Texas passes nation’s first ibogaine research funding bill; Colorado’s first Natural Medicine client; and Psilocybin’s effects wane a year after dosing
Plus: Oregon Psilocybin services releases its first quarterly demographic data report and Could the Czech Republic be the first EU country to approve psilocybin-assisted therapy?
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.
Texas passes nation’s first ibogaine research funding bill
On Wednesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed in a public ceremony the nation’s first ibogaine-related legislation. The state will now 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.”
The bill — House Bill 3717 (or Senate Bill 2308) — also creates a commission to review applicants to run the clinical trial, and says the applicant selected must contribute “an amount of money that is at least equal to the amount of money that the applicant received” in its grant funding from the state. (The Texas Ibogaine Initiative, a campaign spearheaded by the REID Foundation, has pledged to contribute $50 million to the effort.)
At the signing ceremony, Governor Abbott first thanked the advocates standing behind him, including W. Bryan Hubbard, executive director of the Texas Ibogaine Initiative and staunch ibogaine advocate, and Marcus and Amber Capone of VETS, an organization that connects Special Operations veterans with psychedelic retreats and resources. “Texas is now leading the way in the United States for the evaluation of ibogaine as a potential medication that can help improve the lives of so many Americans,” Governor Abbott said after signing the bill. “It is now law.”
Texas Senator Tan Parker, a Republican and one of the bill’s sponsors, sat beside Governor Abbott. In response to how quickly ibogaine might be available, he said that clinical trials can take a long time, but “Texas putting its stamp on [ibogaine] will speed up the process” of allowing eventual access to the drug. He said that within the next 60 days, Texas authorities will begin evaluating trial proposals from universities, hospitals, and drug developers.
Colorado’s first Natural Medicine client
Last Friday, the Center Origin saw its first patient — believed to be the first psilocybin client in Colorado’s newly launched Natural Medicine program. In early April, The Center Origin became the state’s first licensed healing center. (The state has since licensed six more healing centers.) By the end of April, the state had also licensed its first testing laboratory - the final missing piece in the state’s psilocybin ecosystem. After that, the Natural Medicine program was officially open for business. “We received licensed, tested medicine last Tuesday and have already had two journey work sessions with another happening this coming weekend,” Elizabeth Cooke, founder and CEO of The Center Origin, told The Microdose.
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Psilocybin’s effects wane a year after dosing
Earlier this year, researchers published the results of a pilot study in which military veterans with “severe treatment-resistant depression” received a single dose of COMP360, a form of synthetic psilocybin produced by the company Compass Pathways. Three weeks after receiving psilocybin, 9 of the 15 participants showed a “response” to psilocybin, which the researchers define as a greater than 50% decrease in depression symptoms, as measured by the standard Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating scale (MADRS). A follow-up study, published Monday in the Journal of Affective Disorders, reports on the veterans’ outcomes six months to a year after the study.
Only 10 of the 15 original patients participated in the one-year check-in. But of those 10 patients, 8 continued to show reduced MADRS scores six months later. (Whether those 8 were among the 9 who showed a response at three weeks is unclear.) However, those numbers waned at the one-year check-in; at that point, only four showed a response.
The authors acknowledge that this study was an open-label trial, where both participants and researchers know that all participants are receiving an active psilocybin dose, and that fact could affect participants’ expectations and outcomes. The researchers did not assess those expectations. Additionally, the researchers write that participants’ willingness to participate in follow-up measurements could be related to how well they responded to their psilocybin dose. “Future studies should consider similar potential biases when interpreting long-term response to psilocybin,” they write.
Oregon Psilocybin services releases its first quarterly demographic data report
This week, Oregon Psilocybin Services released data from the first quarter of 2025 about its client counts and demographics. OPS launched in January 2023, but this is the first quarter for which this kind of data has been available; the passage of Senate Bill 303 in May 2023 required licensees to record certain types of client data starting in 2025.
The data show that around 1000 people received psilocybin between January and March of this year, taking part in a total of 1509 sessions, which were administered mostly in individual sessions rather than group sessions. All respondents who answered a question about which language they prefer to speak and write in replied with English, and the majority (71%) reported their race and ethnicity as Eastern European, Slavic, Western European, or “other white.” (Ten percent of respondents refused to answer — more than the number of African American, Asian, or Native and Indigenous people combined.)
The majority of clients (65%) were between the ages of 30 and 60, and none reported being older than 80. In reporting their reasons for seeking out psilocybin, popular answers included big-picture goals like general health, change of perspective, and expanded consciousness, as well as specific health concerns, including anxiety, depression, and PTSD.
Could the Czech Republic be the first EU country to approve psilocybin assisted therapy?
Members of the Czech Parliament’s Chamber of Deputies recently passed an amendment to a bill that would allow doctors to prescribe psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy. The bill also proposes several criminal reforms, including legalizing personal cultivation of up to 100 grams of cannabis and instituting rules and penalties for misusing AI for things like deepfakes.
The amendment would allow doctors with specialized qualifications to administer psilocybin-assisted therapy to patients over the age of 18. The session would require “repeated monitoring of the mental state and vital functions of a patient”, and records from the session would have to be kept for 10 years. Physicians who violate these rules would be subject to a 300,000 to 500,000 CZK fine — between $14,000 and $23,000 USD.
With 142 of 159 members voting in favor, the bill passed the chamber. It now heads to the Czech senate for a vote.
Journey Colab founder Jeeshan Chowdhury announced on LinkedIn that the company is shuttering. The company had received FDA authorization for a clinical trial using psychedelics at rehab centers, but “the FDA’s decision last year to reject approval of MDMA for PTSD sent a chill through the market,” he wrote. If you will be at the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver next week, learn more during a panel discussion with Chowdhury, Field Trip co-founder Ronan Levy, and me. Our panel “The greatest teacher: Lessons from bygone and reborn psychedelic startups” will be in Bluebird Ballroom 1c on Wednesday, June 18 at 12:20pm.
Speaking of Psychedelic Science: Join The Microdose editor Malia Wollan, former UC Berkeley - Ferriss fellows Tiney Ricciardi and Mattha Busby, and me for a panel on psychedelic journalism. “The Psychedelic Beat: Journalism and a Rapidly Shifting Story” will be held in the Four Seasons on Friday, June 20 at 11:30am.
A case report published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology Reports describes how a 21-year-old Texas man punctured his own eye with a pencil after taking psilocybin mushrooms. He died from his injuries. The report’s authors mention that the patient had no personal history with self-harm or mental health struggles, but that his father had died by suicide a decade before. “As psilocybin becomes more accessible and potentially recognized as a medical treatment, our report highlights the need for public education by medical professionals and further research on its safety, especially regarding the risks of self-inflicted ocular trauma and death in young adults,” they write.
The Washington Post explains what ibogaine is and recaps recent news in ibogaine advocacy, such as the successful move in Texas to fund more research into the substance.
Fox News published their own explainer about psychedelics and recent advocacy around using psilocybin and MDMA in treating mental health issues.
The Daily Beast reports that an American tourist recently died of organ failure after an ayahuasca retreat in Peru.
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