A “Trip” That Can Cure

Growing evidence about the benefits of psychedelics on mental health 

May 2026

BY KIM WHITING

Editor’s Note: This article was originally written and published by The Reporters Inc. in 2022. It’s been updated to include new information and data about this subject.

Zach thought he was a sponge and stayed in a shower for several hours, terrified that if he dried off, he would die.

Evie squatted on top of a low bookshelf for the duration of a party, paralyzed with fear because (we would later learn) she thought the unpopped popcorn kernels on the floor were alive and coming for her.

More than 40 years ago, in the early 1980s, I tried to soothe and reassure these college friends through their terrifying trips on psilocybin mushrooms—also known as “magic mushrooms.”

Granted, it’s likely Zach and Evie consumed grocery store mushrooms laced with PCP (a dangerous and cheap manufactured hallucinogenic commonly used in those days by drug dealers to imitate other drugs) instead of real psilocybin mushrooms. They also cause hallucinogenic experiences but grow naturally and have been shown by research to be much safer.

However, according to studies on psilocybin—as well as some mushroom users in my own social circle—it’s not uncommon for “shrooms” to cause anxiety-filled or highly emotional trips if a person is nervous, has underlying negative emotions going into the experience, or is in an environment that is overstimulating.

After helping my college pals get through those crazy experiences, my view on psilocybin mushrooms went from “not interested,” to “Yikes! I wouldn’t try them if you paid me.”

These days, however, the abundance of data coming from studies at top-ranked institutions that demonstrate the mental health benefits of shrooms and other psychedelics, along with positive accounts about them from friends, has led me to a complete turn-around in my perception. Not only would I consider trying them as a means of alleviating the mild depression that I’ve cycled through since early childhood—a depression that has been resistant to prescribed antidepressants—but I’d even pay someone for the chance.

If only they were legal.

The illegality of psilocybin mushrooms and other psychedelics isn’t stopping people from using them, however. A 2025 RAND survey estimated that 11 million U.S. adults used or “microdosed” psilocybin, LSD, or MDMA in 2025. An estimated 30 million have used psychedelics sometime in their lifetime. According to the survey, many used psychedelics (most illegally) for the purpose of improving their mental health. This isn’t surprising, as our country’s mental health crisis has created a steep need for effective treatments. For example, a 2024 study from Emory University estimates that more than 5 million Americans would be eligible for psilocybin-assisted therapy for the diagnoses of Major Depressive Disorder and Treatment-Resistant Depression alone –again, if it were legal.

The hordes of people watching YouTube videos on the subject of magic mushrooms may also point to a need, and at the very least, curiosity about them. These videos have garnered hundreds of thousands of viewers, and some, more than a million. As of May 2026, one video, titled “Microdosing Psychedelics,” has collected 1.8 million views. Another video, called “How Magic Mushrooms Affect the Brain” has 1.6 million viewers. And Oprah’s 2025 podcast with Harvard professor Michael Pollan on the benefits of psychedelics for mental health has 1.4 million.

Television has gotten in on the act as well. For example, in 2022, Netflix began streaming How To Change Your Mind, a docuseries on the history and politics of psychedelics and their benefits as demonstrated by studies both decades-old and new. And the topic has been covered on shows such as PBS’s NOVA.

Apart from videos that share personal experiences of the psychedelic benefits on mental health, the information in these videos and shows are derived mainly from studies on psychedelics being conducted at (currently) nine U.S. psychedelic research centers at such prestigious institutions as Johns Hopkins, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, UCSF, Emory, Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General), NYU and UCLA. Findings from these centers point to psilocybin and other psychedelics being beneficial for treating depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, PTSD, eating disorders, addiction/substance abuse, and even migraines—and that even a “bad trip” can have significant and long-lasting therapeutic benefits.

What’s more, through the use of microdosing, many of these benefits can be had without any trip at all.

Unfortunately, accessibility to the benefits of psychedelic therapy remains highly limited.

