Eli Lilly isn't investing in your mystical experiences.
The experience still belongs to clinicians and how they provide for their patients.

As Eli Lilly moves to acquire Atai Beckley, many are expressing concern about what it means for the future of psychedelic medicine. Those concerns are valid. But perhaps we can invest and focus more on the shaping the standard of care and patient experience, and remember that Eli Lilly is investing in pharmacology, not trying how clinicians offer support beyond the drug. And maybe that’s a good thing— square peg, round hole.

Perhaps it’s more of a philosophical challenge than an operational one. Psychedelic therapies derive much of their power from time, depth, emotional intensity, experiential resonance, and the therapeutic relationship. Since none of these are easily compressed into variables, do we optimize for scale and potentially dilute the experience in doing so? Or do we limit access and preserve the experience.

Uh-Oh. Are those really our two best options?

The clinical literature on ketamine is largely a literature about pharmacology. What it does not capture well is the human dimension of the work, and that is precisely where most of the variance in outcomes lives.

Good ketamine-assisted therapy practices have invested in their physical space. They have thought carefully about their music. They have built a preparation protocol that goes beyond intake paperwork. Their clinical team is diverse (in every sense of the word!) and has done some version of their own inner work, enough to be comfortable sitting with a patient in a non-ordinary state without projecting anxiety into the room. They have integration infrastructure, whether internal or through referral. And they have been honest with themselves about which patients they are positioned to serve well and which they are not.

Information about both MDMA's and psilocybin's ability to support symptoms of depression and boost serotonin continues to circulate widely. Although some effects can appear similar, these two compounds behave very differently in the brain. Here is an updated overview of how they differ mechanistically — and why that matters clinically.

And let's be honest about something else: different chapters of life have a way of bringing people back to work they thought they'd already done. Every significant challenge — grief, transition, rupture, growth — is an invitation to look in the mirror again. For those with a history of MDD or TRD, that reality is even more pronounced. The mirror doesn't go away. But with the right tools and the right support, people get better at facing it.

So what does that actually look like? What happens in the months and years following a profound psilocybin therapy journey, or an 8-week ketamine protocol? What should we be saying to new patient callers? Or to the patient who does beautifully for eight months and then feels the darkness return?

This is the return visit nobody talks about.

A REMS would include certified prescribers, meaning only specially trained and enrolled clinicians could prescribe COMP360. The FDA has indicated it is considering developing a class-wide REMS for psychedelics given the complexity of the risks involved, and provider training or certification is one of the primary tools being considered.

Here is the truth about modern medicine

Compass Pathways’ COM360 program has reached Phase 3 endpoints. In clinical terms, this is a data milestone. In cultural terms, it is a bell tolling across the mental health landscape.

How to prepare with Beyond Consulting

If you’ve ever laid in that liminal space between sleep and wakefulness, where images are vivid, emotions intense, and time elusive, you’ve brushed the very terrain explored by a new scientific proposal that’s been rippling through psychedelic theory: the oneirogen hypothesis.

Psychedelics may serve as a potential treatment for addiction, offering a novel approach that targets the emotional, psychological, and neurochemical roots of substance use disorders. Substances like psilocybin and LSD, for example, are believed to disrupt habitual thought patterns and promote introspection, facilitating emotional healing. While ibogaine, the psychoactive alkaloid derived from the iboga plant, can also foster deep insight, it is also believed to help with addiction by modulating the brain’s dopaminergic and opioid systems, reducing withdrawal symptoms and cravings.

Psychedelic-assisted therapies for women’s health offer a different lens. One that recognizes women’s health transitions as whole-system events, involving brain chemistry, nervous system regulation, emotional processing, and identity reorganization all at once.

How to Work With GALILEA®

Jan 3

Written By Stephanie Karzon

A Practical Guide for Clinics, Practices, and Providers

GALILEA® works with providers, clinics, and psychedelic therapy centers as a strategic and clinical partner. Our offerings are designed to meet you where you are—whether you’re seeking expert perspective, refining an existing practice, or building something entirely new.

All engagements are provider-to-provider and consultant-to-practice, and each tier includes access to our broader multidisciplinary expert team as needed. This allows us to match the right expertise to your specific clinical or operational questions.

GALILEA® is a multidisciplinary program teaching cycle-aware care as both a clinical and relational practice.

GALILEA® brings together psychedelic-informed practice, women-centered precision medicine, operational excellence, and data you can trust into a cohesive program that clinics, therapeutic centers, and practitioners can adopt and evolve within their own ecosystems.

There's a peculiar moment happening in wellness right now. On one hand, we have NASA-grade biofeedback devices and FDA-approved digital therapeutics. On the other, we have people lying on vibrating beds claiming to access "non-ordinary states of consciousness." And, both might be onto something.

Neuroplasticity, psychedelics, and buzz.
The pons, a region involved in movement and implicated in consciousness.
Source: https://www.gregadunn.com/self-reflected/self-reflected-gallery/

When Psychedelics Meet an Injured Spinal Cord – What Really Happens?

Peripherally Dominant Serotonin-Like Syndrome in Persons With SCI Using Serotonergic Psychedelics

In people with spinal cord injury (SCI), something different can happen when taking serotonergic psychedelics like psilocybin or LSD: an intense peripheral reaction in the body that can look a lot like a mild or localized form of serotonin syndrome.

Psilocybin—the psychedelic compound found in certain mushrooms—has long been studied for its impact on mood, consciousness, and mental health. But could it also affect the body in ways we hadn’t considered? A new study, published in npj Aging (July 2025) by Kosuke Kato and colleagues, offers the first experimental evidence that psilocybin and its active metabolite, psilocin, may also have anti-aging effects at both the cellular and organismal level.