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!