What is Microdosing?

While microdosing protocols differ, the central premise is that the dosage remain low enough to receive the benefits of psychedelics without hallucinogenic effects. For psychedelics mushrooms, this is achieved by weighing and eating a tiny piece of dried psilocybin mushroom (there are over 180 different types of psilocybin mushrooms with different tastes and potency) or taking a capsule containing pulverized pre-measured mushroom. In official research, the psilocybin is generally isolated from the mushrooms in a lab, and subjects are given a pill containing just psilocybin.

Dr. Jim Fadiman is the founder and director of the Microdosing Institute and has been researching magic mushrooms for more than two decades. His Institute’s website provides six microdosing protocols from which to choose, including what’s known as the Stamets Stack, designed by Paul Stamets, the world’s most well-known mycologist (studier of mushrooms).

Stamets recommends microdosing psilocybin mushrooms in tandem with niacin (vitamin B3) and lion’s mane mushrooms (studied extensively for their neurohealth benefits), for four days on, and three days off. Both Fadiman and Stamets claim to have compiled thousands of stories from people who have benefitted from microdosing psilocybin.

Then there’s YouTube vlogger Julianne Keu, who says she struggled with depression, anxiety and complex PTSD (rooted in childhood trauma) that caused her weekly flashbacks and terrifying nightmares. By her late 20s, she maintains that she’d been on some form of antidepressant for half her life.

After engaging in psychotherapy for four years, along with EMDR therapy (a simple treatment involving rapid eye movement that’s used to treat PTSD and was first used successfully large-scale after the Oklahoma City bombing and then 9/11), Keu worked to slowly get herself off antidepressants.

Despite the doctor-supervised weaning schedule, however, Keu spent six weeks suffering from nausea and migraines. “It was a debilitating experience, she says in one of her videos, explaining, “I vowed never to take conventional antidepressants again.”

A friend then referred Keu to an underground company (a.k.a. an illegal drug dealer) selling raw psylocibin mushroom in capsules, measured for the purpose of microdosing. Keu had never heard of microdosing, nor did she know of the growing body of research regarding the benefits of psychedelic mushrooms and other psychedelics. But after just two doses of the capsules, she maintains that her social anxiety and ruminations all but vanished and she found it “much easier to get things done,” when no longer plagued by mental health issues.

Unlike standard psychopharmaceuticals that only address symptoms, and with which a person can expect to take every day for life, psilocybin mushrooms and other psychedelics actually change the brain. Studies have shown that they typically cause significant decreases in mental health issues within several months, with positive effects enduring for years after use. These same enduring benefits have been experienced by research subjects after one or two macrodoses (enough to “trip”) of psilocybin in a therapeutic setting.

As for Keu, after five months of microdosing using a one day “on” and two days “off” protocol, she says she no longer felt the need to take psilocybin regularly. Since then, she takes just small doses of the psychedelic infrequently, when she needs what she calls a “mental re-set.” One year after ceasing regular microdosing, Keu says she continues to be free of anxiety and depression, and experiences only occasional traumatic flashbacks.

These are heartening results for those suffering from mental health issues.

But again, there’s a big problem.

A Schedule 1 Drug

As I mentioned, psilocybin is illegal—in almost every state. It’s not just illegal, but really illegal. The federal government, along with most of the 50 states, classifies psilocybin as a Schedule 1 Drug, in the same category as heroin, LSD, Ecstasy (MDMA) and bath salts, among others. This is particularly ironic, because psilocybin has been found to be beneficial in freeing heroin addicts, for example, from their addiction

Despite the law, indigenous cultures have utilized psilocybin mushrooms in their spiritual rituals for more than 10,000 years. Common sense says that if the effects of psilocybin hadn’t been positive, their use wouldn’t have continued for centuries. Like other magic mushroom users, once psilocybin became illegal, these cultures simply went underground with their psilocybin use and rituals.

