☁️🍄 Issue No. 035

Today’s issue is presented by: 

Good morning, and welcome back to another edition of Headlines. We’ve got a lot of new faces here this week. (ICYMI, we made it to the front page of Hacker News last Wednesday)! 

If you’ve made your way here from HN, welcome to our little corner of the internet. Delighted to have you here. Feel free to check out some of our past editions like this one and this one to get a taste of what we’re all about.

QUICK HITS

• Psychedelic pastor. Chaplains are the latest to join the shroom boom. 

• K meets AI. PsychMD wants to marry tele-ketamine with artificial intelligence. 

• Coming soon. Headspace is partnering with Meta on an immersive VR experience.

• Cactus jack. Canada-based Lophos Pharma is legally mass-producing and selling peyote. 

• Ask Molly. Canada-based TheraPsil is launching an MDMA-assisted psychotherapy training program. 

• Nose spray. Seelos Therapeutics’ latest study suggests intranasal racemic ketamine reduced depression symptoms for adults on the verge of suicide.  

• Promising pair. Small Pharma announces positive results from its latest study pairing DMT with antidepressants for depression.

• Treatment what? The concept of treatment-resistant depression (TRD) may be embedded with some problematic assumptions.

1) AI eats therapy 

Last Monday, OpenAI announced new capabilities for ChatGPT — the bot can now “see, hear, and speak.” What does this all have to do with the mental health space? Well, a lot. As we covered in Issue No. 017: AI Eats Therapy, people have quickly co-opted LLMs as a virtual therapist that can provide instant emotional support at any hour.

And this new evolution is no exception — one OpenAI employee posted a now-viral tweet describing her emotional, therapeutic conversation with GPT where she “felt heard.” And it wasn’t long before the contentious debate over AI therapy was reignited in full swing.

But the pushback, it seems, may be the loud minority: 80% of Americans surveyed said they felt ChatGPT was an effective therapy alternative. Meanwhile, in an adjacent realm, wearables maker WHOOP is going full steam ahead into AI coaching. The train may be leaving the station.

2) To self-medicate or not to self-medicate

This week, an opinion piece titled “Please don’t self-medicate with psychedelic drugs” made the rounds on the web. The controversial Post article saw even further backlash after Michael Pollan, author of How to Change Your Mind, shared the piece on Twitter/X. 

Many were quick to point out the apparent irony of such a post from Pollan, who himself has tried psychedelics non-medically and documented—in the best-selling psychedelic book of the decade—his experiments in great detail. Bucking the headline, some shared their own positive self-medicating experiences. And, earlier this month, Johns Hopkins published a large-scale study showing that psilocybin still had overwhelmingly positive effects when taken “in the real world.” 

Still, others noted the considerable risks of encouraging folks to seek psychedelics in lieu of mental health treatments. And it’s undeniable that proper set and setting are crucial components. Ultimately, only one thing is clear: As the medicalization of psychedelics looms, this conversation is far from over.

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DEALS & DEBUTS

🤸 Cartwheel, a student mental health platform, landed $20M in a Series A round led by Menlo Ventures. → source

💰 Numinus Wellness, a psychedelic mental health company, announced the establishment of an at-the-market equity program to raise CA$10M ($7.4M). → source

🍄 Cybin, a clinical-stage psychedelic biopharma company, teamed up with psychedelic therapy trainer Fluence to support Cybin’s facilitator training program EMBARK. → source

🐎 Megan Thee Stallion joined Seize the Awkward, a national campaign to inspire young adults to talk mental health with their friends, and launched a new public service advertisement dubbed “Check In On Your Friends.”→ source

❤️‍🩹 NorthStar Care, a virtual alcohol rehab program, raised $6M in a seed round led by Tony Robbins and Starting Line.→ source

🌿 Kyros, a Minnesota-based addiction recovery platform, added $10.5M in a funding round led by Rally Ventures.→ source

🐆 Filament Health, a natural psychedelic drug developer, teamed up with plant-based drug developer Jaguar Health to form Magdalena Biosciences, a joint venture to tackle ADHD and other mental health conditions.→ source

WHAT I’M READING

• The loneliness economy. “It’s very easy to blame technology for our loneliness and want less of it, but it’s important to remember that technology follows ideology, not the opposite.” Check out this report on 160+ companies leveraging tech to fight the loneliness crisis. → hugo.pm

That’s a wrap. Happy Mid-Autumn Festival to all those who celebrate. 🥮✨Did you catch the first full moon of fall this Thursday? It was a stunner. 

See ya next Sunday!-Mel