The Alkaloid 🌿
@thealkaloid.com
Independent reporting on cannabis, psychedelics, and plant medicine. No hype, no moral panic — just attention. Every Tuesday.
Pinned
Massachusetts voted for legal recreational marijuana. Now that access is under threat, along with jobs, businesses and tax revenue.
Question 8 would let adults possess up to one ounce while taking away the regulated shops that sell it.
Where are people supposed to go?
Question 8 would let adults possess up to one ounce while taking away the regulated shops that sell it.
Where are people supposed to go?
Massachusetts voted for legal recreational marijuana. Now that access is under threat, along with jobs, businesses and tax revenue.
Question 8 would let adults possess up to one ounce while taking away the regulated shops that sell it.
Where are people supposed to go?
Question 8 would let adults possess up to one ounce while taking away the regulated shops that sell it.
Where are people supposed to go?
September 22, 2026 at 11:44 AM
Massachusetts voted for legal recreational marijuana. Now that access is under threat, along with jobs, businesses and tax revenue.
Question 8 would let adults possess up to one ounce while taking away the regulated shops that sell it.
Where are people supposed to go?
Question 8 would let adults possess up to one ounce while taking away the regulated shops that sell it.
Where are people supposed to go?
The FDA's psychedelic-care questions are practical: who monitors the session, how patients report harm, and who follows up afterward. A promising drug still needs a care model patients can understand and trust.
September 15, 2026 at 12:17 PM
The FDA's psychedelic-care questions are practical: who monitors the session, how patients report harm, and who follows up afterward. A promising drug still needs a care model patients can understand and trust.
Cannabis is getting its name on the concert poster. Weedmaps and Rolling Loud have announced a year-round collaboration, starting in Brooklyn on September 10.
The cultural fit is easy to sell. The claim that cannabis makes music better is harder to prove.
The cultural fit is easy to sell. The claim that cannabis makes music better is harder to prove.
September 8, 2026 at 12:30 PM
Cannabis is getting its name on the concert poster. Weedmaps and Rolling Loud have announced a year-round collaboration, starting in Brooklyn on September 10.
The cultural fit is easy to sell. The claim that cannabis makes music better is harder to prove.
The cultural fit is easy to sell. The claim that cannabis makes music better is harder to prove.
Every trade outlet reported the hemp ban moved to Dec 11. It hasn't passed the House, so the date on the books is still Nov 12. And the delay turns on whether a molecule could be made by the plant, not whether it was. Lab-converted delta-8 rides along. The pure analogs don't.
August 26, 2026 at 4:07 PM
Every trade outlet reported the hemp ban moved to Dec 11. It hasn't passed the House, so the date on the books is still Nov 12. And the delay turns on whether a molecule could be made by the plant, not whether it was. Lab-converted delta-8 rides along. The pure analogs don't.
Two clinical trials of lion's mane both dosed three grams a day.
One used dried mushroom. The other used a 10:1 extract, so about thirty grams' worth.
Same number on the page. Ten times the material. That is most of why seven trials have settled nothing.
One used dried mushroom. The other used a 10:1 extract, so about thirty grams' worth.
Same number on the page. Ten times the material. That is most of why seven trials have settled nothing.
August 19, 2026 at 1:28 AM
Two clinical trials of lion's mane both dosed three grams a day.
One used dried mushroom. The other used a 10:1 extract, so about thirty grams' worth.
Same number on the page. Ten times the material. That is most of why seven trials have settled nothing.
One used dried mushroom. The other used a 10:1 extract, so about thirty grams' worth.
Same number on the page. Ten times the material. That is most of why seven trials have settled nothing.
A UK psilocybin trial reported a 12.92 point drop in depression this month. Before you share it: the trial's stated primary outcome was never whether the drug works. It was whether the NHS could run the trial at all. It could. The researchers said so. The press release didn't.
August 12, 2026 at 12:45 PM
A UK psilocybin trial reported a 12.92 point drop in depression this month. Before you share it: the trial's stated primary outcome was never whether the drug works. It was whether the NHS could run the trial at all. It could. The researchers said so. The press release didn't.
Twelve years. Three rounds of legalization. Minnesota teen cannabis use went from 13% to 5%. The flood that was predicted never arrived.
August 4, 2026 at 8:28 PM
Twelve years. Three rounds of legalization. Minnesota teen cannabis use went from 13% to 5%. The flood that was predicted never arrived.
A review of 937 CBD products found only 31% contained what the label said. Topicals were the worst at 13.8%. One vape sold as CBD came back at 45% THC. The person this hurts is the one who read the label and took the dose on the box.
