Category: Magic Mushroom

“The University of the West Indies in Mona is launching the world’s first research facility to focus on psychedelic lifeforms. Researchers will study what makes so-called “magic mushrooms” psychedelic, for example. Funded in total by a Canadian psychedelic firm called Field Trip Ventures, the goal is to put research findings toward creating profitable products and services.; The announcement of the new psychedelic research facility came a few weeks after Johns Hopkins became the largest such center in the world.

According to Field Trip Ventures’ co-founder Ronan Levy, two potential business targets have been identified. One involves the establishment of ways to measure the mushrooms’ psychedelic properties in order to provide clearer expectations of their effects on humans. The other is to identify intellectual property that could be patented, as the firm will retain the rights to all discoveries made at the facility. Levy did not disclose how much his company is investing in the project, saying there was no set limit to the number of funds that will be provided to the Jamaican research center.

Ten scientists will be employed at the center with more staff to be added in the future. Some of the scientists will be employees of Field Trip Ventures, while others will be from the University of the West Indies.

Field Trip Ventures is in the process of constructing psychedelic clinics throughout North America, including in the cities of New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto, In the hope that new psychedelic drugs will be found to have therapeutic properties. Currently, only ketamine is legal for such use. The company has not yet identified any new psychedelic molecules, however.

Jamaican.com

“Just a few decades ago, the approach would have been unfathomable to many. Using psychedelic drugs to treat people with PTSD? Depression? Addiction? To make them stop smoking? To perhaps treat Alzheimer’s? Wow. Just say no. Weren’t these the drugs we were told growing up gave you emotional disorders? But times have changed, and today, as with so many other cultural shifts, people are taking a second look at some of the things considered taboo not so long ago. And it just could be that the same generation that popularized the drugs could benefit from their therapeutic potential.

Roland R. Griffiths, Ph.D., a psychopharmacologist and professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in an interview that the approach could offer “an entirely new paradigm for treating psychiatric disorders.”

He should know. Griffiths initiated the psilocybin research program at Johns Hopkins almost 20 years ago and led studies investigating the effects of its use by healthy volunteers. His research group at Johns Hopkins was the first to obtain regulatory approval in the U.S. to re-initiate research with psychedelics in psychedelic-naïve healthy volunteers in 2000. Griffiths said his group’s 2006 publication in the journal Psychopharmacology on psilocybin is widely considered the landmark study that sparked a renewal of psychedelic research worldwide.

Griffiths will head up the new Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins Medicine. The first of its kind in the U.S. and the largest research center of its kind in the world, the center is being funded initially by a $17 million donation from a group of private donors to advance the emerging field of psychedelics for therapies and wellness. The center will house a team of six faculty neuroscientists, experimental psychologists, and clinicians with expertise in psychedelic science, as well as five postdoctoral scientists. Graduate and medical students who want to work in psychedelic science, but have had few avenues to study in such a field, will be trained at the center.

Psychedelics are a class of pharmacological compounds that produce unique and profound changes of consciousness. The most common psychedelics are psilocybin, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), DMT (dimethyltryptamine), and mescaline. Much of Griffiths’ work is focused on psilocybin, the chemical found in so-called magic mushrooms.

Although research with these compounds began in the 1950s and 1960s in America, Griffiths said it was the “cultural trauma” of the psychedelic 60s—which included some adverse effects of the compounds—that ended it in the early 1970s. The unfavorable media coverage that ensued resulted in misperceptions of the risks of the drugs and highly restrictive regulations.

Continue reading at Forbes

“Marijuana is becoming legal in more parts of the country, both medicinally and recreationally. A new group of advocates is following the pot playbook to change laws regarding hallucinogens, specifically magic mushrooms.

A small but growing campaign to legalize magic mushrooms has spread its spores into a handful of spots across the United States. In May, Denver became the first city in the country to decriminalize psilocybin, the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms. A month later, the Oakland City Council did the same. Under decriminalization, psilocybin is still officially illegal, but city agencies do not enforce laws that ban it.

