Welcome to issue #22 of The Ethical Trip! This fortnight:
What does elite investment mean for the future of psychedelic pharma?
Is political consumerism effective?
What is this secret third section in the newsletter?
For all this, plus a 100% not biased roundup of recent research and beard care for microdosing coaches, read on!
Huge thanks to everyone supporting this work. Whether it’s feedback, sharing, 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.
Table of Contents
Industry Insights:
Research Round-up
Lyons et al (2026) look at preferred terminology amongst psychedelic users for that they call the substances they use. TLDR: people surveyed preferred to us substance names, followed by more general terms like ‘psychedelics’. For people of most backgrounds, ‘medicine’ was a long way down the list, as was ‘entheogen.’
Orlowski (2026) gives us fascinating (and, IMO, quite ambitious) doctoral thesis that shows naturalistic (i.e., nonclinical/recreational) psychedelic use is associated with reduced negative emotional reactivity.
Cherniak (2026) found that “Therapeutic-like context and support were found to moderate links between life stress and challenging psychedelic experiences and between challenging experiences and outcomes.”
Lots more good stuff below, but only for subscribers!
The Psychedelic Investment Gap
Imagine you could see what a group made up of the 1,500 people closest to ultimate executive power in the U.S. invested in.
Imagine that, within the same sector, 95 of them chose to buy shares in one company, but only 3 chose to buy in another. Which of those stocks would you say was the safer bet? Which of these companies is more likely to be going somewhere good any time soon?
These are the people with some of the best access to inside information on potential legal and regulatory changes.
Would you bet against them?
This isn’t hypothetical. This is the elite investment gap. And I think it means more for psychedelic pharma than anyone is giving it credit for.
Read the full analysis here: The Elite Investment Gap
Just imagine it’s Christian Angermayer
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Philosophical Brief: Spending our way out of moral problems
We’re encouraged to think about our ability to influence the world via our choices as consumers. The most recent example of this has been the collective abandoning of ChatGPT after it acquiesced to Pentagon demands (all while Sam Altman claimed it was doing no such thing.)
An estimated 2.5 million people have cancelled subscriptions and/or uninstalled the ChatGPT app. (I will leave aside that many of these people signed up with Claude AI, without realising or caring that Anthropic has been happy to play along with US military planning, including the current Iran quagmire.) But how effective will this be at getting Sam Altman to change his ways?
Articles in The Guardian like Quit ChatGPT: right now! Your subscription is bankrolling authoritarianism make the case for ‘sending a signal’ to Silicon Valley tech-bro CEOs. I don’t think it’s that simple or easy though.
One of the reasons is something I wrote about, just over 10 years ago.
This is where the other key mistake in reasoning regarding simple living could be. If you live simply enough, then yes, it might well be the case that if everyone did it, that the environmental outcome would be positive. But they don’t, and they won’t just because you do.
I was thinking about the environment and shorter showers. But the overall point is the same. The short answer is that we need to more than just adjust our consumerist choices to create change. This is, sadly, still true if that choice is to consume as little as possible.
See the full analysis in Ethical Living, Personal Choices and Political Change
Bonus Fiction: Let the Sun Shine
Cold, dusty daylight shines through old glass, illuminating a forbidden transaction while a black SUV speeds away to hide until called.
A man and woman face each other, silent for a moment before he makes his usual opener: "You look good."
Awkward paranoia dictates their movements as armies of scents battle for dominance of the cluttered new-age stoner storefront. Patchouli, burning esfand, and the smell of second-hand books hold Old Spice and flop sweat at bay, but only just. Their conversation is the same as always: Opsec small talk on one side, sighs and rolled eyes on the other.
Find out how their conversation ends at my new home for occasional unpublished fiction: The Bureau of Uncomfortable Futures.
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If you made it this far, thanks for reading!
As always, all feedback and suggestions are welcome, and I promise* to not sign you up for never-ending emails from the Church of Latter Day Saints.
*Unless you voted for the Queensland LNP.
PS:
I watched this great documentary last night on mushrooms.
I think that's how I'm going to watch all of them from now on.
Written on Worimi lands. Sovereignty was never ceded.
Icon by Freepik from Flaticon
