Ibogaine researcher Nolan Williams dies at 42; DOI and DOC use in the U.S. rare; Money, power, and hostility in psychedelics
Plus: California Gov signs bill that will expedite psychedelic research, and volunteer bias in psychedelic research
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.
Stanford ibogaine researcher Nolan Williams dies at 42
Stanford researcher Nolan Williams, known for his pioneering work on ibogaine, died by suicide on October 8. On Williams’s personal website, his wife, Dr. Kristin Raj, posted a tribute. “He was an adoring father to our two sparkling and soulful young children, and he instilled in them a sense of adventure and deep courage. He grew into a gifted wave kitesurfer ahead of the curve, somehow taught me to snowboard with him, and loved listening to Dead and Co. together with our kids,” Raj wrote. “And he was an extraordinary neuroscientist and physician whose work has transformed the field of mental health.”
Colleagues praised Williams for his work developing treatments for people with depression, which included studies using transcranial magnetic stimulation and ibogaine. “Everyone at HHS is mourning the passing of Stanford Professor Dr. Nolan Williams,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted on X. “Dr. Williams envisioned a world where the field of psychiatry addresses the root causes of depression and where patients receive precision treatments tailored to their individual brains.” Secretary Kennedy went on to write, “To everyone suffering from depression or suicidal thoughts: you are valued, and we see you. Reversing the mental health crisis is a key priority for me. Dr. Williams made a profound impact on the world—one that will endure. We are praying for his family and will honor his legacy by advancing research and delivering innovative mental health therapies to patients.”
“Nolan’s groundbreaking research, particularly as it relates to ibogaine’s effects in reducing post traumatic stress, anxiety, and depression in veterans with traumatic brain injury, has brought new hope to countless individuals and will redefine the future of brain health,” the advocacy group Americans for Ibogaine wrote in a statement posted to X. “His research earned global recognition, but what defined him was his relentless dedication to patients, students, and colleagues – and his belief that science, at its best, is an act of service,” MAPS wrote in a statement.
“His legacy is not just in his work, but in the lives he changed and in the work we now continue,” the psychedelic advocacy group VETS posted on X, along with a video tribute to Williams.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, dial 988 to speak with a trained listener via the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Visit 988lifeline.org for crisis chat services or for more information.
DOI and DOC use in the U.S. rare
Two compounds known by their acronyms DOI and DOC are used within the research world to test psychedelic effects without having to get the often onerous approvals required to do research with Schedule I compounds, including classic psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD. However, 2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine (DOI) and 2,5-dimethoxy-4-chloroamphetamine (DOC) could soon become harder for scientists to use in research studies. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has proposed moving the two previously unscheduled substances to Schedule I, in part because the agency claimed the drugs were being used recreationally. After a hearing in November 2024, a DEA Administrative Law Judge wrote in a June 2025 ruling that the DEA should move ahead with its plans.
A new paper in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs published by public health researchers Joseph Palamar of New York University and Nicole Fitzgerald of Columbia University analyzed the availability of these drugs and searched for evidence of recreational use, as well as the history of “DOx” drugs — the class of substances that includes DOI and DOC, first synthesized by Alexander Shulgin. They pored over drug testing data collected by the DEA, drug seizure data collected by law enforcement agencies, national public health surveys, published research papers and case reports, and their own data surveying New York nightclub and dance festival attendees about their drug use. (For more on that work, read our 5 Questions for Palamar.)
Overall, the authors conclude that recreational use of DOI and DOC in the United States is rare. Based on responses to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health collected between 2005 and 2023, fewer than 40 people surveyed about their drug use have said they’ve used DOC, and only 10 said they’d used DOI. The NDSUH is an annual survey of tens of thousands of Americans; for instance, in 2023, it included over 67,000 people. “This equates to less than 0.01% of the population [of the U.S.] having ever used, and it is unknown whether use occurred recently or decades ago,” the authors write. Drug testing from law enforcement data also suggest recreational use of the drugs is rare: between 2005 and 2024, a national drug testing lab detected DOC in 795 samples. (The authors note that this is a low number compared to the 160,000 samples that tested positive for fentanyl in 2023 alone.) Additionally, there were three law enforcement seizures of DOC between 2017 and 2024, and no known seizures of DOI. “If drug seizure trends do indeed indicate drug availability, then DOC and especially DOI do not appear to be widely available,” they write. There is, the researchers write, two known deaths related to DOC poisoning between 2008 and 2024, as well as one non-fatal poisoning.
