Even more psychedelics bills, changing western views on hallucinating, and a new name for 5-MeO-DMT?

Plus: Results from psychedelic brain imaging feasibility study and gaining clarity on perennial psychedelic research issues

Happy Friday, and welcome back to The Microdose. 

The State of Psychedelics: Even more bills!

Last week, 22 senators in Washington state teamed up to sponsor the Psilocybin Services Wellness and Opportunity Act, or Senate Bill 5263. If passed, the bill would establish psilocybin services in the state through a process similar to Oregon’s. The state would have a two year development period, during which they’d appoint a psilocybin advisory board to make recommendations for state rules and guidelines for providing services. The bill is a modified version of Senate Bill 5660, a psilocybin bill that was introduced during the 2022 legislative session but never advanced. In his newsletter Psychedelic Week, drug law expert and former Oregon Psilocybin Advisory board member Mason Marks detailed the differences between last year’s bill and this year’s version.

In Arizona, four representatives introduced House Bill 2486, which would appropriate $30 million from the state’s general funds for psilocybin research grants and establish a psilocybin research advisory council to review applications.

And in New Hampshire, representative Kevin Verville (R) introduced House Bill 328-FN, which would amend current law to remove penalties for “possession or use of a hallucinogenic drug.” The bill has been referred to the legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety committee. 

These new bills, plus those already introduced in Illinois, Virginia, Connecticut, California, and New York, add up to at least eight states with new psychedelics legislation in just the past month, with more bills in the works.

Changing western views on hallucinating

In modern western cultures, hallucinations are often associated with psychopathology or psychiatric disorders. But the phenomenon is universal, spanning time and cultures, researchers from the International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research, and Service (ICEERS) in Barcelona write in a new paper published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry. They point out that the Bible, for instance, describes hallucinations, and write, “90% of human cultures have developed some technique to induce altered states of consciousness.” 

The researchers detail the history of western theories on hallucinations and states of consciousness in which hallucinations are common, including grief, near-death experiences, and, of course, psychedelics. They argue that context and cultural beliefs can influence people’s experiences even in people experiencing schizophrenic-like hallucinations. “When schizotypal experiences were assessed in psychotic patients comparing people with strong religious beliefs (Christian evangelists) and those without spiritual beliefs, evangelists reported a higher number of positive hallucinatory experiences than the group of psychotic patients. This was related to the interpretation of the experiences, since evangelists attributed their hallucinations to divine intervention,” the authors write. 

“Like imagination, hallucinations can be stormy and dysfunctional when part of a psychopathological disease. But they can also be therapeutic, adaptive, a source of creativity, joy, fulfillment, and knowledge,” they conclude. “This could be one of the reasons to support the modern use of hallucinogenic drugs in psychiatry: because they can produce healing transformation through an enhanced knowledge of the subjects’ reality.”

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A new name for 5-MeO-DMT?

5-MeO-DMT is the psychoactive tryptamine found in the secretions of the toad Bufo alvarius — and it’s also a mouthful to say or type. The World Health Organization recently proposed calling 5-MeO-DMT “mebufoteninum” instead. The WHO made the proposal in its International Nonproprietary Names for Pharmaceutical Substances list, reports Psychedelic Alpha. Whether the new name will catch on remains to be seen. On the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s database PubChem, there are dozens of entries for the drug’s synonyms, which range from opaque combinations of letters and numbers to slightly more pronounceable variations, like mebufotenen.

Gaining clarity on perennial psychedelic research issues

Though Compass’s phase 2 psilocybin clinical trials results “may be interpreted as promising, the study was unfortunately a missed opportunity to gain clarity on problems that have plagued research in this area to date, and also raised concerns regarding safety,” Johns Hopkins researcher Natalie Gukasyan writes in a new paper published in Cell Press’s journal Med.

Compass’s study results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in November 2022; the researchers concluded that a 25 mg dose of psilocybin lowered participants’ treatment-resistant depression scores three weeks after treatment, but a 10 mg or 1 mg dose did not. Soon after the paper was released, researchers (including Gukasyan) voiced concerns about the high rate of adverse events reported by participants, including suicidal ideation.

In her new paper, Gukasyan suggests that shortcomings in Compass’s methodologies could be avenues for future research. Compass’s study gave participants just one dose, while other studies include more than one dosing session; Gukasyan suggests that future research might investigate whether repeated doses have “additive therapeutic effects.” She also points out a perennial criticism in psychedelic research: the ability of participants and research staff to correctly guess whether participants have received a psychedelic or a placebo could affect results. And finally, given the Compass study’s high rate of adverse effects, Gukasyan points out that future studies could include more detailed data on the onset and specifics of suicidal ideation and other negative symptoms like insomnia or anxiety. 

Results from psychedelic brain imaging feasibility study

In our second-ever issue in November 2021, we reported on psychedelics start-up Cybin’s plans to measure participants’ brain activity during ketamine therapy using a brain imaging device shaped like a helmet. This week, Cybin issued a press release announcing that Kernel, its partner company, which designed the brain imaging helmet, has completed a feasibility study. Fifteen participants came into the lab twice; all participants received a saline placebo dose during their first session and a ketamine dose their second session. The feasibility study, the company says, demonstrated that Kernel’s brain imaging device measured changes in brain activity associated with psychedelic experiences and recorded differences in activity between ketamine sessions and saline sessions. The company noted that the small, portable device could lend itself to more widespread use in clinical settings.  

• Atmos explores the intersection of psychedelics and climate activism. 

• Ohio State researchers are conducting a survey about psychedelic use among “gender and sexual minority adults.”

• In DoubleBlind, writer Madison Margolin takes readers inside legendary psychedelic chemist Sasha Shulgin’s “ramshackle laboratory,” and explores the legacy of his work, including current work from the Alexander Shulgin Research Institute.  

• University of Exeter researchers are investigating whether ketamine can be used to treat gambling addiction.

• Given Alberta’s recent legalization of psychedelic therapy, will Canada lead the psychedelic renaissance? In The Conversation, historian Erika Dyck reviews the country’s psychedelic past and future. 

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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