🫠 This Week in Psychedelics

PRESENTED BY ALTHEA & FOUNDATIONS 🤝

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter that once heard “it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” So instead, we’ll just focus on maxing out our mean daily grass-touching minutes. 🌾

Here’s what we got this week.

• Psychedelic retreats help vets adjust to civilian life 🧢

• Czechia legalizes medical psilocybin 🇨🇿

• Spravato hits $1.7 billion run rate 💸

• An ibogaine documentary is streaming on Fox 📺

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MICRODOSES

🔬 Research

It’s complicated: Psychedelics are commonly known as 5-HT2A agonists, but it turns out they activate nearly every serotonin, dopamine, and adrenergic receptor.
Tiny tastes of God: A Phase 1 clinical trial demonstrated that microdosing 5-MeO-DMT is safe.
Drop the Juul: In a review of eight studies, psilocybin outperformed LSD, mescaline, and ayahuasca in helping people quit or reduce smoking.
Rare but real: Researchers systematically reviewed the efficacy of different treatment protocols for psychedelic-induced psychosis.
Eat mushies, get money: CU Denver is recruiting local participants for a (paid) observational study on the effects of psilocybin. See if you qualify.

🏛️ Policy

Hold your horses: As Colorado plans to roll out ibogaine in healing centers, the state’s official indigenous advisory group is recommending that Colorado halt the program altogether.
Ante up: The governor of California claims he’s “all in” on psychedelic therapy, but he has concerns about commercialization.
Pics or it didn’t happen: The co-chairs of the Congressional Psychedelic Advancing Therapies (PATH) Caucus met with the VA Secretary to discuss their bill to create psychedelic therapy research centers. (Yes, they took photos.)
Feeling frugal, are we? Lawmakers blocked an amendment that would have added $10 million to the Department of Defense’s budget for psychedelic therapy research.
Concentrate crackdown: The FDA issued warning letters to several companies selling products containing highly concentrated 7-OH, a kratom-derived compound.

📈 Business

Wall Street bets: U.S. News ranks their top seven psychedelic stocks to watch or buy.
Down to the wire: Synthetic psilocybin is approaching FDA review.
Good news, innit: Cybin received approval from UK regulators to begin the Phase 3 trial of their psilocin analog for major depression.
Early signals: Enveric Biosciences posted positive preclinical results for their neuroplastogen for PTSD.
Higher ed: UC Irvine was selected to lead a national push to integrate psychedelic therapy education into college courses.

🫠 Just for fun

Gather round, Cyclists: Pharmacologist and author Andrew Gallimore recounts the surprising history of DMT.
ICYMI: MAPS has published hundreds of conference session videos from PS2025.
Unregulated and unchecked: Brazil’s psilocybin mushroom market is growing fast.
Meme of the week: How I communicate with my trip sitter when I’m 5g deep…

THE PEAK EXPERIENCE

Mission: Remission

Raise your hand if you could go for a tropical vacay right about now.

Ok, now keep it raised if you're cool with processing your deepest, darkest trauma while you're there.

No? Well, that's essentially what 58 military veterans signed up for in an important new study. Important because it’s the first to investigate whether psychedelic retreats can help vets not only heal but actually reintegrate into civilian life.

The study followed vets through psychedelic retreat programs (mostly psilocybin in Jamaica or ayahuasca in Peru), measuring everything from depression and PTSD to how well they were adjusting to life outside the military.

Here's what researchers saw four weeks after everyone returned home.

• 📈 Across the board: Every single mental health measure improved significantly, with effect sizes ranging from medium to "very large."

• 🔪 Symptoms slashed: Average PTSD scores dropped from 40 to 19 while depression fell from 13.4 to 5.6, well below the clinical threshold.

• 🚶‍♂️ Back to the “real world”: The biggest surprise was an 18% improvement in veterans' ability to navigate civilian life.

• 🎖️ Heavy hitters: The veterans with the worst symptoms at baseline saw the biggest improvements. (This is the very population that usually drops out of traditional therapy, mind you.)

This study practically begs us to pay attention to the communal aspect of psychedelic therapy. Unlike the clinical model where participants sit alone with therapists, these retreats put veterans together as a cohort. They prepped together, journeyed together, and integrated together.

Sure, the study has limitations. We technically can't separate the drug effects from the group setting. But that shared experience of healing seems like it matters.

Don’t know about you, but whenever we journey with others, it feels like we get a whole new band of brothers and sisters. 🫠

AFTERGLOW

Vibe Czech

Petr! Petr! Czech President Petr Pavel just made history by signing Europe's first comprehensive medical psilocybin law. Soon, Czech doctors will be able to prescribe pharmaceutical-grade psilocybin for depression, PTSD, and anxiety disorders. Note that before the legislation even made it to Pavel’s desk, 142 out of 159 lawmakers voted ‘yes.’ That level of support is basically unheard of, at least on this side of the Atlantic.

It’s no free-for-all, though. The law requires patients to try other treatments first, limits prescribing to specialized psychiatrists only, and mandates that all sessions happen in controlled medical facilities under special supervision. While the law officially takes effect Jan 1, 2026, it'll probably take a couple more years for the whole system to get up and running. Even the most progressive drug policy moves at government speed.

Still, this puts Czechia way ahead of the European pack. While Switzerland already has limited therapeutic access through special authorization programs (and who could forget the magic truffles for sale in corner shops around the Netherlands?), Czech Republic just created the continent's first real framework for integrating psilocybin into mainstream healthcare. When America?

Gotta pay to spray

Johnson & Johnson just dropped their Q2 earnings, and their FDA-approved ketamine nasal spray Spravato is absolutely crushing it. To be more precise, the company reported $414 million in quarterly sales, which represents a 53% jump from last year. At this pace, Spravato is tracking toward a $1.7 billion annual run rate.

J&J credits the growth to "continued strong demand from physicians and patients," which is corporate speak for "people really want this stuff." The numbers are especially impressive when you consider the drug’s REMS program (i.e., restrictions). Spravato can only be administered in certified clinics under medical supervision, and patients have to hang around for two hours after dosing (to make sure they’re back on Planet Earth before driving).

And that, in part, is why this is bigger than J&J's bottom line. First, Spravato is the first FDA-approved psychedelic medicine, so you could argue its success validates the supervised psychedelic therapy model. Second, J&J has built a network of 3,000+ clinics capable of handling the treatment. That’s infrastructure that other psychedelic therapies can piggyback on. So once they inevitably get approved, just know there’s a delivery system ready and waiting.

CYCLISTS’ PICKS

• 🎞️ Documentary: Ibogaine: The Fight of a Lifetime (and six bonus stories) are streaming now on Fox Nation. Long-time Cyclists are sure to recognize some familiar faces.

• 🧑‍⚖️ Legal briefing: Rudick Law Group is hosting a free webinar for psychedelic-assisted healthcare professionals on navigating legal risks and building a compliant practice.

• 🌎 Online event: Heart-Mind Institute’s free, six-day Somatic Healing Summit kicked off yesterday, but it’s not too late to register and learn from dozens of experts how to heal trauma safely through embodiment.

• 📓 Call for stories: Gossamer is working on a coffee table book about psychedelics. They’re crowdsourcing hyper-local, niche, and under-reported angles, so why not submit yours?

UNTIL NEXT TIME

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

ONE CYCLIST’S REVIEW

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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.