🫠 This Week in Psychedelics

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the newsletter that keeps tabs on psychedelics so you don’t have to. (See what we did there?) 👅

Here’s what we got this week.

Fair warning. This is your final week to book a legal psilocybin journey for $500.

Althea’s Pick is, bar none, the most affordable way to experience psilocybin with a licensed facilitator.

But on July 1, the price goes up to $750.

While that’s still a fraction of the going rate, it’s a substantial increase from our launch price. So if you've been sitting on the fence, now's the time to hop off.

Plus, we now have dates confirmed for July through September, so you can actually plan around your life.

Start setting those intentions…

Robotripping: Dextromethorphan (the cough suppressant) has psychedelic properties and is being explored as a potential psychiatric treatment.
Picture this: fMRI shows distinct brain responses to psilocybin and escitalopram, and baseline measures can predict who will respond to each treatment.
DNA toggle: Psilocybin changes the epigenome of people recovering from alcohol use disorder.
Strength in numbers: An estimated 4.8 million U.S. veterans have used psilocybin, LSD, or MDMA.
Split the check: The University of New Mexico is running a group psilocybin therapy study to understand the costs and feasibility of the state’s new psilocybin program.

Market expansion: Philomath, Oregon is now open for psilocybin services businesses, after residents voted to let the municipality’s ban expire.
Pork barrel spending: North Carolina lawmakers introduced a bill that would allocate $5.4 million to psychedelic therapy research.
The drug circle of life: Louisiana is deploying some of its opioid settlement funds to study psychedelics as a potential solution to the local meth crisis.
Reinforcements: Bipartisan U.S. Congress members filed an amendment to a defense bill that would extend military psychedelics research for six years.
Packing heat: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that mere use of a controlled substance does not deem a person unsafe or unfit to own a firearm.

Head start: BetterLife Pharma raised $2 million (CAD) to fund its progress toward an Investigational New Drug filing.
Small batch: Optimi Health, a GMP psilocybin manufacturer, has expanded into microdose products for clinical research.
Drip feed: Entropy Neuroscience is clear to begin the next cohort of its Phase 2 trial of IV psilocin for binge eating disorder.
Finger on the pulse: ARPA-H funding recipient, INVI MindHealth, has partnered with the makers of the Oura Ring and added Shawn Ryan to its board.
Ozempic who? Magdalena Biosciences’ whole-leaf coca extract is being studied as a weight loss treatment.

Weightless: Space travel may open an altered state of consciousness for humans.
Toad-al BS: The ancestral history of 5-MeO-DMT may be embellished or entirely fabricated.
Did you ask first? Futurism has concerns about the psilocybin for Alzheimer’s case report making the rounds. (See previous coverage.)
Meme of the week: You can only pick one…

Odd start to the week. We woke up Monday morning to find everyone was buying acid.

For a minute there, could’ve sworn we’d time traveled back to the ‘60s.

Then we realized people aren’t loading up on Orange Sunshine. (No more than usual anyway.) They’re buying stock in the biotech company developing a fast-dissolving LSD tablet as a mental health treatment.

Two years ago, Definium Therapeutics (then known as MindMed) earned an FDA breakthrough therapy designation for generalized anxiety disorder. Now we know DT120 isn't a one-trick pony.

This week, the company released topline Phase 3 data in major depression (the drug’s second potential indication), and the numbers sent investors into a premarket frenzy. The share price popped more than 30%.

Here's what emerged from the Emerge trial.

When you think about it, the same compound helping with anxiety and depression isn't all that shocking. These two conditions are often comorbid, and both involve rumination and rigid thought loops. Maybe LSD treats “stuck brain” more than any specific diagnosis.

For what it’s worth, Definium didn’t land one of Trump’s coveted psychedelic priority vouchers. But company execs think they’re better off swerving the political controversy anyway.

Fair. Suppose LSD doesn’t have the cleanest track record in that department, huh. 🫠

We normally focus on the U.S., but this week we gotta hand it to Canada. Our northern neighbors are serving up more freedom than a Nathan's hot dog eating contest. On June 16, Saskatchewan MP Corey Tochor introduced Bill C-286 (aka “Thomas' Bill”), which would let doctors prescribe psilocybin directly instead of begging regulators for permission one patient at a time.

See, today’s system leaves a lot to be desired. Patients can apply through Health Canada's Special Access Program, but getting an answer often takes over a year. And ~70% of the time, the answer is no. Bill C-286 would fix that on two fronts. First, it reschedules psilocybin to make direct prescriptions possible. Second, it puts future psilocybin drug submissions on Health Canada's 180-day priority-review clock.

Now, about that name. The bill honors Thomas Hartle, Tochor's late constituent and the first Canadian to legally access psilocybin. He used mushrooms to ease the anxiety of his Stage 4 cancer diagnosis. That is, until the government cut off his renewals and he had to fly abroad. Tochor makes a good point. A country that offers patients Medical Assistance in Dying shouldn't make it so hard to access something that helps them live.

Is ibogaine the most intense psychedelic there is? Not for us to say, but we can’t name another medicine that puts you in a dimension-hopping dreamstate for 36 hours. Ibogaine also requires vigilant monitoring because it poses legitimate cardiac risks. All of which makes it slightly nerve-wracking that ibogaine has been centered in the psychedelic policy revival. But a new preprint suggests the fatality fear might be overblown.

Researchers ran two analyses. First, they looked at 19,071 patients treated across 11 international clinics. All 6 deaths they found were patients undergoing opioid detox. (There was not a single death among the 8,689 people treated for non-addiction conditions.) Then they pulled together a historical tally of ibogaine deaths going back to 1990. In that group, 41 of 44 deaths with a known treatment indication involved substance use disorder.

Now, this study hasn’t been through peer review yet. But if its findings hold up, that’s good news for the many PTSD and TBI patients lining up for ibogaine, who may face far less danger than its reputation implies. And for the opioid folks, ibogaine still seems a heck of a lot less risky than staying on fentanyl.

Numinus offers a free live session every other Friday where you can ask anything about their psychedelic therapy training programs. If you’re exploring your options, these calls are an easy way to feel out a fit.

That’s all for today, Cyclists! Whenever you’re ready, here’s how we can help.

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DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. The use, possession, and distribution of psychedelic drugs are illegal in most countries and may result in criminal prosecution.