What’s more, studies on psilocybin and other psychedelic/hallucinogenic substances done in the 1950s and ‘60s showed them to have great promise as a treatment for addiction and mental health issues. In fact, according to work published by Italian researchers Maurizio Coppola, Francesco Bevione, and Raffaella Mondola in Journal of Xenobiotics, “Although there were limitations related to the scientific design of many studies, clinical observations performed during the 1950s and 1960s showed a potential therapeutic effect of psilocybin for patients affected by depressive symptoms, anxiety, and conversion disorder.” (Conversion disorder is a condition in which a person experiences physical and sensory problems, such as paralysis, numbness, blindness, deafness or seizures, with no underlying neurologic pathology.)

And as for psychedelics in general, in the ‘50s and ‘60s psychiatrists Osmond and Hoffer administered LSD to 2,000 alcoholic patients at the Weyman Psychiatric Hospital in Saskatchewan, Canada, over the course of more than 10 years. They claimed that a single large dose of LSD was an effective treatment for alcoholism and that, as a result, between 40 and 45 percent of their patients did not experience a relapse after a year. Their LSD therapy was endorsed by the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous of Canada and the director of Saskatchewan’s Bureau on Alcoholism. During the ‘50s and ‘60s the effects of psychedelics were tested on a total of about 40,000 people in several countries, including Switzerland and the U.S., across dozens of studies and with promising results. Half a dozen international conferences on the benefits of psychedelics were also held during this period.

So, how did psilocybin (along with the other psychedelics) become so vilified?

A Bad Reputation

By the late ‘60s, media coverage of hippies tripping on hallucinogens, as well as the budding abuse of LSD (including the illegal manufacturing of it), fanned flames of negative perception, particularly in the U.S. In 1970, President Richard Nixon, as part of an effort to shut down the anti-war and anti-government hippy movement, enacted the Controlled Substances Act, supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. In one fell swoop, psylocibin went from being totally legal to being classified as the most illegal type of drug, and research on psychedelics came to a halt—or went underground.

The criteria that define a Schedule 1 drug are as follows: (A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse; (B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States (C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.

Jerrold Rosenbaum, a Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry, Mass General’s Chief of Psychiatry Emeritus, and founder and director of the Center for the Neuroscience of Psychedelics, said in a June 2021 edition of the Harvard Gazette, “I don’t think it makes sense for psychedelics to continue [as a Schedule 1 drug]. When you talk about harm to self or harm to others, they’re way down the list, below things you can buy in your pharmacy or that your doctor can prescribe. They’re not addictive, though they do create an intense emotional experience that can be distressing if people are not prepared for it or if it’s not done with the right mental set and in the right setting. But millions of people have used these substances.”

He continued, “Some of these substances may have some brief cardiac stimulation, but otherwise, they’re remarkably safe and non-addicting.”

In 2021, a “Rapid Evidence Review” by the Oregon Psilocybin Advisory Board concluded that even unsupervised psilocybin use “is associated with decreased risk of mental health symptoms in population-based surveys.” In other words, psilocybin is proving to be low on risks and strong on benefits. Oregon’s study of the 16,000 people who received psilocybin therapy since its legalization in 2020 have reported promising data:

Clients utilized the therapy for mental health issues and/or drug, alcohol or nicotine addiction.

Participants showed significant improvements in depression, anxiety, and well-being 30 days after their session, with 97% of those monitored reporting improvements in anxiety and depression symptoms. Participants also reported improvements in overall wellbeing, such as healthier sleep, less fatigue and less pain.

However, Harvard’s Dr. Rosenbaum says that further research needs to be done in order to learn more about the science behind psychedelics. And, in terms of legalizing psychedelics, he says, “…we’re not so much advocates or fighters for access; we’re trying to understand how they work.”

