The Alkaloid #36: Who DJs the Trip?
Who chooses the soundtrack for psychedelic therapy? An analysis of eight playlists finds only weak evidence for a shared musical arc, without testing whether the music helps patients.
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Field Notes #15: What a Support Line Can Tell Us
A new database describes 25,419 Fireside peer-support interactions. It offers a view of help-seeking, not a league table of drug risk or proof that support works.
Field Notes #14: Cannabis and Sleep, Still an Evidence Gap
Nine studies, 537 adults, and a very uncertain answer. A Cochrane review on cannabis for insomnia shows why feeling sleepy and treating insomnia need separate evidence.
The Alkaloid #35: The Shorter Trip Still Needs a Clock
A mebufotenin trial found an antidepressant signal and early discharge readiness. Its protocol still required four hours at the clinic. Those are different findings.
The Alkaloid #34: The Label Isn’t the Chemistry
Indica, sativa, hybrid: familiar labels, unreliable predictions. What cannabis chemistry research can tell us—and what it cannot.
Field Notes #13: When the Trial Ends
Four former psychedelic-trial participants describe life after the final visit. Their accounts raise questions about aftercare, with company involvement disclosed.
The Alkaloid #33: The Brain’s Own Cannabinoids
What an ageing-brain review, a mouse experiment and human blood samples can tell us about cannabinoid signalling—and what they cannot establish.
The Alkaloid #32: What the Flame Adds
Heating THC produced 79 small-molecule breakdown products in a new lab study. What the experiment shows, what it cannot tell us, and why better testing should serve people who use cannabis.
Field Notes #12: Beyond the Breakthrough Headlines
A new US survey records health changes people attribute to five psychoactive drugs. Its small subgroups and different recall windows matter as much as the headlines.
Field Notes #11: Who Gets Paid for the Root?
Gabon wants a share of the ibogaine boom. New reporting exposes the distance between paying for bark and sharing the value created afterward.
The Alkaloid #31: The Leaf and the Label
Kratom leaf and concentrated 7-OH can share a name on the shelf without sharing a chemical profile. The distinction matters for safety, research and regulation.
The Alkaloid #30: The Jobs Behind the Jar
Before a cannabis jar reaches the counter, someone grows, harvests and cures it. Massachusetts' repeal debate is also about those paychecks, the businesses behind them and the limits of promises about what comes next.
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The Alkaloid #29: The Right to Have It. Nowhere Legal to Buy It.
Massachusetts could preserve an adult's right to possess cannabis while closing recreational shops and ending home grows. Who benefits—and what would police be asked to do again?
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The Alkaloid #28: The Medicine Needs More Than a Molecule
The FDA is asking who delivers psychedelic care, how patients are protected, and who pays. The practical work extends well beyond the drug.
Field Notes
Field Notes #10: A Room of Their Own
Cannabis-friendly social spaces need more than a place to consume. St. Louis offers a look at the work of hosting.
Field Notes
Field Notes #9: The New Social Drink
THC drinks borrow the rituals of a night out. Familiar packaging does not make the intoxicant familiar.
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The Alkaloid #27: From the Parking Lot to the Poster
Cannabis gets an official place in the event program. What two upcoming events promise, and what a small music study can actually tell us.
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The Alkaloid #26: The 227 Smells of Cannabis
A new cannabis genetics paper cataloged 227 volatile terpenes across six cultivars. The fun part is what those compounds reveal about flower, genes, and why your nose keeps finding more than a THC label can say.
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The Alkaloid #25: The Deadline That Hasn't Moved
Everyone reported that the federal hemp ban slipped to December 11. It hasn't passed the House, and the delay is narrower than the coverage suggests: it turns on whether a molecule is capable of being naturally produced, not on how it was actually made. What that sorts, and what it strands.
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The Alkaloid #24: The Same Three Grams
Two clinical trials of lion's mane both gave subjects three grams a day. One of them used ten times more mushroom than the other. Seventeen years of research, seven small trials, and still no agreement on what a dose is. Plus Curaleaf goes hostile on Aurora, and Yale prices federal legalization.
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The Alkaloid #23: The Question It Was Asking
PsiDeR was built to answer whether the NHS could run a psilocybin trial at all. It could. The 12.92-point depression result everyone reported is a secondary outcome, and the researchers said so plainly. Their press office left that part out. Plus: the Senate blinks on hemp.
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The Alkaloid #22: The Alarm That Didn't Ring
Past-month cannabis use among Minnesota teens fell from 13% to 5% across twelve years of steadily looser law, and the predicted spike never came. The decline also never reached Native, LGBTQ+ or low-income students, who were three times more likely to use in 2013 and still are today.
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The Alkaloid #21: The Honest Third
Researchers pooled 28 studies covering 937 CBD products and found just 31.3 percent contained what the label claimed. Topicals came in at 13.8 percent. Plus undisclosed THC, synthetic cannabinoids, heavy metals, and why the number on the box can be wrong in four different ways.
Field Notes
Field Notes #8: The Other Mushroom Boom
While psychedelic mushrooms fight for legal status, their boring cousins quietly became a near-$85 billion wellness industry. What the science on lion's mane and reishi actually shows — and where the marketing gets ahead of it.