“Although neither DOC nor DOI appears to be prevalent, the U.S. DEA is expected to classify these two substances as Schedule I drugs this year,” the authors write. “While scheduling a low-prevalence synthetic drug can arguably lead to a further decrease in availability, there is now increased attention to DOx due to this intended scheduling, which can potentially lead to increased interest in use.”
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Money, power, and hostility in psychedelics
Last Friday, the psychedelics non-profit Psymposia released a 201-page report called The Psychedelic Syndicate. The report investigated “how a small group of Silicon Valley elites sought to capture the psychedelic therapy industry — using a network of affiliated organizations to scapegoat critics while pressuring regulators to approve their botched MDMA clinical trials,” according to the group. The report covers the growing influence of the philanthropy group Psychedelic Science Funders Collaborative, and delves into the Food and Drug Administration’s 2024 rejection of Lykos Therapeutics’s new drug application for MDMA. The report also includes some new allegations, such as the claim that Dr. Walter Dunn, the only member of the FDA advisory committee who voted in support of approving MDMA, did not adequately disclose his ties to the group Veterans Mental Health Leadership Coalition, where according to Psymposia he “served on VMHLC’s advisory board alongside [Brett] Waters,” the co-founder of the psychedelic advocacy group Reason for Hope.
In an email to The Microdose, Dunn said he never had an official position or financial relationship with VMHLC, and that his work with the group ended in 2022. Additionally, he notes that the last time he had contact with Waters was late 2023. “These interactions with VMHLC were not reported to the FDA because they did not qualify under any definition of the ‘Outside Positions’ portion of the Confidential Financial Disclosure Report which I completed prior to the advisory meeting. Dunn said that the reporting period for these ‘Outside Positions’ only extends for the preceding 12 months. “I was transparent in my public comments during the June 2024 advisory meeting that I have a longstanding interest in veteran issues as I treat veterans clinically and am a veteran myself.”
The report also alleged that neuroscientist Matt Baggott told Psymposia that he “was using a custom large language model (LLM) to manufacture discourse on Reddit as part of a low-cost PR strategy” around the time of the FDA decision. Baggott is the CEO of Tactogen, a public benefit corporation developing novel, MDMA-like drugs. In response to a request for comment, Baggott told The Microdose: “I am guessing the reason Psymposia is weaponising a year-old conversation about a tiny experiment I ran is that they are reacting to Hamilton Morris talking on popular podcasts about how Psymposia didn’t disclose taking Sarlo money to stop the Lykos NDA. I think they should all stop rehashing Biden-era disputes and instead focus on our current crises.”
In the aftermath of the FDA’s rejection of Lykos’s new drug application for MDMA last summer, many have blamed Psymposia for its failure, as the group raised concerns about research ethics and abuse allegations associated with MAPS’ clinical trials. As Baggott alluded to above, a July WIRED piece reported that the Sarlo Charitable Fund had donated $185,000 to Psymposia in 2024 on the recommendation of Susie Sarlo, whose had previously sued a MAPS board member Vicky Dulai, alleging Dulai’s behavior constituted elder abuse against Susie Sarlo’s father George Sarlo. (The elder Sarlo was a significant donor to MAPS.) At the time, Psymposia’s Brian Normand told WIRED that Psymposia is “nobody’s attack dog,” but many continue to speculate that Susie Sarlo’s money is evidence that Psymposia was paid to do her bidding.
It’s in this ultra-polarized environment that Psymposia’s report emerges. In the document, Psymposia provides evidence that Lykos and PSFC launched a coordinated PR campaign attacking them, and details about how Psymposia member (and report author) Neşe Devenot was personally harassed in the aftermath of the FDA decision. There are clearly deep ideological rifts in the psychedelic space which have often devolved into personal attacks. Psymposia and its members have, in many recent instances, been part of these mostly online volleys. In his newsletter Ecstatic Integration, Jules Evans writes that those who are outraged that Psymposia received funding from a philanthropist, show “a weird misunderstanding of NGOs - NGOs have a mission, stated on their website, then they seek funding for that mission. That’s true of pro-Lykos NGOs like Heroic Hearts, Reason to Hope or Healing Breakthrough and anti-Lykos NGOs like Psymposia. Hopefully the NGO leadership believe in their mission, and aren’t forced by donors to do something that goes against their values. In Psymposia’s case, I don’t think anyone can doubt they believe what they say. They were attacking MAPS years before they ever got funded.”
