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Magic mushroom’s positive effects lasting over a year, say researchers

Magic mushroom’s positive effects lasting over a year, say researchers
By Eric W. DolanWednesday, June 15, 2011 16:45 EDT Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine claim to have determined the proper dose levels needed to create positive changes in attitudes, mood, life satisfaction, and behavior that persist for more than a year with the psychoactive substance in so-called “magic mushrooms.” The findings are the latest in a series of experiments done at Johns Hopkins to investigate psilocybin, a psychedelic substance contained in certain mushrooms. The findings were published online this week in the peer-reviewed journal Psychopharmacology. “In our laboratory, weʼre working with the pure chemical psilocybin, which we can measure out precisely,” he added. SIMILAR: First therapeutic study of LSD in 35 years finishes treatment of last subject “I feel that I relate better in my marriage,” one participant reported. The participants, ages 29 to 62, were screened to include only those who were deemed psychologically and physically healthy.

MUSHROOMS IN WONDERLAND | Brainwaving Was Alice in Wonderland and Victorian fairy art and lore in general inspired by actual experiences with mind-altering fungi? The first well-documented hallucinogenic mushroom experience in Britain took place in London’s Green Park on 3 October 1799. Like many such experiences before and since, it was accidental. A man subsequently identified only as ‘J.S.’ was in the habit of gathering small field mushrooms from the park on autumn mornings, and cooking them up into a breakfast broth for his wife and young family. © Mike Jay By chance, a doctor named Everard Brande happened to be passing through this insalubrious part of town, and he was summoned to treat J.S. and his family. Dr.Everard Brande would diagnose the family’s condition as the ‘deleterious effects of a very common species of agaric [mushroom], not hitherto suspected to be poisonous’. The J.S. family’s trip in 1799 is a useful jumping-off point for such enquiries, because it establishes several basic facts.

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