By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 11, 2006; A08

Psilocybin, the active ingredient of "magic mushrooms," expands the mind. After a thousand years of use, that's now scientifically official.

The chemical promoted a mystical experience in two-thirds of people who took it for the first time, according to a new study. One-third rated a session with psilocybin as the "single most spiritually significant" experience of their lives. Another third put it in the top five.

The study, published online today in the journal Psychopharmacology, is the first randomized, controlled trial of a substance used for centuries in Mexico and Central America to produce mystical insights. Almost no research on a psychedelic drug in human subjects has been done in this country since the 1960s. It confirms what both shamans and hippies have long said -- taking psilocybin is a scary, reality-bending and occasionally life-changing experience.

The researchers say they hope the experiment opens a door to the study of a class of compounds that alter human perception and erode the boundaries of self -- at least in some users. They hope it will provide new insight into how the brain works and what neurochemical events underlie moments of mystical rapture.

If the generally positive effects of the drug are confirmed by other studies, the research is likely to raise the question of whether people should be allowed access to psilocybin for self-improvement or recreation.

Rigorous study of these substances has been shunned since the 1960s, although it is not legally prohibited. Research on them was a casualty of the muddled mix of science and advocacy by people like Timothy Leary, the LSD guru and former Harvard psychologist once called the "most dangerous man in America" by President Richard M. Nixon.

"Our study has shown we can conduct a study of this type safely, and that the effects produced are really quite interesting," said Roland R. Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who ran the experiment. "There is a clear neuroscience agenda to understand those effects, and clear clinical applications that could be pursued."

Other brain researchers hailed the experiment as much for the fact that it was done at all as for its findings.

"These are some of the most potent compounds we know of that can change consciousness," said David E. Nichols, a professor of medicinal chemistry at Purdue University who has studied the effects of psychedelics on rats and cultured cells. "It's kind of peculiar they have just been kind of sitting on the shelf for 40 years. There is no other class of biologically active substances I am aware of that have been ignored like that."

The study, which involved 36 middle-aged adults from the Baltimore-Washington area, was conducted over five years. The subjects were chosen from 135 people who answered newspaper ads. All said they were members of a religious organization, practiced meditation or took part in other spiritual activity.

The study was designed to minimize the effects of anticipation and group enthusiasm, which might color a person's response. It also sought to examine the delayed, as well as immediate, effects of the drug.

The volunteers were randomly assigned to take either 30 milligrams of psilocybin (chemically synthesized, not extracted from mushrooms) or 40 milligrams of methylphenidate, the stimulant sold as Ritalin. The sessions lasted eight hours in a room where a person could listen to music, relax on a couch with eyeshades or talk with two monitors always in attendance. Each subject then took the other drug in a different session two months later.

Of the 36 people, 22 had a "complete" mystical experience as judged by several question-based scales used for rating such experiences. Two-thirds judged it to be among their top five life experiences, equal to the birth of a first child or death of a parent. Two months after a session, the people who had taken psilocybin reported small but significant positive changes in behavior and attitudes compared with those who had taken Ritalin.

One-third of the subjects, however, said they experienced "strong or extreme" fear at some point in the hours after they took the hallucinogen. Four people said the entire session was dominated by anxiety or psychological struggle.

Nichols thinks that last finding should give people pause.

"I think these drugs are potentially very dangerous," he said. "I would be very disappointed if in any sense these results were used to encourage recreational use of these compounds. I wouldn't want to take responsibility for anyone under unmonitored conditions coming up with those feelings."

Alan Leshner, who headed the National Institute on Drug Abuse for seven years and now leads the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was both wary and excited about psilocybin's reported effects.

"If it is ultimately shown to be benign but enriches people's lives, who could object to that? But I don't have that level of confidence at this point, given the paucity of research on it," he said.

A scholar of mysticism, G. William Barnard of Southern Methodist University, suspects that most mystical traditions would not object to the idea that a chemical could allow a person to tune into a preexisting state of consciousness, usually ignored, just as fasting, prayer, yoga and other activities can. But there is less enthusiasm for the idea that this kind of research will unlock the mechanism of mystical insight.

"Most people I suspect would say that the neurochemistry is not the full cause of these experiences," he said.

Entheogenic Mysticism in the Matrix

When you take away the silly plot theme of The Matrix (that machines are using humans as Duracell batteries), you can find some great mystical messages. Reality is a construct in human minds that is structured by the universal field of matter/time/space (whatever that is made of). This universal field could be called Yo, The Divine Mystery. Or, as in this film clip, it could be called the Matrix.

