Kiana Anvaripour, a marketing executive in Los Angeles, has a rigorous weekday-morning routine. She drinks warm lemon water, dials into a high-intensity interval training class, and then gets her kids ready for school. Before she runs out the door for work, she eats a protein-rich breakfast and takes her supplements: turmeric, vitamin D and omega-3. She tops it all off with a capsule of psilocybin—the psychedelics you might know as magic mushrooms.

“I work hundreds of hours a week, and it helps my performance,” says Anvaripour, 42, who runs her own agency. “It allows me to be my best self.” Read the full article.

President Joseph Biden last week signed a defense spending bill that funds clinical trials researching psychedelic drugs to treat post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries experienced by active-duty members of the U.S. military. The president signed the legislation, known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), on Friday after the bill was approved by Congress earlier this month.

Under the legislation, the Department of Defense would be required to establish a system to allow active-duty service members with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or traumatic brain injuries (TBI) to participate in clinical trials studying the psychedelic drugs psilocybin, MDMA, ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT as treatments for their conditions. The legislation appropriates $10 million for psychedelics research, which could be conducted in conjunction with academic institutions and eligible federal and state agencies. The measure also sets a 180-day time limit from the day the bill becomes effective for the Department of Defense to establish the psychedelics research program. Read the full article.

Some neuroscientists now believe that the drugs’ mental-health benefits don’t come from tripping.

One of my chronically depressed patients recently found a psychoactive drug that works for him after decades of searching. He took some psilocybin from a friend and experienced what he deemed a miraculous improvement in his mood. “It was like taking off a dark pair of sunglasses,” he told me in a therapy session. “Everything suddenly seemed brighter.” The trip, he said, gave him new insight into his troubled relationships with his grown children and even made him feel connected to strangers.

I don’t doubt my patient’s improvement—his anxiety, world-weariness, and self-doubt seemed to have evaporated within hours of taking psilocybin, an effect that has continued for at least three months. But I’m not convinced that his brief, oceanic experience was the source of the magic. In fact, some neuroscientists now believe that the transcendent, reality-warping trip is just a side effect of psychedelics—one that isn’t sufficient or even necessary to produce the mental-health benefits the drugs seem to provide. Read the full article.

As our weekly therapy session drew to a close, my patient, a young woman in her early 20s approaching college graduation, said that she had been feeling a lack of motivation, but that it felt different from her usual depressive symptoms. Live well every day with tips and guidance on food, fitness and mental health, delivered to your inbox every Thursday.

A worrisome climate change report had recently been published, and she felt paralyzed by uncertainty of what the world is going to look like. She asked, “How can I decide where I want to go? Will it even be safe to live in California when I’m older?” Read the full article.

Psychedelic drugs have been undergoing a major makeover in psychiatry, earning mainstream acceptance that has eluded them for decades. In 2019, a variant of ketamine — an animal tranquillizer well known as a club drug — was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In May, Oregon opened its first treatment centre for administering psilocybin — the hallucinogenic compound found in magic mushrooms — following the state’s decision to legalize it (psilocybin remains illegal at the federal level). . Read the full article.

The state has pioneered a therapeutic market for psychedelic mushrooms. Researchers are watching with a mix of excitement and unease.

In a carpeted office suite, Alex Beck settled onto a mattress and, under the watch of a trained guide, began chomping through a handful of “Pumpkin Hillbilly” mushrooms.

A Marine Corps veteran who was sexually assaulted during his time in the armed forces, Mr. Beck had long been searching unsuccessfully for a way to put those nightmarish years behind him. Now he was ready for a different kind of journey, a psychedelic trip through the nether regions of his own mind. Read the full article.

The drugs had been the third rail of scientific inquiry. But in a landmark study, he saw them as a legitimate way to help alleviate suffering and even to reach a mystical state.

Roland Griffiths, a professor of behavioral science and psychiatry whose pioneering work in the study of psychedelics helped usher in a new era of research into those once banned substances — and reintroduced the mystical into scientific discourse about them — died on Monday at his home in Baltimore. He was 77. Read the full article.

California Governor Gavin Newsom last week vetoed a bill that would have legalized the personal possession and use of some psychedelics including “magic mushrooms.” Newsom vetoed the bill on Saturday and called for legislation establishing regulations for the use of psychedelic drugs. Read the full article.

Psilocybin tea, wind chimes and a tie-dye mattress await those coming to an office suite in Eugene to trip on magic mushrooms. For roughly six hours, adults over 21 can experience what many users describe as vivid geometric shapes, a loss of identity and a oneness with the universe.

. Read the full article.

A single dose of psilocybin can lead to a “rapid, robust, and sustained reduction” in symptoms of severe depression when taken in conjunction with psychotherapy, according to a new study.

Patients across the US were given either a 25mg dose of the drug, found in magic mushrooms, or a B vitamin, before spending between seven and 10 hours with therapists. They were encouraged to cover their eyes and listen to a curated playlist during the session. Read the full article.

Recruitment has begun for a small study of whether psilocybin, in the setting of group psychotherapy, can reduce anxiety related to a diagnosis of metastatic cancer.

. Read the full article.

As the founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, Dr. Roland Griffiths has been a pioneer in investigating the ways in which psychedelics can help treat depression, addiction and, in patients with a life-threatening cancer diagnosis, psychological distress. He has also looked at how the use of psychedelics can produce transformative and long-lasting feelings of human interconnectedness and unity. One could surely classify his achievements using various medical and scientific terms, but I’ll just put it like this: Griffiths has expanded the knowledge of how we might better learn to live. Read the full article.

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati examined post-treatment journals filled out by participants in a 2014 Johns Hopkins smoking cessation study that found psilocybin was effective in helping some people quit smoking tobacco for long-term periods, and believe they have an idea of how the substance works.

Being able to undergo an identity shift is what enables smokers to overcome a challenging, compulsive addiction like nicotine, researchers believe. The results demonstrate the potential psychedelics have to reshape self-perceptions to help people break free of old habits or addictions in spite of constant, daily triggers. Read the full article.

A Nasdaq-listed company is trialling the active ingredient in magic mushrooms as a new treatment.

Aly began to cry as she took a sip of water. For years, she was afraid of anything — food or liquid — passing her lips. The 34-year-old Californian had spent more than a decade in and out of hospital since developing anorexia as a teenager. Now she felt something new. As she drank, she discovered that the usual sensation of fear was completely absent. Instead, she felt a curious affinity. “It was just this beautiful moment where I was like, ‘Oh, I’m water,’” she says. “It was so strange, but really healing.” Read the full article.