(Reuters) - Erinn Baldeschwiler has stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. The 49-year-old mother of two teenagers was diagnosed a year ago and given two years to live.

When she spoke on Tuesday at a press conference via Zoom as a plaintiff in a pending lawsuit, she started to cry. Her son's birthday was the day before, and "I don't know how many more I'll be here for," she said. "It's just really hard."

It was a raw and devastating moment in what's usually a tightly scripted format.

But there's something Baldeschwiler thinks might help combat her overwhelming sadness and anxiety: psilocybin. And she's the face of a first-of-its-kind legal challenge to get it.

I admit, I was initially skeptical when I read the lawsuit description. Because c'mon, psilocybin? As in magic mushrooms and Grateful Dead concerts and glassy-eyed kids tripping in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district?

But Kathryn Tucker, special counsel at Emerge Law Group in Portland, Oregon, along with co-counsel from Perkins Coie and Yetter Coleman, argue that medical research shows that even a single therapist-guided treatment with psilocybin can provide tremendous benefits to terminal cancer patients struggling with depression and anxiety stemming from their illnesses.

For example, in a study on anxiety in terminally ill cancer patients published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, one patient reported that during psilocybin therapy "I felt like I was being shown what happens after (death), like an afterlife."

"I'm not a religious person and I'd be hard pushed to say I'm anything near spiritual," the person continued, "but I felt like I experienced some of that, and experienced the feeling of an afterlife, like a preview almost, and I felt totally calm, totally relaxed, totally at peace. So that when that time comes for me, I will have no fear of it at all."

As a Schedule 1 drug, however, psilocybin remains off-limits despite recently enacted federal and state "right to try" laws intended to allow dying patients access to drugs still in investigational stages.

People like Baldeschwiler "don't have the luxury of time to wait for the very long new drug approval process," Tucker said, noting that an FDA-approved phase 1 clinical trial for psilocybin has been successfully completed, and that research continues.

Now, Tucker is leading the charge in novel litigation against the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration after the agency refused to greenlight the therapeutic use of psilocybin for Baldeschwiler and other patients.

On March 8, the team filed a petition for review of the DEA actions before the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, alleging that the agency's denial was arbitrary and capricious. (Under 21 U.S.C. § 877, final DEA actions are directly reviewable by courts of appeal.)

My column yesterday was also about end-of-life care, profiling Morgan, Lewis & Bockius trusts and estates partner Sara Wells, who is a hospice volunteer. Don't worry, it's not my new beat. But it does underscore how lawyers are in a unique position to help people in their lives – and their deaths.

Tucker has gained prominence over the past three decades as an advocate for patients' rights, serving as founder and director of the End of Life Liberty Project, which advocates for the rights of terminally ill patients, including for aid in dying. A 1985 Georgetown University Law Center graduate, she also previously served as executive director of the Disability Rights Legal Center.

At 14-lawyer Emerge, she co-chairs the psychedelics practice group.

The notion of a psychedelics group might sound funny, but then again, isn't that what many of us thought when firms first started forming cannabis groups about seven years ago?

Now Big Law stalwarts including Duane Morris, Seyfarth Shaw, Akerman, Fox Rothschild, Sheppard Mullin, Dorsey & Whitney, Goodwin Procter, Arent Fox and Foley Hoag all have cannabis practices.

Could medical use of psilocybin open the door wider to legalization, much like medical use of marijuana seemed to pave the wave for recreational use?

In November, Oregon voters approved Measure 109, which legalizes psilocybin for use in therapeutic settings. The measure was drafted by Emerge lawyers led by shareholder Dave Kopilak. However, it will take at least two years to implement, and (unlike cannabis) the drug will not be available for people to purchase and take home. It can only be used in a supervised therapy session.

No matter. The DEA defends its zero-tolerance stance on psilocybin.

The drug "remains a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act, meaning it has a high potential for abuse and is currently not approved for medical use in the United States," DEA public affairs specialist Amanda Purdum wrote to me in an email.

"DEA relies on and continues to support legitimate scientific research for medical treatments," she continued. "When research demonstrates that a drug is both safe and effective, and the FDA recognizes it as a legitimate treatment, DEA will take the appropriate actions."

But in the meantime, Baldeschwiler is suffering and believes psilocybin could help – or at least is worth a try.

"Whatever time I have left," she said, "I want to have the highest quality of life."

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