July 11, 2006

Mushroom Drug Produces Mystical Experience

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 12:31 a.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- People who took an illegal drug made from mushrooms reported profound mystical experiences that led to behavior changes lasting for weeks -- all part of an experiment that recalls the psychedelic '60s.

Many of the 36 volunteers rated their reaction to a single dose of the drug, called psilocybin, as one of the most meaningful or spiritually significant experiences of their lives. Some compared it to the birth of a child or the death of a parent.

Such comments ''just seemed unbelievable,'' said Roland Griffiths of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, the study's lead author.

But don't try this at home, he warned. ''Absolutely don't.''

Almost a third of the research participants found the drug experience frightening even in the very controlled setting. That suggests people experimenting with the illicit drug on their own could be harmed, Griffiths said.

Viewed by some as a landmark, the study is one of the few rigorous looks in the past 40 years at a hallucinogen's effects. The researchers suggest the drug someday may help drug addicts kick their habit or aid terminally ill patients struggling with anxiety and depression.

It may also provide a way to study what happens in the brain during intense spiritual experiences, the scientists said.

Funded in part by the federal government, the research was published online Tuesday by the journal Psychopharmacology.

Psilocybin has been used for centuries in religious practices, and its ability to produce a mystical experience is no surprise. But the new work demonstrates it more clearly than before, Griffiths said.

Even two months after taking the drug, pronounced SILL-oh-SY-bin, most of the volunteers said the experience had changed them in beneficial ways, such as making them more compassionate, loving, optimistic and patient. Family members and friends said they noticed a difference, too. [Note: Follow up research showed that the positive effects lasted more than a year.]

Time Lapse of Sacred Psilocybe Cubensis

Charles Schuster, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at Wayne State University and a former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, called the work a landmark.

''I believe this is one of the most rigorously well-controlled studies ever done'' to evaluate psilocybin or similar substances for their potential to increase self-awareness and a sense of spirituality, he said. He did not participate in the research.

Psilocybin, like LSD or mescaline, is one of a class of drugs called hallucinogens or psychedelics. While they have been studied by scientists in the past, research was largely shut down after widespread recreational abuse of the drugs during the 1960s, Griffiths said. Some work resumed in the 1990s.

''We've lost 40 years of (potential) research experience with this whole class of compounds,'' he said. Now, with modern-day scientific methods, ''I think it's time to pick up this research field.''

The study volunteers had an average age of 46, had never used hallucinogens, and participated to some degree in religious or spiritual activities like prayer, meditation, discussion groups or religious services. Each tried psilocybin during one visit to the lab and the stimulant methylphenidate (better known as Ritalin) on one or two other visits. Only six of the volunteers knew when they were getting psilocybin.

Each visit lasted eight hours. The volunteers lay on a couch in a living-room-like setting, wearing an eye mask and listening to classical music. They were encouraged to focus their attention inward.

Psilocybin's effects lasted for up to six hours, Griffiths said. Twenty-two of the 36 volunteers reported having a ''complete'' mystical experience, compared to four of those getting methylphenidate.

That experience included such things as a sense of pure awareness and a merging with ultimate reality, a transcendence of time and space, a feeling of sacredness or awe, and deeply felt positive mood like joy, peace and love. People say ''they can't possibly put it into words,'' Griffiths said.

Two months later, 24 of the participants filled out a questionnaire. Two-thirds called their reaction to psilocybin one of the five top most meaningful experiences of their lives. On another measure, one-third called it the most spiritually significant experience of their lives, with another 40 percent ranking it in the top five.

About 80 percent said that because of the psilocybin experience, they still had a sense of well-being or life satisfaction that was raised either ''moderately'' or ''very much.''

---

Scientific American Mind -  December 28, 2007

Psychedelic Healing?

Hallucinogenic drugs, which blew minds in the 1960s, soon may be used to treat mental ailments

By David Jay Brown

Mind-altering psychedelics are back—but this time they are being explored in labs for their therapeutic applications rather than being used illegally. Studies are looking at these hallucinogens to treat a number of otherwise intractable psychiatric disorders, including chronic depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and drug or alcohol dependency.

The past 15 years have seen a quiet resurgence of psychedelic drug research as scientists have come to recognize the long-underappreciated potential of these drugs. In the past few years, a growing number of studies using human volunteers have begun to explore the possible therapeutic benefits of drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA, ibogaine and ketamine.