Similarly, Evans writes that Psymposia’s claims that “PSFC donors have a plan to ‘capture’ the psychedelic therapy industry for their own profit is unfair, in my view. It’s attributing the lowest motivation to their actions - greed.” This is the same accusation–greed–that critics have levied against Psymposia’s campaign against MAPS. “In both cases it’s an ungenerous and paranoid interpretation of another’s motives,” writes Evans.
California Governor signs bill that will expedite psychedelic research
Last Friday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1103, which is expected to relieve bureaucratic red tape around research study approvals, and in particular, for psychedelic research. Currently, research studies involving Schedule I or II substances or any controlled substance use disorder treatment research must undergo special review by a group called the Research Advisory Panel of California (RAP-C).The new law now allows RAP-C to expedite the review of some of those studies. The criteria laid out in the bill would allow expedited review of studies involving human subjects if the drug being studied has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as an Investigational New Drug — a designation that includes MDMA and some forms of psilocybin, LSD, and 5-MeO-DMT — or any research group that has received clearance from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
The bill was introduced in February, passed both chambers in September, and had been awaiting Governor Newsom’s signature for several weeks. The legislation was sponsored by the psychedelic advocacy group VETS.
Volunteer bias in psychedelic research
Recently, the Food and Drug Administration released their complete response letter detailing its rationale for rejecting Lykos’s new drug application for MDMA. The letter touched on several methodological issues, one of which was that roughly 40% of enrolled participants had previously used MDMA. That number, the FDA’s letter said, was “much higher” than average use in the population of people with PTSD, raising the question of whether selection bias was at play.
A study recently published in Journal of Psychoactive Drugs set out to investigate volunteer bias in psychedelic studies. Using MTurk, Amazon’s digital marketplace where people can complete studies and tasks for middling pay, the researchers recruited around 700 people to report on their use of a variety of psychoactive drugs. After that, they asked participants about their willingness to participate in three types of follow-up studies (a one-off survey, a longitudinal study, or a study where psychedelics are administered), and whether or not they’d be willing to do it for free or if they’d only participate for a small fee ($7.50).
Overall, the researchers found that psychedelic use over the last 5 years was a predictor of whether people were willing to volunteer in these hypothetical unpaid studies. In fact, people who reported greater psychedelic use within the past 5 years were 3 to 5 times more likely to say they’d participate in those studies. The researchers did not, however, find any correlations between people’s history of psychedelic use and their willingness to participate in paid studies.
The authors note that MTurk participants aren’t representative of the general population, either, and that how people answer questions in these surveys may not reflect how they’d actually behave in real life (i.e., if they’d actually follow through on volunteering for these hypothetical studies). They also note that while more research is clearly needed to understand the extent to which volunteer bias affects psychedelic studies, “strategies for sidestepping these problems are also worthy of consideration.” These might include building relationships with participants from marginalized groups, and conducting study sessions on evenings and weekends. “Efforts related to increasing the inclusivity of diverse samples, including those who have no experience with psychedelics, would likely benefit psychedelic research,” they write.
Insiders who worked on Massachusetts’s 2024 Yes on Question 4 campaign review lessons learned from the failed psychedelics ballot initiative effort in Lucid News.
Psychedelic drugs are illegal in South Africa, but “self-appointed healers and shamans” are still openly advertising their services, reports BBC. While some people say the experience has helped them heal, others speak of the potential harms, such as a client on ibogaine who tried to strangle his guide, and another 26-year-old client who died after using ibogaine.
Psychedelic Alpha’s Josh Hardman interviews licensed clinical psychologist Samuli Kangaslampi about how psychedelics affect recall and memory, real or false.
Spectrum News reports that The Ohio State University has received a $400,000 grant to create a program that will train health care workers and first responders to treat people experiencing adverse effects in response to psychedelic trips.
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