Psychedelic preparation going digital, more Canadian raids, and a new psilocybin services bill in Arizona
Plus: Filling psychedelics knowledge gaps and the public perception of psychedelics
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.
Psychedelic preparation going digital
The current model for psychedelic-assisted therapy includes at least one “preparation” session with a guide or therapist, which helps a patient or client better understand what they might encounter during their trip. In a new paper published in Scientific Reports, researchers from University College London, Harvard, and Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet recruited study participants from psilocybin retreat centers and asked them for feedback on a smartphone-based, self-directed, digital psychedelic preparation course called DIPP, short for Digital Intervention for Psychedelic Preparation.
The digital program, which takes place over 21 days and includes information about psychedelics, meditation options, and mood ratings, which participants can complete on their own time. “‘Meditation’ was consistently identified as a valuable preparatory component for psychedelic experiences,” the authors wrote. “A recent longitudinal study found that more days of loving-kindness or compassion meditation practice prior to a psychedelic experience seemed to buffer against certain challenging psychedelic experiences.”
While the tool has not yet been used outside of a research setting, the authors suggest it might be a less costly alternative to the in-person preparation session often used in clinical trials and with clients in Oregon’s psilocybin program. A three-week digital program allows people to “take an active role in the management of their own health,” the authors write.
More Canadian raids
Last Thursday, the police department of Hamilton, Ontario raided three illegal mushroom dispensaries in the city. They arrested and charged three men, and, in a press release, claimed to have seized “over $100,000 worth” of psilocybin products. One of the shops, called Shroomyz, was previously raided in October 2023; its Toronto location was raided in November 2022. For the last two years, police in Canadian cities like Hamilton, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver have been raiding stores selling illicit psilocybin products; some store owners consider it an act of civil disobedience to stay open.
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The State of Psychedelics: Psilocybin services bill in Arizona
Last week, Arizona’s Senate Health and Human Services Committee unanimously approved Senate Bill 1570, which would create a psilocybin services program in the state. On Monday, Senate leadership voted on whether to allow the bill to bypass debate; at least one senator objected, so the bill now will go back to the whole Senate to discuss and potentially amend. If passed, SB 1570 would require the state to adopt rules around its psilocybin program and begin accepting applications by January 1, 2026.
Filling psychedelic knowledge gaps
In 2023, members of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology gathered in Nice, France for the New Frontiers Meeting to discuss knowledge gaps that will be important to address as psychedelics move forward as potential medicines. Those researchers published a paper this week in Neuroscience Applied detailing open questions they identified at that meeting. Those inquiries include how pharmacological effects of psychedelics could differ from person to person: the authors write that genetics may contribute to how the body responds to LSD, and that at least one study’s results suggest that the onset of drugs’ subjective effects may come sooner in women than in men.
The researchers also discuss the difficulty in comparing the effects and potencies of different psychedelics. How much psilocybin is roughly equivalent to a tab of LSD? “Such findings are crucial for the interpretation of clinical trials using different psychedelics,” they write. “For example, the psilocybin dose of 40 mg used in patients with alcohol use disorder can be considered equivalent to the dose of 0.2 mg of LSD used in patients with anxiety disorder.” In addition, they discuss how predictive models might help researchers understand how other factors, like personality traits or biomarkers, correlate with treatment outcomes.
It’s also worth noting that about half of the paper’s authors have grants from or have advised and/or consulted for private companies, ranging from psychedelic start-ups to big pharmaceutical companies. While EU regulatory agencies like the European Medicines Agency have been slow to support psychedelics research, private companies have been funding researchers’ work in Europe.
Psychedelics’ public perception
In a special report for psychedelics business insights company reMind, Psychedelic Alpha founder Josh Hardman dives into changing public perceptions of psychedelics. Hardman draws from a variety of sources: for instance, to understand changing interest in psychedelics, he looked to sources including News on the Web (NOW), and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) to search how often the word “psychedelics” was mentioned by news sites, magazines, blogs, books, academic papers, and TV in the last two decades. In the NOW data, Hardman writes, “the frequency of ‘psychedelics’ in media has increased significantly in the last decade, with ‘psychedelics’ being mentioned 1.45 times per million words versus just 0.29 in 2010.”
Hardman also references several studies on healthcare practitioners’ attitudes about the drugs: the vast majority of those polled believe psychedelics show promise as treatment. He also includes concerns from patients, like social stigma and logistical concerns around accessing treatment. Overall, he writes, “it’s clear that, among both the public and healthcare practitioners, awareness of and interest in the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelics has increased significantly in the past half-decade.”
In The Intercept, journalist Mattha Busby reports on MAPS Israel’s efforts to start a new study that would use MDMA-assisted therapy to treat PTSD in 400 survivors of the October 7 Hamas attack.
How much do psychedelics facilitator training programs prepare students for supporting people who are experiencing or have experienced a bad trip? Ecstatic Integration surveyed training courses and reports.
The Daily Beast interviews GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons about the 2018 psilocybin trip that he says helped him heal from the PTSD he developed after serving in Vietnam. Parsons, a billionaire, has since given millions to psychedelics efforts, including the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.
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