Much remains unclear about the precise neural mechanisms governing how these drugs produce their mind-bending results, but they often produce somewhat similar psychoactive effects that make them potential therapeutic tools. Though still in their preliminary stages, studies in humans suggest that the day when people can schedule a psychedelic session with their therapist to overcome a serious psychiatric problem may not be that far off.

The Trip Begins
Psychedelic drug research began in 1897, when German chemist Arthur Heffter first isolated mescaline, the primary psychoactive compound in the peyote cactus. In 1943 Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann discovered the hallucinogenic effects of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Basel while studying ergot, a fungus that grows on rye. Fifteen years later, in 1958, he was the first to isolate psilocybin and psilocin—the psychoactive components of the Mexican “magic mushroom,” Psilocybe mexicana.

Before 1972, close to 700 studies with psychedelic drugs took place. The research suggested that psychedelics offered significant benefits: they helped recovering alcoholics abstain, soothed the anxieties of terminal cancer patients, and eased the symptoms of many difficult-to-treat psychiatric illnesses, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder.

For example, between 1967 and 1972 studies in terminal cancer patients by psychiatrist Stanislav Grof and his colleagues at Spring Grove State Hospital in Baltimore showed that LSD combined with psychotherapy could alleviate symptoms of depression, tension, anxiety, sleep disturbances, psychological withdrawal and even severe physical pain. Other investigators during this era found that LSD may have some interesting potential as a means to facilitate creative problem solving.

Between 1972 and 1990 there were no human studies with psychedelic drugs. Their disappearance was the result of a political backlash that followed the promotion of these drugs by the 1960s counterculture. This reaction not only made these substances illegal for personal use but also made it extremely difficult for researchers to get government approval to study them.

Things began to change in 1990, when “open-minded regulators at the FDA decided to put science before politics when it came to psychedelic and medical marijuana research,” says Rick Doblin, a public policy expert and head of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). “FDA openness to research is really the key factor. Also, senior researchers who were influenced by psychedelics in the sixties now are speaking up before they retire and have earned credibility.” Chemist and neuropharmacologist David E. Nichols of Purdue University adds, “Baby boomers who experienced the psychedelic sixties are now mature scientists and clinicians who have retained their curiosity but only recently had the opportunity to reexplore these substances.”

Research Begins Anew
The efforts of two privately funded organizations have catalyzed much of the recent wave of research: MAPS, founded in 1986 by Doblin, and the Heffter Research Institute, started in 1993. Outside the U.S. there are groups such as the Beckley Foundation in England and the Russian Psychedelic Society. These seek out interested researchers, assist in developing the experimental design for the studies, and help to obtain funding and government approval to conduct clinical trials. They have initiated numerous FDA-approved clinical trials in the U.S., Switzerland, Israel and Spain. So far the agency has approved seven studies, with two under review and more on the way.

Current studies are focusing on psychedelic treatments for cluster headaches, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), severe anxiety in terminal cancer patients, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), alcoholism and opiate addiction. New drugs must pass three clinical milestones before they can be marketed to the public, called phase I (for safety, usually in 20 to 80 volunteers), phase II (for efficacy, in several hundred subjects) and phase III (more extensive data on safety and efficacy come from testing the drug in up to several thousand people). All the studies discussed in this article have received government approval, and their investigators are either in the process of recruiting human subjects or have begun or completed research on human subjects in the first or second stage of this trial process.

Psychedelic drugs affect all mental functions: perception, emotion, cognition, body awareness and one’s sense of self. Unlike every other class of drugs, psychedelic drug effects depend heavily on the environment and on the expectations of the subject, which is why combining them with psychotherapy is so vital.

“Psychedelics may be therapeutic to the extent that they elicit processes that are known to be useful in a therapeutic context: transference reactions and working through them; enhanced symbolism and imagery; increased suggestibility; increased contact between emotions and ideations; controlled regression; et cetera,” says psychiatrist Rick Strassman of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, who from 1990 to 1995 performed the first human study using psychedelic drugs in about 20 years, investigating the effects of DMT on 60 human subjects. “This all depends, though, on set and setting,” he cautions. “These same properties could also be turned to very negative experiences, if the support and expectation for a beneficial experience aren’t there.”

Mechanisms and Targets
Scientists divide classical psychedelic drugs into two basic chemical groups: tryptamines (such as LSD, DMT and psilocybin) and phen­ethylamines (such as mescaline and MDMA). In addition, some people consider so-called dissociative anesthetics (such as ketamine and PCP) to be psychedelic drugs, although the way they affect the brain is quite different.

