MindShift

The Big Story

The world’s largest collective psychedelic diary. Once a niche archive for data geeks and drug nerds, the platform erowid.org has become an invaluable resource for researchers. It was created in the mid-1990s as an effort to catalog personal reports of psychoactive experiences. Today, its Experience Vaults are home to more than 45,000 firsthand reports from users.

BBC Future tells the story of this grassroots initiative and how it became an unlikely ally for the scientific community and the pharmaceutical industry. Researchers have mined its content in the hope of finding predictive patterns of positive experiences and bad trips (though no consistent patterns were found), to determine if the come-up and come-down of psilocybin are more likely to be associated with negative or positive feelings, and even to explore the debilitating effect of ketamine abuse on the bladder. Drug developers can rely on this rare source of real-world user insights, providing a unique form of post-market surveillance for illicit or experimental psychoactive substances.

Science & Innovation

A sharp rise in clinical research. Registrations have increased notably since 2019, according to a review of psychedelic clinical trials on ClinicalTrials.gov. Psilocybin remains the most researched compound, and a majority of trials are still university-led, though industry involvement is growing. Overall, current trends also reveal a lack of standards and inconsistencies in reporting. The latter could hinder the field’s advancement and regulatory approval, according to the authors.
→ J Psychopharmacol

Healing the healers. Healthcare workers report rising rates of stress and burnout in the years following COVID-19. A new study tested ketamine-assisted group psychotherapy to treat anxiety, depression, PTSD, and burnout among frontline workers. Over seven weeks, participants underwent three ketamine and four therapy sessions. Results showed significant improvements across all clinical measures, including anxiety, depression, PTSD, and burnout scores. 
→ Ther Adv Psychopharmacol

Psychedelics’ memory enhancements could hold the key to lasting psychiatric benefits. Published in eNeuro, a study performed on rats shows that psychedelics enhance connections between a brain area highly sensitive to psychedelics, called claustrum, with another region involved in psychiatric conditions, the anterior cingulate cortex. The mechanism is akin to memory acquisition, but much faster. "One idea is that the intensely memorable experience common during psychedelic 'trips' is critical for success in psychiatric treatment. Neurons are thought to encode memories by strengthening their connections with other neurons, so this pathway may be the mechanism through which psychedelics intensify memories," says the main author of the study, Pavel Ortinski, from the University of Kentucky.
→ Neuroscience News 

When time bends. Psychedelics like psilocybin, DMT, and LSD distort time perception, slowing, stretching, or even erasing it altogether. In an opinion paper, researchers argue that these temporal shifts stem from changes in the brain’s default mode network and serotonin activity, altering how we process memory, emotion, and self-awareness. A deeper understanding of this time distortion could reveal how the brain constructs consciousness. It could help us understand conditions like PTSD, depression, and anxiety, where time itself feels broken.
→ Earth.com

Society & Policy

The new faces of the psychedelic renaissance. The demographics of psychedelic users are shifting. Once associated with ravers, neo-hippies, and tech bros, these substances now appeal to a much wider crowd. Across the world, midlife women, many of them scientists, doctors, and caregivers, are turning to psychedelics to find clarity, healing, or simply a way back to themselves. Some take ketamine under soft music and a therapist’s guidance; others brew mushroom tea in quiet defiance of the law. Women’s Health spoke with some of these women to explore their reasons for taking these drugs, often through illegal channels.
→ Women’s Health (UK)

Trip, love, and act morally. A new research article in Bioethics argues that psychedelics like psilocybin can enhance moral behavior. The paper proposes a continuous, self-sustaining relationship between love, happiness, and morality, where love inspires moral and prosocial behavior, moral action increases happiness, and happiness, in turn, makes people more inclined to act morally and lovingly. And so on. Authors state that the use of psychedelics can act as a “love drug,” fostering selflessness, boosting happiness, and enhancing moral behavior.
→ Bioethics

The latest updates on the regulation front. Over the past two weeks, regulations have been shifting in California, where the governor signed a veteran-backed bill to speed up the study of psychedelics for PTSD.
→ Los Angeles Times

Business

Delix Therapeutics aims for at-home psychedelic treatment. Its compound, zalsupindole, was cleared for a phase II trial by the FDA. During its Phase I trial, it showed rapid and sustained symptom reduction for depression with no major side effects. It is part of a growing family of non-hallucinogenic molecules that could minimize the risks associated with traditional psychedelics. Delix Therapeutics hopes that this innocuous profile will allow patients to take the treatment at home, instead of a controlled environment.
→ Politico

Atai Life Sciences rides up the NASDAQ. Its shares rose after two recent major announcements. First, the company reported that, together with its clinical partner Beckley Psytech, it had received Breakthrough Therapy designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its nasal spray treatment BPL-003, targeting treatment-resistant depression. Breakthrough Therapy is a special process to expedite drug development and review. Atai Life Sciences also priced a secondary issue of its stock with 23.7 million shares to be sold in a public offering for $5.48 apiece.
→ The Motley Fool

Irish pharma GH Research reports on its inhaled psychedelic therapy GH001. It showed rapid and lasting improvement in treatment-resistant depression, with effects appearing within two hours and persisting up to six months, the company said. The compound, a vaporized form of mebufotenin, was presented by GH Research at the ECNP Congress 2025.
→ Medscape

In brief

Tripping at the convenience store. An American journalist tried the magic mushroom gummies available in most liquor stores in Arizona, despite the products being illegal. → kjzz.org 

A crash course. The essentials of psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT), explained. → Medical Press

Psychedelics for all? A professor of psychiatry and pharmacology discusses their promise for mental health, and whether they’re right for everyone. → CityNews Toronto 

Cancer care. At the 2025 Society for Integrative Oncology meeting, researchers explored how psychedelics could aid cancer treatment, healing, and end-of-life care. → OncoDaily 

Safety first. There are three ways to mitigate psychedelics' risks: planning setting and dose, seeking support during the experience, and reflecting afterward to integrate insights. → James Cook University

He took his first trip at 64. Philosopher Brandon Robshaw was the perfect guinea pig for his scientist daughter, who is working on psilocybin. → The Times

If you have a little more time

What Happens to Your Brain When You Trip? Could the concept of entropy explain how psychedelics work in the brain? Originating in thermodynamics, entropy describes disorder and unpredictability. Normally, the brain relies on past experiences to predict and interpret the world, explains Robin Carhart-Harris, a neurologist, psychiatrist, and behavioral scientist at the University of California. Psychedelics disrupt this predictive order in the brain, much like entropy in a physical system.

In a recent in-depth feature, Nautilus examines this theory: a compelling bridge between physics and psychology, yet one that remains “slippery” in many ways. As Amy Kuceyeski, a professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, puts it: “Entropy means how predictable is my next state from my previous ones?” The challenge lies in pinpointing which aspects of brain signaling is being measured by entropy.
→ Nautilus