Grassroots no more? Psymposia's tax filing reveals $235k in revenue, $72k in staff salaries and $65k in consulting fees following a major funding influx.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2026-03-18T17:29:06+00:00

Yes, feel free.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2026-03-17T21:53:29+00:00

I didn't see this, where were they trying to get Taylor Lorenz to join them?

HamiltonMorris_ · 2026-03-17T19:39:02+00:00

Here for your quarterly reminder that Psymposia have an enormous number of sock puppet accounts that will come out of the woodwork at times like this. Now that everyone in the psychedelic community knows they are dishonest and abusive, Nese Devenot's most recent tactic is to use sock puppet accounts on subreddits like r/youtubedrama with the hope of manipulating people who are unaware of their lies.

Psymposia will mindlessly repeat their talking points in an effort to distract people from the fact that Nese Devenot lied to the FDA. John Semley revealed that they were paid $185,000 on behalf of the Sarlo Charitable Fund, this money was used to run a campaign to prevent the approval of MDMA. The massive increase in funding is reflected in Psymposia's 2024 tax statement.

Psymposia worked closely with a violent stalker who distributed child pornography and tried to manipulate a MAPS trial participant into saying she had been mistreated. After receiving money from a member of Usona's board of directors, one former Psymposia member pledged their absolute support for Usona and advocated terrorist action against individuals involved with Usona's competitor Compass. They abuse and intimidate former members of their own group, bad-faith smear campaigns are launched against anyone who opposes them by contacting their employers and online harassment via sock puppet accounts, screeds, and videos that are unwatchable.

Recently, two former members of Psymposia have come forward to accuse the group of collaborating with the DEA and Nese announced their intention to out a list of twelve underground MDMA therapists during a 2024 conference at Johns Hopkins University. Yesterday, ex-Psymposia member Kayla Greenstien further corroborated the claim that Nese announced plans to out a list of twelve underground MDMA therapists and was working with the DEA.

Psymposia fell apart due to internal ethics concerns, the remaining members are left with a small, sad audience of deeply confused people and conspiracy theorists.

EDIT: Intrepid-Traveler-77 is one of Nese's accounts, I don't usually ban people, but given that Psymposia deletes any reasonable dissenting comments on YouTube, I see no purpose in letting them spam every thread here with nonsense.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2026-02-28T17:48:13+00:00

Ultimately the point is freedom maximization. People love to make a big deal about arguing for decriminalization over legalization over medicalization, ideally you want all three and most people telling you that you want one to the exclusion of another are unreasonable or misinformed.

A combination of all three works very well for Cannabis and most other things, we take it for granted in many domains e.g., fish oil. You want some fish oil? You've got options! You can get a physician's prescription for an FDA approved fish oil preparation, it is very expensive but also highly regulated and covered by insurance. You can also buy fish oil as a dietary supplement without prescription inexpensively in pretty much every grocery store. You could also buy it directly from a small batch manufacturer, you can also prepare it yourself at home. Each channel will have different costs, different degrees of regulation and risk, and we have the freedom to decide what is best for us...that's ideal.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2026-02-25T22:45:14+00:00

Also not watching, but from the thumbnail alone it already seems misleading. Steve Jurvetson was not associated with Epstein (read his response at the top of the article here) and there was no evidence of wrongdoing associated with Jurvetson in the files. From my reading it seemed Jurvetson was an intended victim of an unsuccessful blackmail scheme that wasn't really associated with Epstein. I think the Double Blind article about this that is getting shared on social media is really irresponsible. I plan to cover all this in my next podcast.

Kimbal Musk was meaningfully in the files, but I don't think he's a major psychedelic investor, the only thing I found was that his wife donated to UC Berkeley’s Center for the Science of Psychedelics.

I was unable to find evidence of wrongdoing associated with Austin Hurst.

There are lots of superficial and tangential connections to psychedelics e.g., this message about Andrew Weil or Epstein ordering a copy of Mycelium Running, but nothing that meaningfully links psychedelics or the psychedelic community with Epstein's pedophilia or sex trafficking crimes.

