Welcome to issue (lucky) #13 of The Ethical Trip! This fortnight:

For all this, plus a thoughtfully curated roundup of recent research and unfeasibly niche humour, read on!

Huge thanks to everyone who continues to support my work. Whether it’s feedback, sharing an email, or contributing a few dollars a month via buy me a coffee cactus, it all makes a big difference to me and I’m deeply grateful.

Research isn’t always exciting. (Heck, sometimes it’s not really research.) Here’s some of what I found more interesting from the past two weeks of publications:

Qeadan et al (2025) found that psychedelic use was associated with significantly reduced rates of all adverse substance use disorder outcomes, including all-drug overdose. (I look forward to reading the final version of this paper.)

Mathai et al (2025) reports on the prevalence of self-medication with psychedelics in Hispanic/Latino adults with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

Vercace and Rucker’s (2025) article suggests that while ‘self-integration’ can assist with consolidation and growth form positive psychedelic experiences, it may not protect against severe personality disturbance.

Pelham (2025) finds, perhaps unsurprisingly, that people who microdose self-report positive changes in cognition but also improvements to mood, social lives, and lifestyle.

Lots more below, but only for subscribers!

Barely a week can pass without someone big-noting how much the psychedelic therapy/pharmaceutical market will (one day) be worth.

Leaving aside truly cooked takes, like Christian Angermayer claiming the total addressable market (TAM), presumably for things that atai will sell, is basically the entire population of the world, there are some ideas people should be familiar with. When figures of millions or even billions of dollars are thrown about, it’s much easier to distinguish a good investment from outright bullshit if you understand TAM, SAM (serviceable addressable market) and SOM (serviceable obtainable market.)

So what are these concepts, and how can they be misused? Read TAM, SAM & SOM: Bringing reality to psychedelic valuations to get the lowdown on why some of those numbers we see are not what they seem.

Want to help upgrade my budget from ‘Jetstar’ to ‘Qantas’? Support me via Buy Me a Coffee. (That’s not hypothetical - I’ll be flying to Melbourne to speak at EGA Garden States Regeneration in late November, and those plane tickets don’t pay for themselves!)

Inspired by a recent article on The Conversation, I’ve been looking at The Sovereign Individual and how this little known but influential book might have been changing minds in the psychedelics sphere.

One idea that stands out is the Cognitive Elite, people who are so smart that in the coming ‘information economy’ they will be borderline gods, and certainly not troubled by anything as petty as governments and regulators.

As it happens, when you look at this worldview, which is very popular in certain circles (it’s basically Peter Thiel’s favourite book), some of what we see in psychedelics takes on a different and not entirely pleasant significance.

So, what happens when self-perceived elites think they’ve been frustrated by a bunch of underfunded left-wing hippies? Read Psychedelics and the Cognitive Elite to find out!

If you send enough time around people who use psychedelics, you’ll end up having to help someone though a difficult or challenging experience, even though this wasn’t what you had planned for that night. While this doesn’t usually come with a risk of physical harm from overdose (depends what they've taken) these experiences can be frightening and overwhelming. Here are some basic steps to go through in order to keep someone safe while they move through this.

Try to work out what they took, including other medications that might cause unexpected interactions. Are they injured or do they show any signs of medical distress? In particular, be mindful of serotonin toxicity (if they’ve taken MDMA or 5-MeO-DMT) or signs of opioid overdose from fentanyl or nitazene contamination etc. if their stuff hasn’t been tested.

Obviously, if there is a medical emergency, you need to take appropriate steps, such as calling an ambulance.

When listening to them telling you what’s going on for them, remind them that what they’re experiencing isn’t unusual, and that others have experienced this. Don’t be dismissive or tell them it’s all in their head. Don’t interpret their experience for them or tell them how they should feel. For the most part, keep quiet unless you’re responding to them.

