Europe holds the line, the US gets ready to launch, and Big Pharma buys in
· Published by Psyche Vibes Ltd, London
Independent, evidence-first news on psychedelic-assisted therapy research, regulation and business, with the UK and Europe first. This is information, not medical advice. We do not promote using any controlled substance outside lawful clinical settings.
Welcome to the first issue. Every week we read the regulators, registries, company filings and trade press so you don't have to. Then we update our live approval tracker at psycheinsights.com. Every claim below links to its source.
🇬🇧 UK: still Schedule 1, still waiting for the pilot
No change to the law. As of October, psilocybin is still Class A / Schedule 1. The Home Office pilot that would exempt universities and NHS trial sites from a separate Schedule 1 licence "remains in design", with no rescheduling (PsyAccess monthly update, Oct 2026). The government's own position is that rescheduling would normally follow an MHRA marketing authorisation, not come before it (UK Parliament written answer 85461).
The science is ahead of the law. A 2 October landscape piece says the University of Exeter and the University of Leicester have been awarded £2.5 million by the Wellcome Trust for a five-year study of how people use psilocybin, LSD and MDMA therapeutically outside clinical settings. It also notes that King's College London is recruiting for an anorexia trial (Psychedelic Health).
Worth re-reading: the NHS-delivered PsiDeR trial (60 patients with treatment-resistant depression, single 25 mg dose). At six weeks, 50% of the psilocybin group had responded versus 3% on placebo (King's College London). The authors call the effect sizes preliminary, and blinding largely failed: all of the psilocybin arm guessed their allocation (PsyReflect summary, 15 Oct).
🇪🇺 Europe: a vote lost, a quiet month and a slow rollout
Netherlands: on 13 October the Tweede Kamer rejected, 65 to 85, a motion asking the government to allow MDMA therapy for a small, high-urgency PTSD group before full registration. The cabinet had advised against it (vote record; motion text, Kamerstuk 36662 nr. 10). Investigator-led research continues, including an Amsterdam UMC Phase II MDMA trial approved in August (PsyAccess).
A quiet month in the EU trials register. No new psychedelic or ketamine-family trial approvals appeared in CTIS between 3 September and 2 October. Czechia's psilocybin framework, in force since 1 January, is still waiting for its first treatments, expected in H2 2026 (PsyAccess).
Germany: the psilocybin compassionate-use programme (two sites, treatment-resistant depression) is listed until 17 June 2027 (PsyAccess Europe guide). Supervised esketamine is still billable only in a narrow set of psychiatric specialties, which limits capacity (PsyAccess).
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