🫠 This Week in Psychedelics

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter that knows the only way (to break) out is (to break) through. Read between the lines, mkay? 👁️

Here’s what we got this week.

Not sure who needs to hear this, but knowing how to guide a mushroom trip won’t pay your rent. (Sorry.)

Building a brand, organizing your marketing, having processes… these are the things that keep your practice alive.

Unlike other programs, Acadia’s psilocybin facilitator training takes that part seriously. Students graduate with the skills to treat facilitation like the business it is.

The deadline is coming up to join their March cohort and get licensed in Oregon or Colorado.

If you're serious about facilitation as a career, not a hobby, this is your program.

With the receipts: The full Phase 2 results that led to Transcend Therapeutics’ breakthrough therapy designation for methylone were just published.
Anhedonia know it: Psilocybin therapy helps people with treatment-resistant depression experience joy again.
Sobering news: Ketamine’s efficacy in treating alcohol use disorder may have little to do with its psychedelic-like effects.
Call it a “dirty drug” one more time: Ibogaine may support neuronal repair and remyelination in CNS disorders such as multiple sclerosis.
You’re here, you’re queer: If you identify as LGBTQIA2S+ and psychedelics helped you form or shift that identity, researchers want to hear from you.

Live free or die trying: The New Hampshire House of Representative approved a bill to legalize psilocybin under medical supervision. (See previous coverage.)
No rush: Maryland’s psychedelics task force may be getting a one-year extension.
Choose your fighter: Washington state lawmakers are weighing two distinct and conflicting visions for legal psychedelics.
Missouri loves company: Missouri lawmakers held hearings on an ibogaine bill and a separate psilocybin bill.
Licensees, take note: Oregon Psilocybin Services is holding two potency workgroup meetings in March to address the proliferation of high-psilocin products. Colorado’s Natural Medicine Division has a compliance tip for people applying for licenses.

Target practice: Psychedelic Alpha updated its signature bullseye chart, which plots all the psychedelic drugs in development according to their proximity to approval.
A rising tide lifts all stocks: After Compass’s Phase 3 readout last week, share prices of at least four other psychedelic companies went up, too.
Comparison shopping: This table shows how COMP360 stacks up against other depression treatments, current and investigational.
Show me the money: Who’s going to pay for psychedelic therapies?
Holy capitalism: Psychedelic religious groups blur the line between business and spirituality.

Inside voices: In this excerpt from his next book, Michael Pollan explores what our thoughts reveal about the very nature of consciousness.
Oh, the irony: Psilocybin may have evolved to protect mushrooms from being eaten.
Wooking for Love: A new reality dating show, centered on Denver’s music festival subculture, is now casting contestants.
Sensory overload: People with synesthesia dream differently.
Meme of the week: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Any Cyclist parents out there? Remember all that awesome unsolicited advice you got when you had a kid?

Sleep when the baby sleeps. Eat when the baby eats. Cool, great. But what about when the baby cries and you can't stop crying either?

Postpartum depression affects ~1 in 7 mothers, and current treatments… well, they have no problems latching. (That’s our cute way of saying they suck.)

This week, Reunion Neuroscience announced that luvesilocin earned the FDA’s breakthrough therapy designation for PPD. Which makes eight psychedelics on that list.

For you synthetic fans, luvesilocin is a prodrug of 4-HO-DiPT (yep, of TiKHAL fame). The designation was based on Phase 2 data from Reunion's RECONNECT trial, and the numbers are ice cold.

For context, the FDA has handed out at least 634 breakthrough designations since the program launched in 2012, and 53% of those have gone on to be approved. So it’s no guarantee. Psychedelics are 0-for-8 so far.

To be fair, most of these programs are still mid-development, and the designation does come with more FDA face time, faster reviews, and a shorter path to market.

But at a certain point, we’re gonna start sounding like overeager grandparents-to-be. For real though. Give us our first psychedelic baby, FDA. 🫠

Ask anyone who's eaten mushrooms and then tried synthetic psilocybin. The shroom hits different, full stop. Until now, scientists have mostly shrugged at this claim. But a new computational study just offered the most detailed mechanistic case for the mushroom “entourage effect” to date.

Researchers found eight compounds in psychedelic mushrooms that can cross the blood-brain barrier and latch onto targets involved in mood and cognition. Not just 5-HT2A, either. (There’s levels to this game.) β-carbolines in mushrooms bind to MAO-A, an enzyme that breaks down serotonin. If that sounds familiar, pairing a tryptamine with an MAO inhibitor is the same trick ayahuasca pulls to deepen its trip. (Could be why mushroom extract beats synthetic psilocybin on synaptic plasticity in mice?)

It’s worth mentioning that Oregon and Colorado both use whole mushrooms in their regulated programs, while Compass and Usona are (understandably) pursuing isolated psilocybin for the purity and predictability the FDA demands. Neither approach is wrong. But if the mushroom really is greater than the sum of its parts, maybe Mother Nature was onto something. (That’s our WWE ring name.)

The team behind Tandava Retreats, maybe the world's most established 5-MeO-DMT retreat center, just launched a biotech company. (This was not on our 2026 bingo card.) But their new venture, Five Discovery, isn't jamming the God molecule into a pill bottle. They’re developing novel, non-hallucinogenic molecules inspired by 5-MeO-DMT to treat neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and TBI.

Co-founded by friends of the newsletter, Joël Brierre, Manesh Girn, and Cory Firth (we knew ‘em before they were cool), Five Discovery is staking its claim in “regenerative neurology” by designing small molecules that repair broken brain circuits. Their head of neuropharmacology, Lindsay Cameron, literally wrote the foundational Nature paper on non-hallucinogenic neuroplastogens. And some of the conditions they're targeting are orphan diseases with zero approved treatments. (No pressure.)

If you’ll indulge us for some real talk, here’s why we’re smiling right now. These aren't corporate opportunists who've never sat with the medicine. The Tandava crew still facilitates 5-MeO experiences and runs F.I.V.E., a practitioner training program. They just recognize that a grandma with Parkinson's doesn't need to melt into infinity to benefit from what the molecule can do. Zealots could learn a thing or two.

Most psilocybin trainings won’t go here. This 8-month apprenticeship teaches you plant spirit communication, Mexica medicine songs, and sacred ceremony protocols passed down from Mazatec teachers. Tricycle Day readers save $400.

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.