Could the psychedelic mushroom extract psilocybin be key to healing mental health issues? We explore its possibilities.
APSYCHEDELIC renaissance is in full swing, and at the forefront, it’s not party goers and hippies willing to take the risk of bad trips, hallucinations, and bizarre visual and mental thought and feelings you never come back from. It’s people who have been struggling for years with mental health conditions, who just want to feel better.
Psilocybin – the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms – has now been demonstrated in large-scale trials to possess extremely exciting potential for the treatment of many mental health conditions, such as depression, anxiety and PTSD. Ketamine is already being used for psychedelic therapy in UK clinic, Awakn Life Sciences, to treat conditions such as depression and addiction. Psilocybin, however, remains illegal to possess or prescribe, with clinical trials underway. But Dr Ben Sessa, head of psychedelic medicine at Awakn, believes it’s simply been caught in the crossfire of the archaic war on drugs.
‘Psilocybin is a very safe substance. There have been no recorded deaths for psilocybin, ever. You’d need to consume 17kg of mushrooms to get within 50 per cent of a toxic level. That’s 85 boxes of 200g Tesco button mushrooms!’ says Sessa, who was recently featured in Netflix series How to Change Your Mind, which is about how psychedelics can benefit mental health.
JOURNEY OF THE MIND
However, the good safety profile comes with the caveat that you’re sure it’s the right mushroom and you don’t take a trip every day. The relative safety of psychedelic mushrooms may come as a surprise to many who, over the years, have been subjected to warnings of the dreaded “bad trip”. But Sessa believes we need to define what we mean by that.
‘Taking a psychedelic is challenging and it can be up to a 12-hour experience. It’s like running a marathon – there’s going to come a point where it hurts! You may wish you hadn’t started it. But when you get to the end you feel great for it. Bad trips, in that sense, are common, but perhaps not what we’ve been led to believe. Some would even argue if you don’t have challenging experiences, there’s no point in doing it.’
Patients in their thousands have been exploring the possible benefits of psilocybin, despite its current status. While not as controlled as legal psychedelic therapy, many believe the experience has changed their lives for the better.
Although psilocybin is not yet available as a legal therapy in the UK, Dr Sessa says that he, and many others, believe the combination of psychedelics and psychiatry makes for a very powerful form of treatment for mental health conditions.
‘What you’re doing with psilocybin is you’re opening a window of opportunity whe
