🫠 This Week in Psychedelics

PRESENTED BY ALTHEA 🤝

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter that needs you to verify that you’re human. Please solve this CAPTCHA: Mushrooms are best consumed with _____. Go on. Hit reply and fill in the blank. ✍️

Here’s what we got this week.

• DEA bumps up psychedelic production quotas 📈 

• Fireside’s AI psychedelic patient simulator 🤖

• NJ pushes psilocybin program forward 🍄

• Open your psychedelic mystery box 🎁

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

Time to PIVOT: The VA is launching its own Phase 3 clinical trial of COMP360 psilocybin for veterans with treatment-resistant depression, with or without PTSD.
Couples that trip together: Psychedelics may enhance intimacy and relationship satisfaction, especially when used in therapeutic settings.
Touch grass: The most common health behavior changes that psychedelic practitioners notice in their clients are contemplative practices and time spent in nature.
¡Muy bien! In a large global survey, Spanish speakers reported strong mental health benefits after a memorable experience with psilocybin or LSD.
Sweet dreams are made of this: Chemists figured out how to synthesize 5-MeO-DMT from melatonin.

🏛️ Policy

Courtroom karma: The DEA got grilled in federal court for sitting on an ayahuasca church’s religious exemption petition for six years.
Defending tradition: The Native American Church is advocating to reinforce the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and protect its use of peyote.
Speak now or hold your peace: Oregon Psilocybin Services is requesting public comments on the latest round of proposed rule changes.
Laissez les bons trips rouler: Will Louisiana be the next state to embrace psychedelic research?
Sacred text: Religious scholars at Harvard Law shared a collection of think pieces on psychedelics and spirituality.

📈 Business

First bite at the apple: Entropy Neurodynamics dosed the first patient in its clinical trial of IV-infused psilocin for binge eating disorder.
On a roll: Optimi Health will supply the MDMA for MAPS Israel’s PTSD clinical trial.
Dream team: Daniel Carcillo, founder of the psilocybin center Experience Onward, is joining Doug Drysdale, former CEO of Cybin, at BetterLife Pharma.
Fair point: A spokesperson for Fun Guyz, an illegal psilocybin dispensary in Canada, broke his silence in court to ask why alcohol is legal. A sentencing decision is expected this month.

🫠 Just for fun

That’s epoch: The human brain goes through 4 distinct turning points over the course of one’s lifetime.
Louder for the people in the back: Psychoactive plants and toads are facing a conservation crisis.
Don’t die, ego: Longevity influencer Bryan Johnson turned another mushroom journey into a public spectacle, this time live-streamed with guests.
Meme of the week: When someone you thought you knew calls mushrooms “drugs”…

THE PEAK EXPERIENCE

Number go up

Chop, chop! We’ve got quotas to hit, people.

For once, we’re not talking about our subscriber count. (Though we definitely won’t be mad if you share Tricycle Day with all your psychedelic-curious friends…)

Nope, we’re talking drug production.

Fun fact: every year, the DEA sets Aggregate Production Quotas for Schedule I and II substances. It’s a vestige of the Controlled Substances Act that decides exactly how many grams of magic, mind-altering molecules (say that 3x fast) America is allowed to legally produce for research.

Well, the 2026 numbers just dropped, and we spotted some telling trends.

• 🍄 Psilocybin and psilocin both jumped 33% from 30,000g to 40,000g and 36,000g to 48,000g respectively.

• 🐸 5-MeO-DMT nearly tripled from 11,000g to 30,000g. That’s a 173% increase, which is even more dramatic when you consider it was just 35g in 2021.

• 💊 Methylone skyrocketed 477% from 5,200g to 30,000g. The MDMA-adjacent compound went from 40g in 2021 to becoming a major research priority.

• 🌵 MDMA, LSD, mescaline, and ibogaine quotas stayed flat, signaling either supply sufficiency or regulatory caution.

For this whole situation to (sorta) makes sense, you have to understand that researchers can't just order psilocybin like lab mice. They need DEA Schedule I licenses, and manufacturers can't produce more than the quota allows. So when the DEA raises a quota, that means they’ve projected greater research needs based on FDA pipeline data and active clinical trials.

Through that lens, the massive jumps for 5-MeO-DMT and methylone make perfect sense. (Those are the two psychedelics that earned FDA’s Breakthrough Therapy Designation this year.) AtaiBeckley and Transcend are gonna need those compounds in bulk.

Unfortunately, the quota for how much the DEA is cool with you ingesting is still *checks notes* zero. 🫠

AFTERGLOW

Skill issue

New psychedelic therapists need to practice their skills to get good, but patients don’t want to be traumatized by a noob. Classic catch 22, right? The nonprofit Fireside Project has decided this (subjecting oneself to a less-than-proficient psychedelic therapist, that is) is the perfect job for AI. So they just launched Lucy. It’s like a flight simulator, but for holding space during someone's bad difficult trip.

The AI-powered training platform uses voice-based role play, informed by 7,000+ real calls on Fireside’s support hotline. And it feels scarily similar to chatting up a human. (We tried it.) Through these mock conversations, trainees get to practice managing mid-trip anxiety and handling trauma that surfaces during sessions, all without winging it with their first few clients.

Between all the psychedelic drug approvals coming, ketamine clinics and state programs already running, and underground use happening everywhere, the field needs thousands of trained facilitators yesterday. Fireside hopes Lucy certification will eventually become a recognized credential. Just don’t get caught in the uncanny valley of simulated robot empathy, or you might have your own psychedelic crisis to manage.

The elephant in the room

Would ya look at that. New Jersey lawmakers advanced a psilocybin therapy bill last week. (Yay!) But not without someone asking a question we’ll probably start hearing a lot more often: Why bother if the FDA is about to approve psilocybin anyway? Which is fair, tbh. After all, Compass Pathways says COMP360, its proprietary psilocybin formulation, could be approved nationwide as early as late 2026.

Here's what's missing from that perspective though. COMP360's approval (which, btw, isn't guaranteed) would be limited to treatment-resistant depression. New Jersey's pilot program, on the other hand, would fund psychedelic therapy research more broadly, not limited to specific diagnoses (or even psilocybin, for that matter). $6 million would go to three hospitals to conduct FDA/DEA-compliant trials over two years, plus establish a research fund that could eventually pave the way for natural psilocybin access down the line.

NJ's Assembly Health Committee ultimately did vote to advance the bill to Appropriations. If it passes, researchers get funding to prove efficacy. If those findings are positive, then maybe, just maybe, the fine people of New Jersey won't need to (be) fail(ed by) two antidepressants just to qualify for healing.

CYCLISTS’ PICKS

• 🥡 Mystery box: Feeling lucky? MAPS is packing gift boxes with random books, merch, and artifacts from psychedelic history. If you’d rather control your fate, they’re offering 40% off everything else with code MAPSTURNS40.

• 📖 Magazine: The fourth issue of Psychedelic Pathways Magazine celebrates veterans and first responders. You can pick it up for free with our link.

• 🇯🇲 Fundraiser: Last month, the largest hurricane ever to make landfall in the Caribbean hit Jamaica. MycoMeditations has paused all retreat operations to organize local restoration efforts and is asking for donations to the cause.

• ☕️ Bedtime ritual: To help wind down after *ahem* stimulating activities, we’ve found nothing more effective than Clevr’s melatonin-free Sleeptime SuperLatté. It’s on sale right now.

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.