The exact mechanisms differ, but all the tryptamine hallucinogens—which make up the majority of psychedelic drugs—selectively bind to specific serotonin receptors on neurons, mimicking the effects of the nerve-signaling chemical, or neurotransmitter, serotonin on these receptors. Phenethylamines mimic the chemical structure of another neurotransmitter, dopamine. They actually bind to many of the same serotonin receptors activated by the tryptamines, however. Serotonin is responsible for many important functions, including mood, memory, appetite, sex and sleep. It is such an essential neurochemical that any substance—such as a hallucinogen—that interferes with its action might be expected to produce dramatic changes in brain function.

How do the drugs create their perceptual effects? Neuroscientists believe that activation of a particular set of serotonin receptors, the 2A subtype, which are highly expressed (or present) in the cortex, the outermost layer of the brain, interferes with the processing of sensory information. Consciousness is thought to involve a complex interaction among the cortex, the thalamus and the striatum. Disruption of this network by activation of serotonin 2A receptors is now the most popular theory for the mechanism of action for tryptamine and phenethylamine psychedelics.

“There are at least two possible mechanisms for beneficial actions,” Nichols says. “The first simply involves a change in the numbers of brain serotonin 2A receptors. Activation of serotonin 2A receptors by psychedelics causes the number of receptors expressed on the surface of neurons to decrease, a process called downregulation. For some disorders, such as OCD, it may be this receptor downregulation that could be therapeutic,” he explains. “The other possible mechanism is a psychological effect that is harder to define but in some way produces changes in the way the subject perceives pain and distress. Psychedelics seem able to produce a profound cognitive change that provides the patient with a new insight—the ability to see the world from a new perspective—somehow reducing anxiety and raising the pain threshold.”

MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine) is also chemically classified as a phenethylamine, but its action in the brain is substantially different from that of other drugs discussed in this article. “In contrast to most psychedelics, MDMA does not directly stimulate serotonin 2A receptors but instead causes dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine [another neurotransmitter] to be released from their stores in neuron endings,” Nichols says. There is some controversy about whether MDMA has neurotoxic effects. Most researchers believe, however, that the occasional moderate use of MDMA at therapeutic doses would not be damaging. There have been no recent studies using mescaline, although MAPS plans to initiate some in the future.

In contrast to the traditional psychedelics, the dissociative anesthetics selectively bind to N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptors, block­ing the neurotransmitter glutamate from activating these receptors. “Because glutamate is an essential neurotransmitter that activates neurons, this blocking effect seems to prevent the processing of sensory information by the brain,” Nichols states.

Ketamine appears to hold particular promise as a psychedelic therapy because it is already among the selections in Western medicine’s pharmacopoeia. In addition to being part of a different chemical class of drugs than the other psychedelics, ketamine is in a separate legal class as an FDA-approved schedule III drug. This designation means that any physician can administer it for an off-label use if he or she believes it will help the patient.

Although some research indicates that psychedelic drugs may enhance suggestibility and certain aspects of psychotherapy, the benefits of dissociative anesthetics such as ketamine and ibogaine may simply be the result of enduring biochemical changes in the brain. For example, in 2006 Carlos Zarate of the National Institute of Mental Health published a study demon­strating ketamine’s unusual antidepressant properties. A single infusion of ketamine relieved symptoms of depression in some patients within a few hours, and that relief persisted for several days.

This was the third study that showed ketamine’s powerful and enduring antidepressant effects. In an intriguing finding from one of the previous studies, subjects received the ketamine as an anesthetic for orthopedic surgery—so they were not even conscious during the mind-altering segment of the drug’s action in the brain—and the antidepressant effects occurred postoperatively.

In other work seeking to help cure addicts, a preliminary ketamine study, in which psy­chiatrist Evgeny Krupitsky of St. Petersburg, Russia, treated 59 patients with heroin dependency, produced encouraging results. And the Iboga Therapy House in Vancouver, Canada, has recently begun a study that has so far successfully treated three out of 20 opiate-addicted subjects with ibogaine. The experimental procedure substantially reduced the withdrawal symptoms associated with opiate addiction, helping the addicts to recover and break their dependency on the drug.

OCD, Cluster Headaches and Cancer
In addition to the promising work with ibogaine and the dissociative anesthetics, progress is also being made in the study of conventional psychedelics. In 2006 investigators at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine published the results of a six-year project on the effects of psilocybin, in which more than 60 percent of the participants reported positive changes in their attitude and behavior after taking the drug, a benefit that lasted for at least several months.

