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Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug
By MALCOLM RITTER
AP Science Writer
Tue Jul 1, 8:59 AM ET

In 2002, at a Johns Hopkins University laboratory, a business
consultant named Dede Osborn took a psychedelic drug as part of a
research project.

She felt like she was taking off. She saw colors. Then it felt like
her heart was ripping open.

But she called the experience joyful as well as painful, and says that
it has helped her to this day.

"I feel more centered in who I am and what I'm doing," said Osborn,
now 66, of Providence, R.I. "I don't seem to have those self-doubts
like I used to have. I feel much more grounded (and feel that) we are
all connected."

Scientists reported Tuesday that when they surveyed volunteers 14
months after they took the drug, most said they were still feeling and
behaving better because of the experience.

Two-thirds of them also said the drug had produced one of the five
most spiritually significant experiences they'd ever had.

The drug, psilocybin, is found in so-called "magic mushrooms." It's
illegal, but it has been used in religious ceremonies for centuries.

The study involved 36 men and women during an eight-hour lab visit.
It's one of the few such studies of a hallucinogen in the past 40
years, since research was largely shut down after widespread
recreational abuse of such drugs in the 1960s.

The project made headlines in 2006 when researchers published their
report on how the volunteers felt just two months after taking the
drug. The new study followed them up a year after that.

Experts emphasize that people should not try psilocybin on their own
because it could be harmful. Even in the controlled setting of the
laboratory, nearly a third of participants felt significant fear under
the effects of the drug. Without proper supervision, someone could be
harmed, researchers said.

Osborn, in a telephone interview, recalled a powerful feeling of being
out of control during her lab experience. "It was ... like taking off,
I'm being lifted up," she said. Then came "brilliant colors and
beautiful patterns, just stunningly gorgeous, more intense than normal
reality."

And then, the sensation that her heart was tearing open.

"It would come in waves," she recalled. "I found myself doing Lamaze-
type breathing as the pain came on."

Yet "it was a joyful, ecstatic thing at the same time, like the joy of
being alive," she said. She compared it to birthing pains. "There was
this sense of relief and joy and ecstasy when my heart was opened."

With further research, psilocybin (pronounced SILL-oh-SY-bin) may
prove useful in helping to treat alcoholism and drug dependence, and
in aiding seriously ill patients as they deal with psychological
distress, said study lead author Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins.

Griffiths also said that despite the spiritual characteristics
reported for the drug experiences, the study says nothing about
whether God exists.

"Is this God in a pill? Absolutely not," he said.

The experiment was funded in part by the National Institute on Drug
Abuse. The results were published online Tuesday by the Journal of
Psychopharmacology.

Fourteen months after taking the drug, 64 percent of the volunteers
said they still felt at least a moderate increase in well-being or
life satisfaction, in terms of things like feeling more creative, self-
confident, flexible and optimistic. And 61 percent reported at least a
moderate behavior change in what they considered positive ways.

That second question didn't ask for details, but elsewhere the
questionnaire answers indicated lasting gains in traits like being
more sensitive, tolerant, loving and compassionate.

Researchers didn't try to corroborate what the participants said about
their own behavior. But in the earlier analysis at two months after
the drug was given, researchers said family and friends backed up what
those in the study said about behavior changes. Griffiths said he has
no reason to doubt the answers at 14 months.

Dr. Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, called the new work an important follow-up
to the first study.

He said it is helping to reopen formal study of psychedelic drugs.
Grob is on the board of the Heffter Research Institute, which promotes
studies of psychedelic substances and helped pay for the new work.

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press
Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc.

URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080701/ap_on_sc/sci_psychedelic_study_2