Scientific American is reporting today that a recent survey of users of magic mushrooms have had profound mental changes that have lasted up to 14 months:

Most of the volunteers looked back on their experience up to 14 months later and rated it as the most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful and spiritually significant of their lives,” comparing it with the birth of a child or the death of a parent, says neuroscientist Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who lead the research. “It’s one thing to have a dramatic experience you say is impressive. It’s another thing to say you consider it as meaningful 14 months later. There’s something about the saliency of these experiences that’s stunning.”

Carefully screened volunteers were given psilocybin as part of the research, and about 2/3 of them reported having mystical experiences and a feeling of “oneness” with the universe. Then, after 14 months, the same volunteers were asked about their experience and about 2/3 gave it “high marks for transcendental satisfaction” and credited the experience with improving their well-being.

Griffiths is also recruiting terminally ill cancer patients to see if psilocybin reduces patients “existential anxiety” about their impending death. He also claims that it could be a treatment for alcohol and drug addiction.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that these sort of effects last very long indeed. I’ve had conversations with people who still reminisce fondly about “mushroom trips” they took years ago. A similar anecdote can be found here, in which the author states at the end, “I should add that no words can describe the intensity and personal significance of the experience.”

That sounds like too much fun to allow it to be legal.

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