Issue 54 / Wednesday June 8, 2022

 

Hello and welcome (back) 👋

⚠️ Update: Starting now, Daily Mushroom will be shifting to a biweekly newsletter on a trial basis.

Here’s what’s in store for you in today’s issue:

🍄The most famous psychedelic book comes to Netflix 📺

🍄 What machine learning tells us about microdosing

🍄 Join a revolution of wellbeing 💙

🍄 MAPS is under fire?

🍄 And more.

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How to Change Your Mind comes to Netflix!

The most famous book on psychedelics becoming a Netflix series this July 12th.

If you haven’t read Michael Pollan’s best-selling book How to Change Your Mind, you’re missing out. The book provides one of the most comprehensive summaries on the history and future of psychedelic research, covering so many fascinating details that we could never fit in this 5-minute newsletter.

Now, the book is being transformed into a 4 part docu-series on the healing potential of LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, and mescaline. The 

The psychedelics sector gained a ton of traction after the documentary Fantastic Fungi was released — we can only imagine the positive impact this series will have

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What machine learning tells us about microdosing

The benefits of microdosing can be so subtle that they’re hard to measure in clinical settings, which is why this study turned to machine learning and natural language processing.

Essentially, patients were asked a series of subjective questions following psilocybin microdoses or placebo doses, and the interviews were analyzed with AI.

The key takeaways?

  1. A “sentiment analysis” measured the connotation of each word as positive, negative, or neutral. Sentiment scores increased while microdosing, suggesting that psilocybin has a positive effect on mood and subjective well-being.
  2. Verbosity (length of responses in number of words) increased for all questions when microdosing, which may reflect increased enthusiasm, motivation, and energy.
  3. Semantic variability (how much the meaning of consecutive words changed) was not affected by microdosing. This implies that microdosing does not lead to incoherent speech and might not enhance creativity like many believe. 

It’s important to note that the microdose were fairly large – 500 mg of dried mushrooms. It would be interesting to see how a 100 or 200 mg dose compares 🤔

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Cybin (CYBN) announced year-end financial results including C$53.6M in cash and a C$67.6M net loss. The company is initiating a phase 1/2a psilocybin trial for depression in a few weeks.

Ceruvia Lifesciences submitted an application for a Phase 1 LSD trial targeting migraine prevention.

Clearmind Medicine (CMND) appointed John Krystal, Chair of the Psychiatry Department at Yale and a leading expert on alcoholism, to its Scientific Advisory Board to support the development of psychedelic treatments for addiction. So far, Clearmind’s MEAI formulation has significantly reduced alcohol consumption in mice receiving a daily dose for 2 weeks.

Mydecine (MYCO) received FDA approval for its multi-site psilocybin trial for smoking cessation, which has received $4M in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health.

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MAPS under fire for alleged investigator misconduct

Health Canada is reviewing all previously approved MDMA trial applications after a former trial participant came forward with sexual assault allegations.

Footage from MAPS’ PTSD trial in 2015 shows patient Meaghan Buisson being physically restrained and spooned by two therapists (one of them unlicensed) during an MDMA therapy session.

The session was recorded to ensure that therapists were following treatment protocols, but the footage wasn’t actually reviewed for 6 years. MAPS is finally looking into recordings from all past patients.

“I just want people to realize, this is not against MDMA. This is not against psychedelics,” Meaghan ensures.

“I’m just saying that if this drug is going to be legalized and medicalized in this way, then there is a certain degree of safety and fiduciary responsibility and credibility that goes into being part of the medical system — and especially with vulnerable subjects.”

You’re all caught up! See you next Wednesday 👋