Del Potter, PhD is an ethnopsychopharmacologist, chemist, and psychedelic pioneer whose career has moved across some of the most consequential and unconventional edges of the field, from Mesoamerican field research and underground manufacturing to cutting-edge pharmaceutical development and clinical trials. He brings a rare perspective to the psychedelic renaissance: not as a commentator, but as someone who was inside the apparatus that produced these compounds long before the current wave had a name.
Dr. Potter holds a PhD from a joint program between the UCSF Medical School and UC Berkeley's Department of Anthropology, specializing in psychiatric anthropology, ethnopsychopharmacology, and neuropharmacology, with additional clinical training at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute. His postdoctoral fieldwork examined shamanic traditions and indigenous psychotherapeutic practice across multiple lineages, including ceremonial psilocybin and Salvia divinorum use among the Mazatec of central Mexico, ayahuasca and yagé ritual among the Shuar of Ecuador, and parallel traditions among the Yanomami of Brazil and the Cofán of Colombia, contributing to Richard Evans Schultes' comprehensive survey of psychotropic botanicals worldwide. A formative mentorship with Alexander Shulgin oriented his chemistry toward novel tryptamine compounds, particularly in the DMT and 5-MeO-DMT structural classes, and he has since developed a portfolio of compounds that retain the neuroplasticity associated with psychedelic receptor activity while producing no psychedelic effect.
On the pharmaceutical and biotech side, Dr. Potter served as Chief Science Officer at Leef Holdings, designing what became California's largest fully automated medical cannabis manufacturing facility, and later directed first-in-human 5-MeO-DMT clinical trials at UCSF through his work with Alvarius Pharmaceuticals, followed by a Phase 1 trial at Trinity College Dublin. At University College Dublin, he developed and validated the use of human stem cell-derived brain organoids to assess how psychedelic compounds reverse epigenetic changes caused by substance abuse. In 2023 he founded Spiritus Bioscience to develop novel delivery formats for psilocin, DMT, and 5-MeO-DMT, with the first product entering clinical trials in Australia targeting Alcohol Use Disorder. He currently serves as founder and CSO of BioUnbound Inc., exploring the intersection of psychedelics and bioactive peptides for mental health and longevity applications.
Dr. Potter is currently completing his memoir, whose working title is Was a Different Time: Chronicles of a Psychedelic Pioneer in the Reign of the Cartels.
Episode Highlights
▶ Del's background supplying California cannabis genetics to the Guadalajara cartel and working at Rancho Bufalo
▶ Meeting cartel figures Miguel Felix Gallardo and Rafael Caro Quintero, and the fallout from the Kiki Camarena murder
▶ Manufacturing LSD in Marin County using precursor chemicals sourced through cartel connections
▶ How a DEA sting led to a federal task force, a stunning offer, and a get-out-of-jail-free card
▶ Mentorship under Alexander Shulgin and the countercultural milieu of Esalen, Claudio Naranjo, Allen Ginsberg, and Terence McKenna
▶ Why psychedelics have no intrinsic politics: the compound is the same, the container decides everything
▶ The retreat economy as product development: when one medicine stops differentiating, operators start stacking
▶ How the clinical and pharmaceutical models convert ceremony into a billable procedure
▶ The psychoplastogen pipeline: engineering the experience out so the worker is back at their desk by Wednesday
▶ Indigenous cosmological governance as a technical achievement, not a romanticized ideal
▶ The concept of restraint and reciprocity as regulatory systems, and what Western culture has lost
▶ Why patenting psilocybin protocols and dosing postures is a winnable legal argument
▶ Publicly funded, community-governed clinics as the only container that can hold what these compounds require
▶ The mental health crisis as inseparable from the housing, wage, care, and climate crises
▶ Building a parallel infrastructure: cooperatives, commons defense, and indigenous benefit sharing as models
Dr. Del Potter’s Links & Resources
▶ https://delpotterphd.substack.com
▶ https://www.facebook.com/del.potter.75
▶ @drdelpotter.bsky.social
▶ www.biounbound.com
▶ https://www.instagram.com/potter_del/
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Download Beth's free trainings here:
Clarity to Clients: Start & Grow a Transformational Coaching, Healing, Spiritual, or Psychedelic Business: https://bethaweinstein.com/grow-your-spiritual-business
Integrating Psychedelics & Sacred Medicines Into Business: https://bethaweinstein.com/psychedelics-in-business
▶ Beth’s Coaching & Guidance: https://bethaweinstein.com/coaching
▶ Beth's Offerings & Courses: https://bethaweinstein.com/services
▶ Instagram: @bethaweinstein
▶ FB: / bethw.nyc + bethweinsteinbiz
