Nearly a hundred years ago, a Swiss chemist named Albert Hoffman accidentally spilled a mysterious substance on his pants.

He didn't think anything of it and took a bike ride home.

He soon found himself in a state of intense hallucination and confusion, which he later attributed to the substance he spilled on his pants - lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD.

Hoffman described LSD as "medicine for the soul."

Now, with Ohio being the 24th state to legalize weed, I think psychedelics are next and set to revolutionize our perception of mental health. I think they will be one of the best investments this decade.

1. More Useful Than Recreational Drugs

It's no secret that America has a mental health crisis.

Suicide ranks as the second biggest killer of American adults under 40, and it's the number one cause of death for men under 50. This is terrifying.

Science also shows that anti-depressants have a 50% failure rate.

That's an F.

Meanwhile, on the psychedelic drug front, research has shown that psychedelics like MDMA, LSD and psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms) have significantly higher success rates in treating PTSD, addiction and depression.

A 2016 study on the use of psychedelic drugs by terminally ill patients showed that 80% experienced reduced depression and anxiety. Another study on treatment-resistant depression reported that two-thirds of patients were in remission one week after their first psilocybin therapy session.

As an Army brat, I've also come across many tales of using psychedelics to combat PTSD.

The VA will get to using psychedelics, 20 years too late, but eventually.

2. Big Pharma & Shrooms

Pharmaceutical companies are a mess. They peddle synthetics through opioids and SSRIs, supplanting nature's remedies and good dietary habits.

Yet, they are sorely needed to help the psych space to help it grow.

Right now research on psychedelics is being stifled by limited funding from philanthropists. As a result, the trials are being conducted on a small scale, leaving us with just a taste of what these drugs can really do.

Leading the way is the Peter Thiel-backed Atai Life Sciences. They recently partnered with Otsuka, a big pharma player, to tackle depression with R-ketamine. This marked the first major collaboration between a shroom lab and a big pharma company.

I can't help but worry that big pharma will ultimately be calling the shots and doing whatever they please with mushrooms and LSD. They even want to isolate the therapeutic benefits of these substances while completely erasing the psychedelic experience. Scary stuff, if you ask me.

3. Avoiding the Mistakes of Weed Stocks

People get high all the time yet weed stocks suck.

Why is that...?

The 2020 bull market drove weed stocks into a frenzy of speculation and fervor that made investing in Dogecoin look safe by comparison. Moreover, in cities like New York, people weren't even buying legal weed; they'd still shop at Mom & Pop bodegas or Canal St. for their dime bags.

The important thing here is that even in a booming industry like drug legalization, finding the winners isn't easy. And just because sales are soaring, doesn't mean that will translate into higher P/E.

Psychedelics may take forever to take off market-wise only because - as revolutionary as these treatments may be - legalization doesn't necessarily mean an endless pile of money. There's also the stigma that will always exist against "drugs."

What Shrooms, LSD and Ketamine do have going for them, however, is that many acclaimed investors like Tim Ferriss, Peter Thiel and Kevin O'Leary back them.

4. What's Next?

Ohio just became the 24th state to legalize recreational marijuana.

This is huge. It opened Pandora's Box. Nearly half of the Union supports the legalization of a drug that Nancy Reagan used to say did this to your brain...

Attitudes around psychedelics are certainly changing as well.

Joe Rogan promotes the usage of DMT, Michael Pollan recently released a book on micro-dosing, and the FDA is working with companies like Compass Pathways to bring psilocybin mushrooms to the market.

Psychedelics weren't always illegal. In fact, in the '50s, researchers studied psychedelics for their potential to treat anxiety and Henry Ford famously wanted to build the first car out of hemp.

Imagine what we could find if that research continued?

Bottom Line

Albert Hoffman believed science and spiritualism shouldn't be separated from one another. After all, there's so much about consciousness we don't understand.

"Evolution of mankind is paralleled by the increase and expansion of consciousness." - Albert Hoffman

It's normal to overthink things. It's normal to be afraid. It's normal to feel overwhelmed and not know what to do.

What's not normal is pretending that mental illness doesn't affect everyone to some degree, or that it isn't getting worse. It is. It's why there's a rich history of psychedelics in literature. In Plato's Phaedo, the philosopher says he was inspired by the Eleusinian Mysteries, an ancient religious ceremony where participants took psychedelics.

Don't bet the farm on psychedelics when it comes to investing, there are plenty of reasons why: 1) Legalization doesn't automatically mean big profits. 2) Big Pharma isn't fully on board, despite growing interest. 3) Drugs still scare some people

However, I do have investments in Atai Life Sciences, which we've talked about in this article, and Mind Medicine, the first psychedelic research company to hit the stock market in Canada.

I'm all about that invest and forget life. Give me five years, and watch psychedelics change the world.

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