The Magic of Magic Mushrooms
By Cooper Fuller
How could a substance which causes hallucinations, intense emotions (positive or negative), and a departure from reality for the user possibly be helpful? The substances in question are known as psychedelics, which include magic mushrooms, LSD, peyote, and DMT, to name a few. Any such substance should be disregarded, right? The budding research on psilocybin (the chemical found in magic mushrooms which causes their hallucinatory effects) is beginning to suggest that such a substance may hold immense healing powers.
Allow me to paint a brief picture of the history of psychedelics in American culture. Some preliminary research was conducted in the early-1960s, and psychedelics were a staple of the counterculture. Eventually, the government decided to make psychedelics illegal—horror stories of true, albeit extremely rare, “bad trips” swayed the discussion. There are classic stories of individuals that have a psychotic break while under the influence of psychedelics, and then proceed to jump out of windows because they think they can fly. There are true stories of psychedelics negatively affecting people, but these stories are actually quite rare.
Being nearly synonymous with the hippie counterculture did not help matters either. The association between psychedelics and the counterculture, coupled with the possibility of bad trips, spelled trouble for psychedelics. Psychedelics were deemed more harmful than good and were quickly made illegal. For decades, psychedelics were unable to be studied. But today, it is said, a “renaissance is underway” (Illing, 2019). Psychedelics, especially psilocybin, are being scientifically investigated once again, and the results are promising.
Since the 1960s, psilocybin has gone from ‘forbidden fruit’ to wellness trend. But research on psilocybin is still in its early stages. Magic mushrooms are illegal in most states and they are still federally illegal, so researchers have to jump through many hoops before they can study them. However, the research so far has shown that psilocybin can help treat a variety of conditions. Some of these treatment outcomes include helping people quit smoking (Garcia-Romeu et al., 2014), reducing depression and anxiety (Goldberg et al., 2020), and even reducing symptoms of PTSD and alcoholism in special forces veterans (Mangini et al., 2021).
I find the results of the smoking cessation study particularly striking. The study featured 15 participants who were all smokers. Each of them was given psilocybin on 2-3 occasions. Twelve months later, the participants were asked whether they were still smoking. A whopping 80% of them were abstinent from smoking after a year. Those are impressive findings, as that is better success than any other known form of smoking cessation treatment.
In light of the breakthroughs in psilocybin research, in 2018, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) designated psilocybin as a “breakthrough therapy.” The “breakthrough therapy” idea was created in 2012 as a way for drugs to get approved quicker by the FDA, so long as the drugs “display treatment advantages over current options” (Haridy, 2018). What this all means is that psilocybin may be approved sooner rather than later. This is of much benefit to researchers who wished to investigate psilocybin but were persuaded not to due to the legal hurdles they would have had to go through. With this FDA-approved “breakthrough therapy” designation, the doors are beginning to open to researchers who wish to investigate psilocybin.
Although the “breakthrough therapy” designation gives researchers more freedom in conducting psilocybin research, it does not give researchers free rein to do whatever they want with psilocybin. The research is highly controlled, and very strict conditions must be met before research can be conducted. We can expect the research to progress at a more rapid pace than before the FDA designation, but progress will still be slow because of the extant regulations.
I think it is important to note that we currently have much less research about psilocybin than other drugs (medical or otherwise). As such, we should be careful when reading that the FDA designated it as a breakthrough therapy. “Breakthrough therapy” is only a label—a label which will change based on the science. It could turn out that psilocybin is ultimately less useful than current treatments we have for PTSD, depression, addiction, etc. It could turn out that psilocybin is useful for only one of those conditions. Or it could turn out that it is even more magical than we could ever imagine. The message I am trying to get across here is this: despite the progress we have made thus far, we do not know enough about psilocybin yet to make any long-term plans with it. Our best bet is to stay cautiously optimistic.
For more information on psychedelic research (including research on psilocybin), see the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research: https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/
If you or a loved one are concerned about your mental health or substance use, check out SAMHSA: https://www.samhsa.gov/
References
Brown, E. N. (2022, January 23). Inside the growing wellness trend of psilocybin mushroom microdosing. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved February 23, 2022, from https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/pyschedelic-mushrooms-microdosing-medical-treatment-1235076616/
Garcia-Romeu, A., Griffiths, R. R., & Johnson, M. W. (2014). Psilocybin-occasioned mystical experiences in the treatment of tobacco addiction. Current drug abuse reviews, 7(3), 157–164. https://doi.org/10.2174/1874473708666150107121331