(Illustration by Tuesday Hadden)

One of the biggest contemporary scientific renaissances is happening right now on the other side of Forest Park. And no, it’s not the cure for cancer. In fact, the research subject is illegal in the state of Missouri. 

The Healthy Mind Lab at Washington University School of Medicine is conducting some of the most cutting-edge research into psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms.” 

Psychedelics are a class of drugs that alter consciousness. Psilocybin, LSD, and mescaline often conjure images of tie-dye shirts and hallucinatory mirages. However, the emerging field of psychedelic-assisted therapy is producing promising results for some of the most common mental illnesses such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). 

Dr. Ginger Nicol, associate professor of psychiatry, leads the psychedelics research team within the Healthy Mind Lab with Dr. Joshua Seigel. Their research comes after a long history of stigma and restriction of psychedelic substances. 

Nicol said that medical research into psychedelics first came into prominence in the 1940s and 50s. While indigenous use can be dated back to the earliest annals of history, the modern medical approach to psychedelics started in 1938 when LSD was accidentally synthesized by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann. Psychedelics remained on the fringes of the academic community, and Nicol added that researchers would sometimes consume substances themselves to document their effects. 

Nicol said that researchers, such as former Harvard professors Timothy Leary and Ram Dass (then Richard Alpert), started to realize it was pretty safe. 

“Much safer than alcohol or tobacco. And so the likelihood that you will overdose and that you’ll have a bad outcome because of the dose is very low,” she said. “And so that, I think, made it easy for it to become part of the subculture.”

However, right as scientific research began to take off and psychedelics entered the subculture of the 1960s and 70s, psilocybin, LSD, and other psychedelics were classified as Schedule I drugs. In other words, the federal government deemed there was no medical use and that psychedelics had a high potential for abuse.  

“Psychedelics were very scary and threatening to the status quo and trying to maintain order,” Nichol said. “And then you have underneath all of that, the military and CIA starting to do experiments with it to see what could happen, if you could control people.” 

Nicol explains that this, unsurprisingly, squashed all the budding research at the time. That was until Johns Hopkins University got approval for the first time to restart psychedelic research in 2000. 

Research into psychedelics in the Healthy Mind Lab was kickstarted by Dr. Seigel and his mentor, Dr. Nicol, in 2020. Their first study focused on “precision functional mapping” of brain activity when under the influence of psilocybin. Using functional MRIs before, during, and after taking a dose of the drug, Nicol and Seigel were able to get copious amounts of data from only a few subjects about areas of the brain that were active under the influence of psychedelics. 

There were a few challenges associated with running the first psilocybin trial in Missouri. For one, there are very strict regulations and licenses required for conducting a study with Schedule 1 drugs. It took two years from when Seigel proposed the project until the first dose was administered. 

Additionally, there were concerns that being in an MRI machine while under the influence of psilocybin can invite “negative experiences”. That’s why Nicol and Seigel conducted interviews and generally selected participants who had previous experience with recreational psychedelics, including a current WashU undergraduate. 

The focus of their study now turns to individuals with diagnosed clinical depression. One of the major benefits of psilocybin is that often, only one dose of 25mg (often considered the standard or “heroic” dose) is enough to sustain long-lasting change. 

Results from some of the earlier Johns Hopkins studies show that there is a significant improvement in depressed patients for years after taking psilocybin. However, this one-time cure might pose unintended consequences for the future of psychedelics. 

“Pharmaceutical companies are relatively unlikely to shift their focus from what they already have invested in…the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t have very much interest in trying to spend a billion dollars to get this done” Nicol said. 

Nonetheless, Nicol is optimistic about the future of psychedelics. “Decriminalization is happening in a lot of places and that seems to be the first step towards making it more accessible to people,” she said. Colorado, Oregon, and certain cities in California are leading the charge in decriminalizing psychedelics. 

Nicol also noted that the COVID-induced mental health crisis has created a greater need for mental health resources and solutions. Nicol believes that the current research along with exploding demand means psychedelics “are definitely on [their] way to becoming part of mainstream medicine, with the FDA approval.” 

Additionally, Nicol said the stigma and public association with psychedelics are changing, and there seems to be a greater societal interest in mental health and possible alternate cures. “People are just super curious about this,” she said.