Does Microdosing Actually Work? What Controlled Studies Found
The best controlled evidence does not show a reliable, broad microdosing benefit. Here is what placebo-controlled LSD and psilocybin studies found, what people report, and what remains unknown.
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Inside the Science: A Q&A with Robin Carhart-Harris on Psilocybin Therapy
Robin Carhart-Harris is the most-cited researcher in the modern clinical psychedelic renaissance. This Q&A draws on his published papers, institutional press releases, and on-record interviews to trace the science from his earliest Imperial College London fMRI work to the psilocybin trials that put the field on the map.
Read article →What Is Set and Setting? A Psychedelic Preparation Guide
A practical orientation to set (mindset, intention, emotional baseline) and setting (physical environment, sitter, social context) for a psychedelic experience. Covers what the published clinical and survey literature says, how the framework plays out across substances, what a difficult experience looks like and how it is shaped by preparation, and what to do in practice in the week before, the day of, and the integration after.
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What Is the Default Mode Network?
The default mode network is the set of brain regions most active during self-referential thinking and inner narration. Psychedelics suppress it dose-dependently, and that suppression is the most consistent neural correlate of ego dissolution and the broader therapeutic response.
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What Is Ego Death? A Psychedelic Experience Guide
A short orientation to ego death in psychedelic contexts. Covers the spectrum from ego softening to total dissolution, what it feels like across substances, its role in therapy, and how to prepare for the possibility.
Read article →What Is 5-MeO-DMT? The Toad, Tryptamine, and Ego Dissolution
A short-acting tryptamine, pharmacology-distinct from N,N-DMT, with twenty to forty five minute inhaled duration and an effect profile regularly described as total ego dissolution, often non-visual, often without remembered narrative content. 5-MeO-DMT lives at the convergence of synthetic chemistry, Sonoran desert toad conservation, and a ceremony culture that has outrun most of its careful study.
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Drug Checking Services: A Harm Reduction Field Guide
Reagent kits, fentanyl test strips, and lab-level testing with FTIR and Raman spectroscopy: a buyer's guide to what each tool catches, where each is legal, and how to use each in practice without overstating what the result means.
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Oregon Psilocybin One Year In: What the First 12 Months of Legal Service Centers Actually Looked Like
Oregon Measure 109 service centers have now been open for more than a year. Here is what OHA data, news reporting, and operator interviews reveal about the actual scale, clients, dosing, pricing, outcomes, and the 2026 legislative course-corrections.
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Psychedelic Retreat Legal Gray Zones: What You Should Know Before You Book
From Oregon Measure 109 to ayahuasca churches, Jamaica retreats, and the unregulated backcountry of Mexico, the psychedelic retreat industry operates in widely varying legal conditions. Here is the legal status, the real risks, and what informed booking decisions look like in 2026.
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Silicon Valley Microdosing: The Origin Story of the Trend
From James Fadiman's 2010 self-report diary to Tim Ferriss's "Tools of Titans," the Bulletproof biohacker ecosystem, and the Imperial College self-blinding reversal: the cultural lineage of Silicon Valley microdosing, and the open question of whether adoption led the science or the other way around.
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Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters: Are You on the Bus or Off the Bus?
In 1964, novelist Ken Kesey and a hand-picked crew of friends bought a 1939 International Harvester school bus, painted it in Day-Glo colors, and set out to recreate the road across America. Here is the history of the Merry Pranksters, the Acid Tests, and the cultural frame the trip left behind.
Read article →What Is Ketamine? Therapy, Effects, and Mechanisms
A dissociative anesthetic since 1970, a club drug in the 1990s, and the first genuinely new antidepressant mechanism the FDA has approved in thirty years. Ketamine occupies a strange and consequential niche in modern medicine.
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Psilocybin Therapy: What to Know Before You Try
Psilocybin therapy is no longer a fringe idea, it is a licensed service in two US states and a fast-moving research area globally. Before you book a session, here is what you actually need to know.
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Ketamine Therapy Is Now FDA-Approved. What Patients Should Know
Ketamine went from anesthetic to antidepressant in a single decade, and in 2019 became the first genuinely new class of depression treatment approved by the FDA in thirty years.
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Music Festivals and the Volunteers Who Are Saving Lives
At festivals across the country, a small network of harm reduction volunteers is quietly preventing overdoses with fentanyl test strips, safe spaces, and peer support. Here is what they do and why it works.
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Psychedelics and Depression: What the Science Actually Shows
In 2021, researchers published the largest psilocybin trial ever conducted. The results reframed what we thought was possible in treating depression. Here is what they found, what came next, and what it means for the 100 million people worldwide who suffer from treatment-resistant forms of the illness.
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What Is Ayahuasca? The Vine, the Ceremony, and the Science
Somewhere in the Amazon basin, people have been drinking a bitter vine brew for at least a thousand years. Today, that same brew is showing up in clinical trials for depression and PTSD. Here is everything the science knows about ayahuasca.
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What Is MDMA? The Science, Therapy, and Future of Ecstasy
In 1976, a chemist named Alexander Shulgin synthesized a molecule that had been sitting in a patent filing since 1912 and decided to try it himself. What he experienced over the next several hours would eventually reshape psychiatric medicine.
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A Single Dose of Psilocybin Just Beat Cocaine Addiction. Here's How.
For fifty years, cocaine use disorder has had no approved medication. In May 2026, a randomized controlled trial published in JAMA Network Open changed that picture, not with a pharmaceutical, but with a single dose of psilocybin.
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What Is Microdosing? The Complete Guide to Sub-Perceptual Psychedelics
In 2010, a psychologist named James Fadiman started collecting diaries. He asked people who microdosed psychedelics to write down what happened. What emerged was a picture that surprised him, and launched a global conversation about consciousness, productivity, and the nature of therapeutic change.
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What Is LSD? From Bicycle Day to Clinical Trials
On April 19, 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann climbed onto his bicycle and began the most consequential commute in pharmacological history. This is the full story of LSD, from ergot fungus to CIA mind control to Johns Hopkins.
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What Is DMT? The Spirit Molecule, Explained
In 1990, Rick Strassman injected DMT into volunteers under a federal research approval at the University of New Mexico. The subjects reported interdimensional beings, alternate realities, and experiences more vivid than waking life, then ate lunch. The complete story of the spirit molecule.
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8 Ways to Legally Enjoy Psychedelics
Most "legal psychedelics" lists skip the important part: very few of these options are actually fully legal. Here's what each path really is, and what the tradeoffs look like.
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What Is Psilocybin? The Complete Guide to Magic Mushrooms
A Wall Street banker, a healer in Oaxaca, and a mushroom growing guide written under fake names. The complete story of psilocybin, history, brain chemistry, effects, and what the science actually says.
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What Are Psychedelics? A Beginner's Guide
Everything you need to know about psychedelic substances, from psilocybin mushrooms and LSD to MDMA and ayahuasca. What the science says, where they're legal, and how to stay safe.
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