When Will Medicinal ‘Magic Mushrooms’ Be Legalized?

Not soon enough. The amount of suffering that occurs every second that proper use of the plant medicines and certain entheogens could alleviate boggles the mind and heart.

**********

Many people have now seen media stories about the renewed research interest in psychedelics as medicines, often called a “renaissance” in psychedelic research, over perhaps the past five years or so. Although many psychedelic substances have been used safely as medicines in indigenous cultures for millennia, we are now seeing renewed interest in these substances in Western cultures. As a co-founder of the Heffter Research Institute I have watched with an increasing sense of both amazement and gratitude — that we have been able to accomplish so much in such a relatively short time. We are on the path to make psilocybin into a prescription medicine! The Heffter Institute has been a key driver of this “renaissance,” utilizing most of the donations we receive directly to support clinical research.

Heffter initially provided major funding for a small study of psilocybin treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients, at the University of Arizona. That study provided mixed but encouraging results that have yet to be pursued due to funding limitations.

Our first truly successful study was treatment of 12 terminal cancer patients who suffered from anxiety and depression. They were treated with a program of therapy that included psilocybin, the active component in so-called magic mushrooms. Participants showed a significant reduction in anxiety at one and three months after treatment, with no significant adverse events. That study, led by Dr. Charles Grob at the UCLA Harbor Medical Center, was published in 2011 in Archives of General Psychiatry, widely recognized as perhaps the top psychiatry journal in the world.

http://reset.me/story/long-doctors-can-prescribe-magic-mushrooms