Here’s what’s in store for you in today’s issue:
🍄 Motivate yourself with microdosing
🍄 Cure “suicide headaches” with mushroom tea!
🍄 Shark Tank and One Direction?
🍄 Are you invested in the psilocybin fund?
🍄 And more.
You’ll want to stay till the end to hear how a man got over his fear of spiders, creepy!
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If you want to be more productive, a morning microdose might be just what you need. A recent study found that low doses of psilocybin increased task motivation, attentional accuracy, and impulsive action in low-performing rats based on repeated behavioural tests. The findings suggest that microdosing may have potential to treat major depressive disorder. Researchers are hopeful that this study will facilitate further research in controlled human trials.
Inspired by recent research on psychedelics, a journalist resorted to shrooms to ease her debilitating cluster headaches (which are often called “suicide headaches” because they’re supposedly more painful than childbirth, gunshot wounds, and kidney stones).
She finally found relief that common migraine medications couldn’t provide her after taking 3 small doses of magic mushroom tea, 5 days apart. “Two months have now passed without my having a single headache.” A Yale neurologist explains that the chemical structure of psilocybin is similar to melatonin and triptans, which are often used to treat headaches, but the effect is longer-lasting.
Microdosers report enhanced cognitive performance and improved mental health, but is it all just a placebo? A new study in Sydney, Australia will reveal the answer.
Macquarie University is recruiting 80 candidates for a placebo-controlled study that will use brain scans and biomarkers to see if the benefits of microdosing psilocybin can be measured on a physiological level. We’ll cover the findings in a future issue, so stay tuned!
Former Chicago Blackhawks player Daniel Carcillo was battling a severe case of traumatic brain injury (TBI) after enduring hundreds of fights throughout his NHL career. He suffered from several related side effects such as slurred speech, headaches, memory issues, insomnia, impulsive behaviour, sensitivity to light, and depression. Carcillo admits that he spent three weeks creating a plan to take his own life before magic mushrooms turned his life around.
After taking a single 4g dose of shrooms, he said “I am cured, for sure, of TBI and any related symptoms. 100%.”
The experience led Carcillo to found Wesana Health (WESA), an organization focused on psychedelic treatments for traumatic brain injury and mental health disorders.
This week, Wesana Health acquired PsyTech Inc., a psychedelic therapy firm in Toronto, to help accelerate the company’s growth. The deal provides Wesana with a clinical software-as-a-service platform that integrates wearable biometric technologies and will increase the number of clinics from 2 to 12 within the next year.
PSYK, the world’s first psychedelic ETF that launched in January 2020, was rebalanced for the quarter based on respective float market capitalization. Optimi Health (OPTI) and Atai Life Sciences (ATAI) were added to the fund at 1.9% and 5.0% respectively, and Cybin (CYBN) accounts for the largest stake at 15.9%. The chart below shows the distribution of the ETF’s 24 holdings as of July 9.
Since debuting on the NASDAQ last month, Atai Life Sciences (ATAI) has gained support from some celebrity investors. Steve Bartlett, the youngest venture capitalist on Dragon’s Den, became Atai’s creative director, claiming that it is the most important company he has ever invested in. Bartlett believes that “if any company is to effectively tackle the global mental health crisis, it is $Atai.” He recently convinced One Director star Liam Payne to invest in the company, joining the American DJ Diplo.
After partnering with Greenbrook TMS last week, an operator of 129 mental health service centers in the US, Cybin continues to make big moves. The Toronto-based company announced that it will be transferring its intellectual property assets to a new wholly-owned subsidiary in Ireland as part of its European expansion plan. The company also filed its 13th provisional patent application for a digital therapeutics platform, which will use data analytics to improve patient outcomes in pre and post psychedelic treatments.
We are one step away!
If you live in the golden state, you may want to limit your next order of shrooms to 4 ounces. California’s bill that would decriminalize psychedelics (SB519) was approved by the Assembly Public Health Committee with a 8-4 vote, making it the second of three committees to pass the bill.
However, a new amendment was added that limits the allowable amount of each substance. If enacted, users 21 and older would be able to possess 2 grams of psilocybin or psilocin, or 4 ounces of a plant or fungi containing psilocybin or psilocin.
A Reddit user who grew up Mormon went on a life-changing trip in the canyons of Utah.
“I took 2.5G and it hit me like a train 30 mins later. I started seeing spiderwebs and thinking about spiders. It was scary. I’ve always been scared of spiders. But my cousin kept me breathing. I eventually came to the realization that I had no reason to be scared of spiders. I’m bigger than all of them and modern medicine on spider bites is very advanced, almost no one dies from them anymore. I literally got over my fear of spiders haha.
Then I became aware that I was a woodland creature. I walked around barefoot and told my cousin that this was “my domain” and that I belonged here. I worked through so much trauma about my family and programming in the format of almost a storybook. It was like fairy magic. It was incredible. I talked through so much and it was incredibly cathartic.
It actually made me believe in god even less than I did before which was not what I was expecting. It made me believe in and accept myself more than anything and I needed that severely.”