Under federal law, psilocybin and similar hallucinogens are classified by the U.S. government as Schedule I drugs, substances with “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

Supporters of legalizing magic mushrooms point to evidence that the classification is incorrect on both counts. Recent research suggests psilocybin may be an effective treatment for psychological issues such as depression and anxiety. Magic mushrooms also come with a low risk of addiction, studies suggest. There is some evidence that psilocybin can help people break their addictions to other substances, specifically smoking.

Read the full article at Yahoo News

“Marijuana is becoming legal in more parts of the country, both medicinally and recreationally. A new group of advocates is following the pot playbook to change laws regarding hallucinogens, specifically magic mushrooms.

A small but growing campaign to legalize magic mushrooms has spread its spores into a handful of spots across the United States. In May, Denver became the first city in the country to decriminalize psilocybin, the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms. A month later, the Oakland City Council did the same. Under decriminalization, psilocybin is still officially illegal, but city agencies do not enforce laws that ban it.

Under federal law, psilocybin and similar hallucinogens are classified by the U.S. government as Schedule I drugs, substances with “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

Why there’s a debate:

Supporters of legalizing magic mushrooms point to evidence that the classification is incorrect on both counts. Recent research suggests psilocybin may be an effective treatment for psychological issues such as depression and anxiety. Magic mushrooms also come with a low risk of addiction, studies suggest. There is some evidence that psilocybin can help people break their addictions to other substances, specifically smoking.

Many of these benefits, some say, are present when users practice “microdosing” — taking a small amount that provides psychological benefits without creating a hallucinogenic effect. Microdosing can improve creativity and focus, practitioners report.

Perspectives

Psilocybin may be a revolutionary treatment for depression

“It’s really unprecedented in medical history to see effects for depression that are caused by a single medication.” — Johns Hopkins University researcher Matthew Johnson to NPR

The drug should be made accessible to certain vulnerable groups

“If Prozac had the effects observed in the best current studies on psychedelics, withholding it from the depressed or dying would be considered a human rights violation as serious as failing, out of spite, to set a broken leg.” — Graeme Wood, Atlantic.

Continue reading at Yahoo News

“Interest in using hallucinogens, such as magic mushrooms, to treat depression is on the rise, fueled by the results of early clinical trials in people with cancer.

Researchers caution it will be several years before data is available from the first randomized trials of psilocybin — the hallucinogenic compound in magic mushrooms — for depression in those without cancer.

But advocates say psilocybin could provide an effective treatment for depression with fewer side effects than current antidepressants, which leave many people emotionally “blunted.”

“The work is very promising, with large effects shown for depression in the two largest studies in cancer patients, and large effects in the single published study outside of cancer,” said Matthew W. Johnson, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

One of these studies — conducted in 2016 by researchers at Imperial College London and other institutions — found that a single dose of psilocybin had a long-lasting effect on people with moderate to severe major depression.

“This study showed an antidepressant effect after a week and enduring for a couple of months,” said Dr. Stephen Ross, co-director of the NYU Psychedelic Research Group in New York City.

However, he points out the study didn’t compare people taking psilocybin to people not taking the drug — the control group. So, the study results don’t necessarily show that psilocybin works for depression.

The strongest psilocybin data so far is for treating anxiety and depression in people with cancer, carried out in two clinical trials by Ross and other researchers at NYU and by Johnson and others at Johns Hopkins University.

These studies, which included 80 participants combined, showed that psilocybin worked better than a non-hallucinogenic placebo for treating cancer-related depression.

More of this story at Healthline

“Interest in using hallucinogens, such as magic mushrooms, to treat depression is on the rise, fueled by the results of early clinical trials in people with cancer.

Researchers caution it will be several years before data is available from the first randomized trials of psilocybin — the hallucinogenic compound in magic mushrooms — for depression in those without cancer.

