Are there potential medical applications of psychedelic mushrooms?
There is a study going on at my institution at the moment looking at the use of psilocybin in treating obsessive-compulsive disorder. And that’s been the first federally sanctioned human study with psilocybin since forever. I think there are potential applications in not only psychiatric medicine, but physical medicine. I read something about a mushroom trip you took in the Amazon with a curandera [shaman] who considered Psilocybe cubensis to be the “gran remedio cure of all ills.” I think their sense is that all disease originates on the spiritual level, and that by taking mushrooms in the proper context with a trained shaman, you can often correct things on that level that translates into physical cures. I’m sympathetic to that viewpoint. I think there are mental-emotional-spiritual components of disease that regular medicine doesn’t often address. And I don’t think that the only way to do that is with mushrooms or drugs, but I think that that aspect of health and illness has to be l
