Dispatches from Denver: Day 4 at Psychedelic Science 2023

Welcome back to The Microdose, an independent journalism newsletter brought to you by the U.C. Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics. This week, we’re bringing you daily dispatches from Psychedelic Science 2023 in Denver.

Question of the Day: Each day I’m asking conference attendees one question. The question today is “What about this Psychedelic Science conference was most surprising or unexpected?” Here’s a sampling of responses.

“I was surprised to see Rick Perry as a keynote speaker; I didn’t know how to reconcile such violent politics with a culture of healing. That was disappointing.”
Raffi Marhaba, visual artist, Philadelphia, PA

“I went to the Asian Psychedelic Collective session, and it was unexpectedly powerful to hear Asians share their voice. It was the first time in this space I felt understood.”
Serena Malkani, ketamine-assisted vocal activation specialist, Arcata, CA

“I was surprised by the exploding energy around the promise of psychedelics in treating rampant mental health issues — and all the many unanswered issues around using a medical model, a self care model, or wellness model.”
Washington State Senator Jesse Salomon, Shoreline, WA

I started my morning at the main stage, which aired a recorded conversation between MAPS founder Rick Doblin and Stanislav “Stan” Grof, 91, a psychiatrist known for his early work with LSD and other consciousness-altering practices including holotropic breathwork. Psychologist Brigitte Grof, Stan’s wife, told the audience that Ubiquity University, an online holistic school, has launched a Grof studies program, where students can receive a master’s or PhD in all things Grof. Next, MAPS’s director of development encouraged attendees to donate to the organization; actress Eliza Dushku, best known for her starring role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer,  and her husband real estate investor Peter Palandjian are matching up to $500,000 in donations made at the conference.

After that, MAPS founder Rick Doblin was awarded the Richard Rockefeller Transformational Leadership Award. The award was established after Richard Rockefeller, a physician who was former chairman of U.S. Doctors without Borders and a financial supporter of MDMA research, died in a plane crash in 2014. While accepting the award, Doblin apologized for starting the conference so early in the morning, mentioning MAPS’s party at interactive art exhibit Meow Wolf which went until 2 a.m. (It seems Doblin wasn’t the only one out late; I noticed several people asleep in morning sessions today.)

MAPS Director of Policy and Advocacy Ismail Ali took the stage with Columbia University psychologist Carl Hart. Hart is known for his drug legalization advocacy, and his conversation with Ali focused on bodily autonomy. “People should have control over their own bodies,” Hart said, whether that’s choosing to ingest psychoactive substances, seek an abortion, or play a potentially dangerous sport like football. 

Ali also asked Hart about bias and psychedelic use among researchers. From the framing of his question, it was clear where Ali stood on the issue: “Do we require nutritionists to eat well or people who study the earth to float so they don’t touch the ground?” he asked. Hart responded that the scientific peer review process is meant to serve as a check on researchers’ biases, but that funding sources can also bias researchers — and that in the case of government funding, most research has been biased against psychedelics and towards studying negative aspects of the drugs. Whether researchers use psychedelics is a personal choice, he said. “It’s immaterial, and doesn’t impact their work — if it’s crappy work it won’t be published,” Hart said. “Should we ban scientists from engaging in missionary sex? That’s about how relevant it is to me.”

Want the latest psychedelics news? Subscribe! (It’s free!)

Panel on patents and innovation in psychedelic drug development

As psychedelics companies seek to bring drugs to market, patents are a way for those companies to stake a claim on intellectual property whether that be specific drug formulations or use cases for psychedelic molecules. (Here at The Microdose, we’ve covered patent battles, and calls for patent reform.) “Without a patent, it’s hard to bring a new drug to market, but on the other hand, many have concerns and despair about how new drugs are highly priced or provide incremental benefit over other drugs,” said moderator and Calyx Law patent attorney Graham Pechenik as he introduced the panel. Retsina Meyer, head of corporate strategy for psychedelic biotech company Delix, said the real value of obtaining patents is that they give companies space and time to do their work. “It’s blocking others in order to allow you to focus on developing a product,” she said.

Meyer and Jonathan Sporn, founder of biotech company Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals, discussed their companies’ strategy in developing patentable drugs. Sporn said Gilgamesh brought in chemists to seek innovative molecules, including a ketamine molecule that would be effective if taken orally, a DMT analogue that reduced trip lengths to around an hour, and an ibogaine analog that removes the drug’s cardiotoxic effects. Delix, as I mentioned in yesterday’s review, is developing psychedelic analogs that remove hallucinogenic effects.  

Sisi Li, senior data architect for psychedelic prior art library Porta Sophia, discussed the organization’s work in challenging what they characterize as overly broad patents. Li showed a slide with data on psychedelic applications filed between 1998 and 2022, and said there’d been a 605% increase in overly broad psychedelic applications. Li said Porta Sophia has submitted objections to over 50 patent submissions to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, comprising 83% of all U.S. third party submissions for psychedelic applications between 2017 and 2022.

Li also made the argument that overly broad applications only hurt applicants in the end; companies lose money in lawyer fees if any entities, or organizations like Porta Sophia, challenge patents. (Such fees can cost millions.) Sporn also noted that weak patent claims harm companies’ long-term success. “A lot of patents get through, but they may be weak patents that don’t hold up in court,” he said. Smaller companies hoping to partner with or sell assets to major companies will need strong intellectual property claims to attract big pharmaceutical companies, and to expand into international markets. “Otherwise, the whole thing is just a house of cards,” he said. 

