Seven days. Two state legislatures. Sixty million dollars, and a brain imaging study that may finally explain why psilocybin works at all.
This was not a quiet week. Let’s get into it ⬇️
The Policy Dominos Are Falling… Fast
King County, Washington just told its law enforcement officers to stand down…
A 6-2 council vote on March 24th moved psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca, and mescaline to the lowest enforcement priority for adults using them for personal, noncommercial purposes. The resolution goes a little deeper, it formally called for the decriminalization at the state and federal levels.
This is what the beginning of a policy cascade starts to look like. King County joins a growing list of jurisdictions from Denver to Oakland to Ann Arbor, that have quietly deprioritized entheogen enforcement before broader legal reform catches up.
The request currently covers unincorporated county areas only. But the direction its heading is clear.
Massachusetts is Making Moves
On the same day, Massachusetts advanced not one, but two psilocybin therapy bills out of the Joint Committee on Mental Health and Substance Abuse Recovery.
H.4200 would establish a pilot program at licensed mental health treatment facilities. H.2203 focuses on FDA approved psilocybin treatments. Advocates also pushed to include Ibogaine, a move that signals the conversation is broadening beyond the typical psilocybin focused treatment, to the wider psychedelic pharmacopeia.
Both bills now move to the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing where they will wait for the next step forward.
New Mexico Sets Its Timeline
New Mexico's Medical Psilocybin Program released its first proposed rules this week, with a public hearing scheduled for April 24 in Santa Fe.
The program is targeting first patient enrollments by December 2026. If that timeline holds, New Mexico becomes one of the first states with a functioning medical psilocybin framework. Not just a pilot, not a study, but an actual program.
$60M and a Two Hour DMT Analog
New York-based Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals closed a $60 million Series A this week. Their lead compound, bretisilocin, is a DMT analog engineered to produce a trip of roughly two hours, a duration that fits cleanly into a standard therapy session in a way that standard DMT's 15-minute window doesn't.
The European Medicines Agency added bretisilocin to its list of priority medicines, granting it an expedited application pathway. The EMA doesn't do that casually.
A short duration, controllable psychedelic experience that’s backed by $60M and on a fast-track regulatory pathway in Europe is exactly what clinical adoption has been waiting for.
Psilocybin Found the “Factory Reset” Button
The most scientifically important item of the week got the least fanfare.
A brain imaging study published this week, covered by Science News on March 24, offers the clearest mechanistic picture yet of how psilocybin produces its therapeutic effects. The answer comes down to one system the default mode network (DMN).
The DMN is the brain's habit-maintaining infrastructure or the system that reinforces your fixed sense of self, your rumination loops, your calcified patterns of thought. Psilocybin temporarily desynchronizes it. Activity falls out of its normal, rigid coordination. The drug doesn't destroy the system it just loosens its grip long enough for new patterns to form.
Researchers describe this as a biological "factory reset." After the drug clears, the DMN returns to normal activity. But the window of desynchronization appears to be when the therapeutic work happens.
This is the mechanism your skeptical friend is asking about when they say "but how does it actually work?" Now you have a cleaner answer.
Bryan Johnson Livestreamed a 5-MeO-DMT Trip on X
This one is harder to categorize but it happened, so let’s check it out.
Tech founder Bryan Johnson livestreamed a 5-MeO-DMT experience on X this week, with UCSF psychedelics researcher Robin Carhart-Harris joining the session live. Johnson has made psychedelic experimentation a documented part of his longevity research, having livestreamed psilocybin sessions previously.
Whether you find this inspiring or concerning, the signal is the same, psychedelic use is moving from clinical whispers to public discourse at an accelerating rate. When a prominent tech founder and a leading academic researcher co-sign a live DMT session for a public audience, the cultural moment has shifted.
On the Mycology Front
Mycology Conference concluded this weekend at the Royal College of Physicians in London bringing together clinicians, researchers, and academics focused on fungal disease prevention and treatment. No major published findings to report from this event yet, but it marks an active moment for the field beyond the psychedelic lens.
What we’re watching is a coordinated, if not coordinated, then at least a synchronized shift across policy, capital markets, regulatory science, and culture. In a single week: a county voted to stop arresting people, two state legislatures moved therapy bills forward, Europe fast-tracked a novel psychedelic compound, a brain imaging study filled in a major mechanistic gap, and a public figure livestreamed the experience to a global audience.
The pace of this is not normal. And if you've been following this space for more than a year, you know the pace has been accelerating, not leveling off.
Here's what to watch going forward:
Massachusetts Health Care Financing Committee — this is where H.4200 and H.2203 will either advance or stall. Timeline matters.
New Mexico's April 24 public hearing — the first proposed rules are out; public comment will shape the final framework.
Gilgamesh's European pathway — bretisilocin on the EMA priority list is the most underreported item of the week. Track it.
Hope you enjoyed this week’s edition of The Spore Drop!
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See ya next week! 🍄