Psychedelics

Although the topics at Austin's annual SXSW festival tend to skew toward tech and pop culture, this year's was awash in discussions on the future of psychedelic therapy. At least 20 separate keynote speaker sessions addressed the topic, ranging from "Open Minds: Innovations in Consciousness, Psychedelics & Mental Health" to "Psychedelic Tech: Consciousness in the Modern Age." There was even a psychedelics-related networking event. "It's definitely the future of therapeutic healing," said Alexander Hill, an Austin-based health and wellness entrepreneur,… Read more.

Small amounts of fungi that produces so-called magic mushrooms may soon be decriminalized under a bill heard by lawmakers Thursday. An amended version of Senate Bill 242, presented by Rochelle Nguyen, D-Las Vegas, would allow individuals older than 21 to possess, use and consume 30 grams of the dried fungi that produces psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms. “Twenty-eight grams of fentanyl is not the equivalent of 28 grams of mushrooms and they are treated, in our law, the same,” Nguyen said. The bill also… Read more.

Texas lawmakers have filed a series of new bills aimed at promoting and expanding psychedelics research in the state. The Lone Star State took some observers by surprise last session after the conservative legislature enacted a measure to study the therapeutic potential of psychedelics—and now more legislators are hoping to build on that momentum. Three Democratic lawmakers in the state recently introduced separate reform proposals, including one that would expand the law that Gov. Greg Abbott (R) allowed to take effect… Read more.

Back in the 1950s, Humphry Osmond led a group of pioneering psychiatrists in an extensive study of psychedelics. And from that research, they found that these hallucinogenic drugs had immense therapeutic potential. With academic research coming to an indisputable conclusion and mental health awareness on the rise, the legal landscape is starting to peel back antiquated laws that were put in place 50 years ago. In creating a superior treatment for mental health disorders, the Shroom Boom will give rise… Read more.

Lily Tomlin is a shaman and she and her acting partner and friend Jane Fonda have taken peyote together, we learned on The Late Show on Mar. 9. Tomlin and Fonda were there to hype their new comedy Moving On, which will be in theaters Mar. 17. Three minutes into the interview, host Stepehn Colbert asked: "You guys have done peyote together. A lot of people are microdosong. What was that experience like?" Tomlin I microdose. She's not that advanced. Colbert Are you microdosing right… Read more.

The room resembles an unassuming Ikea showroom, with cream-colored walls, a white fur rug and a simple twin-sized bed. Potted plants frame each side of the room with an orange lamp and a bag of blue corn chips atop asymmetric tables. The only indicator that something is abnormal is the two chairs at the front of the room facing the bed. Indeed, this is no ordinary bedroom. It is the site where patients are given psilocybin — commonly known as… Read more.

Do psychedelics like mushrooms and LSD have anti-aging effects? Dr. Andrew Steele, a physics professor who has ventured into the field of biology, presents a fascinating perspective on longevity in his new book. He emphasizes that it's not cancer or heart disease but aging that is the root cause of the most significant suffering and deaths worldwide. Dr. Steele proposes that by finding pharmacological remedies that target the cells responsible for degrading tissue function, we could unlock the potential for… Read more.

Oklahoma based alternative cannabinoid brand Eighty Six jumps on the burgeoning psychedelics market with the launch of Fun Guy, an edibles series dedicated to helping you experience a lighter, brighter, psychedelic trip. Fun Guy enters the market with three classic flavors – BlueRazz, Strawberry, and Watermelon.  Each gummy contains 350mg of Amanita Muscaria, a federally legal medley of mushrooms that deliver a chilled-out psychoactive experience. What are Amanita Mushrooms? Amanita mushrooms, otherwise known as  the Amanita Muscaria, is an easily recognizable red mushroom dotted with… Read more.

John Oliver is back on “Last Week Tonight” and is once again taking a deep dive into a very intriguing topic: the potential benefits of psychedelic assisted therapy. The show, which aired on Sunday, delves into the history of psychedelics and its potential benefits for mental health. After classically making fun of himself, Oliver, a self-proclaimed drug connoisseur, goes on to look into the different uses of psychedelics, including spirituality, healing, and recreation, throughout the centuries. However, the show focuses on the use… Read more.

A Washington State Senate committee approved a massive overhaul to a psilocybin services bill on Thursday, gutting sections that would have legalized use of the psychedelic drug by adults—and reform advocates in the state are blaming the governor for being behind the move. As originally filed last month, SB 5263 would have put Washington on the road to regulating psilocybin services much like its neighbor Oregon. Adults 21 and older would have been able to legally use the drug with the… Read more.

I’m familiar with magic mushrooms from back in the day. I took them a couple times in college — including on a particularly memorable Halloween — and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. So I was curious about a Santa Monica-based startup called the Reality Center that’s been trying to expand the mind and aid in healing the body via digital psychedelics — a proprietary combination of pulsing lights, sounds and vibrations — instead of consuming drugs. Psilocybin, the active ingredient in… Read more.

Lucy Scientific Discovery Inc. (Nasdaq: LSDI), which focuses on psychotropic drugs and had its initial public offering last week, rang the closing bell at the Nasdaq stock exchange today in New York. The company is focused on becoming the premier research, development, and manufacturing organization for the emerging psychedelics-based medicines industry, it said in a statement. “This milestone marks a significant step in the company’s growth and plans for expansion,” said CEO Chris McElvany. “We look forward to the opportunities ahead of us… Read more.

