This Week in Psychedelics 🫠

Welcome to Tricycle Day. This newsletter is your hero’s journey. You might face your inner demons, but you’ll be a better man or woman once you make it to the other side.

Quick question before we get to the meat mushrooms and potatoes, Cyclists…

Don’t say we never gave you nothin’. Now let’s get into it. 👇

1. Even challenging psychedelic experiences can boost mental health

Ever heard these words of wisdom? “There are no bad trips, only difficult ones.”

Whoever said that definitely wasn’t talking about my car rides from hell through LA traffic. Those were straight up bad.

But when it comes to psychedelic trips, new research says it’s not just a cliché. In the very first study to characterize different types of trips and link them to mental health outcomes, researchers found that challenging, frightening, and even destabilizing experiences led to reduced anxiety and depression.

The study wasn’t limited to any one specific substance either. They included over 1,000 recreational users of mushrooms, acid, ayahuasca, mescaline, and 5-MeO-DMT in their analysis.

The fact that certain types of subjective experiences had similar results, regardless of which drug was consumed, raises interesting questions around how psychedelics actually work.

2. Minnesota may be the next state to launch a psychedelics task force

Serious question. If your state doesn’t have a trip committee yet, what are you even doing?

Minnesota lawmakers have filed bills in the House and Senate to establish their Psychedelic Medicine Task Force, which would “advise the legislature on the legal, medical, and policy issues associated with the legalization of psychedelic medicine in the state.”

The group, which would include tribal representatives and military veterans alongside politicians and health experts, will consider any psychedelic that shows potential as a treatment option. MDMA, psilocybin, mescaline, LSD, bufotenine, DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, 2C-B, ibogaine, salvia, and ketamine are all on the table.

I’m just wondering how long it’ll be before we see mushroom dispensaries in the Mall of America.

3. 5-MeO-DMT got its first Investigational New Drug approval from the FDA

No toad? No problem.

Beckley Psytech has been developing a synthetic form of 5-MeO-DMT, the “god molecule” found in the venom of the Sonoran Desert Toad, and the FDA are big fans.

Beckley’s compound BPL-003 would become a new option for treatment-resistant depression if approved. And it’s very powerful.

Chief Medical Officer, Frank Wiegand, is especially proud of these three attributes.

• Rapid onset — In other words, you breathe it in and before you can even exhale, you’re in another dimension. ✌️

• Reliable induction — You’re definitely going there. Might as well surrender, because resistance is not an option. ✅

• Short duration — The whole trip typically lasts under an hour… not that time exists where you’re headed. ⌛

Based on the preclinical data and trial results so far, the FDA has blessed Beckley with an Investigational New Drug Approval for BPL-003. That’s the first time they’ve ever done that for any short-acting psychedelic treatment.

The goal of the Phase 2b trial is to dial in the dosage. Ideally, they’re looking for max effectiveness against depression without compromising tolerability.

4. Psilocybin lets you break bad habits by helping you reinvent yourself

There’s been plenty of research to show that psychedelics help people overcome addiction. But it’s still a bit of a mystery how.

One of those studies from way back in 2014 found that smokers trying to quit were far more likely to succeed with psilocybin-assisted therapy than without.

Now almost 10 years later, researchers revisited the notes from that study to figure out why the combination of psychedelics and cognitive behavior therapy was so effective compared to traditional quit-smoking methods.

When they reviewed the participants’ own words and reflections, they found that the therapy helped longtime smokers see themselves as nonsmokers. Then the cravings disappeared.

Conclusion? Psychedelics are the cheat code to changing undesirable behaviors because they allow you to pick a new identity for yourself.

Note to self: next time you trip, visualize yourself as Batman.

5. A new species of magic mushroom was named after Paul Stamets

File this one under, “It’s about got-dang time.”

Legendary mycologist Paul Stamets has been honored with the naming of a new species, Psilocybe stametsii.

What?! You don’t know Paul? He’s the guy who:

• Gave a TED talk about how mushrooms can save the world, which has racked up 8.5 million views

• Wrote several books on mushrooms and discovered numerous species himself

• Founded Fungi Perfecti, the company behind the Host Defense mushroom supplement line

• Cured his stutter after getting stuck in a tree for hours during his first psilocybin journey

• Rocks a handmade felt cap (you know you’ve made it when you have a signature hat)

Now it’s your turn. If you got the chance to name a new species of psychedelic mushroom, what would you call it?

Reply and let us know. Best response wins a prize. ✍️

• Wall Street Backs New Class of Psychedelic Drugs [WSJ]

• A Fraught New Frontier in Telehealth: Ketamine [NY Times]

• The Infected in HBO's The Last of Us Were Inspired By an “Otherworldly” Psychedelic Trip [Inverse]

• What Ever Happened to Mescaline? [Slate]

• The Promise and Perils of Psychedelics [Intention to Treat from NEJM 🎧]

• The Veterans Fighting to Legalize Psychedelics [The Daily from NY Times 🎧]

Psychedelics Track at SXSW — A badge to Austin’s premiere tech, arts, and culture conference isn’t cheap, but if you can swing it, they’ve got a killer lineup of speakers and sessions all around the future of psychedelics.