The Benefits of Psychedelics

Research results on the effectiveness of MDMA, ketamine and psilocybin for the treatment of PTSD are notable. According to a study by the National Institutes of Health, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy has produced lasting symptom relief, with approximately 71(%) percent of veteran and first responders diagnosed with PTSD still feeling significantly less symptomatic a year later. FDA trials found that 67% of participants no longer met the criteria for PTSD after just three MDMA-assisted therapy sessions.

It’s the stories of the subjects in these studies, however, that really illuminate the benefits of psychedelics. Retired Army Sergeant Jon Lubecky had PTSD and attempted suicide five times before MDMA-assisted therapy. He says the therapy healed him “100%” and attributes the psychedelic-assisted therapy for providing his son with “a father instead of a folded flag.”

Almost as impressive are study results for the treatment of depression with psilocybin, especially in cases where traditional treatments haven’t worked. Psilocybin significantly reduced major depressive symptoms in 50% of subjects studied, for up to six months, and just a single dose of psilocybin reduced symptoms in those suffering from treatment-resistant depression, within three weeks.

Studies on the effectiveness of psychedelic-assisted therapy for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), opioid addiction and withdrawal, alcoholism, as well as anorexia and bulimia, are still limited—yet promising enough to have prompted plans for further study.

OCD

In 2024, Oxford University looked at all available evidence regarding the effects of psychedelics on OCD and found that case studies since the 1960s consistently reported improvements in obsessive and compulsive behaviors, and a 2006 trial showed that psilocybin significantly reduced OCD symptoms.

Anorexia and Bulimia

Forty percent of participants in a study of psylocibin and eating disorders showed a “clinically significant” reduction in symptoms at a 3-month follow-up, and 60% reported a decrease in the importance they placed on physical appearance.

A study involving MDMA-assisted therapy showed a significant reduction in eating disorders among women compared to a placebo. Ketamine has also shown promise in case studies for bulimia, with some experiencing sustained remission from binge-purging behaviors and improved mood.

Opioid Addiction and Withdrawal

A 2025 review of available research concluded that Ibogaine (another type of psychedelic) can rapidly reduce opioid withdrawal symptoms and cravings, though it carries cardiac risks. Some studies have shown that ketamine can be beneficial for reducing opioid cravings and easing withdrawal. However, study results haven’t always been consistent, and studies have been small or lacked controls.

Alcoholism

Research on the benefits of psychedelics for the treatment of alcoholism finally resumed several years ago, after the long ban placed on psychedelic research in 1970. Today’s results are just as heartening as those of studies done up until 1970. For example, a 2022 clinical trial led by the NYU Grossman School of Medicine found that two doses of psilocybin, combined with therapy, reduced heavy drinking days by 83% over eight months, and almost half the subjects stopped drinking altogether, compared to only 24% of the placebo group.

These findings are heartening, but what about the risks?

Potential Hazards of Psychedelics

According to Medical News Today, some people who take psilocybin may experience persistent, distressing alterations to the way they see the world. These often take the form of a visual flashback, which is a traumatic recall of an intensely upsetting experience. People can continue to experience flashbacks anywhere from weeks to years after using the hallucinogen. Physicians now diagnose this condition as hallucinogen-persisting perception disorder.

Some individuals who use psilocybin may also experience fear, agitation, confusion, delirium, psychosis, and syndromes that resemble schizophrenia, requiring a trip to the emergency room.

In most cases, a doctor will treat these effects with medication, such as benzodiazepines. Symptoms often resolve in six to eight hours as the effects of the psilocybin wear off.

However, in its 2021 review, the Oregon Advisory Board on Psilocybin reported that negative effects were normally “dose dependent,” meaning that low or microdoses did not typically cause these adverse reactions. In addition, a 2024 meta-analysis found that adverse reactions were very rare, around 1%–athough mild side effects like nausea were more common.

How DO psychedelics work?

