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.

Neurometabolic effects of psilocybin, 3,4-methylen... [Neuropsychopharmacology. 1999] - PubMed result Spiritual Effects Of Hallucinogens Persist, Researchers Report In a follow-up to research showing that psilocybin, a substance contained in "sacred mushrooms," produces substantial spiritual effects, a Johns Hopkins team reports that those beneficial effects appear to last more than a year. Writing in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, the Johns Hopkins researchers note that most of the 36 volunteer subjects given psilocybin, under controlled conditions in a Hopkins study published in 2006, continued to say 14 months later that the experience increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction. "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," says lead investigator Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., a professor in the Johns Hopkins departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Neuroscience. "This is a truly remarkable finding," Griffiths says.