How Magic Mushrooms Can Improve Your Life in the Long-Term

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Here's something a little offbeat. A team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine has recently documented a safe, long-lasting way of improving both your life and your personal feelings of well-being: shrooms.

Or, more precisely, psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. Here's the boring news first: ingesting psilocybin produces a mystical experience that can be quantified. "Noetic quality," for example, increased from 19.4 on a placebo to 70.6 on the highest dose used in the study. "Transcendence of space and time" increased from 18.3 to 78.2. Etc. You probably already knew that.

Here's the somewhat more interesting news: psilocybin can sometimes produces bad trips full of fear and anxiety, but the researchers have also figured out how to minimize this. Partly this was due to the experimental design: "The study was designed to optimize the potential for positively valued experiences by providing 8 hours of preparation, administering psilocybin in a pleasant, supportive setting, and instructing volunteers to focus explicitly on their subjective or inner experience." They used soothing music, too. But they also tried various dosages of psilocybin on their subjects, and it turns out that nearly all of the episodes of anxiety happened at the highest dose. Crank it down one notch and you're still likely to get most of the benefits but with significantly less chance of a bad experience.

But now for the most interesting result: psilocybin produces not only mystical experiences, but joy, happiness, and positive social effects. And it does it for a long time: in followup interviews 14 months after the study was completed, nearly all the subjects still reported positive changes in their lives, especially if they received their psilocybin in increasing dosages. (Half the study volunteers got the highest dose first and worked down, and half started with the lowest does and worked up. All volunteers also got a placebo tossed in at some point.) Here are the geeky charts you've been waiting for:

These effects were confirmed by interviews with friends of the volunteers who had been recruited to provide periodic feedback to the research team.

Notably, 61% of volunteers considered the psilocybin experience during either or both the [highest dosage] sessions to have been the single most spiritually significant of their lives, with 83% rating it in their top five. Consistent with this, 94% and 89% of volunteers, respectively, indicated that the experiences on those same sessions increased their well-being or life satisfaction and positively changed their behavior at least moderately. ....One month after sessions at either or both the two highest dose sessions, 94% of volunteers endorsed that the experience increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction moderately or very much, and 89% rated moderate or higher changes in positive behavior. At the 14-month follow-up, these ratings remained high. The types of behavior change most frequently cited by volunteers were better social relationships with family and others, increased physical and psychological self-care, and increased spiritual practice (Table 6). Ratings by community observers before and after the study as well as ratings by study monitors after the study were consistent with the persisting positive changes in behavior and attitudes claimed by the volunteers.

So there you have it: a genuine mystical experience with long-lasting positive effects, no reported negative effects, no known medical side effects in healthy people, and with virtually no chance of a bad experience. Does that sound like something you'd like to try? Well, you can't: no matter how safe and beneficial it might be, psilocybin is a Schedule 1 controlled substance and you can't have any. You may thank the War on Drugs whenever you like.

http://www.alternet...._the_long-term/

Edited June 19, 2011 by 8TBVBN

[john & jean 37]

I have known this to be true for many years travel to the spirit world!!!

[Vi-Jay 218]

What would happen to all the anti-depressants manufactured by great drug companies.

[luckytxn 2,264]

Those were the days...indeed.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Those were the days...indeed.

I prefer LSD. The colors are more vibrant. But, I have done some amazing things on shrooms, including rewiring a water truck late at night that had shorted and burned all the console wiring for the pump motor a few hours earlier.

[peejay 327]

Psilocybin mushrooms are common in the wetter parts of TX. When I was a teenager in the early 1970's some of the kids I went to high school with read about them with the usual results. Kids being kids, they went out and found a cow pasture where they were growing and gathered up a bucket full. After that it was monkey see, monkey do at our high school. It became a fad to get high on magic mushrooms and they were free for the taking.

I don't necessarily think munching on mushrooms and tripping is a criminal matter that should lead to a long prison term for goofy teenagers, but this stuff really shouldn't be legalized for open sale and use. I really don't see tripping out on psychedelic hallucinogens as a being a positive pursuit for the masses. This stuff isn't like knocking down a couple of cans of beers to relax after a hard days work. It's some pretty hard core sh*t.

[웃 910]

I don't like them. .They make you lose your mind literally and it is not a great feeling to be temporarily insane for a few hours.

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

I had them once in Amsterdam and thought I had been transported to imperial China. I was also pretty sure I saw the Archduke Franz Ferdinand throwing a party in one of those canal house gables

[SMOKE 1,426]

I prefer LSD. The colors are more vibrant.

true. but, they taste better on shrooms. purple has always been my favorite flavor.

[luckytxn 2,264]

true. but, they taste better on shrooms. purple has always been my favorite flavor.

Purple was good but windowpane was the best.

[SuperDuper! 230]

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Purple was good but windowpane was the best.

Orange Sunshine was a close #2 not to forget good ol 125, some sugar cubes and an eye dropper.

[웃 910]

Orange Sunshine was a close #2 not to forget good ol 125, some sugar cubes and an eye dropper.

What?

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

What?

LSD 125...it was the original acid. It came in a vial, and we would put a drop of it on a sugar cube using an eye droper and then pop it in our mouth. The fist time me and my brother got our hands on some our mom said be careful and don't do more than one hit a piece. Like idiots we each did our one hit a piece, yet didn't wait long enough thinking we got a ####### batch and did two more cubes (drops/hits) a piece. We didn't come down until two days later. It was one of those trips that you begged to come down but couldn't.....like prayed to come back down. It wasn't until more than two years after that when I did my my next acid trip...(Allman Brothers outdoor concert up in Fairbanks).

Nope... Orange Sunshine...came in a nice orange pill and it was always a happy trip. No bummers, no stress, not much strychnine...just a good happy trip.

Edited June 19, 2011 by Why_Me

[웃 910]

LSD 125...it was the original acid. It came in a vial, and we would put a drop of it on a sugar cube using an eye droper and then pop it in our mouth. The fist time me and my brother got our hands on some our mom said be careful and don't do more than one hit a piece. Like idiots we each did our one hit a piece, yet didn't wait long enough thinking we got a ####### batch and did two more cubes (drops/hits) a piece. We didn't come down until two days later. It was one of those trips that you begged to come down but couldn't.....like prayed to come back down. It wasn't until more than two years after that when I did my my next acid trip...(Allman Brothers outdoor concert up in Fairbanks).

Nope... Orange Sunshine...came in a nice orange pill and it was always a happy trip. No bummers, no stress, not much strychnine...just a good happy trip.

Cool. Sounds like a blast. Never did acid. Well, a friend of a friend gave me about 10 or so hits for delivering a 6 foot helium tank to him but I gave it away. That was the last time I seen it and a good 9 years ago.