🫠 This Week in Psychedelics

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter that knows the difference between good stress and bad stress. One builds character. The other is gmail sticking us in the promotions tab. 📬

Here’s what we got this week.

Aspiring facilitators, don’t miss this window.

The next cohort of Numinus's Fundamentals of Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy starts on the 13th.

This course is solid all year round, but the stars really align for the August cohort. You’ll be on the fastest schedule Numinus runs to licensure.

Mind you, this is where our founder Henry trained to become a licensed psilocybin facilitator. (And he'd do it again.)

If you’re concerned about cost, Numinus offers payment plans, bundles, and scholarships. Hit them up to see what's available.

Peas in a pod: Ketamine and classical psychedelics share a neuroimmune mechanism that might explain their antidepressant effects.
Bar none: Psilocybin use is linked to fewer depressive symptoms, even among regular alcohol drinkers.
Fight fire with fire: Based on a new case report, ibogaine shows potential as a treatment for severe ketamine use disorder.
Rumbly in my tumbly: An ayahuasca retreat may shift the compositional makeup of your gut bacteria.
Knock, knock, knockin’ on FDA’s door: Scottsdale Research Institute has applied to run clinical trials of ibogaine hydrochloride.

Island time: The governor of Puerto Rico signed an executive order laying the groundwork for clinical research on ibogaine.
United front: The VA is running multiple psychedelic trials for veterans with one shared goal.
Squad goals: AOC is on board with psychedelic access.
For the record: Sabba Collective has proposed a National Psychedelic Workforce Registry and is requesting comments from the public.
Map quest: Policy researchers are running a study to find out which legislative pathway is fastest and most effective for state psychedelic reform.

Heavy is the isotope: Helus Pharma finished enrolling its Phase 3 trial of deuterated psilocin and appointed a new CEO.
All clear: Clearmind Medicine announced positive safety results from its Phase 1/2 trial of an MEAI-based drug for alcohol use disorder.
Head start: Rose Hill Life Sciences and Control Z are partnering on a psilocybin-assisted therapy program for PTSD in Massachusetts.
Spaghetti, meet wall: Entropy Neurodynamics is launching a multi-indication clinical trial of IV psilocin across eight disorders.

Extreme makeover: What happens when the War on Drugs turns into a wellness fad?
Banger: Billboard reports on the musical artists advocating for psychedelics.
Turn on, tune in, tap out: These MMA fighters traveled to Colombia to drink ayahuasca and heal from thousands of blows to the head.
The beat dropped: Europe's biggest psytrance festival pulled the plug after two tragic deaths.
Meme of the week: Me exercising my human rights…

With military vets, how come it’s always “thank you for your service” and never “what can we do to keep you from unaliving yourself”?

Sorry to be so dark, but the veteran suicide rate is, frankly, appalling. We’re talking somewhere between 17 and 44 a day.

So when a study shows psilocybin-assisted therapy can help the most treatment-resistant vets clear their PTSD entirely, you better believe we’re putting it in this newsletter.

A new open-label pilot trial out of Ohio State tested a psychotherapy-heavy protocol on 12 veterans with severe PTSD. Each participant got 15 mg then 25 mg of synthetic psilocybin two to three weeks apart, bookended by 16 hours of therapy.

Here's how that worked out.

Two things stand out to us. First, symptoms started improving during the eight hours of prep therapy, before anyone touched a capsule, and the veterans who improved more in prep did better a month later. The medicine definitely didn’t work alone.

Second, the researchers checked whether expectancy (i.e., participants believing the treatment would work) predicted the outcome. It didn't. So even though the trial wasn’t blinded, that makes it harder to chalk these results up to placebo effect.

Thank you for your service, psychedelic researchers. 🫠

This one goes out to everyone who knows data is the plural form and conjugates their verbs accordingly. Last week, SAMHSA convened a two-day “Data Expert Consultation” just outside DC to answer a blunt question. Namely, how can the federal government track psychedelic use and the regulated services getting wrapped around it?

Oh, another bureaucratic meeting on psychedelics (*snores*). Hey! The guest list tells you everything you need to know about how seriously this topic is being taken. NIDA director Nora Volkow and FDA's Marta Sokolowska sat in the same room as reps from NIMH, CMMI, ARPA-H, and the VA; state regulators from Oregon, Colorado, and New Mexico; and operators of the systems that handle real-world tracking today (including our own Niko Skievaski). Day one was about the epidemiology of use and misuse itself, and day two turned to the regulated side, with sessions on workforce and clinical models.

Funny thing is, everyone in that room has surely heard psychedelic experiences described as ineffable, beyond language or measurement, or the type of thing material science can’t fully explain. And yet here we are, dutifully building pivot tables for ‘em anyway. Don’t hate the player…

You might know cortisol as the stress hormone. But that doesn’t make it evil. In a healthy circadian rhythm, cortisol spikes in the morning and tapers off by night. And why are we telling you this? Well, Cyclists, a recent clinical trial found that ketamine raised patients' morning cortisol right around the time the drug’s antidepressant effects typically peak.

Researchers gave 80 hospitalized adults with active suicidal ideation either ketamine or midazolam (an active placebo), and measured the cortisol in their saliva before infusion and 24 hours after. The ketamine group's cortisol nearly doubled on a normalized scale, while the midazolam group's ticked down. The cortisol boost was measured well after ketamine's acute effects wore off, and it tracked with a drop in suicidal thoughts (although that correlation was statistically insignificant).

Now we’re not suggesting you start a cortisol microdosing protocol. But the circadianmaxxers among us already know the value of getting sunlight in the eyes first thing in the AM. (It has a similar cortisol-awakening response.) So go on and greet our favorite star tomorrow morning. Just don't stare directly at it. The visuals aren’t worth it.

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.