PsychedeLinks – June 9, 2023

On May 25th, the Medford Planning Commission voted to approve plans for the launch of Shrooms Help Center, the city’s first psilocybin service center. The center will occupy a currently vacant building on Market Street, neighboring a nearby coffee shop and a wellness center. When complete, the treatment facility will boast six therapy “rooms,” including an outdoor area of approximately 8,000 square feet. As part of the approval process, the Commission conducted an in-depth review of Shrooms’ business plans, including parking, staffing, and business hours, with the only unique condition of the approval being the limitation of psilocybin administration hours to 8am - 11:59pm. The city’s approval of the service center is welcome news to current and prospective psilocybin facilitators, as many have expressed concern over the early disparity between the number of facilitator and service center licenses. While Shroom Help Center’s OHA license is still pending, if approved, the license will be the first service center license awarded in Medford since licensure began earlier this year. “We were concerned early on that some areas of the state would be underserved by psilocybin licensees. Would we end up with pockets of oversaturation in populated areas and other less populate regions wouldn’t have access to services at all? This approval allows for psilocybin coverage in a smaller jurisdiction and hopefully represents a continuing trend. It’s exciting to see service centers popping up throughout the state,” says Emerge attorney Alex Berger.

“A Rhode Island legislative committee this week approved a bill to legalize the possession and cultivation of psilocybin mushrooms. The measure, House Bill 5923, was approved by the House Judiciary Committee by a 12-2 vote on Tuesday, according to a report from Marijuana Moment. A companion bill is pending in the Rhode Island Senate, where the chamber’s Judiciary Committee is holding the bill for further study. If passed, the legislation would eliminate criminal penalties for adults who possess or cultivate up to one ounce of psilocybin mushrooms for personal use. Up to one ounce of mushrooms could also be shared by one adult with another. The bill is slated to go into effect on July 1.”

“[A] first-of-its-kind analysis released on Monday is offering novel insights into exactly how psychedelic-assisted therapy works for people addicted to alcohol. Researchers at NYU, UC San Francisco and the mental health practitioner training provider Fluence set out to investigate the therapeutic mechanisms that led a cohort of people with alcohol use disorders (AUDs) to significantly reduce negative drinking behavior after participating in an earlier landmark psilocybin clinical trial. The study, published by the American Psychological Association in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, revealed several common themes among participants that could help inform future research and therapeutic applications as more states move to promote psychedelic studies and regulated access. The study subjects almost universally said that they had experienced inner narratives that consisted of excessive blame, guilt and resentment toward people they were close to, and that inner voice was often self-critical and lended to intrusive thoughts. Another key takeaway from the qualitative analysis is that while the participants who went through the clinical trials generally reported fewer days drinking and reduced desire to drink, cravings didn’t fully disappear for everyone and it was understood that psilocybin on its own is not a panacea.”

“As MDMA and psilocybin treatments become more mainstream, the therapy component has come under scrutiny. While there is mounting evidence that psychedelics could offer much-needed new treatments for intractable mental illness, stories of abuse or trauma have also emerged — which have more to do with the therapists than the drugs. Twenty years of research has standardized the dosage of the drugs used in clinical trials, but the therapy part has not received similar scrutiny. The lack of scientifically backed best practices has prompted researchers, clinicians and former patients to call for a more critical look at the therapeutic component of psychedelic therapy.” To Dr. Amy Lehrner, the clinical director of the Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, “what researchers should be working to standardize now are general therapeutic principles while they continue testing whether the treatment as a whole is safe and effective. ‘Afterwards,’ she said, ‘people may investigate: ‘Well, what if we tweak it like this? What if we change it like that?’’”

“In Oregon, psychedelics are moving from illegal status to an approved product. But this brave new world comes with lots of regulations and challenges, including training psychedelic 'facilitators.' Deena Prichep reports.”