About The Psilocybin Record

Why this exists

Psilocybin is a controlled substance almost everywhere. It is also in hundreds of registered clinical trials, prescribable by authorized psychiatrists in Australia for treatment-resistant depression, and licensed in Oregon and Colorado for programs where adults may take it under supervision. Every one of those things is true this morning.

The word “psychedelic” was coined in Saskatchewan, in the psychiatrist Humphry Osmond’s 1956 letters to Aldous Huxley, when this was ordinary science. Around 1970, drug scheduling closed that down across most of the world, and it stayed closed for a generation. It is opening again now, place by place, in no order at all.

The reopening happens in statutes, health regulations, gazette notices, ballot measures and court rulings. Each was written for one place, and most are revised without anyone announcing it. Nobody composed the set to be read together. We read it, date what we find, and read it again.

How an entry gets made

An entry rests on documents anyone can read. Governments publish them because the law requires it, court files are public record, and trial sponsors register what they run. A small team runs the Record, and software that team built does most of the reading. Where a site blocks automated readers, we read it by hand.

The work runs the same way every time. A sweep flags what moved, a language model helps read what comes back and drafts a first summary, then we read the claim back against the document it came from. Where the model and the document disagree, the document wins. Nothing publishes until a person has approved it. The methodology sets out where the models are used and how far.

How we check it

Beside every status is the date we last reviewed it, and one of four sentences saying what that review found. Re-review runs on two cycles: a short one for the places where something is moving, a longer one for everywhere else. An entry jumps the queue as soon as we pick up movement in it.

Both cycles, the places on the short one, and what each of the four marks means are listed in the methodology. Tell us when we get something wrong. Corrections go to the address on the contact page, and the corrections policy says what happens next.

You can get an email when a status changes, plus a short roundup once a month. Each email has a one-click unsubscribe that works. We never sell or share the list, and the privacy statement covers what we collect.

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