North Spore | Media: Psychedelics

The Politics of Tripping

Nate K. Prime — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 16:30:45 GMT

There’s a particular image from April 18, 2026 that will take some time to fully process. Donald Trump, sitting in the Oval Office, flanked by RFK Jr., Dr. Oz, and Joe Rogan, signing an executive order to fast-track federal research into psilocybin and ibogaine. “Can I have some, please?” The group laughed and then he signed.

The man who spent his first term amplifying the war on drugs just declared partial peace with the psychedelic ones. Make of that what you will.

So how did we get here?

Sixty years ago, the U.S. government shut down psychedelic research. LSD had leaked into the counterculture, Nixon declared a war on drugs, and the science—some of it genuinely promising—got buried under politics. Psilocybin, ibogaine, and MDMA all became Schedule I substances, a category reserved for drugs with “no accepted medical use.”

In the 2010s, researchers at Johns Hopkins, NYU, and Imperial College London began publishing results that were hard to ignore. A single dose of psilocybin produced lasting reductions in depression and anxiety. MDMA-assisted therapy showed dramatic results in PTSD patients who hadn’t responded to anything else. Ibogaine, a powerful psychedelic derived from a West African shrub, was helping veterans interrupt addiction and trauma in ways conventional psychiatry couldn’t touch. The results were peer-reviewed, replicated, and published in journals like Nature and JAMA.

By 2023, the VA was reporting 6,398 veteran suicides in a single year. Antidepressants and talk therapy, the standard toolkit, were failing a significant portion of them. Desperate, many veterans began traveling to clinics in Mexico to receive ibogaine treatments not available at home. They came back changed and started talking. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, a Republican, co-founded a group called Americans for Ibogaine. Texas launched a $50 million state research consortium.

The story of psychedelics as medicine stopped being told by therapists and researchers in California, but it started being told by veterans and GOP governors. At that point, the whole thing acquired a very different center of gravity.

What the order actually does

Let’s be precise, because the headlines have been doing a lot of heavy lifting (as they do).

Trump’s executive order doesn’t legalize anything. Ibogaine and psilocybin remain Schedule I substances—still, technically, in the same federal category as heroin. But the order does several things that matter. It directs the FDA to issue national priority vouchers to qualifying psychedelic drugs, compressing review timelines from months to weeks. It’s a first for any psychedelic. It establishes a pathway for eligible patients to access investigational drugs under the Right to Try Act. It directs $50 million through the ARPA-H program to match state investments in psychedelic research. And it instructs the Attorney General to begin rescheduling reviews for compounds that successfully complete Phase 3 trials.

While it’s far from a revolution, it is a door being opened (carefully, with a lot of caveats) that has been locked for sixty years. Credit where it’s due, even if the person holding the key was also, until recently, not especially famous for his nuanced approach to drug policy.

The science

Psilocybin doesn’t just affect mood. It appears to physically change the brain — increasing the density and size of connection points between neurons by around ten percent, with effects measurable a month after a single dose. It activates BDNF, essentially the brain’s growth and repair system, with a thousand times greater affinity than conventional antidepressants. It suppresses the chronic inflammation that researchers now believe drives diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, not just worsens them.

In April 2025, UCSF published the first clinical trial of any psychedelic in any neurodegenerative disease. Twelve Parkinson’s patients received psilocybin alongside therapy. Depression scores dropped significantly and held for three months. Motor symptoms improved, cognitive performance improved. The safety concern that had kept these patients out of trials for decades—that psilocybin might worsen psychosis—didn’t materialize. The trial is now expanding to Yale, funded by the Michael J. Fox Foundation.

A 2025 JAMA study found that a single dose of LSD could ease anxiety and depression for months. The same year, a study in npj Aging found psilocybin extended cellular lifespan by up to 57% in human cells. The picture emerging is of a compound that does something most psychiatric drugs don’t: it appears to address the underlying biology, not just the symptoms.

Critics exist, and their concerns are valid. Some researchers warn that ibogaine’s documented cardiac risks are being glossed over in the excitement. Others worry about unqualified practitioners and the risks of recreational misuse if the cultural guardrails come down faster than the clinical ones. These are real concerns. An executive order backed by Joe Rogan doesn’t automatically resolve them.

Explore Mushrooms for Wellness

And why now?

Well, Joe Rogan texted the president, and the president texted back “Sounds great.” This is 2026 y’all.

“Now” was always going to arrive once the science reached a certain mass, the veteran crisis became impossible to dismiss, and the political coalition for psychedelic reform entered the podcast space.

What’s genuinely strange and worth sitting with is that the cultural breakthrough for psychedelic medicine is being delivered by an administration that has gutted public health infrastructure, hollowed out the FDA’s workforce, and is not, shall we say, renowned for its evidence-based approach to science. The people who spent decades doing rigorous research to get these compounds taken seriously now find themselves cheering an executive order signed in a room that also contained Dr. Oz.

That’s either a triumph of the science over the politics, or a warning that the politics are about to do something complicated to the science. Maybe both. Either way, it’s Joe Rogan’s world and we’re just living it.

Can Psilocybin Heal the Brain?

Nate K. Prime — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 14:35:29 GMT

Paul Stamets designed his famous stack because he was alarmed by neurodegeneration—the progressive loss of structure, function, and eventually the death of nerve cells (neurons) in the brain or spinal cord. The rise of Alzheimer’s, the absence of anything that actually stops it, and the possibility that a combination of psilocybin, lion’s mane, and niacin might do something conventional medicine couldn’t was the motivation. The microdosing community picked it up and ran with it, but the original question was harder and more urgent than the wellness framing suggests.

That question is now being asked seriously in clinical settings. The results, particularly in Parkinson’s disease, are starting to look like more than a promising sign.

Explore Lion's Mane for Brain Health

Why the brain in neurodegeneration is relevant to psilocybin at all

The starting point is serotonin. Psilocybin works primarily by activating a specific serotonin receptor in the brain. In Alzheimer’s and related dementias, that receptor progressively disappears, and the more it disappears, the worse the cognitive decline. The brain is losing the very thing psilocybin acts on. That’s not a coincidence researchers are willing to ignore.

Psilocybin also appears to do something most psychiatric drugs don’t: it encourages the brain to grow new cells, form new connections, and repair existing ones. And it reduces brain inflammation; the kind of slow, chronic inflammation that scientists now believe isn’t just a symptom of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, but an active driver of them.

Put simply, the things psilocybin does in the brain happen to be precisely the things these diseases are destroying. That’s the core of why serious researchers are paying attention.

None of this is unique to psilocybin among psychedelics, but psilocybin has the safety record, the clinical infrastructure, and the research momentum that makes it the compound most likely to generate real answers in the near term.

What psilocybin does to the brain structurally

This is where it gets interesting and where the science goes beyond what most people realize.

A single dose of psilocybin has been shown to increase the number and size of the tiny connection points between brain cells by around ten percent. That change starts within twenty-four hours and is still measurable a month later. The drug is long gone from the body by then, but the effects on the brain last.

Think of it like this: depression, chronic stress, and neurodegenerative disease all tend to shrink and prune those connections over time. Psilocybin appears to do the opposite by rebuilding them, and doing it fast.

It also directly activates one of the brain’s key growth and repair systems. Psilocybin binds to the receptor for BDNF (essentially the brain’s fertilizer) with an affinity a thousand times greater than conventional antidepressants.

Psilocybin also suppresses several of the inflammatory signals that drive neurodegeneration; the same ones that researchers are increasingly targeting in Alzheimer’s drug development. A compound that promotes brain repair and reduces brain inflammation at the same time is doing something genuinely unusual.

And in a 2025 study published in npj Aging, psilocybin extended cellular lifespan by up to 57% in human cells and improved survival in aged mice. The suggestion is still early and still speculative, but the effects may reach beyond the brain and affect how cells age.

Parkinson’s disease

DMT vs. Psilocybin: Not All Psychedelics Are Created Equal

Nate K. Prime — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 16:04:15 GMT

DMT and psilocybin share a lot of surface area. Both are serotonergic, 5-HT2A agonists, and capable of producing experiences that people have described as the most meaningful of their lives. It makes sense that people curious about one tend to get curious about the other.

The closer you look, the more the differences matter. Especially now, as both compounds move deeper into clinical research and the question shifts from “do these work?” to “for what, for whom, and how?”

Duration

Most people who’ve used both already know that a mushroom trip runs four to six hours and smoked DMT runs fifteen minutes. What tends to get under-appreciated is how much that gap changes everything downstream. Not just logistics, but the therapeutic model itself.

Psilocybin’s duration creates room for resistance to build and dissolve, difficult material to surface gradually rather than all at once, and for a guide to intervene, redirect, or simply sit with someone through the hard parts. The arc of the experience is part of what makes it therapeutically tractable.

DMT compresses all of that into a window so short that conventional therapeutic support barely has time to function. The Imperial College team that ran the 2026 Nature Medicine trial acknowledged this directly: the intensity of the experience is so extravagant and brief that psychological insight may actually be compromised. You don’t integrate during a DMT experience, but rather survive it, surface, and then the integration work begins, outside the session, without the compound.

Ayahuasca is a different conversation. The brew combines DMT-containing plants with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI): a compound that blocks the enzyme that would otherwise destroy DMT before it reaches the brain. That is what makes ayahuasca orally active and extends the experience to four to six hours, closer in length to a psilocybin session than to smoked DMT. But the character is its own thing entirely: more physical, more confrontational, less amenable to the kind of structured therapeutic container that clinical psilocybin trials have refined.

