New study finds magic mushrooms could aid in recovery from alcohol addiction

Magic mushrooms, and more specifically, the chemical compound psilocybin, are seeing an undeniable spike in popularity. Whether it’s down to the sea of holistic products promoted online or the well-put Netflix documentaries, it seems like you can’t escape our little fungi friends at the moment. 

In the “first modern, rigorous, controlled trial” published recently by Jama Psychiatry, the study explored the efficacy of psilocybin – a hallucinogenic component of mushrooms found in several different species.

In a study containing 93 participants, subjects consumed either a placebo or a pill containing psilocybin while lying on a couch with their eyes closed and wearing headphones to listen to recorded music.

They had two of these sessions spread across the same number of months whilst receiving 12 sessions of talking therapy.

Patients using psilocybin performed better than the control group in the eight months following their initial dose, engaging in heavy drinking on roughly one out of ten days on average as opposed to one out of four days for the group taking fake pills.

Comparatively to 24% of the control group, nearly half of those who took psilocybin ceased drinking altogether.

Talking to The Guardian, Dr Michael Bogenschutz, director of the NYU Langone Center for Psychedelic Medicine, who led the research, said: “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 organisation of the brain.”

But what do we know about the history of psilocybin? Some indigenous communities have used psilocybin as medicine for thousands of years, including pre-Mayan cultures in 1500 BCE.

Whether you’re a believer or a sceptic, one thing cannot be ignored: the science behind psychedelic drug use for medicinal and health purposes is slowly coming to the fore as we grow more conscious as a society about environmental sustainability and alternative medicines.