🫠 This Week in Psychedelics

PRESENTED BY ALTHEA 🤝

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter that’s impressed you’re still checking email. We’ll put in a good word with Santa’s DMT elves to make sure you’re on their nice list. ✍️

Here’s what we got this week.

• Psychedelics market responds to cannabis shifts 📈

• Psilocybin might feed brain tumors ⚠️

• Michigan city decriminalizes entheogens 🌵

• Santa’s favorite mushroom in a bottle 🎅🏻

FROM OUR SPONSORS

Raise your hand if you think access to psychedelic therapy shouldn't depend on your zip code, identity, or bank account balance.

Same.

A lot of people say that, but far fewer can actually put their money where their mouth is.

Healing Hearts Changing Minds walks the walk. To date, they’ve given out over $600,000 in grants to nonprofits breaking down barriers for the veteran, LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and end-of-life patient populations.

They’ve got nothing to sell you. But if you’re curious what reciprocity in action looks like…

See who they're funding and the impact they're making.

MICRODOSES

🔬 Research

Don’t sweat it: Psilocybin may retrain the stress axis, leading to increased stress tolerance and less overreaction.
No one said this would be easy: As if psychedelic research weren’t tricky enough, now we have to question neuroimaging and rodent behavior models, too.
Relationship goals: Psilocybin and MDMA may help repair relationships between couples dealing with substance use disorders and codependency.
Golden years: Psilocybin may help with geriatric depression, but adults over 65 are still underrepresented in trials.
Noetic and poetic: This paper offers a rational explanation for why mystical experiences with psilocybin feel “realer than real.”

🏛️ Policy

By the numbers: Oregon Psilocybin Services published Q3 data, including updated visualizations of client and licensee demographics.
Kratom krackdown: Ohio issued an emergency rule making all kratom-related products illegal to sell, possess, or distribute.
Hard pass: The British Columbia College of Social Workers is explicitly prohibiting its registrants from practicing psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.
Czech it out: Psilocybin therapy has been legalized in Czechia, and sessions could begin as soon as January.

📈 Business

Network effects: Radial raised $50 million to build a nationwide chain of practices offering breakthrough mental health treatments, including psychedelic therapies.
Up to speed: MAPS trained the clinicians involved in the DoD’s trial of MDMA therapy for active-duty military, at no cost to the participants.
Blind boxes, but less fun: In the grey psychedelics market, manufacturers are financially incentivized to obfuscate the active ingredients of their products.
Power couple: Vicente LLP and Emerge Law Group, two firms involved in drafting the psychedelic measures in Colorado and Oregon, have merged.
Majority rule: Psylutions now supplies more than half of Colorado’s licensed healing centers with natural psilocybin.

🫠 Just for fun

The Ozempic effect: GLP-1 drugs interact with psilocybin. Here’s what you should know if you’re taking both.
Recess was a trip: Many childhood games lead to altered states of consciousness.
Zoom out: Scroll through an illustrated reminder of the size of life.
Altered AI: People are paying to get their chatbots high on simulated drugs.
Meme of the week: When the mushrooms are showing you all the ways you’ve f’ed up…

THE PEAK EXPERIENCE

Cannabis first, psychedelics next

For once, the rumors were true. (We’ll never doubt you again, internet strangers.)

On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III.

No need to get into the weeds (sorry, couldn’t resist) about rescheduling now. We did that last week. But the tl;dr is, although this isn’t full legalization, it is the biggest federal shift on cannabis in decades.

What now? You skate where the puck is going… or so we’ve heard. And Wall Street’s betting psychedelics are next in line.

Here’s what market analysts are saying.

• 🚀 Optimism is contagious: Cannabis stocks rallied 40-50% on rescheduling rumors, and psychedelic stocks followed suit.

• 🏆 Winners in the making: Jefferies flagged psychedelic stocks like AtaiBeckley, Cybin, and Mind Medicine as potential beneficiaries of the cannabis policy shift.

• 👀 The institutions are coming: Pro investors who've avoided companies that deal with Schedule I compounds might finally warm up to the space.

