Comments
By _alternator_ 2026-02-1922:079 reply The fact that they are using a synthetic version likely means they have constructed a molecule that’s patented or otherwise IP protected. I’m always torn about this, because it means that a cheap, globally available compound (psylocibin) which was what inspired this company to begin with when the founders used it on their son will remain medically inaccessible, possibly at Schedule I in the US, while this startup’s compound may end up being covered by insurance and rake in piles of cash.
I get that it takes a lot of money to prove the efficacy of drugs. But there should be a better way to open some of these chemicals up and acknowledge the community that has worked hard, often at great personal and reputational risk, to demonstrate that these well-known drugs offer powerful options to treat a range of psychiatric illnesses.
By observationist 2026-02-1923:032 reply It's just psilocybin - the formulation is protected, but it's just magic mushrooms. They're studying doses of 1mg, 10mg, and 25mg. 25mg is roughly equivalent to a beginner dose of 2.5g. They should definitely do a followup of 25, 35, and 50mg, because the higher doses are most commonly associated with the most benefits across other studies that have been done.
It's never going to be a major moneymaker - you rarely encounter people who want to continue abusing it. 1 dose is sufficient for 6 or more months of mitigated symptoms, sometimes even allowing people to entirely escape negative thought patterns and depression. Psilocybin induces new synaptic pathways, helps balance out or suppress obsessive loops, so in combination with positive reinforcement in lifestyle patterns, habits, and changing environments, a single high dose psilocybin experience can radically alter someone's mental health and outlook for the better.
The literature is fascinating - one of the safest drugs known to science, yet one of the least exploited for medical or scientific purposes. There's a whole vast wealth of good data that will come from research like this, it's exciting.
By RupertSalt 2026-02-1923:181 reply > positive reinforcement in lifestyle patterns, habits, and changing environments ... can radically alter someone's mental health and outlook for the better.
Edited out the least important step
By observationist 2026-02-1923:25 Even without the lifestyle changes, you can get a 6+ month mitigation of symptoms, but without the lifestyle changes, the symptoms will return, and often it's an indicator of unhealthy lifestyle as opposed to a mental illness. Unfortunately, mental health and treatment with drugs ignores that all important bit. Maybe you are healthy, and are having a perfectly normal response to stressful, negative conditions, and don't need drugs. In the case of shrooms, it can suppress the obsessive loops and focus on being stuck for a long enough period that people can escape, but often that escape route has to be pointed out by a third party.
Unethical practices would be possible with psychedelics, still - don't provide the escape route, just keep people coming back for super expensive, slightly underdosed psychedelic trips every six months to mitigate symptoms.
By bethekidyouwant 2026-02-200:161 reply 2.5g is a strong dose even of B+ strains
By awithrow 2026-02-203:29 Yeah, talking about grams without taking about what kind of mushroom is very out of date IMO. 2.5g could be anything from a light sensation to over the top potent. Just look at the results of the latest Denver Psychedelic Cup to get a sense of range.
https://www.canva.com/design/DAG4IrghoIg/inPxQbZk0XtnQU_lB92...
By dekhn 2026-02-1922:40 Yes, they have a few patents on the unique formulation (a hydrated crystalline form of psilocybin). See also: https://psychedelicalpha.com/data/psilocybin-patent-tracker
It's a myth that you need a novel molecule to get a patent on a medicine.
A company can develop a formulation of generic, off-patent compounds and get FDA approval for that patented formulation.
Even old off-patent drugs are often brought back in new, on-patent formulations that can't be sold generically until the expiration of the patents on the formulation that was approved.
So even if they used psilocybin, they would get a patent on their formulation and get FDA approval for that formulation.
By hermanzegerman 2026-02-1922:30 The same thing with Ketamine. As an i.v.-Medication dirt cheap, but the same drug in a nasal spray suddenly 500$(Spravato)
By reactordev 2026-02-1922:153 reply You just described 150 years of Big Pharma Law.