But advocates say psilocybin could provide an effective treatment for depression with fewer side effects than current antidepressants, which leave many people emotionally “blunted.”

“The work is very promising, with large effects shown for depression in the two largest studies in cancer patients, and large effects in the single published study outside of cancer,” said Matthew W. Johnson, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Promising results of early clinical trials

One of these studies — conducted in 2016 by researchers at Imperial College London and other institutions — found that a single dose of psilocybin had a long-lasting effect on people with moderate to severe major depression.

“This study showed an antidepressant effect after a week and enduring for a couple of months,” said Dr. Stephen Ross, co-director of the NYU Psychedelic Research Group in New York City.

However, he points out the study didn’t compare people taking psilocybin to people not taking the drug — the control group. So, the study results don’t necessarily show that psilocybin works for depression.

The strongest psilocybin data so far is for treating anxiety and depression in people with cancer, carried out in two clinical trials by Ross and other researchers at NYU and by Johnson and others at Johns Hopkins University.

Interest in psilocybin research, but also hurdles

In addition to the research being done at NYU, Johns Hopkins, and other universities, two pharma like companies is also doing psilocybin research.

Usona Institute in Madison, Wisconsin, is planning a multisite phase II study of psilocybin for major depression. This kind of early clinical trial focuses on determining the best dose of psilocybin to use and its safety.

Ross will be the lead investigator for the NYU site. He says the hope is that this research, once completed, will go on to a full randomized clinical trial, also known as phase III.

The other company is U.K.-based COMPASS Pathways. It’s beginning a randomized clinical trial looking at psilocybin therapy for treatment-resistant depression.

In 2018, the company received breakthrough therapy designation from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for this therapy.

Continue reading at Healthline

“Denver café populated almost entirely by young people staring at laptops, Travis Tyler Fluck—dressed in an orange velour jacket, over which is draped a thin braided lock of hair—takes out his phone and pulls up Craigslist.

A quick search lands him on a post advertising $10 magic mushrooms, with a poorly lit photo of said mushrooms. A good deal for anyone but Fluck, who helped leads the ballot campaign to essentially decriminalize magic mushrooms in this city by making enforcement an extremely low priority, a measure that passed by the slimmest of margins early last month.

Instead of reaching out to the seller, he flags the post. After all, the measure says you can grow and possess mushrooms for personal use, but that doesn’t mean you can sell them. Selling on Craigslist is a bad look for a measure that a small majority of voters approved.

Kevin Matthews—director of Decriminalize Denver, which led the ballot campaign—arrives and sits down on a couch opposite Fluck, who shows him the post on his screen.

Meanwhile, the psilocybin decriminalization movement is snowballing at an incredible clip. Last week, the Oakland, California, city council voted unanimously to decriminalize a range of psychedelic plants, including mushrooms and cacti. And Oregon is considering a measure in 2020 to allow access to “guided psilocybin services,” while lowering penalties for possession.

How quickly is the push to decriminalize psilocybin progressing, exactly? So quickly that it’s even surprised psychedelics advocates. “The fact that it’s happening so fast is kind of amazing,” says Brad Burge, spokesperson for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), which leads studies of psychedelic therapies, including the aforementioned MDMA trial. “Here we have some of the very first policy measures ever to be proposed around the decriminalization of psychedelic substances and they’re passing. This is so surprising, I’ve only just had a chance to start thinking about it.”

Read the full article at Wired

“Denver will become the first US city to effectively decriminalize mushrooms containing the psychedelic psilocybin, also known as “magic mushrooms.”

Initiative 301 makes the personal use and possession of psilocybin mushrooms among people 21 and older the lowest possible law enforcement priority in Denver. It also prohibits the city from spending resources to pursue criminal penalties related to the use or possession of psilocybin mushrooms among people 21 and older.

And the initiative sets up “the psilocybin mushroom policy review panel to assess and report on the effects of the ordinance.”