Clinical evidence

Psilocybin has the weight of a decade of serious research behind it. The Johns Hopkins and Imperial College bodies of work on treatment-resistant depression, end-of-life anxiety, and addiction are by now well known in this community. What is worth noting is how the mechanistic picture has sharpened: the default mode network suppression, the BDNF-mediated neuroplasticity, the dendritic spine growth that persists weeks after a single dose. These are not just correlates of a profound experience. They suggest a biological substrate for lasting change that goes well beyond what SSRIs produce.

DMT’s clinical trajectory is moving faster than most people realize. In February 2026, Imperial College published a Phase IIa randomized placebo-controlled trial in Nature Medicine. Thirty-four adults with moderate to severe treatment-resistant depression, a single 21.5mg intravenous infusion over ten minutes, effects measured out to three months. The effect size at two weeks was comparable to or greater than psilocybin trial benchmarks. One dose appeared to be enough; a second in the open-label phase added nothing. Antidepressant effects persisted for up to three months in some participants.

Thirty-four people is a small trial, but this is the kind of result that reorients a research agenda.

The practical implication is worth exploring. A psilocybin session consumes a full clinical day of therapist time, monitoring, the session itself, immediate integration. An IV DMT session with a half-life of five minutes could be structured very differently. If the efficacy holds in larger trials, DMT may end up serving a different clinical niche than psilocybin rather than competing with it directly. Shorter, more accessible, potentially repeatable in ways that psilocybin, with its rapid tolerance buildup, is not.

Safety

The physiological profiles of both compounds are well understood at this point and both are favorable compared to almost any drug with comparable clinical promise. Neither is neurotoxic nor produces physical dependence. Cardiovascular effects are transient and manageable in screened populations.

The real safety distinctions are contextual.

For ayahuasca, the MAOI interaction risk is the one that still doesn’t get taken seriously enough in retreat settings. The combination with SSRIs, SNRIs, or stimulants is a documented source of serious adverse events, and the screening in many legal retreat contexts is not what it should be. Anyone in this community who has watched a friend navigate a serotonin syndrome scare in a ceremony setting knows that this is not an edge case.

For smoked or vaporized DMT, the MAOI question disappears, but the intensity does not. The psychological risk profile for people with personal or family history of psychosis is real for both compounds. For DMT specifically, the speed of onset leaves very little room for the kind of titration or grounding that can make a difficult psilocybin experience navigable. The door opens fast and closes fast, and what happens in between is not always easy to maintain.

The integration problem

There is a specific challenge with DMT that the psilocybin literature has not fully grappled with: the experience may simply be too compressed for conventional integration frameworks to work.

The standard psychedelic therapy model of preparation, experience, integration was developed largely around psilocybin and MDMA, where the experience itself is long enough that some processing happens in real time. With DMT, the experience is over before the nervous system has had time to orient. The content can be extraordinarily dense. Entity encounters, ego dissolution, near-death phenomenology are all packed into fourteen minutes!

The Imperial researchers flagged this explicitly. The extravagance of the DMT experience, and its brevity, may mean that insight is compromised rather than facilitated in the way psilocybin does. What integration looks like for DMT therapy—whether it requires more sessions, different therapeutic approaches, different timelines—is genuinely unresolved.

This is not a reason to dismiss DMT’s therapeutic potential; the 2026 trial results are too striking for that. But it is an honest gap in the current model, and it matters for anyone thinking seriously about how these tools get used.

Tradition

The other thing worth holding is how different the traditional knowledge bases are.

Psilocybin has a rich, well-documented ceremonial tradition, particularly through the Mazatec lineage, that has been in dialogue with Western research for decades, since Wasson and then Hofmann and then the Johns Hopkins group. The accumulated wisdom around preparation, dosing, and the role of the guide has genuinely informed how clinical trials are run.

DMT’s traditional context is ayahuasca, and ayahuasca tradition carries deep knowledge, but it’s knowledge specifically about the brew, ceremony, diet, relationship with the healer, and the multi-night ceremonial arc. Almost none of that maps cleanly onto a clinical IV infusion or a recreational vaporizer hit. The compound is the same, but the container is so different that the traditional knowledge offers less direct guidance than it does with psilocybin.

That gap is not insurmountable, but it means that DMT in clinical contexts is being developed with fewer inherited frameworks to draw from, which is worth acknowledging as the research accelerates.

So which is better?

Of course, the honest answer in almost every case is “psilocybin has more evidence, DMT is catching up, and neither is ready for casual use.” But the nuances are worth laying out, because the reasons behind those answers matter.

Magic Mushrooms for Postpartum Depression

Nate K. Prime — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 19:13:16 GMT

Some of the information in this article was provided by our friends over at Psychedelic Passage. Psychedelic Passage is a trusted network of vetted psychedelic therapy providers.

The weeks and months after birth are supposed to be a time of joy. For too many mothers, they are something else entirely: a fog of disconnection, guilt, exhaustion, and a grief that is hard to name because it sits right next to love.

Postpartum depression (PPD) has always shocked me personally as a wildly under-researched field. I have a mother, I have dated mothers, and some of my closest friends are mothers, and I find it disturbing how little medicine seems to offer in return

Roughly 15% of women experience PPD globally, making it one of the most common complications of childbirth. But the treatment options remain surprisingly thin. Antidepressants take four to six weeks to work. The only FDA-approved drugs specifically for PPD—brexanolone and zuranolone—are expensive, logistically demanding, and out of reach for most mothers. Psychotherapy helps, but access remains limited.

Now, a different kind of medicine is entering the conversation: psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms. The early science is striking, and it connects to traditions that go back much further than any clinical trial.

What is postpartum depression?

PPD is not simply “baby blues,” and it is not a failure of will. It is a condition rooted in a complex collision of biology, identity, and circumstance. After birth, progesterone and estrogen levels drop sharply, the immune system shifts from a suppressed to an activated state, stress hormones recalibrate, and the brain undergoes structural changes that are only beginning to be mapped by neuroscience.

For some women, the result is a nervous system that struggles to return to baseline. They can experience disrupted sleep, intrusive thoughts, difficulty bonding with the infant, and a muted response to reward and pleasure. Brain imaging studies have consistently found that women with PPD show blunted activity in the brain’s reward circuitry when looking at their own baby’s face. The disconnection is neurological. It is also, for the mother living it, devastating.

As many mothers and midwives have long recognized, it is sometimes inseparable from birth trauma. Difficult deliveries, loss of bodily autonomy during labor, and emergency procedures are all experiences that do not disappear at discharge. They live in the body, and they shape the postpartum experience in ways that antidepressants alone are not designed to address.

What psilocybin does and why it matters

Psilocybin works through serotonin, specifically through the 5-HT2A receptor, but that description undersells it. Where a conventional antidepressant nudges the serotonin system gradually over weeks, psilocybin induces rapid and profound changes in how the brain processes information. It temporarily dissolves the rigid patterns of self-referential thinking that define depression, and promotes a kind of neural flexibility that researchers have begun calling neuroplasticity.

Several mechanisms are particularly relevant to PPD.

The first is neuroplasticity itself. Studies in animals and humans have shown that psilocybin rapidly promotes the growth of new dendritic connections in the cortex—essentially rebuilding synaptic architecture that depression tends to erode. Women with PPD show reduced levels of BDNF, a key protein involved in this process. Psilocybin appears to stimulate BDNF signalling through multiple pathways simultaneously.

The second is oxytocin. Both psilocybin and LSD have been shown in human studies to acutely increase circulating oxytocin levels, mediated through the same 5-HT2A receptor. Oxytocin is central to the mother-infant bond, and it runs through a reward circuit in the brain that makes caregiving feel meaningful. PPD disrupts that circuit. Psilocybin, through its effects on oxytocin, may help restore it.

A 2023 study found that psilocybin and other psychedelics can reopen a developmental window during which the brain learns to find social connection rewarding. The researchers believe this may be directly relevant to conditions where that sense of connection has been compromised.

The third mechanism is the default mode network (DMN)—a cluster of brain regions active during self-reflection, rumination, and mind-wandering. The DMN is consistently overactive in depression and PPD. In studies of treatment-resistant depression, the stronger that interruption, the more lasting the relief. For mothers with PPD, who often describe being trapped in cycles of guilt and inadequacy, that's a meaningful signal.

What the first trials are showing

Why Do Psychedelics Cause Visuals?

Nate K. Prime — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 18:29:50 GMT

Some of the information in this article was provided by our friends over at Psychedelic Passage. Psychedelic Passage is a trusted network of vetted psychedelic therapy providers.

Visuals are to psychedelics as waves are to the ocean; intrinsically woven into the fabric of the experience. Whether driven by chemistry or expectation, they remain one of the most recognizable features of a psychedelic trip.

Reports of breathing surfaces, intensified color, geometric patterns, and elaborate closed-eye imagery appear across cultures and decades of documentation. Despite their familiarity, the mechanisms behind psychedelic visuals are often misunderstood.

They are frequently described as “hallucinations” or dismissed as imagination cut loose. Neuroscience suggests something more interesting: psychedelic visuals reflect temporary changes in how the brain constructs perception itself.

Understanding why they occur requires examining how psychedelics affect brain signaling and how the brain normally processes visual information.

Learn to grow mushrooms

TTBVI: How Potent is This Pan Cyan, Really?

