An Oregon training program folds, psychedelics in Congress, and trouble in Wonderland
Plus: Do psychedelic researchers suffer from “excess enthusiasm”? And Beckley completes phase I 5-MeO-DMT clinical trial
Happy Friday, and welcome back to The Microdose.
The Latest in Oregon: Training program folds, citing unknowns and licensing requirements
A group intending to train psilocybin facilitators in Oregon announced last week that they would no longer be doing so, yet another sign of trouble in the rollout of psilocybin services in the state. In their newsletter, the organization called Earth Medicine Center pointed to the difficulties in getting licensure for their program under Measure 109’s rules. The organization’s leaders wrote about their concerns about tax rules and liabilities for students who may be putting their licenses or insurance at risk to participate. “There are too many unknowns about future potential income and work for facilitators, service centers, and the lack of protection that will be granted to facilitators,” they wrote. “At the moment, we would basically be setting up our students for loads of unforeseen risks without understanding the upside reward.”
Psychedelics in Congress
U.S. Representatives Lou Correa (D-CA) and Jack Bergman (R-MI) announced the formation of the Congressional Psychedelics Advancing Clinical Treatments (PACT) Caucus, which aims to increase awareness about psychedelics-related issues among members of Congress and seek more funding from the National Institutes of Health for psychedelic clinical trials.
Trouble in Wonderland
In early November, psychedelics analysis company Microdose (no relation to this newsletter) held its second-annual conference in Miami, called Wonderland. On the first day of the conference, an anonymous meme account tweeted a photo taken at the event’s registration table, which showed the photos and names of 11 individuals with a note saying “banned from all our events / no entry allowed under no [sic] circumstances.”
Ten days later, Microdose released a statement about Wonderland, which does not directly address the ban list, but obliquely references a “decision” the conference organizers made “to ensure the safety of the event was not compromised.” The statement said that speakers “expressed concern about unwanted contact that had been made.” Microdose did not provide responses to our questions about the statement.
On Twitter and a YouTube livestream Tuesday evening, several individuals on the banned list categorically denied that they posed any threat to conference attendees:
A piece published in Psychedelic Spotlight discusses the ban list, as well as psychedelics documentarian-turned-Compass Pathways consultant Hamilton Morris’s remarks mocking journalists’ and scholars’ work highlighting concerns about the corporatization of psychedelics. That piece, too, faced a bit of controversy — shortly after its publication last week, it was removed from Psychedelic Spotlight’s site, but eventually republished.
There has never been a more exciting – or bewildering – time in the world of psychedelics. Don’t miss a beat.
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Does psychedelic research suffer from “excess enthusiasm”?
In a new paper published this week in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, three University of Utah psychiatrists raise concerns about how the hype around psychedelics affects the quality of research on these substances. “We worry, however, that psychedelic researchers could sometimes have what we might call excess enthusiasm for psychedelics,” they write. Researchers who have personal experiences with psychedelics might ascribe more meaning or importance to the drugs than researchers without this personal connection, and that could compromise scientific objectivity.
At the same time, the researchers acknowledge that their concerns lack empirical data; it’s not clear that having personal experience with psychedelics actually biases researchers in any way. Of course bias is not unique to psychedelics. But, the authors write, “even if personal psychedelic use does not cause scientists to become excessively enthusiastic about psychedelics, it can still threaten the viability of psychedelic research if the public (and especially, funding agencies, law makers, and regulatory bodies) comes to believe that it is a source of bias among researchers.”
Beckley completes phase I 5-MeO-DMT study
This week, biotech company Beckley Psytech announced it has completed a phase I study of BPL-003, a synthetic version of 5-MeO-DMT. Because phase I clinical trials are designed to assess safety, the study observed the drug’s effects on 44 healthy, “psychedelic-naive” participants. Those participants snorted doses of BLP-003 or a placebo.
More detailed information gleaned from this study about the safety of BLP-003 has yet to be released, but Beckley says they are moving forward with phase II studies soon. Those later trials will investigate whether the drug is effective in treating treatment-resistant depression or alcohol use disorder.
Nature Outlook’s September 2022 issue dedicated to psychedelics should have given more attention to safety issues associated with the drugs, six researchers wrote in a letter to the editor published this week. “The article on psilocybin for pain relief notes that researchers are trying to avoid the mistakes that contributed to the opioid crisis. But there are strong parallels: prescription of psychedelics and of opioids is rising as a result of aggressive marketing, whereas the evidence for effectiveness comes mostly from small, short-term trials involving highly selected patients in secure settings, without adequate comparators,” they write.
This week, the owners of a Toronto store called Shroomyz were arrested and charged for selling psilocybin products. Shroomyz also has a location in Ottawa. In Canada, possession and sale of psilocybin is illegal under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, but in addition to Shroomyz, a few stores selling hallucinogenic mushrooms have also popped up in Vancouver.
In the newsletter On Drugs, Matt Zorn does a deep dive into dextromethorphan (DXM, an over-the-counter cough medicine with psychedelic properties when it’s taken in high doses), and the release of Auvelity, a new oral antidepressant said to take effect after just one week. Auvelity combines DXM and a smoking cessation medication called bupropion. Zorn calls the drug a “Classic Big Pharma play.”
Outside tells the tale of Jim Harris, a mountaineer and photographer who endured a spinal cord injury in a snowkite accident. Harris reports that psilocybin helped him heal physically, and the piece reviews the nascent research into whether psychedelics could treat traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury.
In a tongue-in-cheek Lucid News piece, comedian Dennis Walker reviews the absurd and the surreal from the Wonderland conference in Miami. “If Kid Rock had showed up with a giant purple MDMA crystal and taken the stage for a raucous dose of empathogenic Americana, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash,” he writes.
Forbes interviews DoubleBlind’s Shelby Hartman about their new psychedelics and maternity course.
You’re all caught up! Have a great weekend. We’ll be back in your inbox on Monday with a new issue of 5 Questions.
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I attempted to post a comment but I don't think it saved. I apologize if this is a duplicate. I was equating this enthusiasm to the possible enthusiasm of medical researchers. If a medical researcher has personal experience with a particular treatment/drug that was successful for them, of course they would be super enthusiastic about further research! Why would it be any different for psychedelic researchers? For some, part of the excitement is seeing the rest of the community catch on to what we already personally knew about the benefits.
The concerns re bias make sense, but it's a two-edged sword. Researchers having personal experience with the substances is also a huge advantage: When you've done a good bit of psychedelics you understand them better, which helps you formulate good research questions. I've seen a few lines of study -- like trying to create "trip-less" psychedelics -- that make me wonder about the experience of those behind them.