PSILOCYBIN STUDIES TURN A NEW LEAF: Scientists aim to set psychedelics research on a sound scientific footing

IN WHAT SOME OBSERVERS DESCRIBE as a watershed study that could resurrect an arena of drug and behavioral research that has been all but off-limits for decades, scientists have confirmed that psilocybin, the psychedelic agent in Psilocybe mushrooms, elicits mystical experiences in some people and "bad trips" in others. "The prospects for far-ranging scientific advancement are exciting," medicinal chemist David E. Nichols of Purdue University writes in a commentary accompanying the study ( Psychopharmacology , DOI: 10.1007/s00213-006-0457-5). "We know that psychedelics have powerful effects in many areas of the brain that are critically important for cognition and awareness," notes Nichols, who synthesized the pure psilocybin used in the research. In their study, Roland R. Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and his colleagues recruited 36 healthy men and women, ages 24 to 64. None had taken hallucinogenic drugs before. In a two-session protocol designed to avoid suggestion effects, pa...