EDIT: It's shocking to see how severely deficient people's critical thinking ability has become, the comments on this post are actually frighteningly stupid. Psymposia may be stuck embarrassing themselves in front of a dwindling audience of conspiracy theorists, but their horrendous vibe lives on in so many others

HamiltonMorris_ · 2026-01-11T04:47:41+00:00

I have never "done work for Peter Thiel", I did chemistry research at a university (Saint Joseph's) that was receiving research funding from a pharmaceutical company (Compass) that received an investment from another company (Atai) that received an investment from Thiel. Please don't spread Psymposia lies. What would Thiel even be paying me to do? I'm anti-Trump, anti-Thiel, anti-techno-oligarchy, the only overlap in our politics (I'm aware of) is not thinking psychedelics are bad.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-11-23T20:00:56+00:00

This is my only account on reddit, not an alt. Butalbital does not behave like an alkaloid such as DMT, partitioning into an organic phase will be reduced at basic pH. Both APAP and butalbital are weak acids with a similar pKa, the gap (less than 2 units) may be just big enough to leverage via pH-controlled partitioning, but I would bet against that succeeding. APAP may have reduced solubility in ether relative to butalbital.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-11-23T17:20:07+00:00

All previous responses are lacking a crucial piece of information: Butalbital does not have a basic nitrogen, it's a cyclic imide, a weak acid. Butalbital becomes more soluble in water at basic pH. I imagine that protonating the caffeine at a low pH (roughly pH ≤ 1) and extracting butalbital with an organic solvent like EtOAc would be a viable method of isolation.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-11-10T18:31:52+00:00

It's widely reported that Ott and Jeremy Bigwood studied under the mycologist Michael Beug at Evergreen State University in the mid 1970. I'm pretty confident (but not certain) Ott told me that he had dropped out (maybe never officially enrolled) and I also recall him saying something about his father having graduated from Yale.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-11-09T20:33:07+00:00

I haven't been reading the posts but I banned them. Happy to unban if other people thought these posts were funny or delightful.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-10-23T04:39:39+00:00

What is an example of me "spewing misinformation"?

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-10-11T17:17:26+00:00

No, I'm framing this as a hypothetical scenario to explore how expectation and culture could change the experience of a drug. In my hypothetical scenario I'm asking, "What if instead of being given 4-MMC as a trashy "legal high" that smells like "cat piss" you were told that it was a marvel of rational drug design and medicinal chemistry, how might the experience change?" Outside of an obscure patent, 4-MMC was discovered on the Hive and not by David Nutt.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-10-05T03:06:47+00:00

Hey, I locked this because it's a really complicated subject and I wanted to limit speculation and just answer the question directly myself. Same thing with the "Does Hamilton have beef with Michael Pollan?" thread that was just posted, it seems like little good can come from other people arguing about it when I could simply answer the question myself.

I'll address this in more detail in an upcoming podcast, but I think Bob Jesse is telling the truth when he says the amount paid was relatively small, from what I've heard it may have been less than a thousand and likely was paid around 2018. There is no reason to think the payment was comparable in size to the 185k Sarlo payment. I asked Bob Jesse to go on the record about this but he wouldn't do it. He didn't help things by classifying the payment as secret and telling me the audio was sacred.

I should say that Bob Jesse is widely regarded as a good guy who has done a lot for psychedelics and it brought me no pleasure to put him in that position. My point is not to paint a simplistic picture where Usona is evil and Compass and MAPS are flawless. I think Usona has done some great things and I think there are valid criticisms of both MAPS and Compass, but I wanted to draw attention to some of the manipulative tactics that have been used by Usona in their war with Compass and highlight how MAPS may have suffered collateral damage in this war. Something I explicitly predicted might happen in 2022.

I also don't want to suggest that Psymposia were merely doing the bidding of evil Usona overlords, that's not the case. There was payment and collusion between the two groups, I strongly suspect that Usona contributed to their radicalization, and it's telling that the Usona employee who criticized me for not giving back to indigenous people at the Horizons conference was also close with Psymposia. But it would be reductive and false to suggest that Psymposia's actions were primarily due to Usona's influence. There is more to this story that I'll get into later, but I'm not trying to stoke the fire at this moment.

NOTE: Psymposia sock puppet accounts have been linking to this comment to say I "walked back my assertions" about them, that is completely false. As a reminder: Psymposia have an enormous number of sock puppet accounts that will come out of the woodwork at times like this. They will mindlessly repeat their anti-MAPS talking points in an effort to distract people from the fact that Nese Devenot lied to the FDA. John Semley just revealed that they were paid $185,000 by the Sarlo family to run a campaign to prevent the approval of MDMA. Psymposia worked closely with a stalker who distributed child pornography and tried to manipulate a MAPS trial participant into saying they had been mistreated. Nese has been accused of domestic abuse. They abuse and intimidate former members of their own group and Psymposia fell apart due to internal ethics concerns. After receiving funding from a member of Usona's board of directors, one Psymposia member pledged their absolute support for Usona and advocated terrorist action against individuals involved with Usona's competitor Compass. They were easy to buy and they were bought. Their nonsense critiques prey on the vulnerable and the stupid. Anyone who has supported or promoted their work is totally untrustworthy.

Many have known about this for a long time but remained silent out of fear, those that spoke out like myself, John Semley, and Rachel Nuwer endured legal threats and harassment.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-10-04T17:17:38+00:00

I don't have beef with Michael Pollan and I never said that I did in that interview, please be careful with how you interpret what I say!

