☁️🍄 Issue No. 008: The Synthesis Saga

Welcome back to Headlines, your weekly mental health dispatch. And greetings to the 86 new subscribers who have joined us since last week. Delighted to have you.

Today, we’re covering one of the biggest psychedelic stories of the month. Let’s dive in. 

THE SYNTHESIS SAGA

Psychedelic retreat and therapist training company Synthesis Institute has collapsed. 

WHAT’S HAPPENING

Seen by many as the “gold standard” of providers, Synthesis had $10M in venture funding and played a key role in Oregon's pioneering psychedelic program.

But this March, without warning, its online curriculum went dark — and so did leadership, providing virtually no communication for days. Nearly a week later, it finally announced its bankruptcy. 

Now, hundreds of students, many of whom placed their life and careers on hold to pursue psychedelic therapy, could be facing the potential loss of thousands of dollars in tuition. 

SHADOW WORK

Founded in 2018, Synthesis ran several high-end psychedelic retreats in the Netherlands. 

When Oregon became the first state to legalize psilocybin in 2020, Synthesis quickly positioned itself as a keystone provider: 

• Execs moved to the state and worked closely with the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) to develop a template for psychedelic facilitator training.

• Betting the farm, Synthesis purchased Buckhorn Springs Resort, a 124-acre retreat site in Jackson County, Oregon, for nearly $4M.

But as time went on, employees had pause, conveying their growing concerns to psychedelic researcher and author Jules Evans. 

Invested in “rapid growth,” leadership seemed set on creating the “McDonald’s of psychedelic experience.” Incidents of burnout among retreat facilitators were left unaddressed, and shares were promised but never distributed. One facilitator noted: 

“We constantly asked the management for dialogue and mediation to deal with the interpersonal issues, but it was always ignored.”

Then in 2021, the company discovered that, due to zoning laws, its multi-million-dollar retreat property was actually unusable. Despite this setback, employees said leaders continued to follow a “raise big money, spend big money” mentality. 

By the end of 2022, the company was looking at $850K of contractor liabilities with less than 20% of its upcoming cohort seats filled. Their Buckhorn Springs lender served a notice of default and began pursuing remedies, and when attempts to raise more money never materialized, there was not much left to do. In early 2023, it declared bankruptcy. 

It seems, Evans writes, that while the company aimed to help people work through their shadows, it repressed its very own. 

ZOOMING OUT

Synthesis’ demise is a significant loss for the psychedelic community, and it draws attention to one of the trickiest challenges in the wider mental health industry: Capitalistic models and healing modalities don’t always mix well.

Time- and cost-intensive, psychedelic retreats, and therapy in particular, aren’t inherently profitable endeavors. When companies start scaling them as such, facilitators and employees often bear the costs out of the goodwill of their hearts — until they can’t. 

Still, as hype around psychedelics builds, we’ll need thousands of facilitators to meet growing demand. Providers like InnerTrek, Fluence, and a host of reputable universities, are continuing operations. And it appears that many Synthesis students will finish up their certification under Retreat Guru, which has taken over operations. 

It’ll be an uphill climb, though, to reestablish credibility. And psychedelic training programs already face countless barriers. 

Punchline: Diving into untested waters, pioneering psychedelic companies are bumping up against what works and what doesn’t. Many are finding that venture-funded models, which might work elsewhere, can’t simply be copy-and-pasted onto mental health.

The lessons hopefully won’t go unlearned. As investors and startups construct the foundations for the future, slow and thoughtful growth must take precedence to ensure that the containers we create are ethical and robust — able to hold the complexities that arise not just within individuals, but in organizations as well.

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this post, feel free to share it with a friend.

QUICK HITS

• AI. GPT-4 does drug discovery.

• Addicted. Politics and news binges are making us sick.

• Served. Reunion Neurosciences sues Mindset Pharma.

• Appointed. Hims & Hers selects an SVP of Mental Health. 

