After a lifetime of addiction, my mom died of a fentanyl overdose. A year later, my sister did, too.
Then my dad hit rock bottom. He didn't shower, shave, or leave the house for a month and texted me suicidal thoughts like, “you know I love you and if anything happens to me it isn't your fault, right?"
Ketamine therapy saved his life.
In August 2021, my mom was found dead in an alley from a fentanyl overdose. But I lost her a long, long time ago.
As far back as I can remember, my mom was consumed by severe mental illness and addiction.
We tried everything: countless medications, therapy, multiple rehabilitation facilities, and even eastern medicines. Nothing worked.
We were a working-class family in Anaheim, not-so-affectionately called Anacrime. The local addicts that my mom befriended and often brought into our home created an environment of violence, chaos, and fear.
By age 12, I stopped speaking to my mom and tried to avoid her completely, often staying with friends until I knew my dad would be home.
By age 16, it became so dangerous that we had no choice but to evict her from our home.
She spent the rest of her life homeless and I never saw her alive again.
Losing my mom could have been the end for me, too. I never met my biological father, and most kids in my position ended up in foster care, or worse.
But I won the lottery. My stepfather, a mailman and bus driver, adopted me and did his best to build a house full of love under impossible conditions.
Too many Americans are needlessly dying like my mom did. And the mental health crisis is only getting worse.
In 2024:
- Nearly 1 in 4 adults experienced mental illness
- 2M people attempted suicide
- Drug overdose deaths hit record highs
- Less than half of adults with mental illness received treatment
But lack of access isn’t the whole story.
Traditional treatments like SSRIs and therapy are failing:
- Response rates for depression are below 50%.
- 4 in 5 patients relapse within five years.
- The “chemical imbalance” theory behind SSRIs has been widely debunked.
- Nearly 50% of people experience debilitating side effects—insomnia, weight gain, sexual dysfunction, and even suicidality—that often persist long after stopping treatment.
Fortunately, we now have better tools.
Psychedelic medicine is a 10X better mental health treatment.
Decades of research show that these medicines work — but they haven’t been available to most Americans.
Today, ketamine is the only psychedelic medicine that is legal to prescribe in the U.S.
Over 100 studies show that ketamine is an effective, safe, and fast-acting mental health treatment, prompting many to call it the “biggest breakthrough in the field of depression in over 60 years.”
In 2022, the Journal of Affective Disorders published the largest-ever peer-reviewed study of ketamine therapy, with real-world outcomes data from over Mindbloom 1,200 clients.
The study showed that after only four treatment sessions:
- 89% of clients experienced reductions in symptoms of depression or anxiety
- 63% experienced clinically-significant reductions in symptoms
- 30% achieved remission
Remarkably, ketamine therapy also eliminated suicidal thoughts for nearly two-thirds of people who were experiencing them prior to treatment.
And this is just the beginning. Decades of research by MAPS and other organizations have proven psychedelics are highly effective for conditions like PTSD and depression, especially for underserved groups like veterans.
I’ve seen firsthand how psychedelic medicine can be the difference between life and death.
One year after my mom overdosed, my sister died the exact same way—just three weeks after she was discharged from inpatient rehab.
I had tried and failed to get her into treatment with ketamine or other psychedelics, and it hurt to know she never got to try medicines that could have saved her.
After losing my mom and sister, my dad, my hero, sunk into a depression so deep that I was confident he wouldn’t make it out.
- He didn’t leave home or bathe for nearly a month
- He texted me a list of all his accounts and passwords “just in case something happens to me”
- He texted me not to throw everything away in the condo when he’s gone because he has silver hidden inside it
- He refused to let me come see him or accept any help from me
- He texted me “you know I love you and anything that happens to me isn’t your fault, right?”
It was clear that he was preparing to end his life.
My dad had resisted ketamine therapy for years, scared by the same stigma that prevents so many people from getting the help they need.
Fortunately, rock bottom was the catalyst I needed to convince him to try at-home ketamine therapy through Mindbloom.
Working directly with Mindbloom’s Medical Director and my friend, Dr. Leonardo Vando, to whom I will be forever grateful, my dad invested in his healing.
The results were incredible:
- He worked through his grief and found his will to keep going
- He started exercising regularly for the first time in his life and lost 50 pounds
- He reintegrated into his friend group and built his support network back up
- He became open to finding a partner for the third act of his life, got engaged, and became a father to three new stepchildren—I officiated the wedding last summer.
- He reached a place of happiness, vitality, and optimism I never in a million years thought I’d see him have again
Psychedelic medicine saved my dad’s life, and it can help the millions of Americans who are still suffering.
The tools we need to fix the mental health epidemic are right in front of us we just have to use them.
This is biblical.
A woman in her eighties. Ten years into Alzheimer's. Hadn't spoken a full sentence in five years.
Takes one, 5 gram dose of psilocybin.
She slept 19 hours and woke up and spoke for hours about her life, recognized family and held real conversations. She regained bladder control after five years, walked on her own. and dressed herself. Gains held for weeks.
In a study of people with generalized anxiety disorder, only 8.6% of recorded worries actually happened.
The most common outcome: 0%. Not a single worry came true.
@IterIntellectus Girls = more likely to stay close to fam and carry your mission's torch.
Boys = more likely to strike out on own and make an out-sized impact
Maxxing for enjoying kids, girl.
Maxxing for impact, boy.
