🫠 This Week in Psychedelics

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter that’s realer than real. A noetic experience to read. But we’ll link our sources anyway. 😉

Here’s what we got this week.

If you're thinking about working with psychedelics, let this sink in.

Preparation matters as much as the experience itself.

That’s why Synthesis’s 5-day Immersion Retreats in the Netherlands begin weeks before arrival, with guided online preparation to clarify intentions and cultivate readiness.

Each retreat includes two group psilocybin ceremonies, held by facilitators who've guided over 1,100 participants, followed by structured integration support to help carry insights into daily life.

Take their 2-min readiness quiz or apply to join in February or April.

Mind over matter: Microdosers report improved sleep, more exercise, and reduced addictive behaviors. Unsurprisingly, the intention to change predicted actual behavior change.
Go deep or go home: When veterans were treated with ibogaine, more intense mystical experiences were associated with greater PTSD improvement.
5-HT1B has entered the chat: The serotonin 1B receptor (not just 5-HT2A) may be involved in the behavioral and neural effects of psilocybin.
Trip cancelled: Lorazepam (a benzodiazepine) completely negates the anti-depressant effects of psilocybin in mice.
Oh, Canada: A large hospital network in Hamilton, Ontario has opened a new psychedelic research center, err centre.

Gotta have faith: Psychedelic churches are increasingly testing the limits of the law and winning.
The race is on: New Jersey could lead the East Coast in psychedelic-assisted therapy.
Can we keep it? The DEA and HHS have issued a fourth (!) temporary extension of the rule that allows for telemedicine prescriptions of ketamine.
Gimme, gimme more: The DEA also finalized its 2026 quotas for psychedelic drug production. (See previous coverage.)
TGA tweaks: Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration is considering changes to its Authorized Prescriber process for psychedelics.

Welcome to America: AtaiBeckley is now a U.S.-based company.
Ding dong: Helus Pharma (the artist company formerly known as Cybin) is now trading on Nasdaq. Yesterday, their Executive Chairman rang the opening bell.
Cleared for blastoff: When the FDA lifted its hold on GH Research’s new drug application for mebufotenin (aka 5-MeO-DMT), the company’s stock rallied. GH plans to launch Phase 3 trials this year.
Prickly IP: Enveric Biosciences secured a new patent on mescaline-derived molecules.
Bullish: Wall Street analysts think this psychedelic stock can gain 335% in 2026.

The prophecy was foretold: Peruvian shamans made some pretty spicy predictions for 2026.
Suit and tie-dye: Bloomberg reports that biotech firms are doing their best to shed psychedelics’ countercultural image.
And yet: These five tech leaders have benefited immensely from psychedelics.
Meme of the week: Psychedelic facilitators trying to stand out in a crowded market.

Sit down, kids. It’s time for some intellectual honesty.

We've spent the last few years watching psilocybin clinical trials post response rates north of 50%, while researchers pat themselves on the back.

But the thing about clinical trials is, they're designed to succeed.

They often screen out the messy cases, like people with multiple comorbidities or who've failed 14 different antidepressants in the past decade. To qualify, you have to be sick in just the right way.

Which is why this new data from Switzerland matters. Researchers tracked 19 real patients with treatment-resistant depression who got between one and four doses of psilocybin (20-35mg) under the country’s “limited medical use” program.

Here’s how they did.

These are very good results for patients who’d essentially run out of options. On average, they’d already cycled through five antidepressants to no avail. They were also dealing with anxiety, PTSD, and personality disorders on top of their chronic depression. No one made them stop their regular meds.

And yet, psilocybin still helped.

This is some of the first real-world evidence on psilocybin therapy outside controlled research settings. The results may not match the glossy trial numbers, but it’s clearly working for the trickiest, realest patients.

Can we count this as a breakthrough about what a breakthrough actually looks like? 🫠

Yeah, we know how this looks. A newsletter covering its own acquisition is like a restaurant reviewing itself on Yelp. But you're stuck with us (muahahaha), so we’re doing it anyway.

Tricycle Day joined forces with Althea last month and announced the deal yesterday. Althea builds the practice management software that powers legal psilocybin therapy in Oregon and Colorado. Their software (our software? Still getting used to this…) handles client intake, safety screening, payments, and regulatory compliance for service centers and facilitators. It’s used by the majority of licensed providers in both states and is provided to users for free.

We think this merger is newsworthy not because our heads are hopelessly lodged up our you-know-whats, but because of the implications for the regulated psilocybin market, today and into the future. As new state programs come online (looking at you, New Mexico), having education and infrastructure under one roof means more people can move from curiosity to legal, safe care without getting lost in the gap between the two. So yeah, we reported on ourselves. We may be cringe, but we are free.

Imagine if psilocybin were legal, but only if you pinky swore you weren’t having fun. Massachusetts might actually pull that off. In late December, bipartisan lawmakers voted to advance two bills—one establishing a psilocybin therapy framework and another decriminalizing psilocybin, but only for certain people who (they presume) aren’t tripping for sh*ts and giggles.

The therapeutic approach we’ve seen before. So let’s focus for a minute on the decrim bill, which is limited to veterans, law enforcement officers, and patients with qualifying conditions like cancer or severe depression. So far the pattern we’ve seen is, decrim usually applies to everyone, while therapeutic models might focus on populations with demonstrated medical need. This conditional decriminalization approach is new, as far as we can tell.

Any forward movement feels like good news after the state’s *ahem* commonwealth's 2024 ballot measure crashed and burned amid scandal. If these bills pass the full legislature, Massachusetts will have invented a new category of access. It’s neither medical nor recreational, per se. We’d call it, “please stop arresting sick people.”

Five ceremonies in eight days sounds intense. It is. But REVIVE prioritizes integration over peak experiences, using somatic support, EMDR, and trauma-informed facilitation throughout. Join them in Costa Rica from Jan 31 to Feb 7.

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.