No doubt, some slick businesses person will make a hundred million dollars selling psychedelic drugs as a high cost, high profit prescription drug before the last old hippie rotting in prison, who sold tabs of LSD for $3 a dose, passes on to that big Woodstock in the Sky . . . . But is it really logical to imprison people as if they were a danger to society, for promoting, years ago, the use of the same substance these capitalists are now scheming to get rich providing? Shouldn't ending the Drug War also entail a Drug Amnesty?
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I taught far gone alcoholics in Puerto Rico to eat the psilocybe cubensis growing in pastures near their home. Mushrooms were not illegal per PR police that knew exactly what I was doing, and enthusiastically approved. Even the dairy farmers supported my wandering among their cows, their sons were heavy drinkers too. Immediately after they all stopped drinking, started traditional jobs, got married or reconciled and never relapsed. This was 1979 and 1980. Nobody got hurt (I closely supervised their ‘trips’) and their families were so thankful they fed me, and introduced me to others suffering from alcoholism. Most only needed one trip. I am not a doctor (rather an author, teacher/photographer) so the US medical researchers I shared my meticulous notes, observations and microscopy with just laughed at me.
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Who would invest in an ‘astrology’ app?
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Love the illustration.
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@Mickela The illustration is of Amanita muscaria, which has a completely different mode of action from that of Psilocybe cubense or othe psycho-active mushrooms. A. muscaria should be dried before consumption, can be passed from consumer to others through urine and makes one feel small (or the rest of the world gigantic. It is used by shamans throughout the northern boreal provinces of the world.
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Ayahuasca would truly make the world a better place. We need it now more than ever. At the rate we are going with bigotry, xenophobia, greed, no unified belief in a truth, a planet that is dying and weapons of mass destruction... humans may find our big brains are not a good strategy for long term survival... aya cuts through the cultural mess and enables people to see more clearly.
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@Traisea The primary psycho-active ingredient in ayahuasca (yagé) is DMT (dimethyltryptamine). It was a popular hallucinogen in the mid 1960s and referred to as the 'businessman's trip' because its effects, although quite intense, are fairly short lived (ca. 30 minutes) if injested through the lungs.
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They’re out when it comes to cannabis but in for the questionable Goop brand? Eye roll! Cannabis is probably the safest bet of the vice industries.
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Could this area of medicine become the "UNICORN" for investors?
Perhaps a new fund can be created for the best practices could be invented and named "the Ellis Dee incubator...?"
Interesting article. I live quite near the spot where the leaking thermometer factory was located.
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I do believe that the wellness industry has been into the mushrooms way before this.
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Interesting that VCs are picking up on this, but anything to be 1st in to a new and un-even market, when there is so much money for rich people to burn: Goop's customer base is essentially well-to-do people who not only likely have healthcare, but they also spend on "ready to wear" wellness because we all want to be smart and perfect and trendy.
As Michael Pollan notes in his latest book "How to Change Your Mind", productive use of psychedelics require a therapy based protocol, of which the drug is only a part. And it'll never be a drug that pharma can make a ton of money off since... its dosage and frequency is not periodic (no refills needed). And given that these substances are non-addictive, not sure you can "get 'em hooked" like the tobacco industry.
Psychedelics need a few more years of research, and while I'm all for decriminalization and removal from Schedule I, I'm not sure they should be next to the beer and cigarettes at 7-11.
More interesting ( for investment) will be other mushrooms that have medicinal and immune system boosting properties - the MUD/WTR and Thrive types of companies.
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@Mark B
" And it'll never be a drug that pharma can make a ton of money off since... its dosage and frequency is not periodic (no refills needed)."
I think those are valid points. But readers ought to take note of the way that Johnson & Johnson has developed its use protocol for esketamine- a form of ketamine, a synthetic disassociative anesthetic with "psychedelic" properties. J & J has obtained its FDA approval for the patented form, the medication known as Spravato. It's both expensive and intended to be administered on an ongoing basis, biweekly in a hospital setting. https://www.spravato.com/treatment-with-SPRAVATO
I'm not exactly reassured that this has been done in order to maximize the effectiveness of the experience for patients who are prescribed it for chronic depression. It appears to me to be more aimed at maximizing the profits of Johnson & Johnson.
