Here’s what’s in store for you in today’s issue:
🍄 30 years of depression vs. two shroom trips
🍄 The mushroom dispensary that wants to make bad trips obsolete
🍄 Toad venom improves life satisfaction 🐸
🍄 Psychedelic startup makes a deal with Big Pharma
🍄 And more.
Steve struggled with depression for 30 years. Traditional antidepressants numbed both his highs and lows, leaving him feeling like a “functional zombie”. Things finally changed when he volunteered for a psilocybin trial at Imperial College London. “With the first dose, I felt joy like I’ve never experienced – and more like myself than I’ve ever felt… It took from not knowing myself at all to having a sense of what my place was in the greater scheme of things,” he said. The second dose was much more challenging, but “therapeutically more useful,” as it forced him to deal with suppressed emotions. “The drug gives us part of a healing process. It exposes you to different possibilities – another way of being,” Steve explains. |
The Golden Teacher is a “grey-area research facility” and mushroom dispensary in Ottawa that wants to make bad trips obsolete.
Owner Jordan Armstrong aims to understand how magic mushrooms affect individuals differently by surveying each customer. The goal is gather data to regulate the fungi properly.
Ottawa’s second mushroom dispensary, Shroomyz, will be opening on May 1st!
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Shroomyz is located on Preston Street and The Golden Teacher is on the corner of Rideau and Dalhousie Streets. |
A Maastricht University study found that a single dose of 5-MeO-DMT (the psychedelic found in toad venom and several plants) improved subjects’ scores for life satisfaction, depression, anxiety, and mindfulness.
The changes were seen 1 day after the dose and persisted for 4 weeks.
Higher levels of ego dissolution were linked with greater improvements in scores (so, the more intense the trip, the more beneficial).
A separate survey found that ~80% of people with depression or anxiety reported improvements in symptoms following a dose of 5-MeO-DMT.
Some companies that are researching 5-MeO-DMT include GH Research (GHRS), Biomind Labs (BMND), and Mindset Pharma (MSET).
Here’s two new opportunities to get your research funded:
Biomind Labs (BMND) dosed the first subject in a Phase I trial /IIa clinical trial on DMT for treatment-resistant depression.
Over the next 4 months, 30 healthy patients who have never done psychedelics will receive 2 doses of inhalable DMT. Researchers will assess the safety of the drug, as well as behavioral and brain effects before continuing with Phase II.
Can you imagine trying DMT as your first psychedelic?
Terran Biosciences, a private psychedelic startup, announced a licensing deal with the French Big Pharma company Sanofi (SNY). Terran will license two of Sanofi’s pipeline assets that target central nervous system (CNS) disorders. The assets have generated more than 100 clinical studies involving 15,000 subjects on a variety of CNS disorders.
Nirvana Life Sciences (NIRV), a recently listed company focused on opioid addiction and chronic pain, received its first batch of psilocybin and psilocin for R&D projects
Medicinal Genomics Corp. launched Psilocydia, a public database containing genetic information of 80+ strains of psilocybin mushrooms. Psilocydia will help cultivators discover genetic traits, select genes of interest, and distinguish beneficial mushrooms from poisonous ones.
PharmaTher (PHRM) announced Q3 financial results including C$10.1M in cash. The company is focused on treating rare disorders with ketamine and creating novel methods of administering psychedelics.
House kills Maine psilocybin billThe House rejected a Senate-passed measure that would have created a medical psilocybin program in Maine. “The bill will certainly be back next session, or, if the legislature continues to refuse to act, perhaps in a peoples’ referendum,” says Senator Donna Bailey. |
You’re all caught up! See you next Wednesday 👋
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