PSA's Sunday Sound-Off: March 22nd, 2026

“Nothing in nature blooms all year — and you weren’t meant to either. Winter is not where life disappears, but where it gathers strength in the quiet.”

By Jamie Blazquez

From our friends at Normalize Psychedelics

The first snow doesn’t shout.
It whispers.

It arrives quietly in the night, soft as breath on glass, and by morning the world has changed its tone. Sound is muted. Light is gentler. Even the air feels slower, thicker — as if the earth itself has pulled a heavy quilt up to its chin.

I’m standing at the window with a mug warming my hands, watching the way the pine trees bow under the weight of white. No one told them to stop growing. No one shamed them for going still. Yet here they are — rooted, patient, conserving life beneath the surface where no one can see.

And something inside me recognizes this.

Not as an idea.
As memory.

Long before alarm clocks and fluorescent lights, before productivity apps and calendars stacked like Jenga towers, our ancestors knew this season differently. Winter was not an inconvenience to power through. It was a teacher. A ceremony. A threshold.

Food was gathered. Fires were tended. Stories were told.

People drew closer — not to screens, but to each other. Hands mended clothes. Grandmothers passed down wisdom in the flicker of firelight. Children learned stories of their ancestors that only winter skies reveal. The pace of life matched the pace of the earth.

Nothing in nature blooms all year.

The bears do not apologize for hibernating. The sap in trees does not rush upward out of guilt. Even the soil rests — microbial life slowing, nutrients cycling quietly underground in preparation for spring’s explosion of green.

Every other mammal understands something we’ve forgotten:

This is a season of conservation, not expansion.

Yet here we are — pushing through fatigue, overriding signals, caffeinating our way past the body’s request to slow down. We call ourselves lazy for wanting more sleep. We shame the quiet. We schedule over the silence. And then we wonder why sickness finds us.

Not because our bodies are failing. But because we are. We are failing to listen.

The immune system doesn’t weaken in winter as much as it works harder — adjusting to colder air, less sunlight, tighter indoor spaces. The body asks for warmth, nourishment, stillness, longer nights. When we refuse the invitation to rest, the body finds another way to get it.

A cold.
A flu.
A forced pause.

The body says, If you won’t lie down willingly, I will lay you down myself.

I learned this the hard way.

One winter, I pushed through exhaustion like it was a badge of honor. Work, emails, obligations, the endless doing. My body whispered first — sore throat, heavy limbs, that deep bone-tired feeling. I ignored it. Until I couldn’t.

Flat on my back, feverish, staring at the ceiling, I finally felt what the snow had been trying to teach me all along: stillness is not the enemy. It is the medicine.

In that quiet, something softened. When the constant motion fell away, the thoughts I had buried surfaced — grief I had delayed, dreams I had pushed aside in the name of staying busy. Winter had not come to punish me. It had come to bring me home.

Home to my body.
Home to my breath.
Home to the wisdom older than calendars.

This is the season our ancestors honored the unseen — spirit, dreams, the inner world. With fewer daylight hours, attention naturally turned inward. Ceremony didn’t always mean something elaborate. Sometimes it was as simple as tending the fire, sharing food, speaking gratitude for surviving another year.

Winter is not empty.

It is gestation.

The seed does not sprout because it tries harder. It sprouts because it rested long enough to gather life.

And so I watch the snow, steam curling from my cup, and I let the stillness in. I cancel something unnecessary. I cook something warm. I call an elder and listen instead of rushing. I sleep earlier without apology.

This, too, is participation in the season.

We are not separate from the earth — we are expressions of it. The same intelligence that tells birds when to migrate lives in our nervous system. The same rhythm that slows the forest pulses in our cells.

When we honor winter, we are not falling behind.

We are remembering.

Remembering that rest is sacred.
Remembering that quiet is not absence but presence.
Remembering that life moves in cycles, not straight lines.

Spring will come. It always does. The push, the bloom, the outward surge of energy will return with the light.

But for now, the earth sleeps.

And if you feel tired, tender, slower than usual —
maybe nothing is wrong with you.

Maybe you are simply listening.

And maybe, just maybe, that is the most ancient wisdom of all.

Complaints against Mimi Walters and Kyrsten Sinema allege improper lobbying and the misuse of internal congressional data tied to psychedelic policy efforts.

Produced in Partnership with and Originally Published by DoubleBlind

By Jack Gorsline

Two controversies involving former members of Congress have surfaced, drawing scrutiny from both the emerging psychedelic pharmaceutical industry and Capitol Hill. One involves former Congresswoman Mimi Walters and a powerful psychedelic industry trade group. The other alleges improper lobbying by former Senator Kyrsten Sinema. Together, they reveal what appears to be an effort to curry favor with, and potentially solicit funding from, government agency leaders, political officials, corporate lobbyists, and deep-pocketed psychedelic industry stakeholders. The evolving controversies, now the subject of formal filings with federal oversight bodies, are drawing intense scrutiny to the lobbying practices surrounding psychedelic therapies.

The first complaint centers on former Congresswoman Mimi Walters and the Association for Prescription Psychedelics (APP), a coalition of leading psychedelic biotech companies, including Compass Pathways, AtaiBeckley, Helus Pharma, and even Japanese pharmaceutical giant Otsuka. It was filed anonymously with the Office of Congressional Conduct (OCC), and alleges that Walters, a Republican who represented California’s 45th district between 2015 and 2019, was involved in the potentially illegal dissemination of taxpayer-funded data originally intended to inform psychedelic policy drafting and reform efforts at the highest levels of U.S. government.

The second complaint concerns former Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema. It was submitted to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, alleging that Sinema engaged in potentially illegal lobbying tied to her advocacy work at both the state and federal levels on behalf of various psychedelic advocacy groups and corporate entities, including Americans for Ibogaine and Tijuana-based Ambio Life Sciences. Former members of Congress are subject to a two-year “cooling-off period,” during which they are prohibited from political lobbying of any kind.

Sinema previously stirred controversy in advocacy circles last year after saying Indigenous reciprocity and conservation concerns are “not my problem,” while also claiming that she’s “well known for having no drama.” She also stated in a public testimony that “there is no major pharmaceutical company to bankroll this effort [to increase ibogaine research and medical access] and then make billions on the back end… there's not a company that's making billions of dollars off of this.”

Despite Sinema’s statements, a growing body of research into “safer ibogaine analogs” is already attracting major pharmaceutical interest. Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals, which is developing a next-generation suite of non-hallucinogenic ibogaine-derived compounds, has an existing partnership with AbbVie Inc., a $400 billion multinational pharmaceutical corporation, that includes an “option-to-license” clause designating AbbVie to lead development and commercialization of these therapies. That relationship expanded last year when AbbVie acquired Gilgamesh’s lead investigational drug Bretisilocin, a synthetic psilocybin compound, in a $1.2 billion deal, now the largest acquisition in the psychedelic drug development sector. The deal builds on an earlier $65 million collaboration between the two companies and underscores the commercial infrastructure forming around both psilocybin and ibogaine-derived treatments.

(Historically, influence-peddling and access-shopping activities involving federal government officials — elected or otherwise — have been a major flashpoint on Capitol Hill that politicians from both sides of the aisle have tried to address. Last year, Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez [D-NY] filed a bill to impose a lifetime ban on lobbying by former members of Congress.)

Both complaints raise significant legal and ethical questions about how private industry gains access to power in Washington, particularly the potential exploitation of taxpayer-funded congressional data and the apparent circumvention of post-employment lobbying restrictions meant to prevent former lawmakers from cashing in on their influence. Taken together, the allegations point to possible federal violations, the misuse of sensitive government information, and a culture of backroom dealmaking that could undermine the credibility of the psychedelic lobbying sector.

March 22nd, 2026

First look at psychedelic industry roles, independently curated by a licensed natural medicine facilitator.

1️⃣ EMT / Paramedic - Austin Ketamine Clinic

📍 Austin, TX

Why this made the list: IV ketamine infusion support role at a psychiatrist-supervised clinic along Barton Creek Greenbelt. Looking for medics with mental health patient experience and IV proficiency. No clinical license beyond EMT required.

2️⃣ Outreach & Partnerships Associate - Ember Health

📍 Brooklyn, NY

Why this made the list: Relational sales role building referral networks for an IV ketamine clinic across the NYC metro area. Good fit for someone with a business development background who wants to work in mental health without a clinical license.

3️⃣ Psychedelic Integration Specialist - ReYou Ketamine Treatments

📍 New York, NY

Why this made the list: In-home integration role supporting at-home ketamine sessions across NYC and Brooklyn. You're the in-person presence during treatment - holding space, safety monitoring, and guiding pre/post-session integration. No clinical license required.

4️⃣ Clinical Support Specialist - Advanced Psychiatry of Elgin

📍 Elgin, IL

Why this made the list: Patient-facing mental health tech role supporting TMS, KAP, and Spravato treatments in an outpatient psychiatric practice. Low barrier to entry at 1+ year of clinical experience.

5️⃣ Chief of Staff - Thesis

📍 New York, NY

Why this made the list: Ops leadership role at a venture-backed nootropics company with a wellness stipend that explicitly includes psychedelic therapy. Not a psychedelic company per se, but adjacent and openly supportive of the space.

Note: All job listings are independently curated and written by Work In Psychedelics. While anyone/everyone is welcome to reference or share with credit and a link back. Automated scraping, wholesale reproduction, or republishing without attribution is discouraged.

All postings relate exclusively to legal job opportunities and educational materials within regulated jurisdictions and are shared for professional development only.

Until next time,

The Psychedelic State(s) of America Team