Ketamine and its analogues are not "classic psychedelics" in either their pharmacology or effect. But given what's happened with esketamine, my hunch is that if a big drug company can find a way to maximize the profit for other newly legalized and patented meds, they'll do it.
This is only part of the reason that I've made an exception to my usual support for private enterprise in the case of the drug companies. I think they've abused their power. They need to be nationalized. Pharmaceutical drugs are generic compounds, not TVs. Reward for research is fine. But take the profit out of manufacture and sales.
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The depicted mushrooms are amanita muscaria, not the psilocybe semilanceata or any of the other kinds of psilocybin mushroom. Amanita mascara contain isotonic acid and muscimol, which are neurotoxins
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@chris b
You are correct. But amanita muscaria, also referred to as fly agaric, was and is still used in Europe and Asia for it's psychoactive effects.
Amanita mascara on the other hand enhances the eyelashes. :-)
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@chris b correction oh good lord autocorrect
The depicted mushrooms are amanita muscaria, not the psilocybe semilanceata or any of the other kinds of psilocybin mushroom. Amanita muscaria contain isotonic acid and muscimol, which are neurotoxins
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@chris b It's an extremely poor decision to have a picture of a poisonous mushroom for an article about psilocybin mushrooms
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I'd like the Times's graphics department to lead the way toward a ban on cartoony images of Amanita muscaria -- the "toadstool" with a reddish cap and white spots -- as a symbol of psychedelic mushrooms. Though it has psychoactive properties, it's the most toxic and least interesting of the so-called shrooms people consume for their mental effects. Encouraging people to keep an eye out for them in this way is counterproductive at the least, and likely to lead to unpleasant experiences for the low-information reader.
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@Jonathan King And they are the most commonly reproduced mushroom in kids books. Muscaria are beautiful mushrooms and I second your call for them to be portrayed more accurately.
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How long until Huxley's "soma" becomes the distributed norm?
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@tartz
Here you go
https://www.vedanet.com/the-secret-of-the-soma-plant/
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@tartz Not soon enough.
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Soma is more like Xanax and the like. Ethnogens are the opposite.. no masking.
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Psychedelia is inherently anti-capitalist. "Inside the boundaries of the old paradigm there's no hope, there's no way out of the box of capitalism" -Terrance McKenna.
The phenomenology of psychedelia is well related to the New World's basic mystical experience of an interconnected and coherent eco-psychic-transpersonal realm. Any fools trying to monetize that will be rendered impotent by the visionary experience itself.
Some say that capitalism is the hallucination of caffeine, so from the bean to Starbucks is a natural progression. But what is the natural progression look like from a mushroom - a fruiting source of spores nurtured my an unseen network of symbiotic flora and fauna feasting on detritus?
Looks more like a vision of utopian anarchy than a good portfolio buy to me.
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@Smokepainter*
"Psychedelia is inherently anti-capitalist." The Silicon Valley technocrats seem to think otherwise.
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@Smokepainter* I'm super interested to watch this develop.
Beware of institutionalizing the psychedelic experience, or making it reliant on an HMO setting. That's even more fraught with perils than the status quo of uncontrolled, illicit experiments by teenagers, with material obtained by criminalized dealers. The psychedelics are too "monetized" by the clandestine market already; that situation is not likely to improve if Big Business is allowed to get into the game after legalization.
There's a definite need for skilled psychedelic therapists with a fund of firsthand experience. It's a worthy profession. But psychedelic therapy is not like ordinary allopathic medicine. It's sensitive work, and sociocultural factors always influence the mental set of those involved. Those are the sort of idiosyncrasies that a franchise or HMO setting tends to neglect. And the power differential inherent to institutional involvement with psychedelic therapy has unpleasant connotations all around.
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Very well put. Thank you for sharing these valuable insights.
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“There are definitely a lot of people who are not well and are desperate and they want to believe, and then there are unscrupulous people who will sell them any cure that they want,” Ms. Eilian said.
She must be referring to Goop, a wellspring of wellness fakery if there ever was one.
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Able, Ms Eilian and Ms Blau, please research the products/companies that you invest in.
Specifically any clothing made with synthetic fibers is capable of breaking down and being inhaled (nanoparticles).
Any company that can make clothing with all natural fabrics is one to invest in (hopefully woman owned)/or the company that makes the fabric itself.