In a 2021 Harvard Gazette Q&A, Rosenbaum, Mass General’s head of Psychiatry, said, “I spent a little less than 20 years as chief of psychiatry at Mass General and toward the end of that term, I was talking to a patient about his suffering, and what was really bothering him. He was very vivid, and I had this ‘aha’ moment. Much of the burden of all the different conditions that we treat in psychiatry, whether it’s OCD, anxiety disorders, addiction, or depression, a main source of suffering is a kind of repetitive, stuck, painful dwelling on things: rumination. I made a practice of asking every one of my patients about rumination and found that it was a substantial part of their suffering.” (By definition in psychology, rumination refers to obsessive repetition of thoughts or excessively thinking about problems.)

Rosenbaum continued, “[Psychedelic] drugs create a mental state where psychotherapy, processing of emotional material and past traumas, can be handled so that you can be free of them. If managed well, you can make profound changes in how people think, feel, and behave—in some cases abruptly, after years of suffering.” Other researchers describe the benefit as getting people away from their ego and out of their mental and emotional “rut.”

What is this mental “state” that relieves or eradicates ruminations and traumas? In 2021, Yale published a study demonstrating psilocybin’s ability to create “brain plasticity” in the form of new neuronal connections. The significance of this is that chronic depression and anxiety are linked to a decrease in these neuronal connections. According to Alex Kwan, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience and the author of the study, “We not only saw a 10 percent increase in the number of neuronal connections, but they were on average about 10 percent larger, so the connections were stronger as well.”

And there’s more. Based on studies from NYU, it seems that psilocybin’s effects can be long-lasting. Approximately 60% to 80% of people who participated in its 2016 study involving the effects of psilocybin on cancer patients with anxiety and depression (in which participants were administered a single dose of psylocibin) continued to experience significant reductions in depression or anxiety, sustained benefits in quality of life, and improved attitudes toward death in follow-ups up to nearly five years later.

However, Dr. Natalie Gukasyan, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences with Johns Hopkins Medicine, cautions, “The results we see that are in a research setting require quite a lot of preparation and structured support from trained clinicians and therapists, and people should not attempt to try it on their own.”

This is good advice, but apart from those who are able to participate in approved studies, or therapy in the very limited number of cities where psychedelic therapy is allowed, psylocibin-assisted therapy is not yet available, and, as yet another friendly reminder, the use of psylocibin is highly illegal in almost every state.

Things are changing, however.

There IS Progress

In addition to a rapidly growing database from new studies, the personal stories presented online have provided a “face” (or faces) to study results and have likely done as much toward improving public opinion of psychedelics.

Some who have benefitted from psychedelic therapy have also put their money into its research, furthering the progress. For example, successful musician, author and entrepreneur Randy Elrod was raised highly religious in Appalachia and taught that drugs of any kind were bad. However, after being diagnosed with PTSD and learning of the possible benefits of psychedelic therapy, he pursued treatment that included psychedelics.

In 2023, Elrod told Johns Hopkins University, “The fear and the distress I had have been greatly alleviated.” He went on to say that he’d had “more joy and more peace” in the four years since his therapy than he’d ever experienced in his life. The effects of his psychedelic therapy were so rewarding that he and his wife donated a large sum to kickstart the university’s Center for psychedelic study and they have committed to continued funding.

To date, more than 130 clinical trials have been conducted on psylocibin alone, across more than 100 institutions. Promising results from these studies have led the FDA to grant “Breakthrough Therapy” designation to accelerate the approval process for the therapeutic use of psychedelics. In 2024, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs announced the first federally funded MDMA and psilocybin research in more than 50 years, awarding $1.5 million to Brown and Yale universities. They have since expanded the research to seven other institutions. The U.S. Department of Defense has also approved studies of psychedelics for military populations.

In addition, some state governments have approved psychedelic research. In 2025, Texas put $50 million toward ibogaine clinical trials for veterans with PTSD and opioid addiction.

