Magic Mushrooms: 3 Benefits You Should Know

From treating depression to helping manage alcohol addiction, researchers say that “magic mushrooms” have many potential benefits. 

Psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms” and “shrooms,” is a powerful psychedelic. Psilocybin has many potential medical benefits.

Studies have shown that psilocybin may treat a variety of psychiatric and behavioral disorders. Possible signs include depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, smoking cessation, alcoholism, cocaine addiction, cluster headaches, and end-of-life cancer-related or other mental health problems.

This is what the current study describes for psilocybin treatment for some possible indications.

Depression

Depression is one of the most studied indications for psilocybin therapy. Researchers are on the road to developing treatments for depression using psilocybin, the psychedelic compound best known as the active ingredient in so-called “magic mushrooms.”

Stop smoking and other addictions

Psilocybin therapy has significantly improved smoking cessation. Psilocybin may also treat other substance use disorders, such as alcohol and cocaine addiction. The general idea is that the nature of these disorders is a limited mental and behavioral repertoire. Therefore, a well-tuned session of psilocybin basically has the ability to shake someone out of their daily lives to give a glimpse of the big picture and create mental plasticity that allows people to get out of those problems.

In fact, a small open-label study of psilocybin and alcoholism found that both drinking and heavy drinking were reduced after treatment.

Cancer-related mental health problems

There have been some promising preliminary results in areas such as treating the overwhelming anxiety of end-of-life people and being diagnosed with advanced cancer. Psilocybin has significantly improved the quality of life of people diagnosed with life-threatening cancers and reduced depression and anxiety.