Nate K. Prime — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 21:31:22 GMT

Photo from iNaturalist by Jake Oncid

If you’ve been following current conversations around psilocybin, you’ve almost certainly heard the acronym TTBVI. It usually comes up in the same breath as “record-breaking potency” or “cup winner.” For me, it came up after writing a piece about Psilocybe azurescens—folks were telling me that TTBVI, not P. azuresens, now holds the title for strongest magic mushroom. But if we strip away the hype and look at the biology, TTBVI isn’t a brand new species or some taxonomical anomaly. It is simply a highly cultivated lineage of Panaeolus cyanescens; a tropical species that is distinct from the Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms most people are familiar with.

It’s All About the Species

What is Lemon Tek and How Does it Work?

Nate K. Prime — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 17:35:18 GMT

The information in this article was provided by our friends over at Psychedelic Passage. Psychedelic Passage is a trusted network of vetted psychedelic therapy providers.

Simply put, “lemon tekking” is a community-developed way of preparing psilocybin-containing mushrooms by soaking finely ground mushroom powder in lemon juice before consuming it. People who use this method often describe it as a way to change how the experience feels: faster to come on, more condensed, and sometimes easier on the stomach.

In practice, the process is simple: dried mushrooms are ground into a fine powder, mixed with enough lemon juice to cover them, left to sit for a short period, and then consumed as a shot-like drink, sometimes with the solids strained out. Among those who use psilocybin where it’s legal or decriminalized, lemon tekking is usually considered a method for more experienced users, not a first-time approach.

The Science / Theory Behind Lemon Tek

The compound psilocybin acts as a prodrug. Your body converts psilocybin into psilocin, the compound that actually interacts with serotonin receptors and produces psychedelic effects. That conversion usually happens in the stomach and liver, helped along by the acidic environment of digestion.

Lemon juice has a low pH - roughly in the same acidic range as stomach acid. When finely ground mushroom material is soaked in lemon juice, many people believe that some of the psilocybin is converted into psilocin before it ever reaches the stomach. If that’s true, it would make psilocin more immediately available for absorption, which matches the reports of a quicker and sometimes stronger onset.

It’s important to be clear: this explanation is biochemically plausible, but it hasn’t been thoroughly tested in controlled human studies. Most of what we “know” about lemon tekking comes from user reports, not from peer-reviewed research. Still, the theory aligns with what we understand about psilocybin, psilocin, and acidic environments.

Lemon Tek vs. Dried Mushrooms

A lot of the interest around lemon tek comes down to how people say it changes the shape of the experience.

Many report that the come-up is noticeably quicker. Instead of waiting half an hour to an hour (or longer) for effects, people often describe feeling the shift within 15 to 45 minutes. The peak of the experience is frequently described as denser and more intense, while the overall duration may be somewhat shorter, closer to four to six hours instead of a longer, slow-burning trip.

There’s also a recurring theme around digestion. Some find that lemon tek sits better in the stomach, especially if the mixture is strained so that only the liquid is consumed. Others still experience nausea or even vomiting. Bodies vary, but for many, pre-soaking and straining seem to lessen the rough edges of eating dried mushroom chunks.

In short, a lot of people describe lemon tek as “more front-loaded”: quicker to take off, more concentrated in the middle, and often a bit shorter overall.

On Intensity

Is Psilocybe azurescens Really the World’s Strongest Magic Mushroom?

Nate K. Prime — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 18:33:57 GMT

If I were a magic mushroom, I think I’d be Psilocybe azurescens, lonesome on the coast of the Pacific Northwest, battered by the briny breeze and tucked into a thicket of fog…

Photo provided by Inoculate the World

Psilocybe azurescens is often described as the strongest psilocybin-containing mushroom on Earth. You will see the phrase in field guides, research summaries, internet forums, and cautionary comments. Like most legends rooted in biology, the truth is more nuanced and more interesting than the headline.

Unlike the familiar Psilocybe cubensis, a species that spread widely alongside human cultivation, P. azurescens is geographically and ecologically specific. It is a mushroom with picky taste: coastal dunes, wood debris, and cold Pacific air. Its story is inseparable from place and chemistry.

P. azurescens was formally described by scientists in the late 1990s, though it was likely known to local foragers before that point. It appears most reliably along the Pacific Northwest coastline, especially in Oregon and parts of Washington, where salty winds, cool temperatures, and driftwood-rich soils converge into a narrow ecological niche.

That specificity is part of the mystique. P. azurescens does not thrive just anywhere. It fruits late in the year, as autumn becomes winter, and seems drawn to liminal landscapes shaped by tides and storms. In a sense, it is a coastal species both geographically and symbolically.

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How it Became “The Strongest”

The reputation of P. azurescens comes from chemistry. Multiple sources report unusually high concentrations of psilocybin and psilocin, along with related compounds like baeocystin, compared with more common species. In some lab tested samples, its total alkaloid content rises well above the typical ranges seen in P. cubensis.

At the same time, potency is an imprecise shorthand for a complex biological reality. Alkaloid levels vary with genetics, environmental conditions, and developmental stage. Even within a single species, individual specimens can differ substantially in chemical composition. What elevated P. azurescens in popular imagination was a series of high concentration outliers that shaped its reputation over time.

As those accounts accumulated, a simplified narrative took hold: the strongest mushroom. Like most simplifications, it captures part of the truth while leaving important details behind.

Cultivation

Are Magic Mushrooms Addictive?

Nate K. Prime — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 19:34:57 GMT

Questions about whether magic mushrooms and psilocybin are addictive don’t arise in a vacuum; they exist within a cultural landscape shaped by decades of drug-war messaging and a long-standing discomfort with fungi more broadly. In Western societies, mushrooms have often been framed as dangerous, deceptive, or inherently suspect—we can call it mycophobia. When that fear intersects with simplified narratives about drugs and addiction, it becomes easy to assume that any psychoactive mushroom must carry the same risks as substances known to cause dependence.

This framing has endured even as scientific understanding has changed. Psilocybin mushrooms are still commonly discussed in the same breath as alcohol, nicotine, or opioids, despite the fact that these substances act on entirely different biological systems.

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What is addiction?

As it is understood in neuroscience and psychiatry, addiction is not defined by intensity or altered consciousness. It is defined by reinforcement. Substances that are considered addictive reliably activate dopamine-driven reward circuits that shape learning, habit formation, and motivation. Over time, this reinforcement teaches the brain that repeated use is valuable or necessary, even when consequences accumulate. Cravings, compulsive use, tolerance escalation, and withdrawal are longterm effects of that process. Psilocybin does not reliably activate this system.

How does psilocybin function?

Once ingested, psilocybin is converted in the body to psilocin, which primarily interacts with serotonin receptors, especially the 5-HT2A receptor concentrated in the cortex. This receptor plays a major role in perception, cognition, and meaning-making rather than reward or reinforcement. Neuroimaging studies consistently show that psilocybin alters communication between large-scale brain networks, increases overall neural flexibility, and temporarily reduces activity in the default mode network (a system associated with self-referential thinking and rigid cognitive patterns).

These changes help explain why psilocybin experiences often feel introspective, destabilizing, or emotionally demanding rather than reinforcing. They are not optimized to produce a reliable “reward signal” that drives repeated use.

One of the clearest biological reasons psilocybin is not considered addictive is how quickly tolerance develops. After a single dose, serotonin receptors involved in psilocybin’s effects down-regulate rapidly. Taking psilocybin again the following day typically results in dramatically reduced or absent effects. This tolerance also resolves quickly after a break, but importantly, it is not accompanied by withdrawal symptoms, cravings, or physiological dependence.

From an addiction science standpoint, this profile is almost the inverse of what is seen with substances that drive compulsive use. There is no escalating dose requirement to avoid discomfort, no rebound state when use stops, and no persistent neurochemical signal pushing repeated consumption.

What does the data show?

Population-level data support this distinction. Large epidemiological studies examining lifetime psychedelic use consistently find that psilocybin is not associated with increased rates of substance use disorders—but interestingly, it may actually help treat addiction. In comparative analyses of abuse potential, psilocybin ranks among the lowest of commonly used psychoactive substances; lower than alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, and many prescription drugs.

Modern clinical trials reinforce these findings. In studies where psilocybin is administered in controlled therapeutic settings, participants do not develop cravings or patterns of compulsive use following treatment. If anything, many report a reduced interest in frequent use and describe the experience as something that requires time to process and integrate rather than repeat immediately.

Part of this may be pharmacological, but part of it is experiential. Psilocybin experiences are often intense, emotionally exposing, and cognitively disruptive. They can surface unresolved memories, challenge deeply held beliefs, and temporarily dissolve a sense of control. Even when experiences are described as meaningful or beneficial, they are not typically described as easy or recreational in the way addictive substances tend to be. For many people, the natural response is distance rather than repetition.

Is there any danger?

That does not mean there are no risks. While psilocybin does not cause physical dependence, some individuals can develop an unhealthy psychological relationship with psychedelic experiences. This can include chasing insight, relief, or meaning through repeated altered states without sufficient integration or support. In these cases, the issue is not addiction in the neurochemical sense, but avoidance, escapism, or reliance on peak experiences as a substitute for ongoing care.

Distinguishing between these patterns matters. Addiction involves specific biological mechanisms that drive compulsive behavior. Psychological overuse, while still potentially harmful, operates through different dynamics and requires different forms of intervention.

Final thoughts

Taken together, the scientific picture is relatively consistent. Psilocybin does not activate the brain’s core addiction circuitry, does not produce physical dependence, does not cause withdrawal, and does not reliably reinforce repeated use. Its pharmacology, subjective effects, and population-level outcomes all place it in a different category from substances typically described as addictive.

The persistence of this question says less about psilocybin itself and more about how broadly the word “addiction” is often applied. When examined through the lenses of neuroscience, pharmacology, and behavioral science, magic mushrooms do not meet the criteria for addiction. Understanding that distinction allows for a more accurate conversation about responsible use.

