🫠 Psychonaut POV

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We're the psychedelics newsletter that knows anything can happen when you shoot your shot. Come on. Hit reply. 🔫

Logan Davidson has been labeled "the mushroom guy" around the Texas Capitol. (Every friend group has one.) He was the one answering the desk phone when psychedelic policy came calling. Then he helped turn a forgettable bill proposal into the first psychedelic research legislation since the Controlled Substances Act.

We asked Logan how Texas's $50 million ibogaine program is managing without a private partner, why a DEA death loop is keeping psychedelics out of patients’ hands, and what (if anything) Trump's executive order actually changed.

If you’ve ever grown your own mushrooms, you know how special it is to sit with medicine you had a hand in making.

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The process takes two full mornings of hands-on cleaning, cutting, and smashing the vine and leaves by hand. (Hey, no one said this was easy.)

But you’ll develop a much deeper, richer relationship with the medicine before it meets you.

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In 2021, I was working in the Texas legislature under State Representative Alex Dominguez. On the first day of my fourth session, they ran me through the bills we'd filed, and at the very end, almost as an afterthought, someone mentioned a psychedelic clinical trial for veterans. As it happened, I knew a lot about both. My brother was the Military Times Soldier of the Year in 2012, so I'd gotten immersed in veterans communications, and I'd been following psychedelic research since college.

That was a Monday. By the end of the day, Dr. Lynette Averill, a psychedelic researcher at Baylor, had cold-called the desk phone to ask what we were going to do with the bill. Tuesday, she connected us to Marcus and Amber Capone at VETS, who I now work for. Thursday, former Texas Governor Rick Perry called my boss to offer his support, and Alex almost hung up because he thought it was a prank call. Friday, we connected with Andrew Marr from Warrior Angels Foundation. By the end of the week, it had gone from a nice-to-have at the bottom of the list to something we could actually pass.

We got it over the line. HB1802 became the first psychedelic research legislation passed in the United States since the Controlled Substances Act. Then Alex ran for higher office, I ran his campaign, and we both thought our time in psychedelics was over. Then a serial entrepreneur in Dallas named Eric Khozindar cold-emailed Rick Doblin, Rick pointed him our way, and Eric and Alex founded Texans for Greater Mental Health. They recruited me as founding executive director, and in June 2023 I left politics to do this work full time.

Texas made the right call. The state had a very high standard for partnership. Companies had to match the $50 million, commit to pursuing FDA approval, establish a corporate presence in Texas, and agree to give the state 20% of future drug sales. Leadership determined that no one could meet those standards, so they decided the only entity that could was Texas itself.

UT Health Houston will lead the consortium. The goal is to show ibogaine works at scale, and the evidence that it's effective for TBI and opioid use disorder, where other treatments fall short, is already compelling.

But there's still a structural wrinkle. As SB 2308 is written, the state technically can't release the $50 million without a private match. Leadership could get there through philanthropic gifts, finding eligible funds within the existing budget, or passing a perfecting amendment next session. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Speaker Dustin Burrows have made it clear they intend to get it done.

The executive order adds another option by reallocating $50 million from ARPA-H to match state psychedelic research. There’s no chance that Texas will see all of it. Besides, even as a Texan, I'd prefer it didn't. Texas has a massive budget surplus. I'd rather see some of those dollars go to other important projects, such as Utah's first-in-the-nation 5-MeO-DMT research, Georgia's MDMA research, or New Jersey's $6 million for psilocybin.

The conversation has shifted enormously. A few years ago I was still regularly hearing legislators ask whether we were just trying to do drugs. That's almost gone. Even legislators who oppose funding, like Brian Harrison in Texas, aren't saying this stuff doesn't work. He just doesn’t think his state should have to pay for it.

A lot of that shift came down to the veteran voice. When a Navy SEAL or Green Beret walks into a hearing room, conservative lawmakers listen. And once Republicans were on board, Democrats who already supported it but didn't want to look like the pro-drug party had the cover to sign on too.

The vibes, to use a technical policy term, have changed. When the president signs an executive order on psychedelics, legislators pay attention. Tennessee and Oklahoma both had bills stuck in the mud that have since passed or advanced significantly. North Carolina rewrote a bill to include $5 million specifically because new federal matching funds make the math work. We have 35 states with active legislation or bills being filed, which is almost enough to ratify a constitutional amendment. We are in the mainstream.

Right to Try means that if you have a life-threatening condition and current treatments aren't working, your provider can give you an experimental drug that's in the FDA development process but not yet approved. It's been federal law for eight years.

The problem is that the Controlled Substances Act and Right to Try are in direct conflict, and under current DEA interpretation, the CSA takes primacy. Schedule I drugs are ineligible because they're defined as having no accepted medical use. But psilocybin, MDMA, and 5-MeO-DMT are in late-stage trials right now and should be eligible for people with treatment-resistant depression and PTSD, conditions that absolutely lead to people losing their lives. The absurdity is that the only way off Schedule I is FDA approval, but once they're approved they're no longer investigational, so Right to Try no longer applies. Two federal laws are fighting each other, and people are stuck in what I call “the DEA death loop.”

The executive order asks agencies to find a pathway under existing law. If DEA's interpretation doesn't change, nothing happens. The Freedom to Heal Act, a bill currently in Congress, would do it cleanly by adding a Schedule I registry to Right to Try. If agencies move together, this could be fixed by the end of the summer. If not, it goes to Congress. Before the executive order, I'd have put the odds of any federal psychedelic legislation passing this year at a decimal point. Now I'd put it somewhere between 12 and 20%.

The most important thing, as corny as it sounds, is to talk to people about it. Politics is downstream from culture. Every time someone outside this world hears about psychedelics not as “I went to a festival” but as “my son came back from Iraq and this worked for him” or “I had postpartum and nothing else helped,” that moves the needle. Share things on social media. It may feel like it doesn't do anything, but that's actually what changes minds at scale.

If you want to go a step further, find the corner of this issue you're passionate about and follow the organizations working in it. For veterans, that could be VETS, Heroic Hearts Project, or the Veteran Mental Health Leadership Coalition. For first responders, it's the 343 Fund. For athletes, it's Athletes for Care. And when a bill is filed in your state, call your representative. You don't need a script. “I'm a constituent, I live in this zip code, you're considering this bill, and I think you should pass this bill.” It’s that simple.

Get involved with Texans for Greater Mental Health, or donate to VETS to help a military veteran access psychedelic therapy.

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.