María Sabina, Gordon Wasson, and the Human Transfer Point in Psilocybin History
How a Mazatec healer in Huautla de Jiménez and a New York banker became central, unequal figures in the story of how psilocybin entered Western public awareness.
The running archive.
Reporting, essays, and analysis across psychedelic medicine, business, policy, history, and consciousness.
How Richard Alpert became Ram Dass, why Be Here Now mattered, and how his path diverged from Timothy Leary's while still sharing psychedelic roots.
How a pharmaceutical researcher's accidental discovery became the chemical catalyst for one of America's most profound cultural upheavals—and how government fear transformed it into a weapon.
Chemical analysis of a 1000-year-old shamanic bundle reveals sophisticated knowledge of DMT preparation—and raises questions about consciousness, spirituality, and what shamans have always known.
The best-supported answer still begins at 5-HT2A, but the downstream story on plasticity and biomarkers is much less settled.
First full week roundup.
Compass says FDA accepted its PTSD IND, while RAND finds 23% of Americans support legal psilocybin mushrooms.
UNM's new Phase 1 PTSD study asks whether psilocybin-assisted therapy can be delivered safely in a peer-supported group format.
Oregon's regulated psilocybin program is real and growing, while Washington's SB 5921 remains stuck in committee.
A Senate bill would create a dedicated VA office for psychedelic therapies. The largest microdosing study finds effects limited to dosing day. The FDA lifts a two-year hold on 5-MeO-DMT. And ibogaine's mechanism turns out to be stranger than expected.
Otsuka is buying Transcend for up to $1.225 billion around a methylone PTSD program that has already reached Phase 3.
The journal said authors withheld protocol violations at the MP4 study site and failed to fully declare competing interests.
Someone asked. So here we are.
Indiana University opens psilocybin trial for veterans with co-occurring depression and substance use disorder. Hopkins OCD study nears completion. UC Irvine starts tracking what ibogaine does to the brain.
A scan of ClinicalTrials.gov for what's been moving. Cybin hits Phase 3, MDMA goes to the therapists, psilocybin accumulates indications.
After the FDA rejected Lykos' MDMA therapy application, MAPS shifted toward policy, education, and the long game.