In another 2006 study, researchers at the University of Arizona, led by psychiatrist Francisco Moreno, found that psilocybin relieved the symptoms of nine patients with OCD. The patients suffered from a wide range of obsessions and compulsions. Some of them showered for hours; others put on their clothes over and over again until they felt right. All nine experienced improvements with at least some of the doses tested.

“What we saw was a drastic decrease in symp­toms for a period of time,” Moreno says. “People would report that it had been years since they had felt so good.” Moreno cautions that the goal

was simply to test the safety of administering psilocybin to OCD patients and that the true effectiveness of the drug is still in question until a larger controlled study can be conducted. Such a study is being planned, although there are currently no funds available for it. According to Moreno, however, no treatment in the medical literature eases OCD symptoms as fast as psilocybin does. Whereas other drugs take several weeks to show an effect, psilocybin worked almost immediately.

Preliminary results of a current study led by psychiatrist Charles Grob of the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center suggest that psilocybin may reduce the psychological distress associated with terminal cancer. This research seeks to measure the effectiveness of psilocybin on the reduction of anxiety, depression and physical pain in advanced-stage cancer patients. Grob’s study is almost complete; 11 out of 12 subjects have already been treated. Although the formal data analysis has not been completed, “my impression,” Grob says, “from just staying in touch with these people and following them is that some do seem to be functioning better psychologically. There seems to be less anxiety, improved mood and an overall improved quality of life. There also seems to be less fear of death.”

The first studies of psychedelic drugs at Harvard University since 1965 are also now under way. In one study, psychiatrist John Halpern and his colleagues are looking into using LSD and psilocybin to treat the debilitating symptoms of cluster headaches. The researchers, who are in the process of recruiting subjects, will probably begin trials in early 2008.

Acute Anxiety and PTSD
Another study at Harvard, also led by Halpern, will look into MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in subjects with anxiety associated with advanced-stage cancer—similar to Grob’s psilocybin study—using measures to evaluate anxiety, pain and overall quality of life. This study is also in the process of recruiting human subjects.

Psychiatrist Michael Mithoefer in Charleston, S.C., is running an MDMA study for treatment-resistant PTSD victims of crime, war or childhood sexual abuse. So far 17 out of 20 such subjects have already undergone the experimental therapy. “At this point the results are very promising,” Mithoefer says. “I think we’re seeing pretty strong, robust effects in some people. I hasten to add these are preliminary findings—we’re not ready to draw conclusions yet. But assuming it keeps going this way for the rest of the study, it certainly seems that there’s very good reason to go on to larger phase III trials.”

Although we are still in the early days of psychedelic therapy research, the initial data show considerable promise. A growing number of scientists believe that psychedelic drugs may offer safe and effective help for people with certain treatment-resistant psychiatric disorders and could possibly help some people who receive partial relief from current methods to obtain a more complete healing.

---

July 1, 2008

Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug

By MALCOLM RITTER   AP Science Writer

In 2002, at a Johns Hopkins University laboratory, a business consultant named Dede Osborn took a psychedelic drug as part of a research project.

She felt like she was taking off. She saw colors. Then it felt like her heart was ripping open.

But she called the experience joyful as well as painful, and says that it has helped her to this day.

"I feel more centered in who I am and what I'm doing," said Osborn, now 66, of Providence, R.I. "I don't seem to have those self-doubts like I used to have. I feel much more grounded (and feel that) we are all connected."

Scientists reported Tuesday that when they surveyed volunteers 14 months after they took the drug, most said they were still feeling and behaving better because of the experience.

Two-thirds of them also said the drug had produced one of the five most spiritually significant experiences they'd ever had.

The drug, psilocybin, is found in so-called "magic mushrooms." It's illegal, but it has been used in religious ceremonies for centuries.

The study involved 36 men and women during an eight-hour lab visit. It's one of the few such studies of a hallucinogen in the past 40 years, since research was largely shut down after widespread recreational abuse of such drugs in the 1960s.

The project made headlines in 2006 when researchers published their report on how the volunteers felt just two months after taking the drug. The new study followed them up a year after that.

Experts emphasize that people should not try psilocybin on their own because it could be harmful. Even in the controlled setting of the laboratory, nearly a third of participants felt significant fear under the effects of the drug. Without proper supervision, someone could be harmed, researchers said.

Osborn, in a telephone interview, recalled a powerful feeling of being out of control during her lab experience. "It was ... like taking off, I'm being lifted up," she said. Then came "brilliant colors and beautiful patterns, just stunningly gorgeous, more intense than normal reality."