The person going through this already has to deal with. So they need the space they’re in to feel safe enough that it’s not an additional threat. This often means getting them to a quieter and less visually stimulating location. I say ‘often’ because sometimes what people need at that moment is a change of environment. I’ve seen people stuck in loops off by themselves pop right out of them when they moved to a livelier (though still not overwhelming) setting.

A safe space also means the personal space between them and other people (especially you) needs to be safe. So, everyone needs to be calm, and not physically interact with them unless it’s necessary for their safety. (This is super-rare, but it can happen - I’ve seen someone physically moved off a busy road where they were yelling at passing traffic.)

Most of all, you, as the sitter, need to be calm. Often, that’s all you need to do for someone: just be calm and present.

The safe space is about your safety too. Sitters may find that those in their care can become sexually aroused towards them, in which case you should firmly tell them ‘it’s not going to happen’ and seek further assistance if they can’t respect that boundary. (And I don’t need to tell you that even if you did want to have sex with this person, this is 100% not the time to do so.)

I’m not a fan of directing people much while they’re in these states of consciousness, though some guides recommend encouraging exploration or letting go. Personally, I’ve stuck to telling them that they are safe, that this is temporary, and sometimes reminding them that they took acid (because sometimes people forget.) I know certain mindfulness practices have worked for me when I’ve had a rough time, but that doesn’t mean the same thing will work for everyone.

No, integration is not just a thing psychologists made up so they could make money from trippers without any legal risk to themselves! Many people find they don’t need much aftercare after psychedelic experiences. But if someone has been though a particularly challenging or impactful time, it can be helpful to talk about what happened and what the experience means for their life and how they’d like to live it. If you sat for someone, in their mind, you may be the obvious place to start that conversation (though whether or not you do that is up to you.)

Even when the experience hasn’t been negative, it can feel really isolating if none of your friends of family can understand what you’ve been though. This is just one of the reasons why community is psychedelics is so important.

For more information see the Dancewize NSW guide to emergency trip-sitting

Tickets for the EGA Garden States conference are limited. So if you want to attend and/or hit that website now to secure your spot: https://www.gardenstates.org/

Greetings Earthlings, this is Orinoco Visionwolf.

I am aware of your presence!

As many of the more cognitively elite readers of this publication will be aware, most psychedelic corporations do not turn a profit, and mainly generate revenue by selling overpriced shares to gullible normies. But conversations with the jaguars that hunt me every night in my dreams have led me to being concerned with this practice. They told me that my fellow sovereign individuals are incurring considerable karmic debt from running non-stop pump-and-dump operations on credulous redditors.

Recently, while being hyperslapped into the place where It dwells, my ego died so hard that I had an epiphany. What we need is a central hub for plans on how psychedelic products and services can be sold for maximum multinational-scale oligarch-level profit. To this end, I have incorporated Corporate Research for Amassing Profit Strategies, or CRAPS.

Do I have any ideas, other than our award-winning Seed Serum facial cream/dissociative laxative or Shaman Blood beverage-like product? Not yet - I clearly need to retain my sacred juices to an even deeper level.

What I have done is design a t-shirt to wear when I go begging for seed funding from billionaire trust-fund nepo-babies as they return from the DMT realms. In the spirit of cosmic entrepreneurship, I’m willing to gift one of these shirts to any being enlightened enough to withstand the requisite energy exchange (probably about $40 AUD plus postage). Please reply to this email to go on the waiting list - you’ll be notified once they go into production.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading!

What is the worst, most dubious, or cooked piece of marketing you’ve seen in psychedelics?

As always, all feedback and suggestions are welcome, and I promise* to not turn your dangerously irresponsible YouTube tantrum into a meme.

*Unless…Well, you know who you are.

PS:

An MDMA-assisted therapy trial participant walks into a bar and has a beer that they enjoy immensely.

The FDA immediately kicks the door in and announces the beer will only be legal if it contains no alcohol and tastes like shit.

Written on Worimi lands. Sovereignty was never ceded.

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