July 29, 2026 at 1:38 AM
A review of 937 CBD products found only 31% contained what the label said. Topicals were the worst at 13.8%. One vape sold as CBD came back at 45% THC. The person this hurts is the one who read the label and took the dose on the box.
Psychedelic mushrooms are still fighting for legal medical use, one trial at a time. Their ordinary cousins quietly became a near-$85 billion wellness industry, barely raising an eyebrow. Same kingdom, very different luck. Real science, still early. Keep some skepticism in the cart.
July 23, 2026 at 5:30 PM
Psychedelic mushrooms are still fighting for legal medical use, one trial at a time. Their ordinary cousins quietly became a near-$85 billion wellness industry, barely raising an eyebrow. Same kingdom, very different luck. Real science, still early. Keep some skepticism in the cart.
For sixty years, brain scans of psychedelics contradicted each other. A new Nature Medicine mega-analysis ran 267 people and 500+ scans through one pipeline. Five different drugs, from LSD to ayahuasca, left the same fingerprint. They don't quiet the brain. They connect it.
July 22, 2026 at 3:06 PM
For sixty years, brain scans of psychedelics contradicted each other. A new Nature Medicine mega-analysis ran 267 people and 500+ scans through one pipeline. Five different drugs, from LSD to ayahuasca, left the same fingerprint. They don't quiet the brain. They connect it.
Mescaline is the oldest psychedelic we can date. People have used peyote for about 5,700 years, yet it's the one neuroscience knows least. A new brain scan finally caught it working, and it looks nothing like LSD or psilocybin. The oldest trip has its own signature.
July 21, 2026 at 10:57 AM
Mescaline is the oldest psychedelic we can date. People have used peyote for about 5,700 years, yet it's the one neuroscience knows least. A new brain scan finally caught it working, and it looks nothing like LSD or psilocybin. The oldest trip has its own signature.
For years growers prized a potent magic mushroom called Natal Super Strength. Turns out nobody had ever named it. New DNA work shows it's a separate species, and its family tree pushes the origins of the world's favorite psychedelic mushroom back over a million years.
July 14, 2026 at 3:20 PM
For years growers prized a potent magic mushroom called Natal Super Strength. Turns out nobody had ever named it. New DNA work shows it's a separate species, and its family tree pushes the origins of the world's favorite psychedelic mushroom back over a million years.
For a decade, psychedelic medicine meant an 8-hour trip, a guide, and a huge bill. A new class of compounds rewires the brain the way psychedelics do, minus the hallucination. The first just cleared the FDA for at-home trials. Maybe the trip was optional all along.
July 7, 2026 at 10:33 PM
For a decade, psychedelic medicine meant an 8-hour trip, a guide, and a huge bill. A new class of compounds rewires the brain the way psychedelics do, minus the hallucination. The first just cleared the FDA for at-home trials. Maybe the trip was optional all along.
The munchies aren't in your stomach. A new PNAS study found cannabis turns up the brain's reward for food, spikes the hunger hormone, and sharpens taste. Block the brain's receptors and the craving vanishes. The same switch could help feed people who can't eat.
June 29, 2026 at 1:51 PM
The munchies aren't in your stomach. A new PNAS study found cannabis turns up the brain's reward for food, spikes the hunger hormone, and sharpens taste. Block the brain's receptors and the craving vanishes. The same switch could help feed people who can't eat.
Modern psychedelic studies mostly recruited the young; people over 60 were ~1.4% of participants. A new UC Berkeley study hands the eye mask to healthy 60–85 year-olds, asking if psilocybin can keep an aging brain adaptable. No results yet, but the question is overdue.
June 23, 2026 at 11:49 AM
Modern psychedelic studies mostly recruited the young; people over 60 were ~1.4% of participants. A new UC Berkeley study hands the eye mask to healthy 60–85 year-olds, asking if psilocybin can keep an aging brain adaptable. No results yet, but the question is overdue.
Magic mushrooms and fiber caps both make psilocybin. They evolved it separately — different enzymes, different pathways, unrelated niches. Evolution invented the same psychedelic twice, in unrelated fungi, for reasons nobody has explained.
June 17, 2026 at 11:10 AM
Magic mushrooms and fiber caps both make psilocybin. They evolved it separately — different enzymes, different pathways, unrelated niches. Evolution invented the same psychedelic twice, in unrelated fungi, for reasons nobody has explained.
A lab just engineered one tobacco plant to make five psychedelics at once: psilocybin, DMT, bufotenin, 5-MeO-DMT, psilocin. The strange part isn't the plant. It's that the molecules no longer need the mushroom or the toad. Our drug laws were written for a world that just ended.