I'd tried to request information from Goop on their synthetics in the clothing they sell and did not receive a response.
I think you could probably get one.
Grateful to hear that you exist and believe in women business owners.
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"Able is unwilling to invest in cannabis; its partners believe that the risks of taking the drug recreationally have been understated."
In reality, the risk of taking most pharmaceuticals prescriptions has been grossly understated.
Marijuana is relatively harmless by any comparison.
“By far the greatest number of [prescription drug-related] hospitalizations and deaths occur from drugs that are prescribed properly by physicians and taken as directed,” says Donald Light, a medical and economic sociologist and lead author of a 2013 paper that detailed the estimate, entitled “Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and Effective Drugs.”
“About 2,460 people per week are estimated to die from drugs that were properly prescribed, and that’s based on detailed chart reviews of hospitalized patients,” says Light, who is a professor of comparative health policy at Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford, New Jersey.
The estimate, which didn’t include those who died as a result of prescribing errors, overdose and self-medication, would make taking properly prescribed drugs the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S.
The endless irrational discrimination against cannabis in this country is the 8th wonder of the world.
https://health.usnews.com/health-news/patient-advice/articles/2016-09-27/the-danger-in-taking-prescribed-medications
I'm all for shrooming, but the Reefer Madness needs to end yesterday.
Sad.
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@Socrates How long until the transition to Huxley's "soma" is made?
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I have a feeling the stats you use about the safety if cannabis don’t include high potent shatters and waxes that are smoked in crackpipe like contraptions. The truth of the matter is that the way cannabis is being “legalized” well how do you say it. If the assignment was to come up with the worst way to introduce cannabis to hundreds of millions of people from a public health and policy perspective (the perspective of regulators) we are here.
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@Harris silver concentrates aren’t smoked in a “crackpipe-like contraption”, they are vaporized on a heated spike and inhaled. I’ll concede that some people get so high that they end up visiting an ER. But there is a difference between over medicating with cannabis and ending up feeling scared for a few hours, and overdosing on prescription oxycodone, going into respiratory arrest, and dying. How about both legalizing cannabis AND educating consumers? Maybe even have cannabis trade places with prescription morphine derivatives for the honor of being a Schedule I drug?
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I'm guessing that they don't have large double-blind placebo studies for anything that they're doing. Please correct me if this is wrong.
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@Matt
Actually, yes, they do. Compass recently reported positive results in a randomized, blinded Phase I clinical trial on the safety and tolerability of psilocybin. They are recruiting for their phase 2b large, multinational, randomized, quadruple blinded clinical trial investigating the efficacy in 216 treatment resistant depression patients. (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03775200)
This is one of the big points of these companies. There is plenty of allegorical evidence on the street from illicit users, and academic researchers at universities that these and similar molecules like arketamine work in depressed individuals. They want to put these molecules in the hands of responsible drug manufacturers and prescribers who won't lace them with rat poison or fentanyl at controlled doses.
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@Kyle
Thanks. I like science.
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Investing in fads will be profitable until it isn't. Being well is simple and doesn't require spending loads of money on products that give you the illusion of wellness. Selling wellness is a fad like Jane Fonda sold her version of it, as an example. Daily exercise that can be simply walking, eating fresh fruit and vegetables, drinking water, having pleasant hobbies, listening to beautiful music, reading books and having friends to meet with don't cost much and is the best path to wellness.
Microdosing acid for a couple of weeks is an effective therapy for depression and I am sure a brief therapy of mushroom tea would also be effective for mental health. MDMA has been effective in treating PTSD and I am sure it is effective in treating other maladies related to the mind. We know marijuana has properties that aid people in pain, people who can't sleep, people suffering from cancer and so on. It will be great once more research and studies by scientists are permitted and we learn more about how these drugs, particularly marijuana and mushrooms, both plant-based, can aid humans.
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Misleading headline, crass story.
Psilocybin is a naturally occurring agent that is ubiquitous across the entire world. Whether "authorities" or the current "regulatory structure" enable profiteers of wellness to exploit it is the basis for this story.
But venture capital will not impact the vast majority of people who use psilocybin for wellness. Like "Big Green" in the cannabis world, a big pile of money doesn't alter the fundamental availability and usefulness of these natural agents.
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