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.

+ 6,488 US veterans died by suicide in 2024 (18/day) + 62% were NOT receiving VA healthcare that or the prior year + 6M veterans are rural or mobility-impaired + 75% of Mindbloom clients with suicidal thoughts experience complete resolution from at-home ketamine therapy 🤔🤔🤔

🍑 ALERT Mindbloom is now available in Georgia, making it 305 million Americans across 38 states + DC who have access to at-home psychedelic therapy with ketamine 🤯

Going to take an attack dose of oxytocin and stare into my 1st newborn's eyes (in 6 months!). Hoping I'm world's first to try this n of 1 experiment.

When I moved to ATX 6 years ago to build Edge Village, our live-next-to-friends community, I predicted it would be one of America's cities of the future but not THE city of the future.

This has been on my office white board for years. If we don't increase patient access to psychedelic therapies by bringing them in-home, like for rural and disabled veterans, then it won't ever get done. I think about this every single day.

The biggest change in how I approach Talent might be riding way longer with the culture-accretive team (who are now friends) that got us here vs. Silicon Valley's standard advice to "always be marrying up."

Pause AI after it cures death and despair.

I talk a lot about what we build to improve Client Experience. But I don't talk enough about what we build to improve Provider Experience. Kinda like how Uber builds for drivers or AirBnB builds for renters, we think of our Providers as mission-critical customers. We relentlessly build for our Providers to help them focus on what they do best: providing exceptional mental healthcare that's supportive, seamless, and professional. For years, we've been sending the Mindbloom Care Delivery Monthly to the entire Mindbloomiverse, and it shows just how seriously we take Provider Experience. My goal is for Mindbloom to be the best place in the world to practice psychedelic therapy. This is just what we did this month 👇

We already know what people do before, during, and after a psychedelic experience affects the quality and outcomes of the experience. There are even 50+ studies showing this. This new Nature paper helps show why what happens during a psychedelic experience matters. Researchers gave 62 people psilocybin and measured their brains with fMRI + EEG while they experienced guided meditation, music, a movie, and eyes-closed rest. What’s interesting is that their brains became MUCH MORE organized around what the person was experiencing than if they weren’t on psilocybin. And the stronger that “context alignment,” the more profound the psychedelic experience was (unity, bliss, positive self-dissolution, etc.) and the greater the psychological change the next day. A lot of psychedelic neuroscience has focused on entropy: psychedelics loosen the brain’s normal organization and make it more flexible and unconstrained. This paper adds a “yes, and”: the brain also becomes more shaped by the experience you give it on psychedelics. It shows psychedelics are experiential medicine at the brain activity level, and that better experiences create more psychological change afterwards. This is why we’ve spent nearly a decade designing the context for our clients doing ketamine therapy. + 150+ therapeutic soundscapes. We’ve designed at least 1,000 music experiences, built our own Multi-Phasic Model, compose our own tracks to deliver what I truly believe is the best music for ketamine in the world. It’d blow your mind if you knew how hard this was and how long it took! + 3 levels of in-session guidance. We offer music only, intro guided, and fully guided tracks with affirmations, meditations, and psychological nudges. And we relentlessly experiment with new formats. + Shake to shuffle. Clients can change the music to change the context, including by shaking their phone so they don’t need to take their eye masks off or look at their phone. + Specialized content. Our programs have therapeutic themes like depression, grief, relationships, self-love, burnout, etc. to help align the context of what clients most want to solve. + Comfort and familiarity of home. The setting of a psychedelic experience is part of the context, and at-home ketamine therapy is part of the product that drives high quality experience and outcomes, not just more affordability and convenience. + Navigation training like TLO. We teach clients techniques to navigate their ketamine experiences and get more out of them, like coming back to the mantra Trust, Let Go, Be Open. These techniques are so powerful, we’ve even had multiple clients get TLO tattoos (integration tip: wait at least a month before getting a tattoo you decided to get on psychedelics). These are just a few examples. The rabbit hole goes deep, like how we built a feature to let clients pre-load the music on their phone to eliminate streaming/buffering interruptions and let them use airplane mode during sessions. With the help of AI, we’re getting better and better at learning what context during sessions matters most for what clients so we can keep improving both their experiences and outcomes. There’s never been a more exciting time to be designing and delivering psychedelic therapy, and we’re still in the 1st inning.

SpaceX. Anduril. Uber. PayPal. Affirm. Flexport. Postmates. Niantic. Opendoor. Carta. Together AI. Diamond Foundry. Crusoe. Flock Safety. Substrate. Brave. Depop. Calm. TrueMed. Turing. Crusoe. MINDBLOOM. Cyan's the GOAT, and her story and heart are prolific.

Building in complex healthcare delivery is quite AI-proof because execution in psychedelics is not cheap. I used to catch myself lamenting "ugh why didn't I start another software company 😫" Now I'm even more grateful for choosing to play on advanced difficulty mode.