Yves here. Magic mushrooms are part of many religious traditions but my understanding is they were usually consumed in a community setting. Those I know who have taken hallucinogens have stressed the importance of being in a safe-seeming space and having a minder. I am surprised at the lack of mention of anything like this as a prudent practice.
By Hollis Karoly, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, and Kent Hutchison, Professor of Psychiatry, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Originally published at The Conversation
Amid a renaissance in the science of psychedelics, public interest in psilocybin – or magic mushrooms, as they’ve long been known – is surging.
One study found that rates of psilocybin use increased 44% among adults ages 18-29 from 2019 to 2023, and 188% among those over age 30. This amounts to more than 5 million adults using psilocybin in 2023 alone. And those numbers are rising: A study published in early 2026 found that about 11 million adults in the United States used psilocybin in the previous year.
In many ways, the growing scientific and public interest in psilocybin mirrors the early days of recreational cannabis legalization in the U.S. Much like how cannabis commercialization quickly outpaced the development of regulations necessary to protect public health, the expanding psilocybin market and surging public interest are moving faster than the science and regulations needed to ensure it is used safely.
We are substance use researchers who have spent more than a decade studying the many new, high-THC cannabis products that have flooded the legal-market.
Now, we similarly aim to bridge the gap between public enthusiasm for psilocybin and the limited scientific evidence available about its potential benefits and risks. Currently, this type of real-world data on the effects of psilocybin mushrooms is almost nonexistent.
How Do Psilocybin Mushrooms Work?
Psilocybin is a prodrug, which means that it has very low activity until the body converts it into psilocin. Psilocin is the compound primarily responsible for the psychoactive effects of psilocybin mushrooms.
Psilocin resembles the chemical messenger serotonin, which is involved in regulating a range of physiological and psychological functions, including mood, appetite, cognition and sensory perception. As a result, when psilocin binds to serotonin receptors, it alters how people think, feel and experience the world.
Importantly, research suggests that psilocin also alters the brain’s ability to strengthen or weaken neural connections, referred to as synaptic plasticity. This process likely underlies the profound and sometimes long-lasting effects psilocybin mushrooms can have on thoughts, emotions and perception.
Psilocybin mushrooms contain numerous other compounds, together known as tryptamines, such as baeocystin, norbaeocystin and aeruginascin. Research on rodents shows that mushrooms containing these compounds may elicit stronger and longer-lasting effects than psilocybin alone.
But very little is known about how these other tryptamines affect humans. This is because federal regulations require researchers to use an isolated, synthetic version of psilocybin in clinical studies rather than the entire mushroom.
Thus, the many ongoing clinical trials testing psilocybin as a treatment for various mental health conditions use synthetic psilocybin that does not contain these other tryptamines.
Psilocybin Mushrooms Sit in a Legal Gray Area
Psilocybin is more accessible than ever before.
In 2019, Denver, Colorado, became the first American city to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms. This means that possession becomes the lowest law enforcement priority and criminal penalties are reduced or eliminated, but it does not fully legalize them.
Over the next two years, several other U.S. cities including Oakland and Santa Cruz, California; Seattle, Washington; and Detroit, Michigan, followed suit. In 2020, Oregon legalized psilocybin for supervised use in licensed settings, and Colorado did the same in 2022. These legal, supervised-use programs allow access to psilocybin mushrooms in regulated environments without a prescription.
Even for people living outside those states and cities, the barriers to accessing psilocybin mushrooms are low. With a quick Google search and around US$35, anyone can legally purchase kits containing the materials needed to grow psilocybin-containing mushrooms. These kits are legal to buy and sell because they contain only mushroom spores, which are tiny reproductive cells from which mushrooms grow. Once these spores begin growing into mushrooms, they can produce psilocybin, making the mushrooms a federal Schedule 1 substance.
Because psilocybin mushrooms exist in this legal gray area and are governed by different rules across states, psilocybin mushrooms are essentially unregulated across most of the U.S.
As a result, consumers lack reliable information about what their mushrooms contain, how much they should take and how to use them safely.
Psilocybin Potency Is Increasing in the US
Much like the cannabis industry, which has seen a steady increase in product variety and product strength since legalization, the psilocybin mushroom market is experiencing rapid growth.
For instance, psilocybin edibles are now available and increasingly popular.
In addition, selective cultivation practices are being used by individual and commercial growers to systematically increase the amount of psilocybin contained in their mushroom strains. For example, the Oakland Hyphae Cup, a community contest intended to identify the best mushroom strains, has shown wide variability in psilocybin content across samples.