Remarks from Patty Salazar, Executive Director of Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) 

If you’ve been following the development of Colorado’s Proposition 122, or the Natural Medicine Health Act, Salazar’s talk won’t be news. She gave an overview of DORA’s progress in implementing the initiative, which establishes a framework for people to seek psilocybin sessions. So far, the state has put together a 15-member advisory board with six subcommittees which will provide recommendations on how to implement the initiative. The state legislature passed Senate Bill 290, which allows the state licensing authority to request data on law enforcement incidents, adverse health effects, and psychedelic products and businesses.

Salazar repeatedly returned to one theme: that her job as a regulator was to create rules that address the potential for intentional or unintentional harm, such as how the state should respond to reports of inappropriate behavior from those offering clients psilocybin, or how to assist clients experiencing a mental health crisis. Based on the acknowledgments she made in her talk, it’s evident that Salazar has had close relationships with MAPS, and Oregon officials, specifically Oregon Psilocybin Services section manager Angie Allbee. 

Next up: Jaden Smith 

Jaden Smith, 24, is an actor, musician, and the son of actors Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith. Jaden’s parents and sister have all spoken publicly about their enthusiasm for psychedelics. The first thing I noticed at the Smith talk: BellCo theater, where all keynotes have been held, was remarkably empty during his talk with MAPS’ Global Impact Officer Natalie Ginsberg. Their conversation focused on Smith’s psychedelics experiences — he recounted his first psilocybin trip, where he felt drawn to a specific tree. He told the audience that he likes to be high in a grass field, in the sun, and by the ocean. Ginsberg asked if psychedelics have helped Smith deal with the stresses of fame; he said his experiences with ego dissolution provided new perspectives on himself and celebrity. He offered some tips for people tripping including don’t look at your phone (and in particular, don’t get on TikTok), and if you think the drugs aren’t working, don’t take more.

Smith kept returning to his belief that because psychedelics often lead people to feel empathy for others and for nature, the substances can change the world. As I’m reflecting on this week at the conference, that idea represents a central tension I’ve seen at this conference. Many attendees and speakers, like Smith, are psychonauts, who seek psychedelic drugs as a way to look deeper into themselves, for religious and spiritual reasons, or for recreation. Others, like former Texas governor Rick Perry, see psychedelics as a tool for healing specific mental and physical issues like PTSD, and want to approach it from a regulated medical model where companies develop drugs and administer them with the cooperation of healthcare providers and insurance companies. 

Indigenous voices: “I’m not even part of the conversation.”

On my way to lunch, I spotted a demonstration in the convention center lobby. Members of The Medicine Objective, a Minnesota non-profit dedicated to healing and decolonization and a MAPS community partner**, had sharp criticisms of MAPS and the conference. “We have been marginalized at every step,” said Ana Sofia Cornelius* through tears. Cornelius is owner of Primal Wellness Ltd, a wellness consulting company rooted in decolonized Indigenous wisdom. A small hand-painted cardboard sign beside her read: “I’m not even part of the conversation.” The Medicine Objective's founder and CEO, Tegan Carr*, also said that the organization had a talk scheduled on Wednesday, but their time slot coincided with famed mycologist Paul Stamets’s keynote talk. “Indigenous voices have not been centered in this conference.”

Tiferet Davina*, founder of Alegría Center for Well Being, reminded the small audience gathered around that plant medicines were ancestral beings, and that she’d spoken to Mazatec who felt that those medicines were being corrupted. Davina said she felt the medicines were “being prostituted” at the conference. Yet another speaker asked the audience if anyone had contact information for MAPS leadership so interested parties could contact them with their concerns directly, and acknowledged that by speaking out, she recognizes she might not be invited back to future conferences. 

When Rick Doblin founded MAPS back in 1986, the organization represented the underground, and many in the psychedelic community saw themselves as marginalized underdogs. But with the explosion of interest in psychedelics, the landscape has changed.  Those who were once stigmatized are now becoming people with power, capital, and access to policymakers. As psychedelics enter the mainstream, who gets heard? Who gets fame? Who gets money? And who gets left behind?***

*Editor's note: This post has been updated with the names of speakers. Thank you to The Medicine Objective for sharing these names.

**Clarification: According to the Medicine Objective's COO Sally Jeon, the organization was the MAPS community partner that hosted the BIPOC Chill and Liberation Zone, a dedicated healing space for Black, Brown, Indigenous, and/or people of color. Jeon says MAPS did not provide funding or material support for the space, but connected with the Denver BIPOC psychedelic community for support.

***This tension was evident in the very last session of the conference, which occurred after this post was published — Indigenous activists disrupted Rick Doblin's closing speech to raise their concerns about MAPS' tokenization of Native voices and commodification of psychedelics.

That’s it for the conference! I hope you enjoyed these updates, and a sincere thanks to the folks who have reached out via email or in person with kind words about The Microdose. As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have tips or feedback. We’ll be back in your inbox next Friday with a new This Week in Psychedelics.

If you know anyone who might like the latest on psychedelics in their inbox, feel free to forward this to them, or click below.

Got tips? Email us at themicrodose@berkeley.edu.