Psychedelic Business Strategy - Controlling Negative Paradigms

Author: Fadil Karim

March 17th 2022

Investors

According to my understanding of investing, investors in the Psychedelic space need the Psychedelic affiliated stock prices to stay stable while growing in order to attract new investors to create market growth for a good return on their investment. Further, these investors need the masses to accept psychedelic therapy in order for it to become a viable treatment in the future. If it is legalised but not accepted, psychedelic therapy may not be successful enough to create further returns on investment for psychedelic investors, the very people making this breakthrough treatment a reality, and we will live through another generation of inappropriate medicalisation for the treatment of mental health problems.

The Problem – Psychometric Paradigms Cause Market Crashes

Late in 2021, upon the release of Compass Pathways’ COMP360 Phase 2b results, the stock price took a huge concomitant tumble. As did other psychedelic affiliated stocks, such as Cybin and MindMed, over the next few days. Psilocybin Alpha identified that the most likely cause for this were the statistics in the study that highlighted the seriously adverse side effects that a small number of participants experienced, such as suicidal behaviour. This event shows us that the psychometric paradigm is a critical factor in the market success of psychedelics. I agree with Psilocybin Alpha’s analysis. The standard response in a situation like this for any market player is to play the game and rebuild lost ground by using statistics, data, speeches, and celebrity endorsements. The problem with this response is that, it’s long, slow, lack innovation and is boring. By blindly using this strategy, we are playing the market at the market’s game instead of drawing the market into our game. If we continue like this, the psychometric paradigm effect will continue to hinder the progress of psychedelic drug acceptance for mental health treatment unless we deal with the problem. We must make the market play our game by using tackling psychometric paradigm’s instead of avoiding them.

Battle Visualisation

The market is like an ancient territory full of populated cities that are free to be penetrated by different factions in the form of market sectors. Market sectors turn up and lay siege to these cities before occupation. Further, cultural similarities between the city and the faction make public order more manageable upon occupation. Our problem is cultural as years of modern-style medications have created a culture of medicalisation in the territory. This culture clashes with our Psychedelic culture. Those that once accepted the new culture associated to Psychedelic therapy will perceive negative statistics from the perspective of their previous cultural influence without any understanding of the significant scientific nuances associated to Psychedelics. This is because, conscious acceptance of new cultures within the self needs to be sustained over long periods to create unconscious acceptance. Hence, once, the people of our liberated cities will always be aversive to the new culture that we introduce, making public order a problem, leading to banishment similar to what happened at the beginning of this month. In this case, the territorial populace’ seem as if they are not aware that Prozac, the most widely prescribed anti-depressant in history, induces suicide ideation as their previous culture doesn’t seek to speak of its own flaws. According to multiple studies, the truth is to the contrary. It is also ironic as the philosophy of medicalisation claims to be fully transparent with regards to scientific statistics and data, yet it seems that only those in the Psychedelic space are being fully transparent.

This so-called cultural problem is a visualisation of what is called the psychometric paradigm, where people from a non-scientific background use unconscious emotions to assess scientific data without realising. It’s not a problem for the individual per se as psychometric paradigms also underpin instinctual behaviours. Although, in our case, it is a challenge to deal with considering its unconscious influence. Hence, this paradigm will always exist in the psyche of the masses and, treating depressed patients with mind altering medication will always come with a certain degree of perceptual risk of dark and disturbing associations. All the market has to do is find a number within a study that it does not like and suddenly the psychometric paradigm engages and potentially destroys years of progress in the field of mental health. Investors rationalise perceptions of this number and respond accordingly by banishing us from their ancient cities. In our case, the rationalisation of the predicted public opinion in regard to the small association between suicidal behaviour and COMP360 treatment for Depression has led to mass selling of Psychedelic-related stock. This Psychometric Paradigm needs to be influenced in order to protect Psychedelic therapy as a concept post-legalisation, and to protect investors in the Psychedelic space pre-legalisation.

The Plan – The Psychometric Trojan Horse

Picture this, 2-4 minute scientific visualisation videos, hosted on YouTube. Each video would be created from one Psychedelic research paper, a wealth of which are available, and would attempt to simplify the benefits, from a scientific perspective, for the layperson. Bear in mind that some of the visualisations in mind would indirectly compare psychedelic treatments to the travesty of existing treatments such as antidepressants. We wouldn’t even need to directly attack anti-depressants. We could the wealth of negative statistics from research papers associated to Prozac and other similar anti-depressants, including, but not limited to, suicide ideation. One of the darker trends that exists in both Psychedelic research and anti-depressant research is the existence of suicide ideation among a small number of patients. Suicide ideation is higher among depressed individuals than the general population so working with patients in our field will always come with a high risk of horrifying statistics. At the start of this month, investors associated the suicide ideation trend to psychedelics, rather than the disorder that is being treated. Using this example as a case study, a successful visualisation campaign would show viewers the suicide ideation trend in existing treatments, allowing them to associate this trend to the disorder rather for themselves, without the need for us to respond by directly and unethically spelling it out publicly and risking the mental health of those participants who used our treatment. If psychedelic corporations could provide information on suicide ideation as a concept along with the suicide ideation associated to currently treatments, readers will naturally deduce for themselves that all treatments, including those that are currently accepted, have risks similar to Psychedelic treatments and one of the thing the treatments have in common is patients with mental health problem. Exacerbation of the patients symptoms has also occurred in many untreated individuals as well as patients who received therapy with no pharmacological treatments.

