Your eyes flicker open, the scintillating 3D fractals slowly bleed away, and you remember where you are. As your sitter helps you up, your phone pings. It’s a warning that the download of universal love gifted to you by a benevolent entity may violate U.S. Patent No. 18/576,658*.

Welcome to the psychedelic economy, and issue #8 of The Ethical Trip! In this edition:

• What is a Markush claim and is it wrong to patent millions of molecules?

• Are you building for the psychedelic majority?

• What is Serotonin Toxicity?

For all this, plus a roundup of recent research, an increasingly unsettling sponsorship deal, and my worst joke yet, read on!

But first: We’ve smashed through the 100 subscriber mark, so I won’t bring up specific numbers again until they’re close to another noteworthy milestone like 500 or 1000. Again, thank you to everyone who has helped spread the word about my work and especially to people supporting me via buy me a coffee cactus.

Table of Contents

1. Industry Insights:

   1. Research Round-up

   2. Markush Claims & Patenting Reality

2. Philosophical Brief: Building For the Psychedelic …

3. Consultancy Corner: Serotonin Toxicity

4. Reminder (Again) - Garden States!

Industry Insights:

Research Round-up

Unlike last time, I felt this was a cracking fortnight in psychedelic research. Maybe it’s because I’m bored with researchers wheeling out brain scans and being excited because they did a science, but I deeply appreciate when other disciplines constructively and critically engage in this field.

First off, Pietka, C. (2025). Landscape architecture in support of psychedelic-assisted therapy: Considerations for design of outdoor spaces. I haven’t finished it yet as it’s a whole Master’s thesis. But what I’ve read so far of this effort to use trip reports to inform design of outdoor psychedelic assisted therapy (PAT) spaces is outstanding. Really cool work that might be useful for PAT operators or anyone wanting to take a conscious approach to designing an experiential space.

Phenomenology of Psychedelic Experiences, by Danny Forde, came out online on July 15. Again, I’ve not read all of this, having only gotten part way through the first chapter. But given that its core thesis is “that certain psychedelic experiences disclose mind-independent aspects of reality” and the structure maps a careful approach to the arguments in Letheby (2021), I think it’s going to be pretty good.

Patch & Smith (2025) look at the ethics of set and setting, and make some interesting arguments around how external factors overlap with placebo effects in shaping psychedelic experience.

Lee, S.J., Epland, C., Kaitz, N. et al (2025) looked at individual perceptions of art displayed in a psychedelic dosing setting, and yes, they do make a difference.

Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Training in the US: A Landscape Analysis highlights the need for things like more spiritual, existential, religious, and theological (SERT) training in US facilitator/practitioner training programs. Unfortunately, IMO, the report utterly glosses over ethics issues. Good on the Harvard Divinity School for trying, I guess.

Lots more good stuff below, but only for subscribers!