Research · Field Notes
What the Research Is Saying
A Field Notes briefing on psilocybin, PTSD, and the difference between a headline and a harvest.
We do not run trials. We grow things, we make clothes, and we have a tuxedo cat who does not read Nature. We also live with PTSD and depression, and we found real grounding in psychedelics as part of healing. That sentence is on our About page because it is true. It is also the reason we refuse to turn this shop into a clinic with a tote bag.
So when a summer produces actual paper — not a podcast, not a rumor — we write it down the way you write a first fruiting: date, conditions, what it is not.
Three things the FDA did in July
On July 13, 2026, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration described a series of actions to advance the development of psychedelic drug therapies for serious mental health conditions. The list, as the agency framed it, was practical rather than poetic.
First: final guidance for industry, Psychedelic Drugs: Considerations for Clinical Investigations. Product quality, safety, trial design, patient monitoring. The boring architecture that has to exist before anyone should be talking about a pharmacy.
Second: a public hearing, to take comment from patients, researchers, clinicians, industry, and whoever else has a stake in how this work is done.
Third: memoranda of understanding involving the Department of Veterans Affairs, HHS, and FDA — parallel agreements meant to put scientists from those agencies in the same room on regulatory research. Veterans have been in this conversation for a long time. The paperwork is finally catching up to the people. The public hearing the agency announced that week is scheduled for September 14, 2026.
A small veteran study, held at its actual size
On July 30, Communications Medicine published “Safety, feasibility, and preliminary clinical outcomes of psilocybin-assisted therapy for veterans with severe, treatment-resistant PTSD: an open-label pilot clinical trial.” The authors include Stacey B. Armstrong, Adam W. Levin, Nathan D. Sepeda, and colleagues. Open-label means everyone knew what they were receiving. Pilot means it was built to see if the work could be done safely, not to settle the question for a country.
Thirteen veterans enrolled. One withdrew before dosing. Twelve completed the intervention. Two sessions with synthetic psilocybin — 15 mg, then 25 mg — two to three weeks apart, inside a therapy frame. In that open-label, one-month window — not a blinded long-term trial — the paper reported large drops in CAPS-5 scores, with a majority no longer meeting PTSD criteria at one month, and no serious adverse events. Headaches, anxiety, dizziness showed up as mild or moderate and passed. Heart rate and blood pressure rose in session and stayed in a range the authors described as acceptable.
Limitations, which the paper itself carries: n = 12. No placebo arm. One month of follow-up. A sample that was about 92 percent Caucasian and predominantly male. People with certain psychiatric histories were excluded. That is how early work looks. It is also how you get a headline that forgets to mention the sample size.
On August 5 the VA announced PIVOT, a new trial of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression in veterans, including those with concurrent PTSD. Pharmaceutical-grade drug. Clinical setting. Psychological support. The announcement is a bed being prepared, not a harvest.
You don’t harvest on the day the first mushroom shows. You note it. You wait.
The pipeline, without the drumroll
Compass Pathways has said it expects to complete a rolling New Drug Application for COMP360, a psilocybin formulation studied in treatment-resistant depression, in the fourth quarter of 2026. Any first-half 2027 launch is the company’s own projection only — not an FDA timeline — and remains contingent on FDA approval and DEA rescheduling. Neither has happened. Usona Institute is in the same general weather for major depressive disorder. Transcend Therapeutics has been developing methylone for PTSD. In April the FDA issued Commissioner’s National Priority Vouchers to those three programs. A voucher speeds a review. It does not write the outcome.
New Mexico’s medical psilocybin program has been aiming to open to patients by the end of 2026; the state began taking producer applications in August. Texas has put public money into veteran and ibogaine research. If you live in Missouri, none of that is a local prescription. The Controlled Substances Act still applies unless and until it doesn’t. We will not pretend a garden in St. Louis is a loophole.
What we will not do with this
We will not sell you a protocol. We will not tell you to take anything. We will not dress a clinical result up as a lifestyle. The reason the garden is built this way — a little strange, a lot of patience, rooted in the dark — is that healing, for us, was not a product drop. It was a practice. The shirts are what grew after.
If this work is personally relevant, the next step is a licensed healthcare provider and the actual papers, not a brand newsletter. If you just wanted to know whether the ground had shifted: a little. Not enough to harvest. Enough to keep the notes.