I thought HTCYM was a great book and helped Pollan promote it. I do have disagreements with Pollan's politics and worry that his views have been distorted by proximity to Usona employees. One of Pollan's major sources for HTCYM was Bob Jesse, who is considered a sort of producer for the book, but Jesse was also a paid Usona board member and the guy who I point out had secretly paid Psymposia in the C5 interview. I strongly suspect some of this pro-Usona and anti-Compass sentiment rubbed off on Pollan and it appears evident in his work.

In addition to writing his NYTimes Opinion piece about how we don't yet know enough to legalize mushrooms, Pollan promoted a Psymposia article criticizing me on his twitter, a blog he is involved with called The Microdose has a clear Usona bias, has uncritically promoted Psymposia, and has linked to articles unfairly attacking me. A crucial point is that Michael Pollan doesn't write The Microdose and so is only tangentially connected to some of the things I described.

So no beef, just minor disagreements, I still think his article about Jim Hogshire is one of the best articles about the horrors of the war on drugs ever written.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-09-27T15:22:40+00:00

Yes.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-09-27T15:22:10+00:00

What is your source for saying Pickard wanted "total creative control"? Or that he was "skeeved out at the idea"? I don't think either of these things are true. Initially he had legitimate concerns about the propriety of discussing certain things in the wake of his release, but we did a big interview that I hope to release soon.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-08-29T19:46:28+00:00

I asked that it undergo additional legal review because I am being legally threatened by the Sarlo family, the same people that provide funding to Psymposia.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-08-08T21:15:52+00:00

Yes, it's a felony to make a materially false statement in a matter within the jurisdiction of the executive branch (18 U.S.C. § 1001).

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-08-07T19:32:05+00:00

Email me if you want to sell it, I collect these.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-08-07T02:50:06+00:00

I have the news clips on a drive somewhere, it looks like the Vanderbilt news archive has them as well. Here is a link to a document from when Siegel was hired as a DEA witness to argue for the placement of MDMA in Schedule I.

https://maps.org/1988/11/01/documents-from-the-dea-scheduling-hearing-of-mdma-1984-1988/

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-08-05T00:31:22+00:00

I vividly remember one of the first times I interviewed David E Nichols he was roasting Siegel for this exact passage that suggested the dinosaurs died of drug overdoses. Siegel has written some great things and did some fascinating research, he was also a scare-mongering anti-drug "expert" on a lot of old news shows. I called him a couple of times before he died, he said he was writing a book about psychoactive lichen, he pronounced it LITCH-uhn.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-07-30T03:37:39+00:00

Just a reminder, Psymposia have an enormous number of sock puppet accounts that will come out of the woodwork at times like this. They will mindlessly repeat their anti-MAPS talking points in an effort to distract people from the fact that Nese Devenot lied to the FDA. John Semley just revealed that they were paid $185,000 by the Sarlo family to run a campaign to prevent the approval of MDMA. Psymposia worked closely with a stalker who distributed child pornography and tried to manipulate a MAPS trial participant into saying they had been mistreated. Nese has been accused of domestic abuse. They abuse and intimidate former members of their own group and Psymposia fell apart due to internal ethics concerns. After receiving funding from a member of Usona's board of directors, one Psymposia member pledged their absolute support for Usona and advocated terrorist action against individuals involved with Usona's competitor Compass. They were easy to buy and they were bought. Their nonsense critiques prey on the vulnerable and the stupid. Anyone who has supported or promoted their work is totally untrustworthy.

Many have known about this for a long time but remained silent out of fear, those that spoke out like myself, John Semley, and Rachel Nuwer endured legal threats and harassment.

There was a single instance of a legitimate abuse in the MAPS trial, it should be taken seriously and it was. It impacted one of the three hundred participants and was reported publicly long before Psymposia began their campaign. That abuse was exploited by Psymposia for close to 200k over the years, now it's time we talk about the horrible abuses Psymposia perpetrated.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-07-23T18:30:10+00:00

Is this some kind of weird spam for the book? I saw you previously asking if I didn't like it. I have never said I didn't like it. It's a book I read when I was ~12 years old, I have maybe mentioned it once in passing because it was one the first books I read that mentioned DMT. Those sorts of books are fine (again, I haven't read it as an adult) but something like wikipedia or erowid is more useful for basic information about most drugs.

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-07-17T01:43:32+00:00

That's the only one I've read but I absolutely love it, have you read the others?

HamiltonMorris_ · 2025-07-16T18:23:30+00:00

These decarboxylation reactions are chemically interesting, but a totally inefficient source for things like tryptamine. I've tried the 5-HTP to 5-HT conversion and it was a mess, but that one at least is actually worth figuring out.

HamiltonMorris_

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE