I Made Money Today on Psychedelics. I'm Not Celebrating.
A letter to Rick Doblin and the field — on the death of Tina Sodhi, the arrest of Dr. Samuel Lee, and the paradox of the most important day in psychedelic medicine history.
🔴 LIVE — This article is being updated in real time as new information comes in. Last updated: July 16, 2026. Refresh for the latest.
Key Takeaways
- Dr. Samuel Lee was charged with felony manslaughter on July 16, 2026 in the death of Tina Sodhi, who died February 10, 2025 during a “Heart Protocol” ceremony in Miami Beach.
- Lee simultaneously administered MDMA, ketamine, and DMT — three pharmacologically incompatible compounds — in a heated sauna environment.
- The same day, Eli Lilly announced a $2.8 billion acquisition of AtaiBeckley, the psychedelic biotech formed from Beckley Psytech and atai Life Sciences.
- The author is an early investor in Beckley Psytech and a 20-year acquaintance of Rick Doblin of MAPS.
- Five minimum safety standards are proposed for the field.
- The ImpactSoul Psychedelic Readiness Index is offered as a structural framework.
Disclosure: On July 16, 2026 — the day this article was published — Eli Lilly announced the acquisition of AtaiBeckley for $2.8 billion upfront. The author is an early investor in Beckley Psytech (acquired by atai Life Sciences in November 2025 to form AtaiBeckley) and holds shares that increased in value as a direct result of this transaction. The author also holds investments in the following psychedelic medicine companies mentioned in this article: MycoMedica Life Sciences, Wake Network, Radicle Science, and Tripp. These financial interests are declared in the interest of full transparency and do not alter the analysis, conclusions, or calls to action in this letter.
EDITOR'S SUMMARY: On July 14, 2026 — the same day Eli Lilly announced a $2.8 billion upfront acquisition of psychedelic biotech AtaiBeckley — Dr. Samuel Lee was charged with felony manslaughter for the February 2025 death of Tina Sodhi during a self-branded "Heart Protocol" ceremony in Miami Beach. The author is an early investor in Beckley Psytech, the company that merged with atai Life Sciences to form AtaiBeckley, and a 20-year acquaintance of Rick Doblin. This open letter calls for five minimum safety standards and a citizen medicine movement.
Tina Sodhi was 51 years old. She paid $2,000 to attend a three-day retreat at Sabia Wellness House in Miami Beach. She signed a waiver. She trusted someone with her life. She was found unresponsive in a rooftop sauna in February 2025. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner determined she died from extreme dehydration caused by a simultaneous combination of MDMA, ketamine, and DMT — plus a parasite cleanser administered before the ceremony — in prolonged heat exposure. Dr. Samuel Lee, the licensed psychiatrist who administered those compounds, has been charged with second-degree felony manslaughter. Court records also show Lee told an officer he was not performing the ceremony under his medical license — and his Florida medical license was expired at the time of Tina Sodhi's death.
I am deeply sad writing this. That is where I need to start.
Ask yourself: if you had been in that room, what would you have done differently? And more importantly — what would have stopped you from walking in?
Rick — This Moment Belongs to You
You founded MAPS in 1986 because the DEA placed MDMA in Schedule I, overriding its own administrative law judge's recommendation that it remain available for therapeutic use. You spent four decades building the scientific, legal, and cultural foundations for the responsible use of these medicines.
This month, you said something that stopped me:
"We are closer than ever to psychedelics becoming legal medicines again, but what's emerging looks different from what I spent 40 years fighting for. My biggest concern now is no longer whether these therapies will be approved, but what they will look like when they arrive, and who will be able to access them. Companies are increasingly minimizing or eliminating the therapeutic component entirely, treating the drug as the product and everything around it as a cost to be cut."
— Rick Doblin, Ph.D., MAPS 40th Anniversary Statement, April 2026
That warning — "treating the drug as the product and everything around it as a cost to be cut" — is the precise mechanism that killed Tina Sodhi. Dr. Lee did not eliminate the therapeutic component. He replaced it with a brand. He called it the "Heart Protocol." He charged $2,000 for access. He invented, packaged, and sold an untested compound stack as a breakthrough experience. Lee's Eternal Life Tribe had over 4,000 paying members at $55/month — a recurring revenue model built entirely on ceremonial authority.
That inversion — product over practice, novelty over wisdom, brand over reverence — is what this letter is about.
Today Is July 14, 2026
This morning, Eli Lilly announced a $2.8 billion acquisition of AtaiBeckley — the psychedelic biotech formed when atai Life Sciences acquired Beckley Psytech in November 2025 — a company I was a proud early investor in. It is the largest single psychedelic medicine transaction in history. Big pharma has arrived.
On this same day, Dr. Samuel Lee faces a manslaughter charge for Tina Sodhi's death.
Dr. Lee is not a fringe figure. He earned his MD at Loma Linda University School of Medicine. He completed his psychiatry residency at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the University of Washington. He was board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology since 2013. He worked as a psychiatrist at Kaiser Permanente. He was medical director at a licensed treatment center in Sedona, Arizona. He has a podcast. He has a following. He has a curriculum vitae that most practitioners in this field would envy.
None of that is a defense. It is an indictment.
The Body Does Not Care About Your Brand
I have invested in MAPS, MycoMedica Life Sciences (co-founded with Paul Stamets), AtaiBeckley, Wake Network, Radicle Science, TRIPP, and others. I have sat with these medicines myself. I am not an expert. I am a student. That distinction matters enormously here.
I recently began building the Psychedelic Readiness Index — a clinical screening tool covering 26 medicines across 6 safety domains — because pharmacological sequencing, interaction risk, and the balance between synthetic and natural substances is dangerously under-addressed in the retreat and ceremony space.
Matthew Perry Died the Same Way
Matthew Perry died in October 2023. Found face down in his hot tub. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner determined the cause of death was the acute effects of ketamine. His blood concentration — 3,271 nanograms per milliliter — was within the range used for surgical general anesthesia. He was alone. He was in hot water. He was dissociated from his own body. He drowned.
Tina Sodhi Died in a Sauna.
She Didn't Have To.
On February 10, 2025, Tina Sodhi paid $2,000 to attend a three-day "Heart Protocol" ceremony at a wellness home in Miami Beach. She was administered MDMA and ketamine. She was found unresponsive in a rooftop sauna.
The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner ruled her death: dehydration from the combination of MDMA, ketamine, prolonged heat exposure, and a pre-ceremony cleansing regimen. She had signed a waiver. It didn't save her. It didn't save the doctor either — Dr. Samuel Lee was charged with felony manslaughter on July 14, 2026.
She was not the first. She will not be the last — unless this industry decides to govern itself before the government does it for us.
What follows are not guidelines. They are the minimum standard of care this field must adopt publicly, immediately, and without exception.
The Six Laws of Conscious Medicine
These are not guidelines. They are the minimum standard of care this field must adopt publicly, immediately, and without exception.
LAW I — Water and heat kill when combined with dissociative compounds. No exceptions. Tina Sodhi died because MDMA and ketamine were administered before sauna exposure. MDMA elevates core body temperature and suppresses heat regulation. A sauna is not spiritual in this context. It is fatal. No ceremony overrides this. No waiver makes it legal. No brand name makes it safe.
LAW II — Compound stacking without peer-reviewed safety data is experimentation. Name it that. MDMA, ketamine, and DMT did not kill Tina Sodhi separately. They killed her together — in a combination that had never been studied, presented as a "Heart Protocol." If there is no published safety data on the specific combination at the specific doses you are administering, you are running an experiment. Your participants did not sign up for an experiment.
LAW III — A waiver is not informed consent. Tina Sodhi signed a waiver. She did not understand that MDMA plus ketamine plus a sauna could kill her — because no one told her. Real informed consent requires a sober explanation of every compound and its interaction risks, written contraindications, and the right to withdraw at any stage without social pressure or financial penalty. A signature is not the same thing. Her family knows what the difference is.
LAW IV — Credentials do not replace lineage, training, and humility. The most dangerous practitioner in this space right now is the one who completed a weekend certification last year and charges $3,000 a seat. Ask your facilitator: Who trained you? How long? Are you still in supervision? If they cannot answer all three without defensiveness, you have your answer.
LAW V — These medicines are singular teachers. You do not stack teachers and expect coherence. Every tradition that has worked with these plants for centuries holds one inviolable principle: one medicine, one container, one teacher at a time. The moment you combine two medicines in one ceremony, you have stepped outside every map that exists. You are no longer facilitating. You are improvising with someone else's nervous system.
LAW VI — A practice improves. A product just sells. The day you stop asking "what did I miss?" is the day you become dangerous. Tina Sodhi's death was not an accident. It was the result of a practitioner who had answers instead of questions. If you are more focused on your next cohort than your last client's integration — you are running a business, not a practice. One of them has a body count.
If you run retreats: Post these six laws publicly. On your website. Before the booking page. If you will not stand behind them publicly, examine why.
If you refer clients: You are accountable for where you send them. Ask every operator you refer to whether they will sign these laws. Publish who will and who will not.
If you are a client: You have the right to ask every one of these questions before you enter any container. A facilitator who cannot answer them clearly and without defensiveness is not ready to hold you. Walk away. Tina Sodhi paid $2,000. She paid with her life.
The industry will not self-regulate through good intentions. It will self-regulate through standards that the best practitioners hold publicly — and the worst are publicly measured against. Tina Sodhi deserved these laws before February 10, 2025. The next person deserves them today.
— TonyG
Share this. Ask every facilitator you work with to sign it publicly. If they won't — that is your answer. And now you know.
A Response Worth Keeping
Within hours of publication, Dr. Stephen Scappa — psychiatrist & physician, powering great human potential — sent this. I am not summarizing it. I am not contextualizing it. I am printing it whole, because it is the rare thing: a real human, with real standing, saying exactly what needs to be said.
"Off-label prescribing depends upon and trusts the physician's judgement. Professional judgement is all too commonly diminished by good intentions — when the prescriber does not say 'no' to a patient in sometimes desperate need. Or whose pockets are full of cash and clout, as is suggested in the tragedy of Tina Sodhi and Dr. Samuel Lee.
'Let the buyer beware' places responsibility on the patient. Better is: trust, but verify. Do not trust blindly because of a degree upon the wall.
Hallucinogenics are now soaked in hype and money and a desire for magic. Any practitioner with their own special treatment should be examined — by the patient and the professional associations — before being let loose upon the public."
— Dr. Stephen Scappa, psychiatrist & physician · powering great human potential · July 16, 2026
"Do not trust blindly because of a degree upon the wall."
That is the Six Laws in one sentence.
What These Medicines Actually Teach
The ancient Peruvian concept of ayni — sacred reciprocity — teaches that if we take without giving, we hurt ourselves and can become sick. Lee took $2,000 from a woman who trusted him with her life. He took the spiritual legitimacy of traditions that took centuries to develop. He gave nothing back except a pharmacological environment that guaranteed harm.
He approached as the teacher. He made himself the medicine. He branded his invention and charged for access. That inversion is what killed Tina Sodhi.
The Paradox of This Watershed Day
Eli Lilly's $2.8 billion acquisition of AtaiBeckley validates what this field can become at its best. BPL-003 — a nasally administered 5-MeO-DMT treatment for treatment-resistant depression — is administered in a clinic, under monitoring, for about two hours. Single compound. Safe environment. Supervised. That is what responsible looks like.
And on this same day, Tina Sodhi has been dead for more than a year.
Rick, you also said this month: "After four decades, I remain genuinely optimistic that psychedelic-assisted therapies will once again become legal. But legality was never the point. Healing was."
That sentence is the entire argument of this letter. Legality was never the point. Healing was. And healing requires the humility to keep practicing.
A Deep Bow: Ron Beller
Ron Beller is Rick Doblin's personal coach. He has been one of the quiet architects of this movement's credibility — not from a stage, not from a press release, but from the inside, over years, doing the unglamorous work of holding space for the people who hold space for everyone else. That work matters. This letter would not exist without people like him.
A Note on My Standing to Write This
Disclosure and accountability: For over 20 years, Tony Greenberg has been a personal acquaintance of Rick Doblin and has had direct visibility inside MAPS — as an observer, supporter, and investor in MAPS Public Benefit Corporation (MAPS PBC). He is also an investor in MAPS Public Benefit Corporation (MAPS PBC), MycoMedica Life Sciences, AtaiBeckley, Wake Network, Radicle Science, and TRIPP.
This piece was written with AI assistance to raise the baton faster. This piece was written with AI assistance to raise the baton faster. Speed over polish. Accountability over silence.