- Advise patients who ask that psilocybin is a controlled substance under U.S. law and has serious risks when used as a drug of abuse; in this study a large proportion of participants had a strong or extreme fear response.
- Note, however, that under controlled conditions, the drug induced powerful mystical feelings that engendered long-term positive effects in terms of mood and sense of well-being.
BALTIMORE, July 12 -- Forty years after the psychedelic drug culture proclaimed that psilocybin induces a profound mystical and spiritual experience, investigators at Johns Hopkins have agreed.
There's magic in those mushrooms after all, researchers found in a double-blind trial that found the use of psilocybin can have a "substantial personal meaning and spiritual significance" even months later.
In one of the first rigorous studies of hallucinogenic drugs in the past 40 years, the investigators found that 61% of participants taking the drug - a serotonin-like derivative of the Psilocybe genus of mushrooms - had a "full mystical experience," as measured on established psychological scales, according to Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., the study's principal investigator.
Two-thirds of the 36 participants rated the psilocybin experience as either the single most meaningful experience or among the top five most meaningful experiences of their lives, Dr. Griffiths and colleagues reported in the online issue of Psychopharmacology.