Researchers are identifying a similar pattern of widely variable psilocybin content in scientific studies of psychedelic mushrooms from around the world.
Potential Harms of Psilocybin
Despite psilocybin’s therapeutic promise, it also carries risks. Psilocybin can cause headaches, nausea, dizziness and changes in blood pressure.
Less commonly, some people experience psychotic symptoms, suicidal thoughts, anxiety, paranoia, confusion or emotional distress.
Another serious potential side effect of psychedelic drugs is what’s known as hallucinogen persisting perception disorder. It involves ongoing perceptual distortions similar to those experienced while directly under the influence of psilocybin, which can persist for weeks, months or years, even once the psilocybin has left the body.
Harms are more likely when people take high doses.
As mushroom potency increases without market regulation, consumers may inadvertently ingest more psilocybin than intended, increasing the risk of harm. Without sufficient research on modern psilocybin products, consumers have little guidance on how to reduce potential harms.
Next Steps in Research and Regulation
Studying psilocybin in the real world requires creative research approaches.
Our team hopes to work within federal restrictions to study people using their own psilocybin mushroom products at home, while providing real-time data to our research team using app-based surveys.
Independent laboratories using state-of-the-art measurement techniques can aid researchers like us by providing information about the potency of the mushroom products that people are using.
While ongoing clinical trials provide important data about the effects of psilocybin under tightly controlled conditions, real-world data is needed to understand how modern psilocybin mushrooms are used and experienced by consumers.
These insights matter not only for scientists and policymakers but for the growing number of people trying psilocybin mushrooms for relief, self-improvement or out of curiosity. In a largely unregulated market, and with few clear guidelines on safe use, consumers are left to simply figure it out on their own.
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I worked in the psilocybin mushroom industry for a few years. Demand exploded during COVID. Then in 2023, I figure the pharmaceutical industry started to take notice. Shadow banning and throttling by social media companies began. There were a lot of mushroom cowboys pushing boundaries and selling crap, but even the reputable vendors got strangled. Then the pharmacutical companies got the ban on all psilocybin mushroom related materials in Florida in 2025. Aside from places where legalized, the psilocybin market is back to early 2010s and most vendors are gone.
I spoke to hundreds and hundreds of people who benefited for psilocybin. Doctors, lawyers, nurses, police, hospice providers, professors, veterans, etc. Members of my own family have benefited. Psilycobin isn’t for everyone but it can help many if done responsibly.
My first experience con fungi was in the wilderness, and you don’t need a minder so much as others experiencing it with you. An outsider showing up in the midst of your 3 hour cruise-a 3 hour cruise, would weird everybody out, and that’s what makes the back of beyond a perfect place to indulge, scant chance of that happening.
I see the world that was there right before me in the forest for the trees, but managed to not glimpse somehow, even though i’d seen it all my life. Little details all blown up.
My only (unplanned) experience with psilocybin 50 years ago was at night among the redwoods of the then idyllic and near deserted campus of UC Santa Cruz, in the company of a young woman who I met that night and never saw again. It was a very safe environment and our “trip” could be experienced with wonder rather than fear. I’m not sure that things would have been quite so benign under different circumstances!
I’m confident that the experience changed how both of us perceive the world (she became a public figure so I can claim some insight there). The neural “desycronization” described by the study published in Nature seems to have enhanced the granular perception of reality and how it is interconnected. It might have something to do with the stage of brain development that I was at in that moment and my lack of access to television during those years, but the ability to call up that “desynchronization” seems to have stuck with me throughout life without ever taking psilocybin again.
Don’t try doing this at home alone, kids!
These kind of mushrooms are an ongoing problem in Ontario, I’ve seen a bunch of these in Toronto too.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/article/illegal-mushroom-stores-keep-popping-up-across-ontario-how-are-they-still-operating/
“…an ongoing problem…”
Gadzooks! A good pun in Spanish.
Hongos, ‘fungi’ in Spanish.
Kudos indeed.
My thoughts exactly!
I say that despite all chemicals have a possibility to interact badly with any particular persons state of being. These are only bad for a small number of people, and the fact is that all of those possible negative side effects happen far more frequently to the masses of people exposed to the propaganda keeping the empire alive in the minds of the masses. Now , our society is sick. The damage done to humanity is far worse from consumption of unregulated information.
https://maps.org/2019/05/24/statement-public-announcement-of-ethical-violation-by-former-maps-sponsored-investigators/
Inappropriate guidance, not so helpful…
IIRC,this boundary violation really set the research back off the front burner.
