AtaiBeckley patents R-MDMA formulation, and California issues a shrooms edibles warning
Plus: The State of Psychedelics, and Difficulties following naturalistic psychedelic use associated with having had adverse childhood experiences
Happy Friday and welcome back to The Microdose, an independent journalism newsletter brought to you by the U.C. Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.
AtaiBeckley patents R-MDMA formulation
AtaiBeckley announced last week that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted the company a patent for EMP-01, a formulation of oral R-MDMA. MDMA is typically a “racemic mixture”: it contains an equal proportion of two molecular structures, known as R-MDMA and S-MDMA, which are mirror images of each other; EMP-01 is a formulation of R-MDMA.
Previous research has suggested that while S-MDMA is associated with strong visual effects and higher blood pressure, R-MDMA more strongly activates serotonin receptors. AtaiBeckley says EMP-01 has been “generally found to be more similar to classical psychedelics than to racemic MDMA.” In its announcement, the company said it would release preliminary data from a phase 2a study using EMP-01 to treat social anxiety disorder in the first months of 2026.
Other companies are also looking to bring R-MDMA to market. In October, a San Francisco-based company called Arcadia received Investigational New Drug status from the Food and Drug Administration for its R-MDMA formulation, which it calls AM-1002. Arcadia is also studying its R-MDMA formulation in the treatment of anxiety. The New York-based company MindMed also has an R-MDMA research program, investigating its use in people with autism spectrum disorder.
California issues shrooms edibles warning
The California Department of Public Health published a statement last week warning consumers to stay away from products claiming to contain magic mushrooms made by a brand called TRE House. According to the department, the brand’s gummies, chocolate bars, and syrup contain a drug called 4-acetoxy-DET, and some contain 4-acetoxy-DMT, both of which are analogs of psilocin. (Psilocybin is the prodrug of psilocin; when a human ingests psilocybin, it’s metabolized into psilocin.)
According to the statement, California authorities are investigating TRE House. No illnesses have been reported yet, but the Department of Health writes that “these food products have the potential to cause severe adverse health effects, including hospitalization and even death.” Last year, the CDC warned consumers to stay away from another brand of synthetic psilocybin edibles called Diamond Shruumz after 180 cases of illness, including 3 potentially associated deaths, were reported; some of those products also contained 4-acetoxy-DMT, along with other substances.
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Difficulties following naturalistic psychedelic use associated with having adverse childhood experiences
People with adverse childhood experiences have higher rates of difficult psychedelic trips, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Drug Policy. An international group of researchers used data from a 13,000-person study of naturalistic drug use and meditation. From that group, around 3100 respondents said they’d used psychedelics, and those data was analyzed for this study. Respondents also filled out a questionnaire to assess how many adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) they’d experienced, a measure that includes household dysfunction and abuse.
Overall, 88% of respondents reported no psychedelic difficulties, while 12% reported experiencing difficulties — including 40 people who said their difficulties lasted a year or longer. Those that reported difficulties after trips were also more likely to have had adverse childhood experiences. The authors note that while it’s not possible to infer causality — i.e., whether those childhood experiences caused those difficult psychedelic experiences — “ACEs may represent a psychedelic-specific risk,” such as heightening autobiographical recall or the resurfacing of forgotten or repressed traumatic memories. Given that psychedelics are increasingly being researched as a way to heal from emotional trauma, these results suggest that more research may be needed to explore the relationship between childhood traumas and psychedelic difficulties.
The State of Psychedelics: Updates in New Jersey, Alaska, Texas, and Ohio
On Thursday, New Jersey’s Assembly Appropriations Committee discussed A3852, a bill that would appropriate $6 million to establish a two-year pilot program to conduct psilocybin research, overseen by the state’s health department and an 11-person advisory board. When it was initially introduced in 2024, the bill proposed a state-regulated psilocybin program like Oregon’s, but the health committee proposed this amended version, which passed in late November 2025.
During the hearing, five out of six people spoke to oppose the bill during the committee’s public comment period. Neal Usatin, a filmmaker who edited the Netflix docuseries How to Change Your Mind, raised concerns that the bill leaves “too much room for interpretation as to how the pilot program will be set up, who will design the pilot programs, and who will benefit.” Usatin said he was worried that the state funds would go to companies’ Phase 2 or 3 clinical trials using synthetic psilocybin to treat patients, and that the bill focuses only on behavioral health issues rather than a wider range of conditions like chronic pain and cluster headaches.
