PSYCHEDELIC MUSHROOMS EARN SERIOUS 2D LOOK FROM SCIENCE

Psychedelic mushrooms have been a stubborn part of the nation's drug
problem for decades, offering their users a potentially dangerous,
and decidedly illegal, way to warp their consciousness. Now
government-funded scientists have found that the active ingredient in
the mushrooms could be a powerful tool for scientific research, and
they say it should be explored as a potential treatment for
depression, anxiety, and other disorders.

In a paper published last week, scientists at Johns Hopkins
University say that a single dose of psilocybin routinely brings
about positive psychological changes that can last for months. This
lasting effect is surprising and mysterious, the scientists said, but
seems to be the result of what they call powerful drug-induced
"mystical experiences" that include a feeling of the sacredness and
oneness of the universe. More than two-thirds of the volunteers
described their session with the drug -- several hours in a
laboratory, under close monitoring -- as one of the most meaningful
and spiritually significant events in their life, on a par with the
birth of a child or the death of a parent.

"That just blew me away," said Roland Griffiths , a Johns Hopkins
scientist who led the study and is considered one of the world's top
investigators into the psychological effects of drugs.

Griffiths and other scientists said that the results suggest the time
has come to study the scientific and medical potential of psilocybin,
some four decades after the drug abuse of the 1960s shut down
research into psychedelic drugs.

Neuroscientists could study people under the influence of the drug to
answer basic questions about human perception and consciousness. But
the research also shows that scientists can safely and reliably
provoke a mystical experience in a laboratory, meaning they now have
an unprecedented chance to study the nature of the mystical
experience itself, using brain scanning and other techniques to probe
the biological basis of a puzzling human phenomenon that has
powerfully shaped the world's religions.

"This represents a landmark study, because it is applying modern
techniques to an area of human experience that goes back as long as
humankind has been here," said Charles R. Schuster , a former
director of the government's National Institute on Drug Abuse and
currently a professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at
Wayne State University School of Medicine .

The Hopkins team is planning follow-up work to look at the drug's
medical potential, but other groups have already begun similar
research. Preliminary results from a study underway at a California
hospital show that a single session with psilocybin helps patients
overcome the anxiety and depression that come with a diagnosis of
incurable cancer. A scientist at McLean Hospital in Belmont is
studying the use of ecstasy, another illegal psychedelic, for the
same purpose. A researcher at the University of Arizona, meanwhile,
is testing whether psilocybin can treat obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The scientists caution that the research is preliminary, though, and
they worry that their results might inspire someone to abuse the
drug. Even in the Hopkins experiment, about one-third of the
participants experienced fear -- sometimes intense -- and paranoia
while on the drug, and these emotions could easily escalate to panic
and destructive behavior outside a controlled setting, Griffiths
said. The participants were given hours of training before
participating, and they were screened for mental illness. The drug is
also thought to have the potential to bring on some mental illnesses
in people prone to them.

"People shouldn't be using this drug," said David Shurtleff ,
director of the Division of Basic Neuroscience and Behavioral
Research at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which helped fund
the work. The research was also funded by the Council on Spiritual
Practices , a San Francisco organization. Griffiths said that work
for the study, published in the journal Psychopharmacology , began in
1999. The team had to clear numerous regulatory barriers, including
approval from the Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement
Administration, and a board at Hopkins that must approve all research
using human subjects.

The volunteers were tested one at a time. They were each teamed with
trained monitors who sat with them throughout the session. The
testing was set up so that neither they nor the monitor knew whether
they would receive psilocybin or a stimulant that is not a
hallucinogen but causes some of the same physical effects.

After being given the drug, the volunteers sat in a comfortable room
for about eight hours, most of it spent with an eye mask on,
listening to music. If they became frightened, a monitor would
reassure them, Griffiths said.

The volunteers filled out extensive questionnaires after the test and
again two months later.

Twenty-two of 36 participants described the psilocybin experience in
terms that meet the criteria of a "full mystical experience,"
according to a standard psychological scale. This includes a sense of
the unity and interconnectedness of the universe, a feeling of being
in the presence of overwhelming love or grace, a sense that space and
time have collapsed, and an inability to describe the experience in words.

Afterward, many participants also said they still felt that their
drug-induced perceptions were "more real" than ordinary reality,
another refrain of mystics throughout the ages.

Two months later, 19 of 24 volunteers said that they were more
satisfied with their life, and interviews with friends, coworkers and
relatives supported the idea that the participants had changed for
the better. (Not all volunteers filled out the long-term follow-up
questionnaire.) Griffiths said he also hopes to test the drug as a
treatment for anxiety and fear in patients diagnosed with terminal cancer.

In the California study, Dr. Charles Grob , a professor of psychiatry
at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, recalled one session with a woman
whose fear of dying had so overwhelmed her that it was cutting her
off from the people who loved her.

He said he watched as she cried and cried while under the influence
of the drug. Grob said he thought that she was anguished by her
mortality. Later, he asked her why she had been crying. She said that
she was crying in empathy with her husband -- that she felt the
loneliness he felt at losing his connection to her.

It was a revelation, she said, that has strengthened her marriage.