• 🧑‍🔬 More than speculation: Research on Schedule I molecules is a bureaucratic nightmare. So clinical trials could become easier, cheaper, and faster.

Meanwhile, psychedelic biotechs are positioning themselves like they already know policy tailwinds are coming.

Cybin just announced it's moving from NYSE to Nasdaq and rebranding as Helus Pharma (ticker: HELP). And AtaiBeckley, fresh off completing its merger, is officially becoming a U.S.-domiciled company. It’s been added to Nasdaq, as well.

We don’t wanna over-index on vibes, but come on. Cannabis being reclassified is a big deal. It proves federal attitudes toward stigmatized substances can and have actually evolved.

Don’t expect psilocybin to be rescheduled tomorrow. But if this momentum brings institutional capital and regulatory clarity to mind-altering medicine, that's a rising tide that lifts all therapeutic boats.

Either that, or all these suits just got a contact high. 🫠

AFTERGLOW

Neurogenesis to the max

If you have brain cancer, you’re gonna wanna read this. Or not, idk. You probably have higher priorities than our dorky newsletter. Anyway, Stanford researchers just published findings that’ll make oncologists think twice before recommending mushrooms to patients. Their new study showed psilocybin significantly increased the growth of gliomas (aggressive brain tumors) in mouse models.

The study looked at both glioblastoma and diffuse midline glioma, two of the deadliest brain cancers out there. What the researchers noticed is that glioma cells express freakishly high levels of the 5-HT2A receptor, psilocybin's primary target. When they knocked out the 5-HT2A receptor in tumor cells, psilocybin no longer promoted their growth. That suggests serotonergic activation, which isn’t limited to psilocybin btw, is the culprit.

Now before you panic, this finding mostly pertains to people (and, err, mice) who already have brain tumors. If you don't have a glioma, you’re probably good. But clinicians who've been eyeing psychedelics to help cancer patients cope with existential distress should take note. Mushrooms are way more safe than most people think, but that doesn’t mean they’re without risk.

Free the shrooms

We’re sorry, Miss Jackson, ooooo! This is for real. Last week, the City Council of Jackson, Michigan (not Mississippi, apologies for the mixup) voted 4-2 to make purchasing, cultivating, and possessing entheogenic plants and fungi the lowest law enforcement priority. Even the mayor himself cheered when the city effectively decriminalized natural psychedelics.

Jackson is now the sixth Michigan municipality to pass such a measure, joining Ann Arbor, Detroit, Hazel Park, Ferndale, Ypsilanti, and Washtenaw County. The resolution applies to psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca, iboga, and mescaline-containing cacti (even peyote). Per the standard Decrim Nature playbook, however, it doesn’t cover synthetics. And all psychedelic use is still off the table for minors, on school property, and while operating vehicles.

You may be wondering what’s in the winning recipe for local psychedelic reform. Three years of community advocacy, apparently, plus a city council member whose marriage and family were personally saved by psychedelics. (Note to self: get a champion on the inside.) Statewide reform would be nice, but Michigan activists say they'll keep going city by city if they have to. Only 270 to go.

CYCLISTS’ PICKS

• 🍄 Sleep potion: Psyched Wellness makes the most rigorously tested Amanita muscaria tincture we’ve found. Their new double-strength formulation helps us relax and get truly restful sleep, with no groggy side effects.

• 🥷 Hoodie: MAPS just dropped two limited-run sweatshirts, created in collaboration with visionary artist InkTally. This one’s printed with a helpful mantra about curiosity and perspective.

• 🤝 Fellowship: UC Berkeley’s Center for the Science of Psychedelics is offering ten $10,000 grants to ambitious journalists looking to cover big, underreported stories about psychedelics. Applications are due Jan 31.

• 📕 Book: You don’t have to use psychedelics to appreciate The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. But it might make its lessons easier to stomach, including our favorite… don’t take yourself so seriously.

UNTIL NEXT TIME

That’s all for today, Cyclists! Whenever you’re ready, here’s how we can help.

ONE CYCLIST’S REVIEW

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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.