$1k/month+Legal Shrooms; Compass on the Path; Wellness Gone Wild; Psychedelic Accelerator & More
$1k/month+Legal Shrooms; Compass on the Path; Wellness Gone Wild; Psychedelic Accelerator & More
Get smart on the business, policy and impact of psychedelics
Welcome to The Trip Report, a newsletter on the business, policy, and impact of psychedelics.
If you’re as interested in the emerging psychedelic space as we are then you’ve come to the right place.
If you’re new here, welcome and thanks for joining.
If you’re enjoying the ride, please share The Trip Report with your friends, colleagues and dealers.
TL;DR
Orthogonal Thinker Launches Psychedelic Accelerator
Dubious move to Patent “Invention of Psilocybin for weight loss” by YieldGrowth
DoubleBlind Issue #2
Andrew Yang Melts Faces of Psychedelic Community
Compass Pathways Study Announcement: mushrooms are safe and chill
Business
Perpendicular Acceleration is a Circle; Orthogonal Acceleration is Psychedelic.
Orthogonal Thinker, the holding company behind, E.I. Ventures, Psillylife brand and Psilly, a psilocybin product for which they are seeking patent protection announced the launch of Alkaloid Accelerator, a "platform for Orthogonal to invest in and joint venture with businesses that are aligned with the Company's mission of individual empowerment through health and wellness..."
Presumably, the accelerator is dedicated to funding psilocybin based products but could also include cannabis, CBD, or Hemp products.
The Hawaii based company boasts a wide variety of health and wellness related subsidiaries.
Orthogonal Thinker has been on The Trip Report radar in the last few weeks as the group seems to be very bullish on psilocybin based products and has made a few other recent announcements.
Ventures such as these are of course dependent upon decriminalization efforts and assuming that Andrew Yang is not the next president the psilocybin consumer good industry will face similar regulatory challenges as cannabis making such investment challenging and risky (no shit dude).
I wonder if they need a Hawaii based newsletter writer? 🤔
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This is my worst nightmare.
And it may already be happening.
When Wellness jumps the shark, it really jumps the shark.
When Wellness goes Wild, it really goes Wild.
Consumer goods company Yield Growth is prepping, like others for the Cambrian explosion in psilocybin based products, assuming that legalization efforts go according to plan.
And they are seeking to patent the use of psilocybin for weight loss.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - December 10, 2019) - The Yield Growth Corp. (CSE: BOSS) (OTCQB: BOSQF) (FSE: YG3) announces its subsidiary Flourish Mushroom Labs has filed a U.S. provisional patent application in the United States for the invention relating to methods of using serotonin antagonists, in particular, psychedelic mushroom actives, for weight loss.
Listen, I am all ‘bout that ‘scrilla’ and my moto has always been ‘if they hate then let them hate and watch the money pile up’
But this feels creepy.
I am willing to be enlightened but I have to admit that this looks like an infomercial waiting to happen and it is concerning for the legitimacy of psychedelic therapy, science and the field as a whole.
Applying for a patent in this seems sketchy and the next in a long line of legitimate natural products with a long traditional use that gets co-opted by snake oil salesmen.
If you want to know if psilocybin is effective for weight loss, you create a research program and you do some fucking research.
From the release:
“The Flourish Mushroom Labs pending patent seeks to protect the invention that administration of psilocin and/or psilocybin results in an overall weight loss in individuals by reducing food cravings, counteracting compulsive overeating, and aiding in improving quality of diet by altering food choices. The patent pending covers the use of microdose administration of psilocin/psilocybin to have the additional weight loss effect of increasing metabolism, which, combined with a decrease in food cravings or compulsive overeating, or altering food choices to less calorie dense foods, could result in substantial and beneficial weight loss.”
Am I mistaken?
Is this a tract to do real science?
Is this the tact for cornering a market in a legalized context?
Please help me understand.
DoubleBlind Doubles Down
The businesses and ventures that pop up here in the land of psychedelia are not limited to clinics, therapist training, pharmaceutical and manufacturing companies.
Culture is a commodity and lifestyle brands like Psillylife and media outlets like The Trip Report will (hopefully) have a future in this space.
One early cultural venture is DoubleBlind Magazine who just released their second issue of their beautifully designed product.
From the looks of it, DoubleBlind is just getting started and has their sights set on other offerings including events and conferences.
Do you have a psychedelic based start-up, non-profit, research lab, clinic or investment fund?
Do you need to gain traction, influence, and engagement in the emerging psychedelic ecosystem?
