🫠 This Week in Psychedelics

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter that loves you no matter who you voted for. Be weird if we didn’t right? We’re a newsletter, not your parents. 😬

Here’s what we got this week.

• MA voters say ‘no’ to legalizing psychedelics 🙅

• Compass delays Phase 3 readout… again 🧭

• 2 gov’t agencies invest in psychedelics 🔬

• Suggestions for tripping with a lover 👩‍❤️‍👨

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MICRODOSES

🔬 Research

Read it and weep: A systematic review of clinical trials concludes psilocybin is superior to psychotherapy alone for treating depression.
Serotonergic Glutamatergic: Psilocybin’s antidepressant effects may come from its impact on the neurotransmitters, glutamate and GABA.
Natural selection: In Paul Stamets’s latest paper, patients describe the differences between their experiences with synthetic and organic psilocybin.
Whose hand is that? Ketamine blurs the boundaries of self-perception.
It’s all a simulation, man: An experiment with DMT and VR could explain how we become immersed in reality.

🏛️ Policy

That’s peachy: Georgia state senators are considering psychedelic therapy for military vets.
Make America Trippy Again: Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign has cemented the right’s romance with psychedelics.
Stream of consciousness: J.D. Vance turned to Joe Rogan (on air) for advice on psychedelic policy reform.
Enough about America: Could Netherlands be the first country to legalize MDMA for recreational use?

📈 Business

Insert K here: Silo Pharma hit a developmental milestone for its ketamine implant.
Say Psy-onara: Psyence Biomed has acquired Psyence Group’s stake in PsyLabs through a debt-for-equity swap.
Cash infusion: Tryptamine Therapeutics raised $6 million to fund clinical trials of its IV psilocin treatment.
War and peace of mind: Fluence and Heal Ukraine Trauma just completed the world’s first veteran-focused KAP training program.
From fringe to featured: Psychedelics made the cut of Fierce Healthcare’s 5 notable trends from HLTH 2024.

🫠 Just for fun

The power of suggestion: A magician-psychologist tricked people into thinking they were tripping on psychedelics.
Wonder if they had plant medicine: Archaeologists just found a lost Mayan city with pyramids in Mexico’s Yucatán.
The perfect swing: Elite golfers are using psychedelics to dominate the PGA tour.
It’s in you: The world’s most mysterious psychedelic is already inside your brain.
Meme of the week: When the mushrooms hit and you realize you’re a part of nature…

THE PEAK EXPERIENCE

No mushrooms for Massholes

Wish we could say Bay State voters made a wicked smaht decision yesterday...

But with ~57% of voters saying ‘no’ to Question 4, Massachusetts won't be joining Oregon and Colorado in creating a regulated psychedelic therapy program. Apparently, Election Day had other plans for the movement.

Here's what they just rejected.

• 🏡 Home grows: Adults could have cultivated psychedelic plants and fungi in a 12x12 foot space (Still bigger than some Boston apartments)

• 🍄 Personal use: Possession of small amounts (<2 grams) of psilocybin, DMT, mescaline, and ibogaine

• 🏥 Supervised sessions: Not retail shops, but licensed facilitators providing therapy by 2026

• 👥 State oversight: A commission and advisory board to regulate it all

Critics hammered the measure from every angle. The Massachusetts Psychiatric Society warned about adverse reactions and the lack of medical supervision requirements for treatment centers. Others claimed the home grow spaces would fuel a black market—especially since facilitated sessions would likely be too expensive for many people to access legally.

(Never mind that supporters had the receipts on safety data, or that eight Massachusetts cities had already proven decrim doesn't cause chaos, or that home grows might actually prevent black markets by giving people direct access...)

In the end, Question 4’s complexity may have been its downfall. The average voter likely struggled to wrap their head around psychedelics, decriminalization, and regulated access, all in one measure.

Remember, most people don’t read Tricycle Day. Not yet at least. Is it too soon to ask you to share this newsletter with everyone you know? 🫠

AFTERGLOW

Compass loses its bearings

The world's leading psilocybin therapy company just hit another speed bump. Compass Pathways—whose investigational treatment for depression could become the first approved psychedelic medicine—announced yet another delay in their Phase 3 trials. Now, they’re pushing their first readout of results to mid-2025 and the second to late 2026. The market didn’t exactly respond with kindness.

What gives? Apparently, there’s more “logistical complexity” to running multi-dose, multi-site psychedelic trials than Compass expected. And ever since the FDA rejected Lykos’s application for MDMA therapy, Compass is (understandably) extra paranoid about keeping their studies properly blinded. How you could ever stop someone from knowing they’re having a full-powered psilocybin journey is beyond us, but we digress…

In any case, the delays are forcing Compass to tighten its belt. They're laying off 30% of their staff, halting all non-COMP360 research, and looking to offload their digital health tools business. The stock dropped 30% on the news, but with $207 million in the bank, they should still make it to 2026. Whether their investors' patience will last that long is another question. Anyone need a microdose of hopium?

Your tax dollars at work

Let’s end with some good news, yeah? The feds are finally putting their money where their mouth is. Two major government agencies just dropped serious cash on psychedelic research. NIDA awarded $15 million to study psilocybin for opioid use disorder, and the VA is funding research on MDMA for veterans with PTSD and alcohol problems. Not bad for a country that’s dumped over a trillion dollars into the war on drugs.

NYU's Dr. Michael Bogenschutz will lead NIDA's trial, enrolling 240 patients who are still using opioids despite being on methadone. What's unique is they're focusing on low-income and minority populations—groups typically left out of psychedelic research. Meanwhile, the VA's study in Rhode Island is taking a clever approach to the whole placebo problem by giving control groups low-dose MDMA. (We’ll see what the “functional unblinding” police have to say about that.)

The timing here is interesting. Just months after the FDA rejected MDMA-assisted therapy, other branches of government are doubling down on psychedelics. The VA's health chief even says they "must lead" on this front. Maybe our government hasn’t given up on psychedelic medicine after all. Maybe they're just changing tactics. Hey, we’re just glad this isn’t a partisan issue.

CYCLISTS’ PICKS

UNTIL NEXT TIME

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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.