Psilocybin Studies Turn A New Leaf

In what some observers describe as a watershed study that could resurrect an arena of drug and behavioral research that has been all but off-limits for decades, scientists have confirmed that psilocybin, the psychedelic agent in Psilocybe mushrooms, elicits mystical experiences in some people and "bad trips" in others.

"The prospects for far-ranging scientific advancement are exciting," medicinal chemist David E. Nichols of Purdue University writes in a commentary accompanying the study (Psychopharmacology, DOI: 10.1007/s00213-006-0457-5). "We know that psychedelics have powerful effects in many areas of the brain that are critically important for cognition and awareness," notes Nichols, who synthesized the pure psilocybin used in the research.

In their study, Roland R. Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and his colleagues recruited 36 healthy men and women, ages 24 to 64. None had taken hallucinogenic drugs before. In a two-session protocol designed to avoid suggestion effects, participants received psilocybin and a nonhallucinogenic control compound in an order unknown to them. During each session, a monitor was present to help participants manage any fear, anxiety, or other ill effects experienced during the sessions.

Eight participants rated their experience as negative, two of them indicating they would never want to repeat it. But 22 participants reported having mystical experiences, as assessed with a battery of questionnaires. Two-thirds of the participants rated their psilocybin experience as among the most meaningful of their lives.

The abuse of hallucinogens, most notably LSD, in the 1960s and poorly designed and conducted studies at the time led to legal, societal, and logistical baggage that rendered research with psychedelics costly and professionally risky. Praised for its design, controls, and rigor, the new work could spearhead an era of scientifically sound research into the physiological, behavioral, and cognitive effects of psychedelic compounds, observers say.