In other words, no. But what do you think?

Understanding the Different Types of Magic Mushrooms

Nate K. Prime — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 15:09:27 GMT

The information in this article was provided and guided by our friends over at Psychedelic Passage. Psychedelic Passage is a trusted network of vetted psychedelic therapy providers.

Psychedelic mushrooms, often called “magic mushrooms,” are rarely discussed with the necessary nuance. In some circles, they are treated as essentially interchangeable. In others, specific strains or species are spoken about as if they have distinct personalities, emotional signatures, or guaranteed outcomes. One mushroom is said to be gentle and heart-opening, another visual and playful, another intense or therapeutic. In practice, these descriptors don’t tell the full story.

People searching for information about the different types of magic mushrooms are usually trying to answer practical questions. Are some stronger than others? Are some safer? Are some better for beginners, microdosing, or therapeutic use? The answer is more complex than it may seem. There are real biological and chemical differences between psychoactive mushrooms, but those differences do not function as reliable shortcuts to emotional outcomes.

Broadly speaking, magic mushrooms fall into two primary categories:

Psilocybin-containing species, which include both above-ground mushrooms and underground truffles or sclerotia (“magic truffles”), and appear across multiple genera such as Psilocybe, Panaeolus, Gymnopilus, and Pluteus.
Psychoactive mushrooms that do not contain psilocybin, most notably Amanita muscaria, which produce their effects through entirely different compounds and biological pathways.

Within these categories, differences in species, potency, and preparation influence risk and intensity far more than strain names alone. What they do not reliably predict is the emotional tone, psychological content, or meaning of an experience.

In this article, I’ll outline a practical way to think about magic mushrooms through classification, chemistry, potency, and harm reduction.

What is a “Magic Mushroom”?

At its simplest, a magic mushroom is one that produces psychoactive effects. Most commonly, this refers to mushrooms that contain psilocybin and psilocin, compounds that interact primarily with the serotonin system.

But psychoactivity in mushrooms is not limited to a single compound or even a single evolutionary lineage. Psilocybin and psilocin appear across several genera, while other mushrooms produce altered states through entirely different chemical mechanisms.

The term “magic mushroom” is an umbrella category, not a guarantee of similarity. Two mushrooms can both be psychoactive while differing dramatically in potency, onset, duration, physical effects, and risk profile.

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Strains, Varieties, Species, and Genera

People tend to talk about mushroom strains. This language largely comes from cannabis culture, but in mycology it is often imprecise.

Mushrooms reproduce via spores, and each grow introduces genetic variability unless genetics are carefully isolated and cloned. Two batches labeled “Golden Teacher” may look similar while differing chemically and genetically. This variability is not user error. It is a fundamental feature of fungal biology.

Terms like variety and species are often more accurate. At a broader level, mushrooms are grouped into genera. Psilocybe is the most widely known, but it is far from the only genus that includes psychoactive species.

Understanding these layers helps explain why names can offer orientation without offering consistency. A label can point toward a general lineage or morphology, but it cannot reliably guarantee potency or experience.

Psilocybin Mushrooms

Music and the Psychedelic Experience

Nate K. Prime — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 16:39:52 GMT

This piece is part of a collaboration with the producers of Borealis Psychedelic Science Summit that took place in Stockholm in September. Subscribe for reflections and interviews!

With contributions from Heather Gureckis of Psychedelic Passage.

For thousands of years, sound and music have accompanied altered states. The earliest known musical instruments date back at least 50,000 years, and scholars believe music evolved as a way for humans to communicate emotion, create meaning, and regulate consciousness. Psychedelic-assisted therapy is re-entering the scientific mainstream, and music remains inseparable from the experience. As a life-long musician myself, I know firsthand that music can be the harbinger, curator, and reminder of altered states. Composing feels otherworldly to me—as if something is possessing me to write. It feels ethereal; even without psychedelics. It’s may come as no surprise that around 50% of people report getting chills from listening to music.

Ancestral Soundtracks

The connection between psychedelics and music predates written history, demonstrated by the 1995 archaeological discovery of the divje flute, a find that forces us to examine what we think we know about ancient humans. Archaeology also suggests that humans have been using psychoactive plants (like mescaline-containing cacti species in the Andes) as far back as at least 8600 BCE. The Aztecs’ psilocybin teonanácatl, or “flesh of the gods,” was taken with song, drum, and dance. Ancient Mesoamerican mushroom stones (500 B.C.–900 A.D.) depict dancers mid-trance, suggesting that sound was essential to early entheogenic rites.

Colonial suppression and a long era of Western mycophobia nearly smote these cultural events, but Indigenous communities preserved their traditions in secret.

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In the 20th century, the Mazatec curandera María Sabina called psilocybin mushrooms “Los Niños Santos;” or “the holy children.” Her veladas (night-long healing ceremonies) were structured around continuous chanting. Similar patterns appear worldwide: Siberian shamans paired Amanita muscaria with steady drumming; Bwiti practitioners in Gabon use percussive rhythms to navigate iboga visions; Amazonian healers sing icaros during ayahuasca ceremonies.

Modern theorists now argue that music and psychedelics have likely been intertwined for much of our evolutionary story: two parallel ways of reshaping the brain’s inner landscape. Across cultures, music has always been the vessel for orientation, protection, and meaning-making in altered states.

The 1960s Psychedelic Revival

Psilocybin resurfaced in the West in the 1950s with R. Gordon Wasson’s 1957 LIFE Magazine article on María Sabina, igniting interest not only in the mushroom but in the ceremonies, and sounds, surrounding it.

By the late 1960s, music itself began to emulate psychedelic experience. Albums by The Beatles (Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s) and Jefferson Airplane (Surrealistic Pillow) mirrored the arc of a trip: gradual ascent, emotional peak, and slow return. “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “White Rabbit” in particular were not only about psychedelic experiences, but also built almost as ceremonial structure of steady drones, rising tension, climactic release.

Music became both a mirror and a catalyst for these new inner explorations. Concerts were light-and-sound rituals. Psychedelic rock, Indian ragas, and electronic drones all attempted to reproduce what shamans had long known: that certain vibrations could open psychic thresholds.

Music in Modern Psychedelic Therapy

Microdosing Mushrooms: What Research Suggests About its Potential Benefits

Nate K. Prime — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 15:41:45 GMT

The information in this article was provided and guided by our friends over at Psychedelic Passage. Psychedelic Passage is a trusted network of vetted psychedelic therapy providers.

A recent national survey in the United States found that about 3% of adults reported using psilocybin in 2024, and nearly half of them said their most recent use involved microdosing. That’s a meaningful shift.

Basically, not everyone is looking to visit another dimension on a Saturday night. In a world that often feels loud and demanding, many are simply looking for the volume knob; a way to turn down the noise and move through their week with a little more grace. People are turning to microdosing in hopes of supporting mood, focus, creativity, and, for some, even chronic health challenges.

While the science is still evolving, early research and long-standing community experience help explain why microdosing has become part of mainstream wellness conversations. So let’s explore what microdosing is, what the evidence says, and where the unknowns are. *The goal here is education and harm reduction, not guidance or instructions on personal use.*

What is Microdosing?

Microdosing typically refers to taking roughly one tenth to one twentieth of a standard psychoactive dose of psilocybin mushrooms (usually .1 to .5 grams). This means that instead of dramatic shifts in perception, many people describe subtle changes in mood, focus, creativity, or emotional resilience. Though research is still limited, several themes consistently appear in scientific and community reports.

What Microdosing May Support

The Science Behind a Mushroom Trip

Breanna Penney — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 15:58:56 GMT

Psilocybin has been shown to completely reorganize the brain’s communication networks, particularly the default mode network (the part responsible for your inner voice and sense of self). On psilocybin, those usual mental boundaries dissolve, allowing different regions of the brain to connect in entirely new ways. This creates the vivid visuals, emotional intensity, and sense of unity that define the psychedelic experience, sometimes described as “ego death.” What’s even more remarkable is that this mental reorganization doesn’t just vanish when the trip ends. Research shows some of these changes persist, potentially easing patterns of negative thought, depression, and anxiety. Scientists now believe psilocybin gives the mind a temporary reset, freeing it from stuck patterns and opening space for healing, insight, and transformation.

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The Bizarre Evolution of Magic Mushrooms

Breanna Penney — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 17:44:37 GMT

Most people know Psilocybe mushrooms for their psychedelic effects. But recent research suggests that the compound psilocybin may have evolved for a surprisingly practical reason: to protect the fungus from being eaten.

And the story of how that chemical appeared stretches back 65 million years, to just after the extinction of the dinosaurs.

A Post-Dinosaur World Perfect for Fungi

Around 65 million years ago, a massive asteroid impact wiped out the dinosaurs and caused a long global winter. Forests collapsed, plants decayed, and much of Earth became covered in rotting organic matter—an ideal environment for fungi.

It was during this period that the genus Psilocybe, the group of mushrooms that produce psilocybin, first appeared.

For a long time, scientists assumed these mushrooms were a recent development. But a 2024 study from the University of Utah and the Natural History Museum of Utah has revealed that Psilocybe mushrooms are far older and more genetically diverse than previously believed.

A New Genetic Map of Psilocybin Mushrooms

Researchers sequenced DNA from 52 Psilocybe specimens, including 39 species that had never been analyzed before. Many of the samples came from old “type specimens”—preserved examples used to define each species.

