Essays

Long-form writing, held to evidence

Pieces that take their time — about what the science shows, what it doesn’t, and what it asks of us.


What we mean when we say a drug "works"
EssayResearch & science

Psychedelic trials report dramatic numbers. Understanding what those numbers measure — and what they quietly leave out — is the first step to reading them honestly.

Dr Alani Reyes · 12 May 2026 · 9 min read

Treatment-resistant
EssayDepression & anxiety

The clinical label describes what medicines have failed to do, not what a person is. That distinction changes how we read the research — and how we treat the people in it.

Dr Alani Reyes · 19 April 2026 · 6 min read

The body keeps the appointment
EssayTrauma & PTSD

Trauma is not only a memory problem. Understanding why it lives in the body helps explain why some emerging therapies work on the body's terms, not the mind's alone.

Dr Marcus Holloway · 10 April 2026 · 8 min read

Who gets to be a patient?
EssayPolicy & access

If psychedelic therapy becomes a real treatment, the next question is not whether it works but who will be able to reach it — and whether access will follow need or money.

Tomas Iwu · 2 April 2026 · 7 min read

A clinician's first session, in her words
EssayPersonal stories

A therapist describes what it was actually like to sit with a patient through a supervised dosing session — the boredom, the fear, and the part nobody had prepared her for.

As told to Priya Nandakumar · 24 March 2026 · 6 min read

Essay

People imagine the dosing session as the climax of psychedelic therapy. In practice, clinicians often describe it as the prologue. What a person does with what they saw — over weeks, sometimes months — is where a temporary experience becomes a durable change, or fails to.