Answer: 1+ each and 3+ total to fulfill duty to replace ourselves.
let me add some important nuance here so people don’t take away the wrong message:
1. rumination and introspection are two very different things
2. rumination = looping the same thoughts without progress → more distress
3. introspection = examining your experiences and beliefs to unlock insight, alignment, and forward movement
maybe the reason this is getting confused is because without new insight, a reframe, or a decision, introspection can quietly slip into rumination
rule of thumb:
- rumination = motion without progress
- introspection = reflection that leads to change
@ecmorris023@mikeroplastics@mymindbloom What nerds get called when they're...
+ Growing up poor: crazy
+ Graduating ivy: eccentric
+ Building startups: orthogonal thinker
I’m hiring Mindbloom’s 3rd PSYCHEDELIC LAWYER.
Our 1st Psychedelic Lawyer @mikeroplastics graduated to founding his 1st venture-backed startup Proxima Health. I wrote the 2nd check in. Ca-ching.
Our 2nd Psychedelic Lawyer Dean L'hospital is an AI-first builder lawyer, artist, and former founder. I promoted him to General Counsel, and we’re doubling down on our core competency innovating and winning offensively and defensively in regulatory.
We’re the largest provider of ketamine therapy in the world with over 800,000 sessions facilitated across 38 states, hundreds of millions of dollars in psychedelic therapy sold, profitable, and still just getting started.
As Psychedelic Lawyer / Legal Counsel, you’ll help a massive number of Americans and help them a lot (life-changing is the most common testimonial we get) while working on big-time initiatives, including literally changing and shaping psychedelic medicine law. Examples of things we’ve done and are doing:
+ Launched 1st national brand for psychedelic therapy, at-home psychedelic therapy, and then at-home injectable psychedelic therapy.
+ Suing the WSJ for lying we killed Matthew Perry for $88M (just won the motion to dismiss so big WSJ fired their litigators).
+ Led mental health industry-wide lobbying that solidified telemedicine prescribing for controlled substances after COVID for everyone.
+ Consistently publish the largest peer-reviewed clinical studies and white papers in psychedelic medicine history.
+ Building a truly AI-First legal, regulatory, and compliance machine to support in-house counsel and our 30+ outside lawyers, lobbyists, insurers, compliance folks, etc.
+ Work with a founding CEO who gets and prioritizes legal and regulatory (under-valued) — I last co-founded Mighty and Justice Bolt, the leading software + capital provider to personal injury lawyers (and doctors and funders) spanning legaltech, fintech, a hedge fund, a law firm, and one of the first AI companies in legal back when we still called it Machine Learning.
I'm prioritizing signs of exceptional ability and achievement, especially in creative problem-solving intelligence, lifelong learning, obsession with our mission, and obsession with AI. Healthcare law experience a bonus but not required.
If you know a lawyer at any seniority and think “they’re a Psychedelic Lawyer,” forwarding this to them could literally change and save lives <3
Link to job below.
It’s highly likely that we could see two psychedelic drugs approved for three indications by end of this year:
- Psilocybin for TRD (Compass)
- Psilocybin for MDD (Usona)
- Methylone for PTSD (Otsuka via Transcend)
What does this mean for the future of mental health?
@AJA_Cortes City of the future.
Moved to ATX 5 years ago after 10 in NYC to build Edge Village, a live-next-to-friends community. So hard to leave, I literally mourned.
ATX exceeds high expectations. It has gravity. It has velocity. It has heart.
You can feel the acceleration.
THE BILLION DOLLAR SPRAVATO SCAM
The patent for ketamine expired 23 years ago.
J&J ingeniously filtered out half (esketamine), patented it, and market it as antidepressant nasal spray Spravato.
But it's LESS effective and 88x more expensive.
And YOU'RE paying for it!
The Gell-Bott Amnesia Effect
1. Read thing from AI you're an amateur in and think "wow so smart and true."
2. Read something from AI you're an expert in and think "wow so retarded and wrong."
3. Read something else from AI you're an amateur in and forget it lost credibility.
When I left my AI startup Mighty 9 years ago to start a psychedelic medicine brand, didn't predict it would end up being another AI company!
Every startup is an AI startup now, and @ilyaf (led Series B and sits on Board) and the KP team have been dream partners every step of the way.
Congrats on the fresh powder to help more founders make history, team!
For more than 50 years, Kleiner Perkins has partnered with founders at moments of inflection. AI is reshaping every industry from the ground up, faster than anything we've seen before. This is the moment to build.
Today, we're proud to announce KP22, our twenty-second venture fund: $1 billion to back early-stage companies, alongside $2.5 billion in growth funds to back high-inflection, category-defining businesses.
A moment like this is where the most enduring companies take root. Deep founder relationships and hands-on support matter more than ever, and we believe in lean investment and portfolio operating teams that work on founder time to deliver exactly that.
We're so grateful to the founders and LPs who have trusted us over the years. We couldn't be more excited to partner with the next generation of history-making companies.
Read more: https://t.co/R7XmcTxOzv
I get emails from investment bankers nearly every day.
Mindbloom is my life's work. You don't sell away your life's work. Ever.
Also growing up, my favorite ways to have fun were video games and sex. And building Mindbloom is way more fun than video games.
We own all of Ridge.
me + 5 guys.
At any point, we can cash out and sell for life changing money.
there is ALWAYS a market for EBITDA positive, growing brands.
not having investors means the deal is clean-
no preference, no board member vetos.
I keep running ridge because it is fun and I like it.
Build a business YOU LIKE to run.
Not one you are trapped in.
This is the number one reason to not raise money.