By comparing these genomes, the scientists discovered two key insights:

Psilocybin evolved more than once. The genes that produce psilocybin appear in two distinct patterns across the Psilocybe family tree, meaning the compound likely evolved independently at least twice.
A major evolutionary split occurred about 57 million years ago. Early Psilocybe species grew on wood, but later ones adapted to soil and eventually to animal dung—where some well-known species like Psilocybe cubensis thrive today.

This shows that psilocybin has a long and complex evolutionary history tied to how these mushrooms adapted to new environments.

Photo credit: University of Utah

Why Did Psilocybin Evolve?

The biggest mystery is why mushrooms would produce psilocybin in the first place.

In humans, psilocybin converts to psilocin, which interacts with serotonin receptors in the brain. But fungi don’t have brains—so what purpose does this molecule serve for them?

Scientists have proposed that psilocybin acts as a chemical defense mechanism. Many animals and insects eat mushrooms, and psilocybin may interfere with their nervous systems, discouraging them from feeding on it again.

The Gastropod Hypothesis

One leading idea is that psilocybin evolved in response to an explosion of slugs and snails after the dinosaur extinction.

As decaying vegetation spread, terrestrial gastropods became abundant—and they happen to be major mushroom predators. Since slugs have serotonin-like receptors, psilocybin might disrupt their neural signals, confusing them or making the mushrooms unappealing.

In short, psilocybin could have evolved not to create hallucinations, but to protect mushrooms from being eaten.

Researchers are now testing this by observing whether slugs avoid psilocybin-containing mushrooms compared to non-psychoactive ones.

Psilocybe ovoideocystidiat | Credit: Alan Rockefeller

Gene Sharing Between Mushroom Species

The study also found signs of horizontal gene transfer, where genetic material jumps between unrelated species. The genes for psilocybin appear to have transferred up to five times between 40 and 9 million years ago.

That means different mushroom lineages may have “shared” the ability to produce psilocybin, suggesting the compound offered a clear survival advantage.

Why This Matters

If psilocybin evolved multiple times in different species, it might exist in many molecular variations—each with slightly different properties.

This has major implications for modern research. Psilocybin is currently being studied as a treatment for depression, PTSD, anxiety, addiction, and other mental health conditions. Understanding its evolutionary diversity could help scientists discover new, potentially more effective therapeutic compounds.

As mycologist Bryn Dentinger, one of the study’s authors, notes, studying fungal biodiversity isn’t just academic — it can lead directly to new medical insights.

Distribution of psychoactive Psilocybe

A Scientific Legacy Hidden in Museum Drawers

Much of this research was only possible because of preserved mushroom specimens collected over the past century. Stored in museums around the world, they provided genetic data that helped scientists reconstruct millions of years of fungal evolution.

It’s a reminder that old scientific collections can still yield new discoveries—especially when combined with modern technology.

The Big Picture

Psilocybin’s story isn’t just about psychedelics or human consciousness. It’s about evolution, adaptation, and chemical innovation in nature.

What began as a defense mechanism in a world recovering from catastrophe eventually became a molecule capable of altering human perception—and perhaps one day, improving human health.

The next time someone mentions magic mushrooms, remember:
their “trip” began 65 million years ago.

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References:

Dentinger, B. et al. (2024). University of Utah & Natural History Museum of Utah, Psilocybe genomic diversity study.
Additional sources: Nature Communications (2024), Fungal Diversity (2023).

Elin Stahre on the Evolving Art of Psychedelic Therapy

Elin Stahre — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 14:15:35 GMT

This piece is part of a collaboration with the producers of Borealis Psychedelic Science Summit that took place in Stockholm in September. Subscribe for reflections and interviews!

Elin and baby Sander joined us for a conversation at the Eatery Lumafabriken in Stockholm | September, 2025

North Spore: Thanks for joining us today, Elin and Sander! To begin, could you introduce yourself?

Elin: Thank you for inviting us! My name is Elin Stahre, and I’m a licensed clinical psychologist in Sweden. I’ve worked for about 15 years in general psychiatry and outpatient clinics. Around five years ago I found the field of psychedelics and have been involved in it, in part, ever since.

North Spore: What made you personally interested in psychedelic therapy?

Elin: Well first, just to clarify—I’m not an academic researcher; I’m a clinician. I’ve worked as a study therapist in two psychedelic clinical trials. What drew me in was my work with trauma, especially PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Some clients with complex trauma and significant dissociation weren’t improving with standard therapy. Often they couldn’t access the emotional component of traumatic memories, which that therapy required. I started reading about MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD and became interested. I’ll add that personal experiences with psychedelics also helped me appreciate their therapeutic potential—so my path was both professional and personal.

North Spore: You have a background in “third-wave” cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and neuropsychology. How has your approach changed through this work?

Right now MDMA for PTSD and psilocybin for depression look most promising.

Elin: I’ve become less directive. CBT can be fairly active from the therapist’s side. In psychedelic-assisted therapy, we aim to be present and supportive without steering—following the participant rather than prescribing solutions. Neuropsychology hasn’t changed my clinical style much, but it helps me feel grounded in the science when discussing what might be happening neurobiologically. I still use CBT—behavioral analysis remains my core framework—but I’ve added flexibility and an emphasis on presence: being a witness and companion rather than trying to “fix” or push the process.

North Spore: And which substances have you worked with? What indications look most promising?

Elin: My direct therapy experience is with psilocybin—two clinical trials for depression—and I’ve also been involved with legal psilocybin truffle retreats in the Netherlands. I teach study therapists across different research protocols (including 5-MeO-DMT and DMT), but clinically I’ve worked with psilocybin. Indications are ultimately an empirical question, but right now MDMA for PTSD and psilocybin for depression look most promising. DMT and 5-MeO-DMT are being explored for depression as well. MDMA for depression may hold promise, though it’s not well tested yet, and psilocybin for PTSD is also worth exploring.

North Spore: It’s fascinating to me the alignment of different psychedelics with specific conditions. What has surprised you most about working in clinical trials?

Elin: How suboptimal the clinical setting can be for this work. Hospitals, pre-dose tests, and long forms can be stressful—some people get “white-coat syndrome” with elevated anxiety and blood pressure. There’s also generally a lack of nature elements, which I see as obvious grounding supports. I understand the need for rigor and standardization to isolate drug effects, and current paradigms aim to minimize “extra-pharmacological” factors, but psychedelics are non-specific amplifiers of set and setting. That mismatch was striking and difficult at first.

Positron Emission Tomography is an imaging test that uses a radioactive tracer to show how organs and tissues are working at a metabolic level and commonly used in psychedelic trials—not the most comfortable place to trip.

North Spore: Those clinical protocols must feel rigid. Shouldn’t they be more individualized?

Elin: In principle, yes. In practice, we use randomized controlled trials to demonstrate efficacy for regulation, so standardization is required. Once treatments are approved, I hope there’s more room to individualize.

North Spore: I hope that too. What are the biggest differences between psychedelic-assisted therapy and conventional therapy?

Elin: By definition in research, psychedelic therapy is relatively hands-off. We lean on the idea of “inner healing intelligence,” following the participant’s lead and trusting their intrinsic resources. MDMA-assisted therapy is a partial exception—it’s more active, with more talking during dosing. That said, there are strong similarities, too: the therapeutic relationship is central, and one could argue that alliance is what makes many therapies work.

North Spore: What skills matter most for someone training to be a psychedelic therapist?

Elin: The capacity to sit with your own uncomfortable feelings—what psychodynamic traditions would call “managing countertransference”—being aware of it without necessarily acting to remove your own or the client’s pain. An ongoing awareness practice (mindfulness, etc.) helps. Authenticity is crucial: people in altered states are highly sensitive to incongruence or performative authority. Show up as a person—warmth, positive regard, empathy, presence. And there needs to be a good bond and fit between the person journeying and their support.

North Spore: I suppose those same behaviors would support a trip-sitter in non-clinical settings as well. Speaking of, what’s the best way to get harm-reduction information to the public?

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Elin: Definitely. It’s important that we equip people with practical information: the importance of set and setting; knowing the substance and dose; not being alone; planning needs in advance; having a trusted, sober support present. People will use these substances no matter what; as professionals, our role is to provide accurate information so they can make sound decisions. I rarely advise outright against use (though sometimes I do), and I never “recommend” it either—I focus on informed choice.

North Spore: Recently, a friend of mine in Spain had a bad trip and went to the ER. I was shocked to hear that the staff had no idea what he was talking about when he explained that he took psilocybin. Do you think healthcare professionals should be informed about psychedelics?

Elin: Wow, that’s interesting and yet not surprising. Yes—especially in healthcare. Many people use psychedelics; to care for them we need to understand potential adverse events and how to respond to difficult experiences. Providers have a responsibility to be informed.

North Spore: That reminds me of a question that came up at Borealis: Should therapists have firsthand psychedelic experience?

Elin: It’s a debated question. I don’t think it should be required—for ethical and practical reasons. Experience of an altered state can help, but there are many routes (breathwork, meditation, arts). A risk of having psychedelic experience is projecting your own journey onto someone else. These experiences vary widely; we never truly know what’s happening inside another person. Empathy doesn’t require identical experience—just as we wouldn’t require trauma therapists to have been traumatized. Familiarity with altered states (even via non-drug means) can suffice.

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North Spore: What’s the hardest thing to teach about this therapy?

Elin: You can’t teach someone to be genuinely present and authentic—that’s a quality they bring. Also, altered states are unpredictable; therapists need comfort with improvisation. Sometimes you must deviate from the manual while holding to core principles: maintain safety and the relationship. That can be hard for clinicians who prefer control and predictability.