Let us do the heavy lifting on creating captivating, informative and engaging content that will bring your message to readers.
reach out to thetripreport@protonmail.com with a brief description of your project and what you need
Policy
Outsider, Dark horse, Nerd and Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang Supports Legalizing psilocybin
A veteran in Davenport told me that psilocybin mushrooms were the only treatment he found effective for his depression after returning home. We should explore making psilocybin mushrooms legal for medical and therapeutic use particularly for veterans.The steady rise of darkhorse presidential candidate could not have happened 20 years ago, perhaps not even 10 years ago.
A complete outsider to politics with zero brand recognition from a history in public who consistently outperforms sitting elected officials is a sign that the power brokers of old are losing a grip on the narrative and losing a grip on the ability to manipulate and influence.
The internet, in its fundamental capacity to connect every person in the world to every other person in the world (with a few exceptions), is a force that is orthogonal to the way things have been.
There are no greater examples of rent-seeking and clinging to harmful and unproductive vested interests and the ‘way things have always been’ than American Politics, American Healthcare, and American education.
So it warms my heart that Andrew Yang has acknowledged the value to society that psilocybin offers, despite knowing that the majority of Americans maintain a prohibitionist stance on psychedelics and drugs in general.
An announcement like this from a presidential candidate offers the chance to upgrade opinions as displayed by this tweet from CNN’s Kyle Blaine:
Not something you typically see from a presidential candidate. Some background: There has been really interesting and promising research done at John Hopkins on the medicinal use of psychedelic drugs. Definitely read Michael Pollan’s “How to Change Your Mind” if you haven’t. https://t.co/rVZ9v0SN2DA veteran in Davenport told me that psilocybin mushrooms were the only treatment he found effective for his depression after returning home. We should explore making psilocybin mushrooms legal for medical and therapeutic use particularly for veterans.Andrew Yang🧢 @AndrewYangI had never donated to a politician until February of this year when I heard a long interview with Andrew Yang on Joe Rogan. He was insightful, funny, unpolished, authentic and original. He was such a breath of fresh air that I donated to his campaign even though I question his campaign defining policy of Universal Basic Income.
What Yang represents is the recalibration of power as a result of the decentralized communication of the internet offers.
There’s no doubt in my mind that there are striking metaphors that apply both to the transformative force of the internet and the transformative force of psychedelics.
It is nice to see a presidential candidate who is rising precisely because of his capacity to be truthful, authentic and compassionate and recognize the true nature of psychedelics.
Furthermore, this announcement seems to be in response to the twitter hashtag #psychonautsforyang
@AndrewYang wow i can't believe that whole #TranscendForYang by the #PsychonautsForYang actually worked! great job, everyone. never underestimate the 10th dimension.Both Forbes and VICE had pieces that came out almost immediately.
If you’d like to donate to Andrew Yang’s campaign you can do so here.
Impact
Compass Seeks True North
Compass Pathways, the London based pharmaceutical company ushering psilocybin through the research and regulatory pathways for Treatment-Resistant Depression announced the findings of their Phase 1 trial in healthy volunteers (lucky bastards) this week and the results were “clinically reassuring and support further development of psilocybin.”
Here’s the gist: It was safe, well-tolerated, no negative effects on cognitive and emotional function and showed that a group protocol was feasible.
And the only adverse events were changes in sensory perception and positive mood alterations.
No kidding.
It may also qualify as the most covered Phase 1 trial in the history of Phase 1 trials.
Newsweek, The Guardian, Financial Times, The (British) Times, CNN
This piece one was good because it covered a key aspect of the study design which directly relates to questions of accessibility and cost;
“Perhaps one of the more interesting aspects of this trial was the secondary exploration into the feasibility of simultaneous group administration of psilocybin. The trial encompassed 25 dosing sessions, in a variety of different group size permutations, the largest of which comprised six subjects being treated in the same space simultaneously.”
As many of you know Compass’ Phase IIb trial is underway in North America and Europe. We’ll be keeping a close watch as we learn more about the progress of these trials.
That’s it for this week’s roundup, thanks for reading and see you on Sunday in which I’ll publish a piece on A Model to Scale Access to Psychedelic Medicine.
If you’ve read this far you either like what we’re doing here or you’re just really into the emerging psychedelic ecosystem and as curious as we are as to how this whole thing will unfold.
Do you have a psychedelic based start-up, non-profit, research lab, clinic or investment fund?
Do you need to gain traction, influence, and engagement in the emerging psychedelic ecosystem?
Let us help you by doing the heavy lifting on creating captivating, informative and engaging content—Newsletters, articles or web content—that will bring your message to readers.
Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note!
Written and Curated in Portland, Maine by Zach Haigney, thetripreport@protonmail.com