"Rick Doblin founded MAPS 🇮🇱 in 1984 as an NGO with two missions – medicalization of psychedelics (especially MDMA-Assisted Therapy) and drug policy reform so anyone who wants to take drugs can"..
"It raised $150 million in funding from US philanthropists, many of whom were very into psychedelic spirituality themselves and enjoyed taking them at Burning Man and hanging out with Rick."..
ecstaticintegration.org
ecstaticintegration.org
"Then came the shroom boom in 2020. Psychedelic biotech companies started appearing, led by German biotech investor Christian Angermayer, who founded an investment firm called atai and also invested in a psilocybin company called Compass Pathways."..
"Suddenly that meant MAPS philanthropists were less keen to give philanthropic donations – they could invest in psychedelic companies instead. ‘We were a victim of our own success’ says Doblin."
Christian Angermayer (left) and Rick Doblin at 2023 Psychedelic Science
🤫🎶
"To raise funding for its MDMA application and roll out, MAPS needed to launch a more traditional biotech firm, Lykos, which raised $100 million through shareholders last year. MAPS has a minority stake in Lykos."..
"Lykos also didn’t engage with the Institute of Clinical and Economic Review when it prepared a very damning report on Lykos’ MDMA treatment, in which it decided the evidence was unclear as to its efficacy, because of methodological issues, poor reporting, and
the quasi-religious enthusiasm of the researchers and some of the participants for psychedelics.
It was in retrospect a big mistake for Lykos not to engage with ICER."
It was in retrospect a big mistake for Lykos not to engage with ICER."
THE WET BURNING MAN STORY | Joe Rogan & Rick Doblin
youtu.be
youtu.be
"Doblin is acquainted with Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Alphabet Inc. Like so many rich Silicon Valley types, Brin is a regular at Burning Man"..
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
"Several months before the 2018 Burn, Doblin had cornered Brin at a gathering at Fly Ranch, a nearby property the festival’s organizers own, and talked up the pharmaceutical potential of mushrooms and ketamine."..
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
"Now, at the festival itself, he had an ideal opportunity to follow up, and he invited two Bloomberg Businessweek reporters along for the ride."..
"Doblin first camped in Black Rock City—the made-up town where the festival is held—for fun in 2003. But as the tech economy minted millionaires and billionaires, and as rich people began to discuss drug use more openly, he began to look at Burning Man differently."..
" MAPS donors.. include several early Facebook Inc. employees, as well as Andrew Mason (co-founder of Groupon), Britt Selvitelle (a former senior Twitter executive), and Cyan Banister (a partner at Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund)."
Rick Doblin on the cover of Tropic magazine, 1985
His friend David Bronner is an easygoing eccentric, a long-haired 46-year-old Southern Californian prone to the same sort of stream-of-consciousness ramblings that appear on the pseudo-mystical soap bottles that Dr. Bronner’s sells..
"Bronner first bonded with Doblin in the early 2000s over battles with the DEA, when Bronner was fighting to legalize hemp, which is used in his soap, and Doblin was arguing in favor of medical marijuana."..
"Bronner, who’s pledged $5 million to MAPS over five years, sits on its board, along with John Gilmore and Joby Pritzker, of the Chicago hotelier family."
x.com
x.com
"Bronner also sponsored Doblin’s visit to Burning Man, allowing him to focus on cultivating donors. Many of Doblin’s backers stay at the nearby Camp Om Skillet, where Doblin once met Dustin Moskovitz, Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard roommate"
x.com
x.com
"Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna, have since promised to give MAPS $2.5 million. “One of their friends donated, invited me to come visit with them,” Doblin recalls. “That was lightning striking.”"..
Om Skillet is where Doblin got the suggestion to connect with another early Facebook employee, Justin Rosenstein, who became a donor. Through Rosenstein, he became friendly with Joe Green, the co-founder of Zuckerberg’s political organization, FWD.us.
"In 2017, Green, who’s now president of the nonprofit Psychedelic Science Funders Collaborative, camped near Doblin at Foam Against the Machine. He now serves as a sort of consigliere to Doblin, connecting him with sympathetic techies."
psfc.co
psfc.co
After closing down the First Camp party , Doblin moved on to the Galactic Jungle camp at the invitation of Florencia Bollini, an executive coach. She’d told Doblin that Guy Laliberté, the Cirque du Soleil founder, who’d be DJing that night,was sympathetic to the goals of MAPS.
Plus, Uber Technologies Inc. co-founder Garrett Camp might be there. But Doblin missed Laliberté by minutes and never found Camp.
Rick Doblin with Albert Hofmann, the chemist who discovered LSD.
Doblin pedaled back to Foam Against the Machine. There he found Green, plus a well-known business leader from Boston and an Israeli billionaire who recently started giving to MAPS..
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