And then, the sensation that her heart was tearing open.

"It would come in waves," she recalled. "I found myself doing Lamaze-type breathing as the pain came on."

Yet "it was a joyful, ecstatic thing at the same time, like the joy of being alive," she said. She compared it to birthing pains. "There was this sense of relief and joy and ecstasy when my heart was opened."

With further research, psilocybin (pronounced SILL-oh-SY-bin) may prove useful in helping to treat alcoholism and drug dependence, and in aiding seriously ill patients as they deal with psychological distress, said study lead author Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins.

Griffiths also said that despite the spiritual characteristics reported for the drug experiences, the study says nothing about whether God exists.

"Is this God in a pill? Absolutely not," he said.

The experiment was funded in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The results were published online Tuesday by the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

Fourteen months after taking the drug, 64 percent of the volunteers said they still felt at least a moderate increase in well-being or life satisfaction, in terms of things like feeling more creative, self-confident, flexible and optimistic. And 61 percent reported at least a moderate behavior change in what they considered positive ways.

That second question didn't ask for details, but elsewhere the questionnaire answers indicated lasting gains in traits like being more sensitive, tolerant, loving and compassionate.

Researchers didn't try to corroborate what the participants said about their own behavior. But in the earlier analysis at two months after the drug was given, researchers said family and friends backed up what those in the study said about behavior changes. Griffiths said he has no reason to doubt the answers at 14 months.

Dr. Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, called the new work an important follow-up to the first study.

He said it is helping to reopen formal study of psychedelic drugs. Grob is on the board of the Heffter Research Institute, which promotes studies of psychedelic substances and helped pay for the new work.

---

July 1, 2008

Long Trip: Magic Mushrooms' Transcendent Effect Lingers

Survey shows that profound mental changes induced by psilocybin have lasted for more than a year

By David Biello

People who took magic mushrooms were still feeling the love more than a year later, and one might say they were on cloud nine about it, scientists report in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

"Most of the volunteers looked back on their experience up to 14 months later and rated it as the most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful and spiritually significant of their lives," comparing it with the birth of a child or the death of a parent, says neuroscientist Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who led the research. "It's one thing to have a dramatic experience you say is impressive. It's another thing to say you consider it as meaningful 14 months later. There's something about the saliency of these experiences that's stunning."

Griffiths gave 36 specially screened volunteers psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms. The compound is believed to affect perception and cognition by acting on the same receptors in the brain that respond to serotonin, a neurotransmitting chemical tied to mood.

Afterward, about two thirds of the group reported having a "full mystical experience," characterized by a feeling of "oneness" with the universe. When Griffiths asked them how they were doing 14 months later, the same proportion gave the experience high marks for transcendental satisfaction, and credited it with increasing their well-being since then.

But some scientists noted that this psilocybin study was just the first trip on a long journey of understanding. "We don't know how far we can generalize these results," cautions neuroscientist Charles Schuster of Loyola University Chicago and a former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "To attribute all of this to the drug, I think, is a mistake and to expect the same effects from simply taking the drug without this careful preparation in these kinds of people would be a mistake."

Herbert Kleber, who directs the division of substance abuse at Columbia University also notes that it is difficult to assess the mushroom's impact without detailed information on how individual lives were changed. For example, it remains unclear from the study whether volunteers really were more altruistic or simply claimed to be.

But the findings do seem to support reports of recreational users and what LSD guru and 1960s counterculture icon Timothy Leary made famous in his psychedelic lab at Harvard University.

Griffiths and Schuster are proponents of future research on psilocybin to determine whether it has long-term influence on the brain—and whether the reported mystical effects affect memory alone or stem from other physiological changes. This study is among the first of so-called "shrooms" in four decades, coming after the widespread, illegal use of hallucinogens as recreational drugs in the 1960s, which turned off corporate and academic researchers.

"I don't think the evidence is sufficiently strong for any beneficial effect in general for us to consider changing the legality of these substances until a great deal more research is done," Schuster says. "But the illegality should not interfere with this research."

For his part, Griffiths is now recruiting terminally ill cancer patients for a trial that will test whether psilocybin mitigates the existential anxiety that comes with facing death. Strangely enough, he says, it may also be a salve for alcoholism and drug addiction.

"It does sound counterintuitive," Griffiths says. But, "six of the 12 AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] steps are related to a higher power and surrendering to it. Many people don't engage fully into the 12-step program because they don't have a connection to a higher power. One can't help but wonder whether an experience like this might be useful."

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