Magic mushrooms have long been considered a serious drug — the federal government puts it in the same class as heroin — but it’s catching on in the oddest place: suburbia.
Moms in communities around San Diego are “microdosing” mushrooms, which contain the mind-altering substance psilocybin, a new report says.
“It’s so necessary for some of us to be out and forward because we need to move the needle. We need to help give permission to other mothers, to fathers and other families,” said a woman identified only as Mikaela, according to the local CBS affiliate, which published a story headlined “Micro-dosing magic mushrooms: A growing trend among San Diego moms.”
In microdosing, people take a small dose in various forms, which can be pills, gummies, and chocolate. “So a dose that would give you a classic psychedelic effect would be anywhere between a gram to five, six, seven grams and so a microdose is a fraction of a gram,” Mikaela told the station.
She said she struggled with alcohol addiction and claimed microdosing helped her stop drinking. “I’ve heard that mushrooms can combat addictive behavioral patterns, so I wanted to approach it head on,” she said.
“More people than you could possibly imagine have an in the closet relationship with mushrooms,” she said.
Long considered a dangerous drug, scientists and doctors have begun to study psilocybin’s positive attributes. Some studies have found that it can help with depression, a scourge across America. And some cities have begun to decriminalize the drug, including Denver, Oakland, and Washington, D.C.
“Decreases in depression and even in cancer patients decreases in depression and anxiety that are seen six months later,” said Michael Johnson, Ph.D., director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, according to CBS8.
The world’s most extensive microdosing study, facilitated by Quantified Citizen (QC) and titled “Psilocybin microdosers demonstrate greater observed improvements in mood and mental health at one month relative to non‑microdosing controls,” was recently published by Scientific Reports.
The paper cites data showing psilocybin microdosing helps with mood and mental health. In addition, “a finding specific to individuals over the age of 55 indicated that microdosing was associated with greater improvements in psychomotor performance relative to non-microdosers” and “exhibited an even larger improvement in psychomotor performance when psilocybin is stacked with lion’s mane and niacin,” according to a press release from QC.
Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.