The initiative doesn’t legalize magic mushrooms; they remain illegal under state and federal law. And it doesn’t decriminalize or deprioritize enforcement against the distribution and sales of psilocybin mushrooms — all of that could still be pursued by police.

According to the Washington Post, Denver police arrested about 50 people a year over the past three years for possession or sale of psilocybin, and prosecutors acted on just 11 of the cases. That’s out of thousands of arrests overall in the city each year.

Voting began in Colorado, which does mail-in voting, last month and mostly concluded Tuesday (although a very small number of overseas and military votes can still come in). Things looked bad for the initiative late Tuesday, as it trailed behind in the results. But on Wednesday, the final tally came in — and showed Initiative 301 narrowly won with nearly 51 percent of the vote, according to the Denver Post and New York Times.

One potential source of real-world evidence on this: Portugal. After the country decriminalized all drugs, it saw a decrease in drug-related deaths and drops in reported past-year and past-month drug use, according to a 2014 report from the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. But it also saw an increase in lifetime prevalence of drug use, as well as an uptick in reported use among teens after 2007.

What effects psilocybin decriminalization will have in the US, Colorado, or Denver, however, remain to be seen. Even more so than marijuana legalization, this is an area of policy that’s largely untested in modern America.

Continue Reading at Vox

“Now that marijuana is legal for recreational and medical use in Colorado, a portion of the public has turned its attention to decriminalizing psilocybin in Denver, the hallucinogen/psychedelic known as “magic mushrooms.” Initiative 301 will appear on municipal ballots on May 7, alongside another initiative that would legalize urban camping. The psilocybin question asks voters whether they support a change to city code “that would make the personal use and personal possession of psilocybin mushrooms by person twenty-one (21) years of age and older the city’s lowest law-enforcement priority.”

In his 2018 book How To Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan—yes, he of the Omnivore’s Dilemma—explores whether science and the pharmaceutical industry can ever surmount psilocybin’s fraught countercultural history to examine it as a potential therapeutic treatment. Pollan’s book is lengthy, but a fascinating read for supporters and skeptics of psychedelics alike. I highly recommend it. He writes that since this mushroom’s discovery (by the West) in the mid-1950s, psilocybin has been shown by brain-imaging studies to create a “high-entropy brain,” in which “new connections spring up among regions that ordinarily kept mainly to themselves.” Researchers, led by Robin Carhartt-Harris of the Imperial College London, wrote in a 2014 paper that this temporary reconfiguring of the brain could potentially be useful in treating psychological disorders marked by mental rigidity such as addiction.

The Takeout

“Sanctioned psychedelic drug use as a medical or psychological treatment method is gaining ground as part of today’s hallucinogenic renaissance.

Recent scientific studies approved by the Food and Drug Administration have yielded positive cognitive results when administering “microdoses” of the drugs lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, and psilocybin, the alkaloid in hallucinogenic mushrooms.

But could this new wave of unorthodox treatment ever find its way into the ranks of the military? According to an article by Marine Maj. Emre Albayrak that was published in the February issue of the Marine Corps Gazette, it certainly should.

Microdosing, which refers to administering a minuscule quantity of the drug in order to avoid hallucinations or debilitating effects in the patient, is already being used by “scientists, Silicon Valley executives, biologists, biohackers, and others” to achieve a mental edge, Albayrak writes.

Administering in such doses has the potential to “significantly heighten alertness, creativity, and problem-solving.”

But an inability to process “superhuman” amounts of information in a community in which “one percent gains provide significant advantages” on the battlefield necessitates a better solution, Albayrak suggests.

Enter LSD and magic mushrooms.

“Like most hallucinogens, LSD mimics the effects of serotonin (a mood regulator),” the author says and activates enhanced mental acuity in the areas of learning and memory.

Additionally, the drug commonly referred to as “acid” can decrease blood circulation to the part of the brain that instigates periods of mind wandering.

Read the full article at Marine Times

“Marijuana and magic mushrooms. One’s a plant, one’s a fungi, both are illegal – for now.

