Like many things, 2023 simultaneously passed in a flash yet also seems like an era ago. When I looked back through our coverage in preparation for this Year in Review series, I was struck by just how much happened.
To kick off the year, the Windsors’ ugly duckling (Prince Harry) confessed his use of ayahuasca and psilocybin in a 60 Minutes special. Mainstream media were beside themselves, with British press reportedly “in a tizzy” and U.S. outlets like WSJ carrying bizarre stories like this one on the Prince’s “Pagan Progress”. (Harry “seeks enlightenment like a typical millennial”, the tagline reads, “via drugs and meditation.”)
Conservative think tank Heritage Foundation swiftly FOIA’d the Department of Homeland Security, asking it to release Harry’s allegedly fraudulent visa application as pro-monarchy (and thus vehemently anti-‘Haz and M.’) outlets foamed at the mouth.
Harry’s confession appeared to capture a moment among high society. “Everyone seems to be on psychedelics except me”, read the title of a January opinion piece in the posh British broadsheet, The Telegraph.
In terms of more niche ‘industry’ news, on January 5th MAPS announced that its second Phase III study of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD was “successful”. While thin on details, the signal allowed a sigh of relief and a building of anticipation for the study’s publication and a potential New Drug Application (NDA) submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
January also saw Oregon begin accepting licencing applications for the first state-legal psychedelic program in the country. And, state legislatures across the U.S. announced a flurry of new psychedelic policy reforms: from Washington to Connecticut.
Whether you were a psychedelic policy reform advocate, researcher, hopeful service centre operator, Prince Harry basher or industry bod: It looked set to be an absolute belter of a year.
But, that firehose of news swiftly dialled down. Oregon’s licencing floodgates opened to be greeted by a trickle, psychedelics-related bills slogged through a war of attrition, and the reality of FDA approval timelines and roll-out challenges sunk in.
In many ways, as the psychedelics space’s internal hype cycle boiled over in 2021 and early 2022, it returned to a simmer in 2023. But, as I learned in Austin last year, the best brisket is cooked ‘low and slow’.