• Amphibian. Enveric Biosciences announces isolation of cane toad enzyme. 

• March madness. Giannis Antetokounmpo partners with Antidote Health, committing $1M of mental health services for Milwaukeeans.

NEWS & TRENDS

1) Bubble burst?

Beyond Synthesis, trouble appears to be brewing across the psychedelics industry. In just the past few weeks, atai Life Sciences shed 30% of its workforce while Cybin cut 15%. Over in ketamine, companies are making major pullbacks — Field Trip Health is closing five clinics, Irwin Naturals is canceling its Braxia Scientific purchase, and Ketamine Wellness abruptly shuttered. 

A long time coming, some say the psychedelic hype bubble is finally bursting. But, zooming out, conditions are fraught on a macro scale. As the psychedelic market matures, what’s taking place is more likely indicative of expected growing pains in a precarious market.

2) Movement is medicine

Recent studies have found evidence that exercise may be the most potent antidepressant. In a review encompassing 1K trials and over 128K participants, researchers found that physical activity—particularly high-intensity exercise—was 1.5x more effective than counseling or leading medications. 

It makes sense — there are strong links between your mind and your body. Next up, therapists could (and should) begin prescribing workouts for better mental health. → Read more

DEALS & DEBUTS

👋 HelloSelf, a London-based digital therapy platform, secured £16.6M ($20M) in Series B funding in a round led by Octopus Ventures. The platform uses AI to match patients with therapists and uses progress-achieving goals to track patient outcomes.→ source

🌑 Sensate, a company focused on stress and anti-anxiety, closed a $3.2M seed fund led by Incisive Ventures. The startup’s flagship product is a palm-sized, wearable device that sends vibrations via the chest bones to help users relax. → source

🚀 Rocket VR Health, a VR mental health company, announced a new trial in partnership with Massachusetts General Hospital. The 80-patient study will examine Rocket VR’s efficacy in improving quality of life for cancer patients.→ source 

😴 Apollo Neuro, a mental health tech startup, launched an AI-driven wearable sleep device. The product delivers low-frequency sound waves to restore balance to the nervous system and mitigate feelings of stress and anxiety. → source

🐇 Hopper Health, a virtual platform for neurodivergent adults, launched its services in New York and California. The company offers care for adults with conditions like Tourette’s, ADHD, autism, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.→ source

🤝 Intellect, a Singapore-based mental health platform, partnered with IHH Healthcare, Asia’s largest private healthcare group. The two will work together to develop custom digital programs for Intellect’s 3M+ patients, clients, and staff.→ source

🪴 BeMe, a digital behavioral health company, joined forces with CareSource, a nonprofit health plan, to provide science-backed digital mental health support to teens in Indiana.→ source 

🚨 Red Light Holland, a Netherlands-based psilocybin manufacturer, announced a distribution agreement with NUBU Pharmaceuticals, a New Zealand-based medical cannabis company, to distribute psilocybin microdosing capsules to Australasia.→ source

👐 ReKlame Health, a BIPOC-focused telehealth startup, joined Cigna’s network as a virtual mental health provider for patients in New York, New Jersey, and Florida. → source 

🌿 Bienstar Wellness, a Latin American psychedelics provider, is expanding its ibogaine-based addiction treatment to a third city in Brazil. → source

WHAT I’M READING

• MDMA for couples therapy. Across clinical trials and research, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy has primarily targeted PTSD, but the substance could be “transformative” for relationships on the rocks. → Time

• The science of healing. What’s the neuroscience behind effective therapy? The coherence therapy framework from Unlocking the Emotional Brain lays out why different therapeutic techniques work. A summary. → LessWrong

Thanks for reading along this week! Always great spending time with you these Sundays. I’m looking forward to welcoming in the spring equinox tomorrow and plan on spending lots of time outdoors as the days get longer.

Hope it’s nice and sunny where you’re reading this, and if not, I hope you’re enjoying the rain or snow or clouds too. 

Until next Sunday,-Mel

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