Israeli-based next-gen psychedelics biotech Clearmind Medicine  CMND+0.83%+ Free Alerts together with partner clinical-stage pharma company SciSparc SPRC-0.44%+ Free Alerts has filed three provisional patent applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The patents cover psychedelic-based therapeutics, including monotherapy and novel combinations of SciSparc’s CannAmide and classical psychedelics. More specifically, the patent applications refer to proprietary combinations of LSD, psilocybin, and DMT with SciSparc’s Palmitoylethanolamide (PEA), a cannabimimetic compound and the active ingredient of its proprietary CannAmide drug. The fruitful collaboration between… Read more.

SANDY, Utah (AP) — Shawn Blymiller spent 10 years of feeling mostly numbed while prescribed traditional anti-depressants, trudging through his day-to-day life as a suburban Salt Lake City father of two kids balancing the obligations of family and work selling technology software. When his son was diagnosed as having special needs a few years later, the stress became increasingly difficult to endure. So like many with treatment-resistant depression, Blymiller, 39, sought out alternatives and found one he said worked: Psychedelic… Read more.

With the Super Bowl and Phoenix Open in Arizona this weekend, nearly every current and former athlete was in the Valley of the Sun. Most where there to talk about the upcoming big game or next season, but others, especially those retired from their respective sports, were in town to promote their latest ventures. For Ricky Williams, Champ Bailey and Jim McMahon is means promoting their cannabis brands, and for former ASU QB Jake Plummer that latest ventures involves the… Read more.

New research is exploring whether psychedelic drugs, taken under strict medical supervision, might help in treating post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. SciLine interviewed Dr. Jennifer Mitchell—a professor in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry & Behavioral Science in the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco—to discuss what scientists have found so far about the effectiveness of these drugs in treating these disorders and how they might safely be administered. The Conversation has collaborated… Read more.

It came as a surprise to many when, on Feb. 3, Australian regulators announced that medicines containing the psychedelic substances MDMA and psilocybin can soon be used there to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and treatment-resistant depression, respectively. That decision makes Australia the first country in the world to formally recognize the therapeutic use of psychedelics. Other countries, including the U.S., may be headed toward a similar outcome, some experts say. Research increasingly suggests that psychedelics can be powerful tools for treating a… Read more.

The Australian government has rescheduled the psychedelics psilocybin and MDMA to provide access to people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and treat-resistant depression. The substances aren’t being legalized for broad use, but by placing them in Schedule 8 for therapeutic use under the country’s drug code, psychiatrists who meet the required standards will be able to prescribe the psychedelics. The drugs will remain in the stricter Schedule 9 for unauthorized use. “The decision acknowledges the current lack of options for… Read more.

A small but growing movement is pushing to decriminalize the use of psychedelics like “magic mushrooms” and ayahuasca. Colorado in November passed a ballot initiative to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms for people 21 and older. It joins Oregon in establishing a regulated system for substances like psilocybin and psilocin, the hallucinogens found in some mushrooms. Lawmakers in several other states, including Massachusetts and New Hampshire, have introduced bills to decriminalize a range of psychedelics, while an Illinois lawmaker is proposing a sanctioned… Read more.

DMT — the most potent psychedelic known to man —  treats people with severe depression after a single dose, a cutting-edge clinical trial suggests. Up to six in ten who received a single dose of DMT intravenously before therapy were declared depression-free three months later. And three in 10 participants were declared depression-free two weeks after one session, compared to one in ten in the placebo group who just had therapy on its own. N,N-Dymethyltriptamine (DMT) has received the backing of celebrities… Read more.

Drug discovery company Mindset Pharma  MSSTF has been greenlighted by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on its application “Psilocin Derivatives As Serotonergic Psychedelic Agents for the Treatment of CNS Disorders.”  The application includes the company’s psilocybin analogs lead drug candidate MSP-1014, its backup MSP-1009 and additional pro-drug candidates belonging to the family 1 tryptamine drug compounds. Both MSP-1014 and MSP-1009 demonstrated improved efficacy and safety profiles with reduced potential side effects and evidence of increased target engagement in preclinical studies. … Read more.

It was 1985 and John Lawn had seen enough.  In Boston nightclubs and Dallas bars, MDMA — better known by its street name, ecstasy — had become an enormously popular recreational drug. It had also terrified the Reagan administration, which was in the midst of its historic War on Drugs. Lawn, the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration at the time, acted quickly. Despite the outcry of medical professionals pointing to the range of MDMA’s clinical uses, Lawn classified the drug as… Read more.

As the COVID pandemic broke open quite clearly, never has there been a greater need for innovation to treat psychological disorders. With the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring mental health disorders as the leading cause of disability worldwide – nearly a billion people are impacted by mental illness of some measurable type. In North America, Numinus Wellness Inc. (TSE: NUMI) (OTCMKTS: NUMIF) is leading the charge among public companies treating patients with emerging psychedelic medicine to ease the pain. In June 2022, Numinus took a big… Read more.

Florian Brand knows that there aren’t many people with his profile in biopharma. “You would probably consider me an outlier,” says the 36-year-old chief executive of Germany’s up-and-coming Atai Life Sciences. He doesn’t have a Ph.D. or any scientific background. His previous gig was running an online cookware retailer. But he does possess a history of profound experiences with mental health—experiences that left such an impression that four years ago he dropped everything to cofound Atai, a biopharmaceutical company now backed… Read more.

The DEA Wants to Double the Amount of Cannabis & Psychedelics Grown for Research This Doesn’t Seem Like Good News The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) released a notice earlier this month, announcing their intention of proposing a much larger increase in cannabis to be grown for research by next year. The notice specifically mentions they want to boost the production of psychedelics including psilocin, mescaline, and LSD, reports Marijuana Moment. The notice proposed the production of some 14,770 pounds of marijuana for 2023.… Read more.