North Spore: Another question inspired by Borealis: Have you faced challenges as a woman in the psychedelic field here in Sweden?

The simple line is “integration is what happens after the experience,” but I’d say it’s taking something meaningful from the session and weaving it into life so it changes behavior, wellbeing, and relationships—and lasts.

Elin Stahre: I think we live in a patriarchy globally, Sweden included, and the psychedelic field isn’t exempt. Psychedelics can amplify existing group dynamics but they don’t solve those issues unless we do the work. At the same time, I’ve felt welcomed and offered opportunities. It’s not a black-and-white picture.

North Spore: How do you see psychedelic therapy working for people neurodivergence (autism, ADHD)?

Elin: Evidence is limited. There was a small 2018 pilot (Alicia Danforth) on social anxiety in autistic adults that looked encouraging. Anecdotally, many autistic individuals report therapeutic insights—greater understanding of their social functioning and sometimes enhanced mentalization. It doesn’t “remove” autism (nor should it), but it can offer perspective on differences and on neurotypical styles. For ADHD, I’m less sure—again, not a cure, and research is sparse. I’ll add that in Sweden (and much of the West) ADHD, and to some extent autism, can be over- or misdiagnosed; sometimes what’s labeled as such is trauma, stress, or personality factors. There’s huge heterogeneity in these diagnoses.

North Spore: I have known therapists who no longer diagnose things like borderline personality disorder, and instead focus on that—trauma.

Moving on, how do you define “integration”?

One woman with recurrent burnout entered a profoundly restful state during dosing—deeper than she’d ever felt. Afterward, she used the music to reliably access that state, learning how to ground and rest in daily life. That’s integration working.

Elin: The simple line is “integration is what happens after the experience,” but I’d say it’s taking something meaningful from the session and weaving it into life so it changes behavior, wellbeing, and relationships—and lasts. Psychedelics can potentiate change, but unless we work to sustain it—using that plastic window to build new patterns in thinking, behavior, and relating—it may fade. When the changes align with a person’s values and they’re practiced over time, they can become durable.

Integration is essential—especially after adverse or challenging experiences. Some people need psychological treatment afterward, and difficult journeys can become growth with the right support. We risk missing the potential of these substances if we over-medicalize and neglect therapy. At the same time, therapists influence people in a malleable state, so we need research, training, supervision, and ongoing ethics. People often argue minimal therapy improves safety/efficiency; I think an appropriately expanded therapeutic frame can improve both.

Preparation sessions matter, too—meeting several times before dosing to teach mindfulness and grounding skills that help both entering and navigating the experience. I’d also like to see more group and community-based integration alongside one-to-one models.

North Spore: Can you share examples of successful integration and failed integration?

Elin: Embodiment is central—finding ways to return to a helpful bodily state from the session. For some that’s meditation, time in nature, or the session playlist. One woman with recurrent burnout entered a profoundly restful state during dosing—deeper than she’d ever felt. Afterward, she used the music to reliably access that state, learning how to ground and rest in daily life. That’s integration working.

By contrast, an unsuccessful pattern is chasing repeated psychedelic highs without changing life between sessions—relationships and functioning don’t improve. That’s not integration; it’s avoidance.

North Spore: A quick aside about music. What role does it play in psychedelic therapy?

Elin: It’s central—often called the “hidden therapist.” Music grounds, shapes, and evokes emotion, and it’s also useful in integration. I avoid very wordy tracks (they can pull people into their heads), but the “right” music depends on the intended arc. In studies it has to be standardized—typically a mix of classical, ambient, and folk. Curating is an art: knowing when to press the gas or the brake. Music is its own language; researcher-musician Mendel Kaelen has developed tools to support music selection in sessions.

North Spore: I particularly liked the track at Borealis on the role of music in psychedelic therapy. But back to integration—can you lay out some common integration mistakes?

Elin: Spiritual bypass: pursuing peak or “enlightened” states while daily life remains unchanged. A checklist mentality: treating integration like a fixed list (nature, yoga, meditate). Those can help, but integration is highly individual—those aforementioned ways of integrating should be viewed more like a smorgasbord. And over-verbalizing too soon: rushing to write down insights can flatten a non-cognitive experience. I often suggest anchoring the felt sense first and trusting that what matters will return.

Support matters, too—knowledgeable peers, community, or professional help after challenging experiences.

North Spore: What’s unique about the Swedish research context?

Elin: Sweden’s trials have so far kept the therapeutic component fairly minimal, with a strong biomedical focus. A notable contribution is biomarker work—for example, the PSIPET study examining whether psilocybin affects synaptic density (i.e., potential changes in the connections where neurons communicate). Those results aren’t yet published. I’d like more work on therapeutic elements and on setting. Legal and political factors have shaped a cautious pace here.

North Spore: I found out recently that Sweden is particularly strict, and that it’s illegal to be under the influence of almost any drug. But I was also reading that Sweden has a pretty big problem with alcoholism. How does that fit into this?

Elin: Yes it’s true. I don’t have comparative figures at hand, but alcohol is widely accepted socially, while other substances remain illegal and unfamiliar to many of the same people who drink. That’s the broad context.

North Spore: Which is similar to many other countries. Do you think momentum is building for psychedelics in Sweden?

Elin: Yes. Media coverage over the past five years has increased public and professional interest. Ongoing efforts include a large randomized control trial on cancer-related depression (≈100 participants), ketamine studies, a forthcoming psilocybin trial for anorexia nervosa in young adults, non-clinical work at Stockholm University on attachment changes post-retreat, and valuable phenomenological research. We benefit from rigor and patience, but there’s an ethical question about whether we’re moving fast enough.

We must balance rigor and care—but for me, care comes first.

North Spore: So after two days of Borealis, what were your takeaways?

Elin: The community. Seeing scientists, therapists, and many others building something together, with genuine care, was moving. I also appreciated Leor Roseman’s talk on how psychedelic culture spreads and the inevitable schisms; it rang true. What was your favorite part?

North Spore: It was all very fascinating. I loved the panels—hearing professionals with differing opinions talk it out. I also really liked hearing Ian Roullier’s story, talks on gender and how psychedelics affect the brain, and—like I mentioned before—the track about music.

Do you have any practical suggestions for trial design?

I’d rather see psychedelics catalyze a paradigm shift in mental health, not just become another medication.

Elin: I’m so glad you enjoyed it. Sure—consider open-label extensions to mitigate disappointment and nocebo effects for placebo/sub-perceptual arms—meaning eventually everyone receives the active dose. Provide settings that let people land after dosing (quiet, nature elements) rather than sending them straight into busy streets. One ethical tension is that participants are often told to avoid additional therapy or community support until a trial ends, even when they need help immediately. We must balance rigor and care—but for me, care comes first.

North Spore: I totally agree and have seen firsthand the difficulties someone can face while under the influence. It scares me to think people get pushed out into the street all alone after a session.

And a final question: What challenges do you foresee bringing psychedelic therapy into healthcare?

Elin: Over-medicalization (treating it as a quick drug fix) risks under-delivering integration and ignoring the spiritual/existential aspects many people encounter. I’d rather see psychedelics catalyze a paradigm shift in mental health, not just become another medication. We urgently need research on setting, and on how to help people with difficult experiences—don’t wait ten years, do it now.

Implementation also raises the question: are we trying to treat individuals while problems are systemic? I hope psychedelics help us address root causes and even redesign care environments—small changes in setting can make mental-health facilities more healing.

Psilocybin and Salutogenesis: A New Hope for Treatment-Resistant Depression

Nate K. Prime — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 18:11:47 GMT

This piece is part of a collaboration with the producers of Borealis Psychedelic Science Summit that took place in Stockholm in September. Subscribe for reflections and interviews!

Illustration by fran_kie

In the chilly lecture hall at Borealis, Dr. Gerhard Gründer stood in front of a slide reading “Psilocybin for Treatment-Resistant Depression.” It was perhaps the title I most expected from the summit, but it turned out to be a deeply informative presentation on what real, intersectional healing means when everything else has failed.

Gründer is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and neuropharmacologist with more than three decades of research behind him. After earning his medical doctorate from Heidelberg University, he became Professor of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, where he leads studies on novel treatments for mood and psychotic disorders.

Before turning to psychedelics, he focused on dopamine and serotonin receptor pharmacology, early neuroimaging of antipsychotic binding, and clinical trials of atypical antipsychotics. That expertise now frames his work with psilocybin: analytical but compassionate. Gründer also co-founded and once chaired the MIND Foundation, a Berlin-based nonprofit advancing evidence-based psychedelic research and ethics across Europe.

Treatment-Resistant Depression vs. Psychiatry

The Invisible Half of the Psychedelic Renaissance

Neuro Rutas — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 21:47:30 GMT

This piece is part of a collaboration with the producers of Borealis Psychedelic Science Summit that took place in Stockholm in September. Subscribe for reflections and interviews!

This reflection has been translated from Spanish to English.

After lunch on day 2 of Borealis, I noticed that the conference room was thinner than it had been for other presentations. This series of talks was centered on gender and women’s experiences in psychedelics and I was disappointed in the lack of people present, but not surprised - a general energy I also felt coming from the speaker on the stage. Many of us are used to less resources, support, and interest.

“I want to say something before I get started because sometimes silence can be misread,” Tali Avron started from the corner of the stage. Identifying herself as Israeli, she quickly clarified to the audience that she condemns the actions of her government. The room erupted in applause.

