🫠 Psychonaut POV

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter that always says what’s ours is yours. Mi newsletter, su newsletter. So take your shoes off and stay awhile. 🛋️

Danny Motyka jokes he’s the world's worst drug dealer, because he started his company giving away $50k worth of psilocybin to patients in need. (Helluva business model, right?) But Psygen is still going strong as one of Canada's only licensed manufacturers of pharmaceutical-grade psychedelics.

We asked Danny what's surprised him most about operating a psychedelic drug lab, why he's committed to non-exclusive access in an industry racing to lock up supply, and whether the search for novel psychedelics is a noble quest or a distraction.

Let’s expand your plant medicine horizons, shall we?

Microdosing isn’t the only way to lift your mood and get in flow, you know. It’s time you learned about kanna.

Our friends at Fun Guy call this South African succulent a “social lubricant” and “natural euphoric.” Can’t say we disagree.

Their Flow Fruit Chews combine kanna with three other potent plants and mushrooms to open your heart while keeping you totally clear headed.

And unlike most psychedelics, these tasty morsels are 100% legal everywhere.

When I was 13, my dad was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Like a lot of people in the psychedelic space, my foray into psychedelics started with deep trauma. By 15, I was looking for interventions, and when I looked into antidepressants and SSRIs, I didn't like the side effect profile. Then I stumbled across Erowid and started reading reports about people using mushrooms to overcome severe depression. My parents were liberal enough to help create a safe space in our basement. That one night, on 3.5 grams of mushrooms, it was like awe, wonder, and curiosity were breathed back into the soul of a kid who was pretty untethered.

After trying psilocybin and LSD, I was like, how are these controlled substances with no medicinal value? It wasn't congruent. I started reading about Shulgin and Hofmann, and at 15, I told my grandparents I was going to build a psychedelic manufacturing facility. My grandfather always said, if you do, you can't do it underground. You have to do it legally. I was tempted through university to go into the underground markets, but out of respect for my family, I decided to learn the skills I needed and wait for an opportunity to do it above board.

So I studied chemistry, joined the Canadian cannabis industry early, and learned controlled substances regulation. Then at a conference in Sweden in 2018, I heard researchers complaining about a lack of access to GMP psychedelics constraining their work. I reached out to Rick Doblin, and he connected me with Peter van der Heyden, our co-founder. Peter had been busted in '96 for operating the largest underground MDMA and LSD production lab in Canada. After prison, he was looking for a way to take his underground skills above ground. That's where we joined forces, and Psygen was born.

It's been a lot of fun. We do our best to balance the regulatory rigor and the sometimes dull GMP work with making sure we're having a good time in the lab. From a regulatory perspective, it was actually a lot simpler than I expected.

What surprised me more was the personal stuff. Coming into this work, I carried a lot of baggage about what the psychedelic industry should look like. I was a bit of an anarchist, anti-capitalist, anti-establishment. I'd hoped we'd find pools of capital with different motivations, and that was naive. I don't think I've had to change my values so much as I've had to reflect on the dichotomies I held in my mind about what is good and what is bad.

The business case for psychedelics is genuinely challenging. How do you scale access to an intervention that needs two therapists for every person? It feels like the for-profit industry is trying to force it from a top-down approach, when psychedelics have always felt more like a community-led initiative. But as a manufacturer, we need to focus on those top-down plays, because those are the customers who can pay. My hope is that it starts there, and access models can evolve over time.

In the early days, there were so many different researchers with so many different ideas, and we felt like everyone needed to be supported and supplied. There are only so many licensed manufacturers like us. We didn’t want to gatekeep where medicine was going and how it was being used.

A lot of the core psychedelic molecules, like ibogaine, psilocybin, LSD, and MDMA, have existed within the public sphere for so long that to me, they almost belong to the commons. Non-exclusivity was our way of keeping ownership distributed. Novel molecules are different. Those are the intellectual property of people who've thought long and hard about receptor binding and drug design, and it makes sense to funnel private dollars behind them. But to me, it feels wrong to privatize a substance that's been used within human culture for potentially thousands of years.

There was also a practical element. Other manufacturers had already struck exclusive supply deals with psychedelic biopharma companies. We saw those flags being planted and thought, maybe non-exclusivity can differentiate us. Most of Psygen's founding team was deeply steeped in psychedelic culture, and this choice felt like a reflection of our values.

All cacao is not made equal. While many brands cut corners with processing, Kokoleka uses the ancestral Mayan washing method, which preserves 860% more flavanols and 300% more antioxidants than regular cacao.

We're synthetic chemists, so we've always had a slant toward synthetic chemistry. But beyond that, show me a plant or a fungus you can extract MDMA from. Or LSD. Or 2C-B. So many molecules don't have a natural source. Our feeling has always been that there's going to be room for both.

There's also a conservation argument. With something like 5-MeO-DMT, synthetic chemistry means you can preserve the Bufo toad and avoid ecological impact. If you're thoughtful about your supply chain, you can probably have a lower environmental footprint with synthesis than with natural sourcing.

If I'm a betting man, the future of the psilocybin market is probably home-grow mushroom blocks. But on the pharmaceutical side, where Western medicine favors precision and control, it makes sense to produce a 99% pure psilocybin API so you can make specific claims about it. Do I believe in the entourage effect? Absolutely. But there's also a postmodern Western society that benefits from synthetic compounds.

I actually think LSD is one of the most important medicines for our time, because it came out of Western culture and interacts with our psyche in a congruent way. Sometimes plant medicines can be challenging for Westerners who don't have the proper relationality to the lineage and the protocols.

We've thought about some novel molecules, but we haven't spent the resources going down that road ourselves. I'm a mixed bag on it. There's a bit of a philosopher's stone quality to the search for the next molecule. David Nichols' lab spent a lot of time trying to find a compound as potent as LSD with the mystical experiences and safety profile, and it birthed the 25I-NBOMe series, which was responsible for a lot of harm. In my own experience with 25I, it just didn't have the same sparkle that LSD has. So I do wonder, why are we constantly searching when the answer's right in front of us?

At the same time, as a psychonaut, I enjoy the research-chemical market and probing consciousness in various ways. But I keep coming back to the entourage effect. In a way, our nervous system seems designed to interact with a symphony of plant messengers and secondary metabolites. An isolated compound that does one thing to the brain is a useful research tool, but from the spiritual side, I'm really enamored with plant medicines.

There's a fascinating case with ibogaine. Peter told me about a paper suggesting that some iboga alkaloids have the inverse effect of the QT prolongation that ibogaine causes, so if you take the whole plant, it may limit that cardiac risk. Maybe our nervous systems have co-evolved with these plants, and there are benefits to a ‘messier’ product. You see it with cannabis, too. Pure THC causes far more paranoia and psychosis than flower with a balanced cannabinoid profile. I think there's something really important about the entourage effect, but that's not to say there's no room for synthetic chemistry. LSD makes that case on its own.

Check out Psygen’s facility, learn about their humanitarian efforts, or reach out to explore a partnership.

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.