But psychedelic drug reform is already happening in the US. The city of Denver, which has already legalized recreational cannabis, is preparing to vote on whether to decriminalize magic mushrooms in May.

With New Zealand moving towards a referendum on our cannabis laws, News-hub spoke to Victoria University drug use expert Dr Fiona Hutton about whether or not we need to take a look at our laws on mushrooms.

Magic mushrooms (or shrooms) contain psilocybin, which is converted in the body to the psychedelic substance psilocin. They’re classified as Class A, meaning they come with the strongest penalties if you get caught with them.

Possession is a maximum of six months in prison – while the maximum penalty for supply is life in prison.

In medical trials, patients reported improvements in anxiety and depression. Other studies found psilocybin could help users kick their drug, alcohol, and nicotine addictions.

In the US, drug researchers, including Johns Hopkins University researcher Dr Matthew Johnson, said they were worried about the risk of bad trips and how people with psychotic disorders could be affected.

According to the 2017 annual Global Drug Survey, which relies on self-reported drug use, the rate of users who needed emergency medical care after using mushrooms was three times lower that of cannabis.

And research by UK drug expert Prof Nutt found that mushrooms were statistically the least dangerous out of 20 drugs, including alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and LSD.

Read the full article at Newshub

“The decriminalization of magic (psilocybin) mushrooms is going to be on the ballot in Denver in May, and voters should definitely go for it.

On February 1, the Denver Elections Division certified a petition from decriminalization activists, noting that it had received enough signatures for voters to decide on the issue in the municipal election. The measure would decriminalize the use of psilocybin — or “magic” — mushrooms within city limits.

It’s important to note that the measure would not legalize the drug, but simply make stopping possession of it a low priority for police, prohibiting the city and county from using any of its resources to punish people ages 21 and older for possessing the drug. The drug would still, of course, be considered illegal on the federal level.

Although mushrooms are a drug that may carry a lot of stigma, voters would be right to pass this measure in May. In fact, speaking generally, I would argue that drug decriminalization is always the right choice. After all, we are supposed to be a country that was founded on the principles of freedom and individual liberty, and locking people up for what they choose to put in their own bodies certainly seems opposite to that philosophy.

Another study suggests that mushrooms are also helpful for the mental health of those who are suffering with life-threatening illnesses. In 2016, a Johns Hopkins study reported that cancer patients who had received psilocybin experienced an average 78 percent reduction in depression and an 83 percent reduction in anxiety.

Read the full article at National Review

“The Mile-High City might be about to get a bit higher. In May, the citizens of Denver, Colorado, will vote on whether or not to decriminalize magic mushrooms, the colloquial name given to a group of mushroom species that contain the psychoactive compound psilocybin.

In the US, psilocybin is classified as a Schedule I drug, taking a place alongside heroin and ecstasy, ostensibly as one of the most dangerous drugs around. However, this classification doesn’t seem to jibe with the scientific consensus on magic mushrooms.

Psilocybin is typically not abused and is not addictive (in fact, some research has shown it to reduce addiction to other drugs). Furthermore, it does indeed have some medical purposes. Research has shown that its impact on depression, anxiety, and other psychological conditions is profound.

But Denverites aren’t talking about legalizing magic mushrooms purely for their medicinal properties; rather, they will be voting on whether or not to decriminalize the drug. First, decriminalization does not mean legalization—buying and selling the drug will still be illegal, but using and possessing it will simply not be prosecuted. Since this means the infrastructure to support its medical use won’t exist, we can assume that more Denverites will be using the drug recreationally.

If decriminalization and eventual legalization go ahead in Denver, what will this mean? Well, in addition to hallucinations, a distortion of time, and a sense of connectedness to the universe, magic mushrooms also have some more interesting long-term effects. First, some studies show that psilocybin usage can make people experience greater personal meaning, spiritual significance, and life satisfaction even six months after their initial dose.

Continue Reading at Big Think