June 16, 2026 at 11:00 AM
A lab just engineered one tobacco plant to make five psychedelics at once: psilocybin, DMT, bufotenin, 5-MeO-DMT, psilocin. The strange part isn't the plant. It's that the molecules no longer need the mushroom or the toad. Our drug laws were written for a world that just ended.
Reindeer dig through snow to find hallucinogenic mushrooms. Jaguars chew the ayahuasca vine and roll around like house cats. Wallabies get loaded in Tasmania's poppy fields and stomp crop circles. Getting high may be older than humanity — one researcher called it a fourth drive.
June 10, 2026 at 9:58 AM
Reindeer dig through snow to find hallucinogenic mushrooms. Jaguars chew the ayahuasca vine and roll around like house cats. Wallabies get loaded in Tasmania's poppy fields and stomp crop circles. Getting high may be older than humanity — one researcher called it a fourth drive.
In November a $28 billion hemp industry is set to vanish. Not because anyone proved it dangerous, but because Congress reached for prohibition out of habit, in a law the White House is now scrambling to undo. The new limit: 0.4mg of THC per container. Most CBD won't survive it.
June 9, 2026 at 2:38 PM
In November a $28 billion hemp industry is set to vanish. Not because anyone proved it dangerous, but because Congress reached for prohibition out of habit, in a law the White House is now scrambling to undo. The new limit: 0.4mg of THC per container. Most CBD won't survive it.
In November a $28 billion hemp industry is set to vanish. Not because anyone proved it dangerous, but because Congress reached for prohibition out of habit, in a law the White House is now scrambling to undo. The new limit: 0.4mg of THC per container. Most CBD won't survive it.
June 9, 2026 at 2:09 PM
In November a $28 billion hemp industry is set to vanish. Not because anyone proved it dangerous, but because Congress reached for prohibition out of habit, in a law the White House is now scrambling to undo. The new limit: 0.4mg of THC per container. Most CBD won't survive it.
The FDA lost its commissioner in May. On June 29 the agency helps decide whether all marijuana moves to Schedule III, the biggest rescheduling hearing in 50 years. The most powerful seat in drug policy sits empty with a caretaker filling in, and almost nobody is talking about it.
June 2, 2026 at 12:47 PM
The FDA lost its commissioner in May. On June 29 the agency helps decide whether all marijuana moves to Schedule III, the biggest rescheduling hearing in 50 years. The most powerful seat in drug policy sits empty with a caretaker filling in, and almost nobody is talking about it.
People are Googling "microdose therapy for inflammation" and finding wellness blogs that swear it'll fix their joints. The lab science is real. Psychedelics hit the receptors that quiet inflammation. But that's mostly high doses in mice and petri dishes, not microdoses in actual humans.
June 1, 2026 at 5:31 PM
People are Googling "microdose therapy for inflammation" and finding wellness blogs that swear it'll fix their joints. The lab science is real. Psychedelics hit the receptors that quiet inflammation. But that's mostly high doses in mice and petri dishes, not microdoses in actual humans.
A London lab gave 34 depressed people a single IV dose of DMT, the molecule in ayahuasca, with no vine and no all-night ceremony. Depression scores dropped for up to six months. The tradition holds the ritual does the healing. This trial quietly asks whether it was ever the ritual at all.
May 27, 2026 at 11:03 AM
A London lab gave 34 depressed people a single IV dose of DMT, the molecule in ayahuasca, with no vine and no all-night ceremony. Depression scores dropped for up to six months. The tradition holds the ritual does the healing. This trial quietly asks whether it was ever the ritual at all.
By RAND's latest count, about 10 million Americans microdosed a psychedelic last year. The science is still scrambling to catch up with what people are already doing.
May 27, 2026 at 1:15 AM
By RAND's latest count, about 10 million Americans microdosed a psychedelic last year. The science is still scrambling to catch up with what people are already doing.
The Alkaloid covers cannabis, psychedelics, and plant medicine the way they deserve to be covered. No hype, no moral panic. Science, culture and capital — one dose at a time. New issues every Tuesday at TheAlkaloid.com
The Alkaloid
Science, culture and capital — one dose at a time.
TheAlkaloid.com
May 27, 2026 at 12:02 AM
The Alkaloid covers cannabis, psychedelics, and plant medicine the way they deserve to be covered. No hype, no moral panic. Science, culture and capital — one dose at a time. New issues every Tuesday at TheAlkaloid.com