Yves, your concerns about the setting and overall context of shroom use are valid. Mushrooms are my favorite substance, but I use them rarely. My experience is they tend to play on whatever is going on at the moment. If you are feeling good about things and in a physical location that you are comfortable with, the shrooms magnify that wonderful feeling and enable you to experience it more deeply. I agree with Wuk that the wilderness is the perfect setting, as long as the wilderness itself doesn’t fill you with anxiety. They truly allow you to travel to incredibly joyful places in your mind. I have fond memories of these experiences. The danger is that if you have some things not so positive going through your head, or if you have some anxiety about the location or timing, the shrooms can grab onto those negative vibes and take you on a scary and traumatic ride, and this negative experience can stick around in your memory. They don’t function like the typical recreational drug in that they are not an escape route, they are a vehicle for exploration. I love shrooms but I also have a tremendous amount of respect for them. I worry that a capitalist society jumping into shroom use will lead to some frightening outcomes, something shrooms were not meant for.
After my initial journey I asked friends in the Big Smokes if they had ever done such a sojourn and they all did it the wrong way, indulging in their apartments or in public-and had a not so nice ride.
Location-Location-Location
I have had had only one mushroom experience outside of a rural or wild environment. It was in Amsterdam around the New Years holiday many, many years ago. Should have been an unpleasant experience given the unfamiliar surroundings, but it is a very positive memory because it was guided by a wonderful friend who initiated/guided the experience, and shared it with me. But, that experience stands somewhat separate from all my other mushroom experiences which have all been in the wild and either solo or shared with a small group. The Amsterdam experience was more about the novelty of the location and an otherworldly vacation, along with a deeper connection with this friend. The other experiences have been about the natural environment and the many details within that natural environment. Mushrooms can create a completely different experience, for the good or the bad, depending upon the location and the friends involved.
Funny that this post should run today…
Minnesota mom gets jail time after 2 kids overdosed in school on chocolate laced with ‘magic mushrooms’
A Minnesota mother has been sentenced to jail after admitting her 6-year-old daughter took her chocolate bar laced with hallucinogenic mushrooms to school and overdosed with a fellow student.
A field trip without the field… loved those as a kid! Well, comparatively-speaking…
At this point in life, “tripping” really isn’t my thing, but I can see the utility in micro-dosing– especially to fight-off the winter-blues, and I’d trust a few mushrooms a hell of a lot more than the anti-depressants pushed by the pharmacutical industry.
I live in alpine Australia and in my younger days loved wandering the mountains in winter picking shrooms and going on a huge trip (in my mind). I think this article is generally right about the effects, although you can also have your limbs stop working when you have heaps, which is freaky at the time but doesn’t last long. You also feel colder than usual, which is a shame given they only grow in winter
When I’ve had so-called psyolibin mushrooms overseas they’ve been lame. So maybe the shrooms are different in different places, or I just prefer a particular kind.
Experimenting with shrooms is absolutely something I’d recommend to nearly everyone. Painstakingly rebuilding your psyche over a few hours (that feel like days) is a game changer for perspective and wellbeing that lasts long after you’re back to your right mind. Not surprising at all they have religious usage in the past: I had a trip where I was randomly convinced I had a unique insight and connection in to Jesus (he was born shroomin, naturally)
Like others have said here, you want to be in the right place and with the right people. But my mates and I also would play a game where we’d go to the worst possible setting then eat way too many shrooms, then try to escape or ride it out once they kick in. I thought the hospital was going to be bad, and it was, but the absolute worst was the rodeo
There is also no addiction risk whatsoever. You actually need to psych yourself up for a big trip once you know what you’re in for, cause the perception of time changes so much it is genuinely exhausting, and bad trips are of course scary
My final unsolicited observation is that acid sucks and is not at all like shrooms
Psilocybin is one of the friendliest hallucinogens I’ve ever taken. I’ve never met anyone who had a bad psilocybin experience. Obviously LSD cannot say the same but I would argue (at length) that LSD’s only a problem if 1) it’s not well made (thx war on drugs!), or 2) the user is mentally unstable. LSD is LSD: it brings nothing to the party that wasn’t already inside your head.
Note: if one of your goals in life is to fly without an airplane, yes, you really need to have a minder strong enough to keep you from jumping out a window. Or walking into all the sparkly colored lights out in the street. Stay out of the kitchen! Also away from power tools and yes, not the best time to be online. Do not let people who are hallucinating climb things. Minders need to be observant and if it looks like the test subject is getting ready to go to the bathroom, help them find the bathroom before the action starts.
Salvia Divinorum is the hallucinogen you definitely want a minder for. Only drug I’ve ever taken that completely removed me from this plane of reality, even more so than when you overdose on network news.