Denise Rue, a licensed clinical social worker and founder of the New Jersey Psychedelic Therapy Association, also raised concerns that the psilocybin used in this potential research would be synthetic formulations rather than whole mushrooms. (For context, Compass Pathways is already partnering with New Jersey healthcare system Hackensack Meridian to use COMP360, its formulation of synthetic psilocybin in research.) Additionally, Rue pointed out that the bill’s current language removes preparation and integration sessions from psilocybin treatment. “This is not a pill that we give people like an antidepressant. If we remove that language, we remove the guardrails and we put patients at risk,” she said. She also questioned whether spending $6 million was a good use of funds when there was already data available from other clinical trials and people treated through state programs like Oregon’s.
Lisa Swain, chair of New Jersey’s Assembly Appropriations Committee, said she viewed the bill as “a first step,” and that the advisory committee would have the latitude to make determinations about what type of psilocybin is used in studies and other details of the program. Ultimately, it passed the committee 6 to 5, and now heads to the full assembly for a vote. The bill has a short runway to pass; the state’s legislative session ends on January 12, 2026.
Last week, Natural Medicine Alaska announced that the psychedelics ballot initiative that they were collecting signatures for would not qualify for the state’s 2026 ballot. “We came incredibly close, but limited funding ultimately made it impossible to reach the required signature threshold in time,” the group’s leaders wrote in a Facebook post.
According to Alaska’s guide to the ballot initiative process, petitioners must collect signatures “equal in number to 10% of those who voted in the preceding general election” — which, per the state’s records, is roughly 34,000 signatures. The Microdose reached out to Natural Medicine Alaska for comment but did not receive a reply by press time.
In June, Texas passed a bill allocating $50 million to research on the therapeutic potential of ibogaine, a psychoactive substance found in plants including the iboga bush. The legislation directs the state to create a public-private partnership to fund a clinical trial that uses ibogaine to treat opioid use disorder, other substance use disorders, and “any other neurological or mental health conditions for which ibogaine demonstrates efficacy.” At the bill’s signing ceremony, Texas Senator Tan Parker, a Republican and one of the bill’s sponsors, said that within the next 60 days, Texas authorities would begin evaluating trial proposals from universities, hospitals, and drug developers.
This week, those authorities announced that UTHealth Houston and University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston would lead a two-year research trial, and that they would also be collaborating with ten other university affiliated research centers on the project. The bill also dictates that universities and hospitals work with a drug company on the trial. The Microdose reached out to UTHealth Houston to ask which company had been selected as a partner, but a media relations representative said that the project is still in its early phases, and that “the information will be available at a later date.”
Meanwhile, Ohio’s Ibogaine Treatment Study Committee had its first meeting last week — the committee was established by Ohio’s appropriations bill, passed earlier this year. The six-person committee is tasked with researching and writing a report about ibogaine that includes recommendations for legislation, due to the general assembly by the end of 2027.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order ordering the U.S. Attorney General to “take all necessary steps to complete the rulemaking process related to rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III of the CSA in the most expeditious manner.” Marijuana is currently a Schedule I drug, the most restrictive category; moving it to Schedule III would make studying it easier. Trump’s order did not specify a timeline by which to complete the process, so it could still be months or years until the drug is rescheduled.
According to The Guardian, the number of licensed psilocybin service centers in Oregon has dropped by a third since the program launched in 2023. “The attrition is setting in, and a lot of people are not renewing their license because it is hard to make money,” the owner of a psilocybin center told the Guardian.
In the 1960s, Harvard graduate and LSD enthusiast Lisa Bieberman shipped LSD through the USPS, started a Psychedelic Information Center in Harvard Square, and spent years advocating for psychedelics. Paul Gillis-Smith, program lead on psychedelics and spirituality at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions, tells Bieberman’s story as part of a digital symposium from the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School.
According to journalist Rachel Nuwer in the BBC there is a growing body of research that suggests “there is something specific about psychedelic substances that make them useful for supportive explorations of sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Mark Chavez, a doctor who pled guilty to supplying the late actor Matthew Perry with ketamine, has been sentenced to eight months of home confinement, reports The Guardian. (Two weeks ago, another doctor charged in the case was sentenced to 30 months in prison.) Perry drowned in his hot tub, and an autopsy revealed high levels of ketamine in his body at his time of death.
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