Pharma, sprang up from taking wondrous compounds found in nature and isolated them or refined them into new compounds that they could patent, market, and sell to consumers.
Ibuprofen, for example, is crude oil.
By hermanzegerman 2026-02-1922:231 reply Yet Ibuprofen is so easy to make that only 6 plants make it worldwide and when one goes offline the shortages are felt throughout the world. Might be a bit more difficult than just crude oil
By reactordev 2026-02-1922:242 reply 6 plants are allowed to make it. Everyone else thought the licensing fee was too high.
Unless you are referring to natural botanical plants, in which case, Pine Trees and turpentine is a good alternative found. IANAL but it would still need to find a way around the Ibuprofen compound patent.
> 6 plants are allowed to make it. Everyone else thought the licensing fee was too high
What licensing fee? It's an old, generic medicine. Anyone who wanted to set up an Ibuprofen manufacturing plant could do so relatively easily.
The reason more plants aren't coming online is that Ibuprofen is a couple pennies per pill at retail prices. There isn't money in making more ibuprofen.
By hermanzegerman 2026-02-1923:021 reply If there wouldn't be money in it, they wouldn't have invested 200 Millions in a new plant in 2017
By Aurornis 2026-02-1923:12 Then there must have been a market opportunity.
I bet there won't be much opportunity left after that plant comes online.
By hermanzegerman 2026-02-1922:33 What licensing fee? There aren't any patent protections on Ibuprofen anymore. It's a generic for a very long time.
Also last time there was a shortage, one american BASF plant went down and they had trouble for almost a year before they could resume production
By ajb 2026-02-1923:15 "Ibuprofen, for example, is crude oil."
In what sense? Ibuprofen is a specific chemical compound, crude oil is anything but that - it's a mixture of a huge number of chemicals.
I don't think the pharma industry is a moral exemplar either. But this seems like a simple error that will just distract from your point. Others in the thread have given better examples.
By jrmg 2026-02-1922:52 FWIW I at least am willing to pay someone else to make my Ibuprofen from the crude oil so I don’t have to. Sounds like it’d be messy.
By vagrantstreet 2026-02-2011:32 I'd go for something targeted than something that is pedled by preachy drug dealers personally.
Can't say how many times I heard of anecdotal stories where a user just flipped personality out of the blue, it kinda steals away emotional resolution and wisdom from resolving issues if for example trauma is related to another person.
By gosub100 2026-02-207:44 In silicon wafer manufacturing, water is one of the ingredients. I doubt you could produce it at your home with sufficient purity to be a replacement.
If I took shrooms, there is a nonzero chance I'd have a psychotic episode that could be fatal.
Devil's advocate suggests that a synthetic can be produced the same way every time where a cultured plant might have varying levels of the active compound in the plant. That makes it difficult to prescribe doses. As an example, suggesting a patient take 1 cap and 2 stems will be problematic for accurate dosing.
Conspirator's advocate says that bigPharma has synthesized and patented every active plant compound so that keeping the actual plants scheduled is to their benefit.
I'm fairly certain it's possible to extract psylocibin from the murshroom, giving the same advantages that the synthetic would have!
Edit0: for a more thorough look: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8247/18/3/380
By adgjlsfhk1 2026-02-1922:331 reply that's generally much more expensive
as if that's a guaranteed win. The low hanging fruit was to recreate what is already in nature. Creating something brand new never seen before would be a greenfield project that I'm sure most of bigPharma is not a fan of.
I'm not certain I catch your drift - I'm saying the RnD work they did to synthesize COM360 or whatever it's called is probably more expensive than using known means to synthesize/extract psylocibin (as psylocybin was first synthesized in the 50's)
Sounds to me as if you're now suggesting researching a new way to make a synthetic drug where before I read it as researching a new drug nobody has found yet
By dmbche 2026-02-200:18 I'm not sure what you mean either way!
