which is five times the lowest-paid worker with five years on the job. Up to $7,500 in child-care assistance and annual bonuses of up to 10 percent of their pay are some of the benefits their 300 employees receive. The cafeteria's vegan meals are free, as are the Zumba classes, back massages and solar-powered electric-vehicle charging stations.
Other independent brands like Tom's of Maine, Colgate-Palmolive and Kiehl's have been claimed by private equity offers. The brothers say that the offers go into the trash. The company gives away 45 percent of its profits in a good year.
He was introduced to the combination of drugs at a dance club in Amsterdam after graduating college. The journey included visions of Jesus, his grandfather and a dialogue with deep self, all of which helped him work through a troubled relationship.
He was arrested twice, once for sowing seeds on the front lawn of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the other for milling oil in a cage in front of the White House.
The politics of drug reform and the company's move to tether a large chunk of its corporate identity to them have not always gone down well with Trudy, a former junior high school math teacher and regular Methodist churchgoer.
Her doubts were dispelled by Michael's recent turn to drugs. The shift came last year, when the medications he had been using to treat his anxiety and depression stopped working. He decided to try talking therapy with a party drug that is gaining increasing acceptance among mental health professionals.
He compared the experience to a massage for the brain that helped clear away much of his angst and despair.
The treatments can cost several thousand dollars and so far 21 employees or their dependents have signed up.
A battlefield anesthetic that is also used in veterinary medicine, ketamine has recently gained popularity as a therapy for depression and suicidal thoughts. Doctors can prescribe the drug for off-label use if they think it will provide benefits to a patient.
10 other companies were already following in Dr. Bronner's footsteps, according to the health plan benefit administrator. Lia Mix, the founder and chief executive of Enthea, said that many are driven by the prospect of reduced spending on mental health coverage.
Even as he began losing his eyesight in his 60s, he refused to see a doctor because he was distrustful of Western medicine. His grandsons think he would have approved of their decision to make the drug a part of the family business.
David said that his grandpa was all about opening hearts and minds and that he probably would have put the hallucinogen in his soaps.
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