🫠 This Week in Psychedelics

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter that sets a high bar. We assume no liability if you trip over it. (Our lawyers made us say that.)

Here’s what we got this week.

Legal psilocybin services can run upwards of 3 grand.

They’re worth every penny, too, but that doesn’t change the fact that lots of people are priced out.

Sangam's group journeys, however, cost $1,000. (We'll let you do the math.)

Once a month, this licensed healing center in Lakewood, CO runs a full weekend experience. You prep on Friday evening, journey with mushrooms on Saturday, and integrate on Sunday morning.

Fly in, do the work, fly home. Heck of a weekend getaway if you ask us.

The next journey is April 18th, and the group locks in by April 4th.

Good vibrations: Psilocybin produces brain wave changes that directly correspond to trip intensity, and your baseline level may predict your sensitivity.
Age-old question: Psychedelics may benefit younger adults' mental health more than older ones. Anxiety outcomes may even reverse with age.
Guten trip: A German clinical trial found psilocybin with psychotherapy produced real but temporary antidepressant effects in 144 treatment-resistant patients.
Make it make cents: A new model found psilocybin-assisted therapy saves ~$7,000 per patient compared to standard care for treatment-resistant depression.
Reefer madness: People who've tried both say psychedelics feel much less like psychosis than scientists assumed, and cannabis is the closer match.

Huzzah! Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed HB390, authorizing a $4.2M psilocybin, MDMA, and 5-MeO-DMT study for veterans with PTSD. (See previous coverage.)
Data or it didn't happen: Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Safety landed an NIH grant to track real-world psychedelic health outcomes as state policies multiply.
Mass appeal: Massachusetts lawmakers advanced two psychedelic therapy bills, one of which is limited to FDA-approved psilocybin treatments.
Homesick: An Oregon judge refused to dismiss a lawsuit alleging Oregon's service-center-only rule discriminates against patients who can't leave home.
Badge still works: Federal complaints allege former reps Mimi Walters and Kyrsten Sinema illegally lobbied for psychedelics using their congressional access.

Small batch: Colorado's first licensed microdosing cafe is open.
Plant-based diet: Magdalena Biosciences kicked off a preclinical study of whole-leaf coca extract as a post-GLP-1 weight management drug.
Mix and match: ClearMind Medicine published six patents covering PEA combinations with MDMA, LSD, ketamine, ibogaine, psilocybin, and DMT.
Extra credit: The Psychedelic Education Partnership launched as a non-profit to get healthcare workers up to speed on psychedelic care.
Ready for PRIME time: Bretisilocin became the first psychedelic to be granted PRIME eligibility, the European equivalent of FDA’s breakthrough designation.

Stranger things: The entities people meet on psychedelics can teach us about the human experience.
What a line item: AOC's team paid nearly $19,000 to a ketamine therapy psychiatrist and logged the expense as “leadership training and consulting.”
Shooting blanks: Bryan Johnson's 249-biomarker psilocybin experiment suggests mushrooms are a longevity therapy, but his sperm count begs to differ.
Meme of the week: Me at work on Monday after a life-altering psychedelic experience trying to remember what it is I do here…

You know when you WebMD a suspicious symptom, develop two more while reading, and close the tab already mentally workshopping your eulogy?

Science has a word for that.

The nocebo effect is where expecting to feel worse makes you feel worse. The placebo effect works the other way. Expecting to feel better makes you feel better.

Both are powerful. And both are at the center of a new meta-analysis, which tackles a tricky problem in psychedelic research. You can't “blind” these trials because 90-95% of participants know if they’ve taken a psychedelic. (Hell, even the mushrooms know.)

To level the playing field, researchers compared 8 psychedelic therapy studies and 16 open-label anti-depressant trials where patients also knew what they got.

Here's what they found.

Now, this doesn't mean psychedelics don't work. The paper says they work about as well as antidepressants, which is a more complicated finding than it sounds.

The comparison ignores that most psychedelic therapies are administered just once or twice, versus a lifetime of daily pills. And even if the efficacy scores line up, side effect profiles and tolerability differ.

We still don’t know who will benefit from what, so having more options is always good.

Speaking of options, you do know doomscrolling WebMD is a choice right? 🫠

A state best known for corn and picking presidents may soon get an edgier claim to fame. Iowa is now advancing one of the more serious psilocybin bills in the country, and unlike any state before it, they’re handing the keys to their cannabis regulators. (Quick everyone, add “mushroom expert” to your LinkedIn.)

HF 978, a bill that passed the Iowa House last year and creates a state-regulated psilocybin therapy program, cleared a Senate panel, but not without key changes. Access is now limited to PTSD patients, enrollment is capped at 5,000, and sessions must be supervised by registered facilitators and video recorded. Veterans' advocates drove the push, arguing patients at elevated suicide risk can't wait for the FDA. (Hear, hear.) Opponents say Iowa should defer to federal regulators.

But the bill needs a full Senate vote before reaching the governor's desk, where a related measure was vetoed last June. If it passes, oversight goes to the existing Medical Cannabidiol Advisory Board, which gets renamed the Medical Controlled Substance Advisory and Licensing Board. Iowa’s licensed cannabis producers could also share facilities with psilocybin operations and may get first crack at licenses. Corn, weed, mushrooms: Iowa’s new power throuple, governor permitting.

Two companies walk into a merger. (Neither can afford the bar tab.) Last week, Red Light Holland announced it's acquiring Filament Health in an all-share deal. Which sounds impressive until you realize Red Light is trading at one and a half cents with revenue down nearly 45% year over year. Filament had under $335,000 in cash by Q3 2025 and was taking on emergency debt to stay afloat. So this feels more like a life raft than a power move.

Still, the rationale may be there. Red Light brings mushroom cultivation, supply chain, and packaging know-how. Filament brings 76 patents, a GMP facility in Vancouver, Health Canada and FDA-authorized clinical programs, and PEX010, a botanical drug candidate used in more than 70 studies globally. (We interviewed their CEO in 2024.) Their assets are complementary in theory. Is this what the corporate elite call ✨ s y n e r g y ✨?

Red Light is betting they can turn the combined entity around with modern tech. For their Hail Mary, they’re deploying an AI platform for protocol design and scenario modeling. Whether it makes a difference remains to be seen. Either way, they’re pointing the life raft toward profitability. Godspeed.

Vivid Minds is the only place offering legal psilocybin art therapy. You get a medium dose, 3 hours, and enough paint and clay to go nuts. No one expects a masterpiece, Michelangelo. This is about healing.

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.