- Shayanne Gal/Business Insider
- There’s been a recent resurgence of interest in psychedelic drugs’ potential to address conditions like anxiety and depression.
- Denver is set to become the first US city to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms, after voters there approved a measure to direct police to make enforcing laws against them a low priority.
- Mushroom’s active ingredient is a drug called psilocybin. Here’s how it affects the body and brain.
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In a slender and surprising victory for supporters of hallucinogenic or “magic” mushrooms, the psychedelic drug better known to scientists as psilocybin, Denver, Colorado yesterday voted to decriminalize the drugs.
Once portrayed as illegal ways to “drop out” or “tune in,” psychedelic and semi-psychedelic drugs like psilocybin and ecstasy are beginning to turn into federally-regulated medicines. Part of the reason: scientific evidence is building that the substances may have the potential to help staunch symptoms of psychiatric diseases that are difficult to treat with existing therapies. Those diseases include severe depression, for example.
Here’s how psilocybin impacts the brain and body and produces its effects:
- Journal of the Royal Society (2014); National Institute on Drug Abuse; NYU Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study; Proceedings of the NAS of the USA; The Lancet (2016); Shayanne Gal/Business Insider