Yo! Technology. What is it all about?

But as patients, what we have on offer just isn't good enough for them. It's not working.

So this is actually a failure of innovation, not a failure of patients or resisting.

It's just that we don't know what to do with roughly a third of the people who are diagnosed with depression.

Hello and welcome to Danny in the Valley, your weekly dispatch from behind the scenes and inside the minds of the top people in tech.

I'm your host, Danny Fordson, coming to you from sunny, surprisingly warm, Oakland.

We have an awesome show for you this week.

We are Shroomin.

That's right.

So a few weeks ago, I traveled to Portland, Oregon, because the state had just

become the first in America to legalize the use of psilocybin, which of course is the active

ingredient in magic mushrooms. And they legalized it for use as a treatment for various mental

health ailments. That is the primary use, but also they made it very clear, even if you just think it'll

quote unquote benefit you, you can also try it.

Now there are some pretty strict rules about how you can use it and where you can use it

and has to be supervised, et cetera.

But it's really kind of opened the door for a potential new chapter for this drug that's been illegal,

Schedule 1 narcotic in the eyes of the government for half a century.

So passing this bill was a moment for this little cottage industry, which has slowly been gaining steam,

over the last few years on the back of people's work like Michael

Paulin and others who argue that psilocybin for certain people with some very difficult

mental challenges can really help and for those who have tried SSRIs and therapy and cycle

...