Informational videos should be released weekly and should also link a psychedelic research paper to a psychological and related neuroscience concept from another research paper. This creates a visually abstract idea of psychedelics in the mind of the investor. The masses are also currently being introduced to the concept of Psychedelic research through the media. Having a visual channel with plenty of easy to digest information is paramount to creating additional positive public opinion. Each video would be aimed at a specific background, from layperson to advanced neuroscientist and would come with a written piece of around 1000-1500 words, and, in some cases, an interactive online statistical dashboard. Although, the more advanced the video, the smaller the audience, hence the more advanced videos should be fewer in number compared to those aimed at investors not from neuroscience backgrounds and laypeople. Although, these advanced videos are still important as they will attract a more knowledgeable audience. This audience, while small in size, is generally a more trustable point of contact for their friends. The average person has 3 to 5 close friends in addition to a few hundred social media followers. People will generally have more trust in a neuroscientist; hence this small audience may not be as unimportant as it may seem on the surface.

Proposition

My proposal is not so much a change in strategy, but a cheap and powerfully effective additional new strategy. I call it the Trojan Horse. Think of it as a gift to the ancient cities. It attracts crowds of investors who are passing and are drawn to its visual appeal. As they approach for a 2-4 minute perusal, nicely presented informatics flow out of the structure and the viewer walks away with slightly more knowledge of the psychedelic experience without even intending to do so while they strolled through the ancient city. This allows us to influence the psychometric paradigmsassociated to negative statistics when they occur in the future. These negative statistics are likely to occur again considering the nature of the mental state of the patients that need this treatment. Single negative statistics don’t define an entire subject, but inevitable overvaluation of negative statistics is unscientific and occurs frequently due to the instant visualisations that occur when discovering them and can derail innovative campaigns. We will attempt to equate the amount of time spent visualising positive information to the statistics that the positive information has produced. This allows us to equalise the conscious experience of data to the unconscious emotional experience of data.

Victory Conditions

Let’s illustrate the existing thought process of the different types of investors in the Psychedelic space and contrast these processes to those that exist in our Victory Conditions.

I have broken down different types of investors in this space into a tiered system below.

Tier 0 Psychedelic Investor: Fully invested in the Psychedelic Market. Will hold stocks regardless of negative outcomes. Generally, from a science background and understands psychological processes involved, or from relatively high financial prosperity and has belief in the Psychedelic process through scientific reading.

Tier 1 Psychedelic Investor: Looks at numbers and data and uses scientific data within studies for risk assessment.

Tier 2 Psychedelic Investor: Checks stock graphs, attempts to assess why turbulent times exist or predicts them and trades accordingly in the moment.

Tier 3 Psychedelic Investor: Takes punts on stock graphs and interesting concepts.

The main targets for The Trojan Horse strategy are Tier 1 and Tier 2 Investors, along with new Investors.

Existing Thought Processes

Tier 1: Numbers are good, let me take a closer look, suicide ideation, psychometric paradigm, big risk, sell and avoid as I don’t see a reason to hold this risk.

Tier 2: The stocks are dropping, why? Suicide ideation, big risk, sell and avoid

Tier 3: Stocks are dropping, better sell

Victory

Tier 1: Numbers are good, let me take a closer look, suicide ideation, psychometric paradigm, Trojan Horse, suicide ideation also exists in Prozac, patients are in a pretty bad mental state to begin with, treatment is cheaper than existing treatment so governments like the UK are interested, psychedelics work by unbiased agonism opposed to Prozac’s biased re-uptake inhibition…and so on, sell and avoid, hold or buy more.

Tier 2: The stocks are taking a dip, but are stable, why? Suicide ideation, risk, but the markets aren’t responding that badly, sell, hold or buy now while cheaper.

Tier 3: Stocks are taking a dip but are stable; sell, hold or buy now while cheaper.

Psychedelic Business Strategy - Controlling Negative Paradigms

Investors

The Problem – Psychometric Paradigms Cause Market Crashes

Battle Visualisation

The Plan – The Psychometric Trojan Horse

Proposition

Victory Conditions

Existing Thought Processes

Victory

Further Reading

Successful Trojan Horse Case Study – Al Jazeera and AJ+

GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, Pfizer – False Psychedelic Promotion

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