Avron, a clinical research manager and psychedelic science consultant with more than a decade of experience in clinical trials and regulatory strategy, has helped steer MDMA-assisted therapy studies across Europe as part of MAPS. She has also led projects in medical cannabis research and founded the Psychedelic Women Network. Her current focus is women’s experiences with psychedelics and shaped the talk she brought to Stockholm, titled Women and Psychedelics: The Research Gap and Why It Matters.

As a woman who has undergone MDMA therapy for treatment-resistant depression and PTSD, I was especially looking forward to this series of talks featuring professional women in the field of psychedelic research.

Ethics in Psychedelic Therapy: A Patient's Perspective

Nate K. Prime — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 21:37:40 GMT

This piece is part of a collaboration with the producers of Borealis Psychedelic Science Summit that took place in Stockholm in September. Subscribe for reflections and interviews!

At Borealis, most presentations unfolded the way you might expect at a science-focused summit: graphs projected on big screens, clinical protocols explained in detail, PowerPoints heavy with data and jargon. As a long-time lover of science (I took Advanced Honors Biology in high school 😉), my itch was scratched, so to speak.

In contrast with this though, was another recurring theme of the conference: a curiosity about the human element of psychedelic trials. In other words: what about the patients?

Ian Roullier covered this with his presentation Participant Voices, Ethics, and Best Practices in Psychedelic Therapy.

Roullier is a writer and advocate in the UK who speaks openly about his lifelong struggle with depression. Before his advocacy work, he was a journalist, with bylines at the BBC and Mixmag. Unlike most of the other presenters in Stockholm, he wasn’t there as a scientist or a clinician, but rather as someone who has experienced the trials from the the other side, as a participant. Perhaps not surprisingly, his talk ended up being the most emotional for me. Someone close to me underwent MDMA therapy last year for treatment-resistant depression, and I witnessed how profoundly it reshaped their life. As Roullier spoke, tracing both the triumphs and the pitfalls of his experience, I felt myself tearing up several times.

So what happens when the sterile clinical lines are filled in with human color?

Can Psilocybin Help Break Cocaine Addiction?

Nate K. Prime — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 14:02:41 GMT

This piece is part of a collaboration with the producers of Borealis Psychedelic Science Summit that took place in Stockholm in September. Subscribe for reflections and interviews!

Day one of Borealis began cool and crisp, not unlike a late-September day in Maine. Arriving at the Elite Hotel Marina Tower - a stately former mill building of striking rust-red bricks overlooking the waterfront at Saltsjöqvarn - I was reminded of the Dana Warp Mill in Westbrook, the site of North Spore’s premiere production facility. It reminded me of my first day as a marketing intern six years ago, and the long path since, creating content, building partnerships and friendships, and watching a once-niche field going global. That journey brought me to Sweden, surrounded by researchers shaping the future of psychedelic science.

One of the summit’s first psilocybin-focused talks came from Peter Hendricks, PhD., a professor in the Department of Health Behavior at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. For almost 20 years, Hendricks has studied addiction, public health, and how psychedelics might help change patterns of behavior. His publications span mindfulness-based interventions, substance use, and the epidemiology of classic psychedelic use, establishing him as a leading voice in the American South. The presentation took place in Gyllene Salen, a lecture hall with shimmering metallic reflecting magenta light, and oversized mushroom sculptures framed the stage - a whimsical counterpoint to the hotel’s gilded elegance. On stage, Hendricks spoke with rigor and precision, but carried an air of personal conviction and quiet compassion.

Addiction & Isolation

Hendricks began by sharing a piece of family history: though based in Alabama, his roots trace back to Sweden. He explained that some of his ancestors emigrated to the U.S. during the Swedish drinking epidemic of the 1800s, a time when cheap, home-distilled brännvin flooded the country. At its peak, Swedes were consuming about 8 gallons (30 liters) of pure alcohol per year, roughly equal to 3 gallons (11 liters) of liquor each week for every adult. The epidemic destabilized families and communities so profoundly that it helped spark one of the world’s first major temperance movements, eventually leading to state control of alcohol sales in Sweden. By contrast, alcohol consumption today is far lower, closer to 2.4 gallons (9 liters) of pure alcohol per person annually, although around 15 percent of adults still drink at hazardous levels. Illicit drug use remains relatively uncommon in Sweden compared to much of Europe, yet the country has one of the higher per capita rates of drug-induced deaths. Hendricks used this story to highlight a recurring pattern: whether alcohol then or cocaine today, substance use often grows from and breeds isolation. Psychedelics, he suggested, may offer a way back toward connection.

A Rising Crisis

That need for new tools is urgent. World-wide cocaine use surged during the COVID pandemic, and by 2023 there were an estimated 23 million people using the drug. Once seen primarily as a nightlife stimulant, cocaine has increasingly become a daily dependency for many. The drug market has also shifted: cocaine is now more widely available, cheaper in many regions, and more often adulterated. Fatal overdoses have risen by 73 percent since 2019, much of that due to cocaine being laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid dozens of times more potent than heroin. In the United States this contamination crisis has been especially lethal, but similar patterns are emerging in Europe, where record cocaine seizures in ports like Antwerp and Gothenburg point to a rapidly expanding supply chain.

Despite the scale of the problem, treatment options remain bleak. “There are no effective pharmacotherapies,” Hendricks said bluntly. Behavioral approaches such as CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) and twelve-step programs have some effect but relapse rates remain high. The one strategy with consistent, measurable success is contingency management, where patients are financially rewarded for clean drug tests. But this approach comes with political baggage: critics argue that paying people not to use drugs sends the wrong message, and when the payments stop, relapse almost always follows. In other words, the best current option is both controversial and fragile.

Hendricks was careful not to frame psilocybin as a miracle cure. Instead, he described it as a rare sign of promise in a field where other treatments have consistently failed.

A Psilocybe Mushroom, New to Science, Documented in Africa

Matt McInnis — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 15:48:43 GMT

Planet Earth is home to hundreds of species of psilocybin containing fungi. These mushrooms have been well-studied in places like Europe, the Americas, and Asia, where species such as the liberty cap and Psilocybe cubensis are famous. But in Africa, they have remained largely in the shadows. Until recently, only a handful of species of Psilocybe mushrooms had ever been documented on the entire African continent. That wasn’t because Africa lacks mushrooms; rather, it’s because formal surveys and studies of African fungi have been lacking in many regions.

Image of P. maluti provided by mycologist, Cullen Taylor Clark

This began to change in the early 2020s, when a series of chance discoveries and grassroots efforts revealed Africa’s first new psychedelic mushrooms in decades. One of these discoveries – Psilocybe maluti – has opened an extraordinary window into Southern Africa’s hidden mycological diversity and cultural history. The story of Psilocybe maluti’s discovery is not just about finding a new species; it’s about how citizen mushroom enthusiasts, scientists, and indigenous knowledge keepers converged to bring a long-hidden tradition to light.

Discovery in a Cow Pasture

In early 2021, on a small farm in South Africa’s Free State province, a self-taught mycologist named Daniella Mulder was surveying her land when something unusual caught her eye. Sprouting from a cow pat in the pasture was a cluster of slender mushrooms with golden caramel caps and pale stems, poking up through the grass. When bruised or handled, the stems stained a telltale shade of blue – a classic hint of psilocybin. Mulder, an avid mushroom forager, knew these looked like they might belong to the genus Psilocybe, but they didn’t quite match any descriptions of known South African species. Intrigued, she snapped a few photos of the mystery mushrooms and reached out for help.

Mulder sent the images to Andrew Killian, one of South Africa’s leading citizen mycologists and shipped a sample to Alan Rockefeller in the US that was intercepted by customs. Eventually, Mulder’s specimens made it to a professional mycologist, Breyten Van der Merwe at Stellenbosch University, for closer examination. It was a true grassroots-to-lab collaboration: an amateur’s curiosity handed off to a scientist’s expertise. In Stellenbosch, Van der Merwe and microbiologist Prof. Karin Jacobs led the scientific sleuthing. They examined the mushrooms’ physical characteristics under the microscope and sequenced their DNA to compare with known species. Sure enough, the genetic data confirmed what field intuition had suggested – Mulder’s pasture mushrooms were entirely new to science.

“I first noticed P. maluti when Daniella Mulder posted that photo of a bunch of them in a dish and she posted them on Facebook on the South African Mushroom Group, so I asked her to send me a sample but when the envelope arrived it was empty because customs found it and so she sent a sample to Breyten and he was able to do the microscopy and DNA barcoding and sequenced a bunch of genes and wrote it up. Then I looked at the paper, and fixed it up some more, and sent it off for publication” - Alan Rockefeller on the taxonomic work published in Mycologia

The team named the novel fungus Psilocybe maluti, honoring the Maluti (also spelled Maloti) Mountains that dominate the landscape of neighboring Lesotho. Psilocybe maluti became only the third Psilocybe species ever formally described from South Africa (the first since P. natalensis in the 1990s). And with this single discovery, the count of indigenous African “magic mushroom” species ticked up by one – from four to five. For van der Merwe and his colleagues, it was a eureka moment. But little did they know, the story of P. maluti was about to get even more intriguing.

From Farm to Mountain

Once Psilocybe maluti was confirmed as new, a burning question arose: where else might it grow? To find out, the Stellenbosch researchers teamed up with another dedicated “mushroom hunter,” mycologist Cullen Taylor Clark— a researcher at Freestate University and one of the leaders in mycology and fungal business in South Africa. Clark had heard through the grape vine that there might be psilocybe mushrooms in Lesotho and had a hunch that if Mulder found it in Free State’s lowlands, perhaps he’d find P. maluti thriving in the high-altitude meadows of Lesotho – especially given the mushroom’s new name. Lesotho, a tiny kingdom encircled by South Africa, is nicknamed the “Kingdom in the Sky.” Its highlands are part of the Maluti-Drakensberg range, an alpine plateau soaring 10,000+ feet (3,000 meters) above sea level. The idea of a psychedelic mushroom hiding in these misty, hard-to-reach highlands was tantalizing.

