The long history of Psilocybe’s evolution; New bills in Indiana, California, and New Jersey; and COMPASS partners with a healthcare non-profit
Plus: A big jump in California’s hallucinogen-related ER visits, and could microdosing hurt the heart?
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.
The long history of Psilocybe’s evolution
Magic mushrooms have been around for a very long time, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. Researchers from London, Mexico, and the U.S. sequenced the genomes of over 50 mushroom samples representing 20 types from the Psilocybe genus, and they found that the mushrooms first arose something like 67 million years ago, or around the same time dinosaurs were wiped out by a giant asteroid. While there are over 165 species of Psilocybe, just five had been previously sequenced, the authors write, and this wider analysis sheds light on the genus’s evolution. They report that there was a “deep split” in the genus’s genes: the researchers discovered there were two different gene clusters that allow Psilocybe to produce psilocybin, suggesting the genus might have independently evolved that ability twice.
The State of Psychedelics: New bills in Indiana, California, and New Jersey
Last week, Indiana state senator Ed Charbonneau (R) introduced Senate Bill 139, which would establish a state research fund to study the use of psilocybin in treating PTSD, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, chronic pain, and migraines. The studies would include veterans and first responders as study participants. On Wednesday, the Senate’s Health and Provider Services Committee unanimously voted to advance the bill, which will now head to the Senate’s Appropriations Committee.
Meanwhile, California’s legislators have amended and advanced AB 941, a bill first introduced in 2023 by Assemblymember Marie P. McGowan (R) to allow hospitals to purchase controlled substances. The bill has now undergone a complete overhaul and is called the “End Veteran Suicide Act”; it would allow licensed clinical counselors to administer psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) to combat veterans with a traumatic brain injury, PTSD, or addiction. As currently drafted, the bill would allow PAT only as part of a minimum of 30 therapy sessions, attended by two or three licensed professional clinical counselors, with each “therapy session” being a minimum of 12 hours in duration.
The amended bill comes after Governor Newsom vetoed a decriminalization bill last year, with a letter explaining his decision and encouraging legislators to introduce bills that set guidelines for psychedelics’ therapeutic use. Last week, the State Assembly’s Health Committee unanimously voted to advance AB 941 to the Appropriations Committee.
Also in California: organizers working on a ballot initiative called DecrimCA recently announced the end of their campaign. “Unfortunately, we only got 67% of the signatures needed this time and will not qualify for the November 2024 ballot,” campaign director Ryan Munevar wrote to the campaign’s newsletter subscribers last week. The initiative proposed allowing “cultivation, manufacturing, testing, distribution, transportation, possession, and consumption of an unlimited amount of magic mushrooms and psilocybin infused products.”
New Jersey Senator Nicholas Scutari (D) introduced S2283, or the “Psilocybin Behavioral Health Access and Services Act,” which proposes the state establish a board to investigate and implement a psilocybin services program within 18 months of the bill’s passing.
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COMPASS partners with NJ healthcare non-profit
Psychedelic company Compass Pathways announced a new partnership with Hackensack Meridian Health, a New Jersey-based healthcare network. Hackensack’s network includes 18 hospitals, and its collaboration with Compass will investigate how Compass’s proprietary formulation of psilocybin, which it calls COMP360, could be rolled out to patients if it receives approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
That approval still seems a ways off. So far, Compass has reported promising results in its phase 2 clinical trial results using COMP360 to treat depression, but it has yet to announce results from phase 3 trials, which started about a year ago, which would be necessary for applying for FDA approval.
A big jump in California’s hallucinogen-related ER visits
As excitement about psychedelics has grown, use of these drugs has increased, as has exposure to psychedelics-related risks. In a new paper published in the journal Addiction, Stanford researchers Nicolas Garel, Steven Tate, and Anna Lembke, along with Kristin Nash of the William G. Nash Foundation, analyzed hallucinogen-related emergency room visits and hospitalizations between 2016 and 2022 and found that they increased by more than 50% in that six-year span. The researchers also point to another concerning trend: there is a lack of public health data tracking people who seek medical care after taking hallucinogens. In the medical field, clinicians use ICD-10 codes to classify patients’ diagnoses for treatment and insurance billing. But the codes lump a wide range of drugs, including MDMA and ketamine under “hallucinogens.” “Aggregating these diverse drugs into one category makes it difficult to assess the changing landscape of use and related harms,” the authors write.
Could microdosing hurt the heart?
Psychedelics like psilocybin, MDMA, LSD, and DMT act on serotonin receptors, and previous research has found that other drugs that act on serotonin receptors, such as the weight loss drug fen-phen, can cause fibrosis, or the thickening of heart valves. That, in turn, can lead to serious or even fatal heart issues like arrhythmias or valvular heart disease. So far, there’s been little research on the link between repeated psychedelics use and heart health, but this week, researchers at the University of Fribourg Center for Psychiatric Research in Switzerland published a paper in the Journal of Psychopharmacology reviewing the existing evidence. “It is possible that chronic microdosing may carry a risk of fibrosis and valvular heart disease, which should be assessed in future studies,” the authors write. “Any future work considering longer microdosing regimens should incorporate breaks and regular screening for vascular abnormalities.”
The Intercept reports that the Ukrainian military is experimenting with giving service members “microdoses” of ibogaine to treat brain injuries and “promote battle readiness,” including its possible use of ibogaine as “a battlefield energy supplement other than amphetamine.” The Economist reports that Ukrainian soldiers are also being treated with ketamine.
Much of the public discourse on psychedelics centers around life-changing trips, ones that cure or save or ruin people. But what about the so-so trip? The meh trip? “I suspect there is a great ‘silent majority’ of psychedelic experiences in the middle, between heaven and hell,” writes Jules Evans in an issue of his newsletter Ecstatic Integration.
The city of Ypsilanti, Michigan passed a resolution “declaring that the investigation and arrest of individuals involved with the personal use, growth, and possession of entheogenic plants, including those scheduled at state and federal levels, be the lowest priority for the city.”
The Guardian visits InnerTrek, one of Oregon’s psilocybin training programs.
The New York Times reviews Tripping on Utopia, historian Benjamin Breen’s new book about anthropologist Margaret Mead’s little-known work on psychedelics. (NPR’s Fresh Air also interviewed Breen about the book.)
The FDA’s non-profit, the Reagan-Udall Foundation is having a two-day virtual conference on psychedelic clinical study design.
A Washington Post feature by UC Berkeley-Ferriss fellow Meryl Davids Landau explores how some terminally ill cancer patients are using psychedelics in their end-of-life care.
Print and audio journalists: Apply for The Ferriss – UC Berkeley Psychedelic Journalism Fellowship $10,000 fellowships to report stories on psychedelics. Find the application, FAQ, and more information at the link. Applications due 1/31.
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