Studies on Shrooms

Another condensed excerpt from Lenny's research paper from law school, "Legal Frameworks for Psilocybin: A 'Magic' New Frontier for Mental Health Treatment."

Shrooms are federally illegal in the U.S., despite demonstrating immense therapeutic potential for treating addictions, depression, anxiety, and more. Last week, we explored the historical context in History of Shrooms. Now, let’s get into a sampling of the literature — note that there are plenty of studies omitted.

Background

Psilocybin had been studied long before the 21st century. As alluded to in History of Shrooms, there are studies going back to at least the 1950s and ‘60s.

Then, the War on Drugs left a nearly 30-year long gap in the legal research of psilocybin. But ever since legislation loosened restrictions on psychedelic research, shrooms have been researched for its efficacy on a number of mental illnesses, including alcoholism, tobacco addiction, depression, and anxiety. Studies have also shown dramatic mental health benefits of psilocybin use in terminally ill patients. Psilocybin even improves the mental health of healthy people.

At the time, there were notions that tripping on shrooms is akin to being insane or schizophrenic. Thus, the first study of the new wave sought to explore this idea.

1997: Researchers compared brain function under the influence of psilocybin with that of chronic schizophrenia patients. The result? They contrast greatly. While schizophrenic brains displayed a decrease in blood flow in the prefrontal cortex, brains on psilocybin displayed the opposite. They found also that psilocybin increased brain activity and dampened the default mode network, a collection of ego-influenced regions of the brain. Brain activity, measured by cerebral metabolic rate of glucose, showed substantial increases of up to 25% in the prefrontal cortex.

Treating Addictions

Psilocybin has been effective for both alcoholism and tobacco addiction.

2015: A New York University study of psilocybin on alcohol dependence found that abstinence increased significantly following psilocybin treatment, which persisted for at least eight months. Additionally, the intensity of the psilocybin dose was correlated with degree of abstinence and decrease in alcohol craving.

2017: A Johns Hopkins University¹ study of psilocybin on tobacco addiction found that psilocybin helped smokers kick the habit. 60% of smokers in the study were still abstaining from cigarettes 16 months later. In comparison, the nicotine patch and nicotine lozenges are comparably successful in about 20% of smokers.

Treating Depression & Anxiety

2019: Researchers at JHU conducted the nation’s first randomized controlled trial for using synthetic psilocybin to treat clinical depression. Amazingly, they found that 71% of patients experienced a noticeable improvement lasting at least four weeks following treatment. Even more amazingly, over half of patients experienced total remission of depression. These results echoed a growing body of evidence of psilocybin’s efficacy in treating major depressive disorder and depression symptoms. This is particularly good news for patients who have SSRI treatment-resistant depression, affecting an estimated 5% of Americans at some point in their lives.

Several studies have also demonstrated its capacity for alleviating end-of-life distress. An NYU double-blind trial showed that one psilocybin dose led to rapid and persisting reductions in anxiety and depression among participants with life-threatening cancer. A JHU double-blind trial found similar results, with a high dose in combination with therapy leading to substantial increases in optimism, life meaning, and quality of life in terminally ill patients. Six months later, 80% of those patients still showed substantial decreases in depression and anxiety.

Treating … Nothing?

Shrooms, shown to be effective in treating various mental illnesses, may even improve the mental health of individuals with no clinical mental health condition at all. Johns Hopkins researchers, in a double-blind clinical trial, administered psilocybin to healthy volunteers, finding that nearly 80% reported an increase in their sense of personal well-being or life satisfaction that lasted for a year or more.

Conclusion

It should be noted that there is little to no chance that someone will become addicted to psilocybin or other classic psychedelics. By virtue of its chemical structure, psilocybin is not physiologically addicting like substances such as nicotine and heroin. Additionally, the psychedelic experience can be emotionally demanding and physically draining; as a result, it is generally easier to shy away than to overuse.

The existing literature should be more than convincing enough to legalize psilocybin for further research.

In fact, I would go further and argue that shrooms be federally legal for therapeutic application. The majority of Americans are in favor. And ironically, shrooms — along with all plant-based endeogens — have been decriminalized in D.C for years.

Congress, what are we waiting for?

1. You’ll notice that Johns Hopkins shows up often. JHU has been a pioneer in psychedelics research, owed in large part to the legendary Roland Griffiths, PhD (1946–2023). Rest in power.