🫠 This Week in Psychedelics

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter that’s embedded in your inbox like mycelium in Uncle Ben’s rice. 🍚

Here’s what we got this week.

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Two become one: LSD increases inter-brain synchrony and feelings of connectedness between romantic couples.
Kill ‘em with kindness: Experienced meditators endorse meditation as a beneficial practice for psychedelic preparation, especially loving-kindness meditation.
Expect the unexpected: Robin Carthart-Harris argues expectancy effects in psychedelic trials aren’t as powerful or predictive as critics assume.
Cherry picking: Funded by a $4 million ARPA-H grant, researchers at ASU are investigating who is mostly likely to benefit from psychedelic therapies.
No regrets: Most people with psychedelic experience who live in decriminalized areas report greater benefits of psychedelic decriminalization than adverse outcomes.

Who’s the boss? Trump’s pick for FDA commissioner may be a boon for psychedelic medicine.
Shoot your shot: New Mexico has opened applications for medical psilocybin producer permits.
Run the numbers: Oregon Psilocybin Services published a 2025 data summary on licensing, safety, sales, and client demographics.
Groundhog day: Joseph City Council readopted an ordinance banning psilocybin service centers and manufacturers, leaving the final decision to voters.
Squeaky wheel: Nonprofits are lobbying to expand psychedelic therapy access and funding in North Carolina.

Think big: Helus Pharma’s new CEO lays out his plans to scale the company’s psychedelic drug pipeline.
Buyer’s remorse: Otsuka scrapped the clinical trial program for a psychedelic drug candidate it acquired through its 2023 purchase of Mindset Pharma.
Shaking things up: Rhelion Life Sciences appointed a new CFO and landed a deal to supply botanical psilocybin for a clinical trial in Parkinson’s disease depression.
Double trouble: Clearmind Medicine and NeuroThera are developing a combination of MDMA and PEA to treat PTSD, anxiety, and eating disorders.

Gratitude practice: Rediscover awe for the mundane by scrolling through this digital apartment.
The Nutty professor: Neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt joined Wired to answer the internet’s burning questions about psychedelic therapy.
Hard conversations: Comedian Reggie Watts is facing backlash for promoting ketamine, after his ex-girlfriend died by suicide.
Meme of the week: It’s up to you to end generational trauma…

A couple weeks ago, we did something that made us feel a little coy.

We revealed our own numbers on real-world psilocybin outcomes from Oregon and Colorado.

Ok sure, it was exhilarating to center ourselves in the news for once. But it’s nice that we don’t have to gloat anymore to make our point.

This week, OHSU's Todd Korthuis and OPEN’s Adie Rae Wilson-Poe published the first multisite study of Oregon’s psilocybin services program in JAMA. For their paper, they tracked 346 people through sessions at 24 licensed service centers between November 2024 and June 2026.

While our snapshot stopped at two weeks, this study kept checking in for three months. Here's what they saw.

One limitation is that this study only looks at Oregon participants, who are overwhelmingly white, educated, and well off. (Not exactly a cross-section of America.) But at least OPEN's survey tool is already running in Colorado, which means we may get a state-to-state comparison down the road.

Pretty encouraging to see two datasets telling a similar story. Can we check the reproducible results box now? 🫠

Oh, you thought you were an individual? How cute. Yeah, well, the psychedelic experience suggests otherwise, and now we’ve peered into the brain to see why. In the largest single-site psychedelic brain-imaging study yet, researchers found that psilocybin induces a state they call “embeddedness,” where the self-focused and outside-world-focused networks sync up. Essentially, they spotted the neurological signature of merging into oneness.

Past research has established that psychedelics dissolve the boundaries between brain networks. That much we knew, but the new finding suggests some structure underneath that chaos. The team scanned 62 psychedelic-naive adults on a 19mg dose of psilocybin, while they rested, meditated, listened to music, or watched a video of clouds. And the more someone's brain activity synced into this unified pattern, the more they described feeling continuous with their surroundings rather than separate from them.

We’ll never pass up an opportunity to spin science into non-duality. But there’s a practical takeaway here, too. People with the strongest embeddedness also reported the biggest positive mindset shifts the next day, so we may be looking at a predictive signal. Anyway, if you want to feel great, settle in and accept that you and this email are one.

Guess one blockbuster psychedelic(-adjacent) drug wasn't enough for Johnson & Johnson. Now J&J is set to lead Delix Therapeutics' $85 million Series C at a $190 million pre-money valuation, according to Psychedelic Alpha. The latest in a string of Big Pharma investments, this deal would build on the company’s success with Spravato, still the closest thing pharma has to working psychedelic delivery model.

We can’t help but read a little jealousy into the timing, what with the news coming mere weeks after Eli Lilly scooped AtaiBeckley for $2.8 billion. (Apparently, J&J considered that deal, too!) Missed opportunities aside, J&J seems to be distancing itself from psychedelics’ baggage. Delix pioneered the non-hallucinogenic psychedelic category in 2021, with the goal of harnessing all that juicy neuroplasticity without the pesky, emotional journeys. Their drugs aren’t psychedelics, you know. They’re *ahem* “neuroplastogens.”

As for what J&J sees in Delix specifically, its lead candidate zalsupindole posted strong enough Phase 1b depression results to secure FDA clearance for an at-home Phase 2 trial. J&J’s term sheet also locks in a right of first negotiation on the whole company after the Phase 2 readout. There may well be a second bite at this non-hallucinogenic apple.

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.