Magic Mushrooms Can Bring About Lasting Personality Changes

Taking magic mushrooms (psilocybin) can have a lasting change on the individual's personality, making them more open about their feelings and the way they perceive things, researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA, wrote in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. The authors explained that those who had mystic experiences while on psilocybin were more likely to subsequently exhibit certain personality changes, making them more forthcoming about their feelings, becoming more focused on being creative, curious, and appreciative about artistic things.

Psilocybin is a psychedelic drug - a substance whose main action is to alter perception and cognition. Its molecular formula is C12H17N2O4P. Its mind-altering effects are similar to those of mescaline and LSD. It effects may include, an altered sense of time, spiritual experiences, perceptual distortions, and thinking processes. Psilocybin can also cause nausea and panic attacks. This psychedelic drug can be found in over 200 types of mushrooms, the most powerful coming from the genus Psilocybe, including P. cubensis, P. semilanceata, and P. cyanescens.

In this latest study, headed by Roland Griffiths, personality changes that occurred in those who took magic mushrooms were still there twelve months later. The authors believe that the psilocybin may well have a long-term effect.

Professor Griffiths said:

"The remarkable piece is that psilocybin can facilitate experiences that change how people perceive themselves and their environment. That's unprecedented."

Magic mushrooms used to be used by Timothy Leary, a former Harvard professor of psychology. Leary founded the Harvard Psilocybin Project.

Openness is one of five main personality traits that span all cultures worldwide, the other four are extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Degrees of openness are fairly constant throughout an individual's lifetime. The researchers found that the other four personality factors were largely unchanged after people consumed magic mushrooms.

The authors say their study is the first finding of a short-term intervention with long-lasting personality changes.

The study involved 51 individuals who underwent two to five eight-hour psilocybin sessions, with a three-week interval between each session. During a session they lay down on a couch, wore an eye mask and listened to music through headphones while concentrating on an inner experience. Their personalities were screened at the beginning of the studies, and then during a two-month and 12-month follow-up.

Thirty of the volunteers had a mystical experience, according to the researchers' criteria gathered from a set of psychological scales. Their openness scores increased, indicating more focus on aesthetics, inner feeling, values, imagination and ideas. The rest of the participants, those with no mystical experiences, underwent no apparent personality change.

The authors concluded:

"The findings suggest a specific role for psilocybin and mystical-type experiences in adult personality change."

Psychoactive mushrooms used by humans for thousands of years
Archeologists have gathered evidence of the presence of psychoactive mushrooms used in religious rituals for thousands of years.

Ancient paintings in Villar del Humo, Spain, show evidence of Psilocybe hispanica usage in religious ceremonies about 4,000 BC.

Murals in southeast Algeria, in the Sahara desert, dated 7000 to 9000 BC suggest psilocybin mushroom use.

In the Aztec language Nahatl, psychoactive mushrooms were called "teonanacatl" (God flesh). Mayan archives have data pointing to common usage of psilocybin mushrooms in ceremonies and rituals.

Magic Mushrooms Can Bring About Lasting Personality Changes

havent been the same since i ate them. had a life changing experience after i ate about 5 gold caps, smoked the bull!! in the bottom in a blunt, and did some pushups after about an hour. [pic]

truth. I smile more [pic]

u smoked that dust my nicca? didnt think it would work but def thought about it - would u recommend doing that>?

man can they please legalize this !!? Ppl should have the right to experience life and all it's natural components...not just how the government sees fit.

is anyone really surprised by this?

Uhhh... No !!...

never been into shrooms. i mean are you still in control though? does it show up on a!!test?

Been !!in wit shrooms since the mid 90's....... they enable you to see our world for what it really is.

Depends on your mindset goin' in playa.!!test can not detect it but hair test or spinal tap can.

So much truth in this. Only had 3 trips thus far and I'm so much more happy and focused. Everyone should try them at least once.

[pic] still thinking about doin em

just hella shook that it could end up bad [pic]




still could be trippy as f*ck tho [pic]

your mind must be an empty slate when about to do them. dont let any bad thoughts poison your mind or it could be bad. just go out into the woods drop some shrooms and let nature take its course [pic]

Take them in a relaxing environment with people u trust and are comfortable with.

Those work really well w/ me. Last time I dropped I laid on the floor listening to music & playing with my son and just enjoyed the hell out of it.

Oh and you don't want to put the fire to any psylocibin components. Heating it destroys the chemicals. Best to eat em on top of some weed brownies when ur on an empty stomach [pic]

Here's something else on psychedelics:

Could a drug known for its psychedelic “acid trips” be used to treat alcoholism?

Norwegian researchers say that lysergic acid diethylamide — also known as the hallucinogenic drug LSD — was used in a few clinics in the 1960s and 1970s to help some alcoholics, and should be revisited once again as a possible treatment, according to a study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

Teri Krebs and Pal-Orjan Johansen of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology looked back at studies from the 1960s and 1970s and identified six studies with 536 participants that examined the effect LSD had on alcoholism.

“A single dose of LSD had a significant beneficial effect on alcohol misuse at the first reported follow-up[..]essment, which ranged from 1 to 12 months after discharge from each treatment program,” they wrote. The effect lasted about six months.

Participants from three studies reported completely abstaining from alcohol, and this effect lasted between one and three months.

Krebs and Johansen noted that one of the previous study authors stated that after taking LSD, some subjects were able “to become much more self-accepting, to show greater openness and accessibility, and to adopt a more positive, optimistic view of their capacities to face future problems.”

“Given the evidence for a beneficial effect of LSD on alcoholism, it is puzzling why this treatment approach has been largely overlooked,” Krebs and Johansen wrote.

They added that other studies found that the psychedelic effects of other substances, such as mescaline, psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms) and ayahuasca were “highly valued and beneficial,” and indigenous groups have claimed that ayahuasca and peyote helped them stay sober.

But they acknowledged that criticism of the previous studies’ reliability and the turbulent history of the infamous drug may also have made it difficult to get approval for clinical trials, which could explain why LSD had never made it to the mainstream as a treatment for alcoholism.

Dr. Ihsan Salloum, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, is a bit more skeptical of LSD’s potential to become a standard treatment option.

“It really has never been a treatment for alcoholism, and it probably would be very controversial to treat alcoholism with something that can potentially cause problems,” he said.

“People have tried in the past, and there are also attempts now to give people substances that will provoke some kind of experience, and supposedly this experience changes the craving for the drug, but I think that sounds too good to be true,” he said. “This is an area that is very nebulous.”

There aren’t many options for alcoholism treatment right now, he said. Among the standard therapies are psychotherapy and a few medications.

“We definitely need more treatments, so it would be great if someone can develop something else,” Salloum said.

They changed my life for the better... mindset, happiness, etc.

acid.

Didn't need a report to tell me this, but I feel as if everyone should trip @ least once in their life, but not everyone would be able to handle it .

truth.

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