Dr. Bronner’s Magic All-One Chocolate — Have you ever read a Dr. Bronner’s label? This business cares way more about planetary consciousness than your average soap company. And their vegan chocolate does not disappoint. (Our favorites are hazelnut butter and almond butter.) Seriously, though, read the label.

DMT Portal or Basket? — Irrefutable proof that basket weaving is a spiritual experience.

Do you remember your first experience with psychedelics? How did it go?

My first experience that I can remember very clearly was taking MDMA as a teenager in Singapore where I grew up. Drugs are really illegal there — like, punishable by death. So that experience was tainted by a lot of fear and shame. But it was confusing because the actual experience itself was euphoric and opened up a lot of feelings that I didn't know I could have. It was kind of a dark portal.

The dark parts have always informed my practice. As somebody who comes from a background where drugs are so stigmatized, both societally and also by my family and being Asian, figuring out my own truth and seeing how that truth could be so meaningful, transformational, and healing made my journey even stronger.

You’ve written for Vice, GQ, NYMag, and Bloomberg about drugs and rave culture. How do you describe what you do for a living?

I describe myself as a counterculture reporter and writer. What threads everything that I do together is an interest in resistance, in alternative ways of being, and in questioning a lot of the “efficacy” or “revolutionary potential” around raving subculture and psychedelics.

I think these practices are liberating in many ways, but both have these panacea-like strains to them where people think that the practice alone is subversive and going to change the world. I’ve had enough bitter experiences of disillusionment, where I’ve encountered the commodification of psychedelics and raving, to be more skeptical.

A lot of people think psychedelics are on the same path to legalization as cannabis, just a few years behind. As someone who moved to California and wrote a book about weed, do you agree?

A lot of people are looking to cannabis as a negative example of what to learn from and grow from, as we move into other plant medicines that are potentially more powerful and more marketable in some ways because of the adjacent industry of psychedelic-assisted therapy.

There are some interesting lessons around different models of legalization and decriminalization that cannabis has illuminated. Another big one is the regulatory greed that is causing small business owners in California to really struggle right now.

But even within cannabis, I want to avoid painting it as a huge failure because the story is still evolving. New York City, for example, is doing some really cool and interesting things with social equity.

In the psychedelic world, an important thing to watch out for is the whole cottage industry of psychedelic therapy that's really on the come up right now. There are questions circling — who is able to be a therapist, who is able to run a space, how are these medicines actually going to be administered under the therapeutic model as opposed to a recreational model? These questions seem to be at a pivotal point in the culture.

What have you learned about yourself from going “Cali Sober”?

That phrase, “Cali Sober” has become associated with my work, funnily enough, sort of by accident. I was going to a lot of parties when I first came to California, and I had decided to stop drinking as part of my healing journey, post nightlife-party-girl craziness. I was pretty addicted to some substances. So when I went to these parties, I would still smoke weed or do mushrooms, but I would refuse alcohol.

The crazy part is even in 2018, which was not that long ago, saying that you didn't drink was still such a taboo that people would get offended and confused. They were like, why are you saying that you're sober but you're smoking weed? So I used this phrase, “Cali Sober,” sort of as a joke. And then I wrote an essay about it that went super viral. It turned out way more people were on the same journey as I was than I’d even expected.

The reason I included psychedelics is that Cali Sober, as a modality, is about attuning to substances that are helpful to you, that are therapeutic for you, and keeping that in mind as you draw the lines. For so long we've been taught that sobriety is just being 100% clean of all drugs. But sobriety is also a journey of recovery and healing, and I’ve found certain substances to be very helpful in overcoming addiction.

I think it's pretty interesting that in traditional AA sobriety, nicotine is allowed. In my personal version of Cali Sober, it’s not.

It seems like you get a kick out of making conservative types squirm on Twitter. How do you choose what to write about, and what motivates you to write?

That's a really funny observation because actually the Fox News thing was the first time that right wingers have ever gotten a hold of my work. So it was kind of a scary experience but also very funny.

I always say, partying is praxis. And I really believe that going out into the world is the best way to gather ideas that can inform your work when you return to your desk. Raves in particular are really potent. A dance floor is like a nexus of different cultural currents that come together in one place at one time. You’re right at the frontier of what's happening in culture. So a lot of my work, I've realized, is really focused on the next thing, the future, ideas that are on the cusp, things that are emergent.

For me, it also works the opposite way, where I like to throw parties to manifest the ideas that I've been engaging with and the conversations that I've had from my desk. I like the idea of creating the world that you want to be in. I recently started experimenting with throwing psychedelic events, and my last one was called MUSHWOMB. It was womb themed, like a cocoon for psychic rebirth, and really about moving beyond the alcohol paradigm.

We had no booze at the bar, just microdose mushrooms and drinks with nootropics in them. We had DJs playing warm-toned vinyl music, and it was a day party that ended at 10pm on a Sunday. It was such a cool experiment, and I think it really tapped into a lot of the ideas I've been exploring around people moving into new ways of relating to substances and each other.

Want more from Michelle? Subscribe to her newsletter, Rave New World, or follow her on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.

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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.