In fact, the number of cities and states that have legalized therapeutic use of psychedelics or decriminalized use and possession have increased slowly since The Reporters Inc.’s original report four years ago. To date, more than 36 psychedelics-related bills have been introduced across more than a dozen states, and 28 states are considering changes in psychedelic legislation.

States with Legal Therapeutic Programs

• Oregon — First state to legalize supervised psilocybin services.
• Colorado —First licenses for medical-assisted use issued March 2025; adults 21+ can access psilocybin in licensed healing centers.
• New Mexico — Governor signed a therapeutic psilocybin program into law in 2025.

Cities with Decriminalization of Psychedelics or Reduced Law Enforcement

• Denver, CO — First city to decriminalize psilocybin (May 2019). A 2021 review panel found no significant negative impact on public safety.
• Oakland, CA — June 2019.
• Santa Cruz, CA — January 2020.
• Washington, D.C. — November 2020
• California cities: Eureka, Arcata, Berkeley, San Francisco, Oakland and Santa Cruz
• Michigan cities: Ann Arbor, Detroit, Ferndale, Hazel Park, Ypsilanti, and Washtenaw County.
• Massachusetts cities: Somerville, Cambridge, Northampton, Easthampton.
• New Jersey (2021)
• Washington State: Tacoma (January 2025); King County (March 2026)

And in April 2026, an executive order was issued from the White House designed to fast-track research and federally review psychedelic drugs.

Progress, yes. But right now there are still many more who are debilitated by mental health issues who could possibly be helped by these drugs.

Dr. Malynn Utzinger is the co-founder of Usona Institute, a Madison, Wisconsin-based nonprofit dedicated to supporting and conducting pre-clinical and clinical research to further the understanding of the therapeutic effects of psilocybin and other consciousness-expanding medicines. According to Utzinger, “Nearly one in 15 people in the U.S. experiences an episode of major depression each year, significantly lowering their ability to function at work, to enjoy life, and to live out their full life potential.

Utzinger goes on to say, “At Usona, our goal is to contribute to well-being by demonstrating the safety and efficacy of psilocybin as a treatment for depression. This goal fuels us to carry out research of the highest standard, with an aim toward FDA approval for a treatment that could change lives.”

And so, with this aim in mind, research at numerous institutions continues, creating an ever-growing stack of data demonstrating the benefits of psychedelics and slowly shifting public opinion—which in turn is prompting new legislation to decrease the illegality of psychedelics.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of people are using psilocybin unsupervised, obtaining their magic mushrooms through a legal loophole, and getting guidance through online DIY videos, as well as the websites of established experts such as Stamets and Fadiman.

This legal loophole exists because, while magic mushrooms contain psilocybin (which is what makes them illegal), their spores do not—and so technically the spores aren’t illegal. As a result, magic mushroom spores can and are being sold in abundance; “grow kits” can be readily purchased online. Once in their possession, people simply grow their own mushrooms from the spores—and when they mature and thus become illegal, these same people just hope they don’t get caught.

Citizens are becoming their own experts on psychedelics. For example, Keu’s experience with psilocybin was so beneficial that she then spent almost two years researching and educating herself on natural psychedelics, even apprenticing with a natural healer who does plant-based medicine ceremonies.

What’s Next?

As the research on psychedelics continues and the number of studies increases, so does my personal interest in taking them. I have friends and family who have grown their own psychedelic mushrooms and used them for both macro and microdosing.

While these people report positive mental health effects that I’d love to experience for myself, I still feel the need to wait until psilocybin gets, at the very least, a little less illegal.

The changes in public opinion and the increase in research have me optimistic. I second what mushroom guru Stamets said in a June 2022 interview with CNN: “Let’s be adults about this, these are no longer ‘shrooms.’ These are no longer party drugs for young people. Psilocybin mushrooms are nonaddictive, life-changing substances.”

Kim Whiting can be reached at whitingk444@gmail.com She is a member of The Reporters Inc.’s advisory board. You can read more about her here. 

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