Have a good one I don't think we are in disagreement
In the immortal words of Scott Alexander [1],
> I used to think that the alternative medicine people were overestimating how evil Big Pharma was. But now I know that’s not right.
> Now I know they’re underestimating it.
> If it were discovered tomorrow that potatoes cured cancer, then people wouldn’t “suppress” this “natural” remedy. Two years from now there would be an ultrapurified potato extract called POTAXOR™®© that was, on closer examination, physically and chemically identical to mashed potatoes. But these mashed potatoes would be mashed in a giant centrifuge by scientists with five Ph. Ds each. Any time someone got cancer, their doctor would prescribe POTAXOR™®© and charge $6,000 per dose, and the patient would get better, and the thought of just going out and eating a potato would never occur to anybody. Not to the doctor, who doesn’t want to sound like the idiot who tells her cancer patients to eat potatoes. Not to the FDA, who doesn’t know whether potatoes might be contaminated with lead or potato fungus or ketchup or God-knows-what. And certainly not to the patient. They would have to pay 60 cents for a potato at the supermarket, but if they have a good enough insurance the POTAXOR™®© is free!
> This system, bizarre as it is, is your guarantee against the pharmaceutical companies suppressing a promising new natural medication. Your insurance company pays $300 on fish oil, and in exchange you go to sleep at night secure that no one has discovered that potatoes cure cancer but decided to cover it up to protect their bottom line. Good deal? Given the current health system, it’s better than you had any right to expect.
Potatoes aren't on Schedule 1; that makes this situation suck a little more. But probably the alternative scenario is just the treatment remaining illegal forever.
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/15/fish-now-by-prescripti...
By gosub100 2026-02-207:50 > If it were discovered tomorrow
It wouldn't be discovered without the profit motive created by the granted monopoly
What people get wrong is that you don't just trip balls and get cured. Re-integration therapy is vital for lasting effects. Grabbing some shrooms and digging in is recreation, which is perfectly fine, but don't fool yourself or anyone else by suggesting it's for treatment.
By topocite 2026-02-2013:07 I was a depressed teenager a long time ago and I am almost certain mushrooms made things worse.
I didn't need mushrooms. I needed therapy, friends, a social life, a sex life, goals, something to look forward to in the real world.
All I found on mushrooms at the time were horrible existential loops that just made things more hopeless. I would read about people having these peak wonderful experiences or Mckenna alien experiences and just get more depressed that even the mushrooms didn't help me.
It is almost blasphemous in this space to say what actually ended up changing my life were SSRIs. A little prozac fixed something that was just chemically wrong in my head.
What seems obvious is there is enormous variability in people's brain chemistry so the tool to fix the problem has to be quite specific for the individual.
By OldSchool 2026-02-200:13 Yes. For example, IV Ketamine can yield not only immediate relief in a chemical sense, the treatment itself results in a fully-aware, balls-tripping, metaphor and symbolism-filled, time and space-warping experience in an entirely fictional space. With thoughtful guidance prior-to and after each experience, a series of them can, for example repeat a message until you "get it," or each may deliver a component of a profoundly larger message when they are combined, weeks later. What you do with it all will determine what you get from it.
I think there's simply so much value in being able to see the same thing in so many different perspectives that you never have considered possible at all in your life before.
By OldSchool 2026-02-200:27 This is particularly true of a deep psychedelic experience "inside" with IV Ketamine.
Your own internal processing will still determine how you perceive a perspective change, but specific to this idea in particular, you may for example, within, suddenly find it obvious to think of things as being made of something different than in the outside world reality (and this sort of "change of bases" may reveal some kind of truth not otherwise visible.) You may see something as formed of language instead of molecules and atoms, or vice-versa.
By jesse__ 2026-02-1922:52 As someone who accidentally discovered the anti-depressive effects of psilocybin in my early 20s, I approve this message!
