🫠 This Week in Psychedelics

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter with ambitions more inflated than a mushroom-shaped pool floaty. (Come on in. The water’s fine.)

Here’s what we got this week.

This experience is a one-on-one psilocybin program in Boulder, CO for people in addiction recovery who've done the work but still feel something unresolved underneath. It includes preparation, a full-day guided session, and integration over 3-4 weeks, led by a facilitator with 25 years of lived experience in recovery.

Muscle memory: In a randomized controlled study, a single dose of LSD improved motor learning performance the next day and reduced stress a week later.
Same energy: Psilocybin, ketamine, and nitrous oxide act on different receptors, but a shared network-level mechanism may underlie their antidepressant effects.
Banger: Music modulates the psychedelic experience in three ways.
Never say never: Some people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders may benefit from psychedelic therapy after all.
Sit with it: USC received federal funding from ARPA-H to study psilocybin therapy combined with mindfulness meditation training.

Land of enchantment: New Mexico is getting closer to rolling out its medical psilocybin program.
Sharing is caring: Colorado activists are pushing back on recent changes to the state’s Natural Medicine program, which may restrict personal-use sharing rights.
What goes around: A Michigan bill would take $50 million from the state’s opioid settlements to set up a new ibogaine research fund and pilot program.
Be all you can be: A psychedelics amendment added to the National Defense Authorization Act now heads to a vote on the House floor.

Are you ready? Psilocybin could become the first FDA-approved psychedelic therapy in a matter of months.
A rising tide: From an investor’s point of view, psychedelic biotechs are more teammates than rivals.
Ch-ching: Helus Pharma (formerly Cybin) just raised $50 million.
Outsourcery: BetterLife Pharma hired Syner-G BioPharma to manufacture its investigational new drug for Phase I trials.
Risky business: An underwriter chimes in on where insurable businesses will form across the value chain of psychedelic therapy.

Mic drop: Speaker submissions are open for Psychedelic Science 2027.
History lesson: A seminary dropout took MDMA from Shulgin’s lab and introduced it to the world at industrial scale.
You contain multitudes: The lives of split-brain patients can tell us how consciousness binds into one mind.
Do the math: The world’s largest mushroom church built a psilocybin potency calculator.
Meme of the week: Meta when you post scientifically grounded psychedelic content….

Entropy is the measure of disorder in a system. Chaos, essentially.

Sounds bad, right? I mean, we’re talking about the very force responsible for melting your ice cream.

But in psychedelic science, entropy is a good thing.

The idea, according to golden boy neuroscientist Robin Carhart-Harris, goes like this. Psychedelics increase entropy in the brain, loosening its rigid, well-worn grooves into something freer and more flexible. Entropy makes change possible.

This so-called “entropic brain hypothesis” has gained a lot of traction in the field. And this month, RC-H published a review arguing it’s only gotten stronger since he introduced it in 2014.

Here are the five types of evidence he lays out for his model.

It’s a cool idea, and he makes a compelling case. But there’s still more to sort out. For instance, a research team in Copenhagen recently ran the numbers 14 different ways and found that brain entropy is more slippery to measure than it seems. (Only five even clocked the psilocybin.)

Anyway, if entropy is so therapeutic, don't mind us. We'll be over here dumping out our kitchen drawers and donning mismatched socks.

For the mental health benefits, naturally. 🫠

Stick another rainbow thumbtack in your map of the U.S. of A., psychedelic policy buffs. With the passage of SB 43, Louisiana has committed to fund clinical trials of psilocybin, ibogaine, and MDMA. Governor Jeff Landry didn't actually sign the bill, but all good. He didn’t have to. It lapsed into law anyway as Act 956.

Here's how this all came together. Louisiana stands to collect ~$600 million through 2038 from the drugmakers who fueled the opioid crisis. Sponsor Sen. Patrick McMath pitched psychedelics as one use of that settlement money, with trials targeting addiction and treatment-resistant psychiatric conditions. The state Health Department will run the program, though dosing still needs to be cleared by the FDA and DEA.

You gotta appreciate the irony. This is the same state so wary of psychedelic mushrooms that it's the only one in the country to ban Amanita muscaria. Yet here we are. McMath says he first heard about ibogaine on Joe Rogan and joked that lawmakers should “start a Joe Rogan caucus.” Man, if a podcast can move drug policy, maybe a newsletter can too. We'll keep our eyes peeled for a Tricycle Day caucus and report back.

First-movers have an advantage, sure. But they also get to run into every wall no one knew was there. Oregon, which built the country's first legal psilocybin program, has apparently smashed headfirst into the latest one. (Money.) Now, the Oregon Health Authority has proposed a sweeping set of fee increases for the people it licenses. While nothing's final, the numbers aren’t pretty.

Effective January 2027, annual fees for facilitators would double from $2,000 to $4,000. For service centers and manufacturers, the fee would go from $10k to $20k. Even worker permits would jump from $25 to $200. And the discounts for low-income and veteran applicants would disappear altogether. OHA says its psilocybin program is funded almost entirely by fees and its costs are rising, so this is the only way to keep the program solvent.

Now, if the state doubles what it charges providers, clients will feel it too. These fees get baked into session prices, and cost is already a barrier. In fact, a new study found Oregon's safety record looks good, but flagged that the well-off participant pool limits how broadly those findings apply. So there ya have it. Technically, affordability is a matter of safety.

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.