The active ingredient in magic mushrooms, Psilocybin, can help individuals who are looking to cut back on their drinking. A recent study, and the first of its kind, employed these hallucinogenic fungi to see if they could help people break addiction.
93 participants were given either placebo or psilocybin. The scientists administered two treatments, one month apart. In addition to the doses, the participants received 12 sessions of talk therapy.
Results showed that those who were given performed better than those who were not. When surveyed eight months later, the test group had reduced their binge drinking to once every ten days, in comparison to the control group which still binged one out of four days. More comparison revealed that 50% of the test group quit drinking entirely, while only 24% of the test group was able to do so.
A quote from the study:
“More parts of the brain are talking to more parts of the brain. There’s a possibility of really shifting in a relatively permanent way the functional organization of the brain.”
Mushrooms are quickly falling in to public acceptance, and it makes sense. Indigenous cultures have employed mushrooms as medicine for millennia. Psychedelic therapies have been approved in Canada. A new genre of music is emerging around the phenomenon. And the Biden Administration anticipates a push for federal legalization soon.