Clark and the research team organized field forays into Lesotho’s mountains in late 2021. Sure enough, in the lush grass of a high-altitude pasture, they spotted familiar golden caps emerging from the ground. It was P. maluti again – thriving in its namesake terrain. The mushrooms in Lesotho looked just like the Free State specimens, with conical caps and a habit of popping up on livestock dung after seasonal rains. Their distinct form was now unmistakable: P. maluti has a unique cap — it’s elongated, pointy and is secotioid, meaning it never opens up fully like many other capped mushrooms. In other words, unlike the classic umbrella-shaped cap found in species like Psilocybe cubensis, P. maluti keeps a narrow, spire-like cap even at maturity, giving it a subtle, wand-like appearance.

The Lesotho finds confirmed that Psilocybe maluti wasn’t a one-off oddity – it had a wider range across Southern Africa’s grasslands. In fact, subsequent reports indicated it has been found in at least three regions: Free State and KwaZulu-Natal provinces of South Africa, and the highlands of Lesotho. Wherever it occurs, its ecology appears consistent: it is a “dung-lover,” springing from cattle or other grazer manure in moist grassland, much like P. cubensis. In fact, it appears that the closest relative to Psilocybe maluti is Psilocybe cubensis, the most widely cultivated variety of psilocybe, says Alan Rockefeller, mycologist and co-author of the Mycologia paper: “the gene sequencing results were a big surprise because [P. maluti] came out close to Psilocybe cubensis… we were expecting it to come out maybe in the cyanescens group… or maybe over by peliculosa… I never would have guessed that it was a cubensis relative just based on looking at it.”

Both P. maluti and P. cubensis share dung-loving trait – grazing animals, from cows to antelope, create fertile mushroom nurseries, and many psychedelic mushrooms worldwide have evolved to take advantage of that nutrient-rich niche.

If this mushroom had been quietly growing for ages in these mountains, perhaps the local Basotho people had noticed it long before the scientists did. Mamosebetsi Sethathi, a respected traditional healer (or ngaka) of the Basotho would transform the Psilocybe maluti discovery from a mere biological finding into a cultural revelation.

Sethathi had been conducting research on the traditional uses of non-psychoactive mushrooms and fungi in traditional healing in the area. As a trained healer, fluent in several languages and well-trusted by other healers in Lesotho, she conducted interviews with the healers around Lesotho and gathered and compiled much of the evidence of the use of P. maluti. Of over sixty healers that Sethati interviewed, only three made a reference to using psychoactive mushrooms in their healing practice.

“It just so happened that I stumbled upon Psilocybe maluti prior to its formal documentation on New Years Eve and not many knew that particular species existed (so I posted photos on a local mycology group I was involved in, as I thought it was a psilocybe and wanted confirmation, and it was subsequently confirmed as a new species ) I then started reaching out far and wide in Lesotho and KwaZulu Natal with the help of Betsy [Mamosebetsi]… and talking to all that I could in order to confirm its traditional uses” - Cullen Taylor Clark

Cullen Taylor Clark with P. maluti specimens

Psilocybe maluti, in the Sesotho language, are called “koae-ea-lekhoaba,” which translates roughly to “powdered tobacco of the crow”. The name itself is a little riddle of folklore and observation. Basotho elders explained that dried spores of the mushroom resemble fine brown tobacco powder (hence koae, “tobacco”). And lekhoaba – “of the crow” – refers to the local pied crows that were often seen pecking at these mushrooms in the fields. One can imagine villagers noticing the birds’ peculiar attraction to the fungi and perhaps their subsequent drunken antics (did the crows get a bit “high” from the shrooms? the stories don’t say, but it’s certainly possible). Thus, “crow’s tobacco” became the folkloric moniker for Psilocybe maluti long before any Latin name existed.

More importantly, Sethathi and other healers revealed that koae-ea-lekhoaba had been used in Basotho spiritual healing practices for generations. This was a jaw-dropping revelation to the scientists. Studies on mycology and ethnomycology in Africa are rare, and historically there hasn’t been much work on the subject on the continent. The only hints were speculative: for example, 8,000-year-old rock paintings in the Sahara Desert that some believe depict mushroom-headed figures in shamanic ritual. But concrete, living traditions had never been documented, until now.

Sethathi is quick to temper the desire to paint with a broad brush about the use of psychoactive fungi in the region: “it is wildly inaccurate to paint the picture as if the use of psilocybin mushrooms in traditional healing practice is widely spread or common. I have since been involved in further research after the paper’s publication and I can safely say that while psilocybin mushrooms are used in traditional healing in Lesotho, it is a somewhat rare occurrence. The mushroom that I found to be most commonly used by Basotho healers, especially as a protective charm, was the podaxis. Other mushrooms were used for the treatment of wounds, hemorrhoids, dermatological ailments etc.”

Basotho healers explained that two kinds of practitioners in their culture utilize these mushrooms. “Linohe,” the shamans or diviners, consume the conical mushrooms to “foresee the future,” gaining visionary insight into a client’s problems. Meanwhile, “ngaka-chitja,” the herbal healers, sometimes include the mushroom in their pharmacopeia of remedies – not so much for divination, but as a potent ingredient alongside their vast knowledge of medicinal herbs. In both cases, P. maluti is regarded as a sacred tool by the few healers knowledgeable about its psychoactive properties, used carefully and purposefully rather than recreationally.

The Healer’s Ritual

One of the most intriguing traditional preparations shared by Sethathi was a psychedelic brew known in Sesotho as koae-ea-lekhoaba tea. The recipe is striking: take a generous quantity of the Psilocybe maluti mushrooms and steep them in warm water along with Boophone disticha, a powerful hallucinogenic plant known locally as leshoma or seipone. (Boophone disticha is a bulbous plant with beautiful fan-like leaves – and a notorious reputation as a poison and vision-inducer used by San and Sotho peoples for centuries) The combination of P. maluti and Boophone yields a potent potion.

When a patient seeking spiritual guidance drinks this mushroom-Boophone tea, the effect is profound. The individual enters a “trance-like state” – eyes open but sensing another reality. According to the study published in Mycologica, healers then seat the entranced person in front of a reflective surface, often a mirror, hence the name seipone (“mirror plant”) for Boophone. In this altered state, the patient is encouraged to describe their visions aloud: what they see in the mirror, the images or ancestral messages that arise. The healer, listening intently, interprets these descriptions, much like a therapist parsing a dream. Through this guided visionary experience, answers are believed to emerge – perhaps clarity on an ailment’s cause, or guidance for an important life decision. After the effects subside, the healer advises the patient on next steps, based on the visions’ meaning.

This ritual bears a fascinating resemblance to shamanic practices found in other parts of the world – from the Mazatec mushroom veladas of Mexico to ayahuasca ceremonies in the Amazon – yet it is uniquely Basotho. It blends the natural pharmacopoeia of the highlands with the cultural concept of consulting one’s reflection for truth. And notably, it appears to have persisted in secret, passed down orally through generations with no written record.

Mamosebetsi Sethathi and the Stellenbosch University team documented these practices with great care. As they wrote in their publication, “This appears to be the only recorded firsthand report of hallucinogenic mushrooms being used traditionally in Africa and the first mention of hallucinogenic mushroom use in Sub-Saharan Africa.”. In other words, some of the Basotho may have always known about koae-ea-lekhoaba, but the rest of the world is only just now finding out. The knowledge had survived quietly in the mountains, “passed down through generations by word of mouth”, even as outsiders assumed psychedelic mushrooms played no role in African traditions.

Photo of P. maluti provided by mycologist, Cullen Taylor Clark

Taxonomy Meets Tradition

The discovery of Psilocybe maluti and its associated cultural knowledge is a powerful example of science and tradition converging. On one hand, you have modern DNA analysis confirming a new species and enriching our catalog of biodiversity. On the other, you have indigenous healers confirming that this “new” species isn’t so new to them – it has long been a part of their healing toolkit. Breyten Van der Merwe summed it up perfectly: “I don’t like the word "discovery", these are descriptions, not discoveries.”

Neither perspective alone gives the full story, but together they paint a richer picture of P. maluti’s significance. One group’s first scientific description is another’s traditional medicine.

It’s also a story of citizen science at its finest. Were it not for curious amateurs like Mulder, Killian, and Moult (another citizen mycologist who discovered a second new species, Psilocybe ingeli, around the same time), these mushrooms might have continued to elude formal science. “These two species were sent to me by citizen scientists. It would be impossible for a single researcher to cover a fraction of the area these mushroom enthusiasts have access to,” Van der Merwe noted, emphasizing that engaging the wider community is “the only way we will be able to further studies in African mycology.” In Africa, where professional mycologists are few and far between, passionate hobbyists are mapping the frontiers of fungal diversity.

The revelation of P. maluti also comes at a time of a broader psychedelic renaissance worldwide. Psilocybin – the compound that makes these mushrooms “magic” – is under intense study by medical researchers as a potential treatment for depression, PTSD, and other conditions. Governments from the U.S. to Australia are beginning to ease restrictions to allow therapeutic use of psilocybin, and cultural attitudes toward psychedelics are rapidly shifting. In this climate, the emergence of a new psilocybin mushroom species carries special buzz. Psychonauts (enthusiasts of psychedelic exploration) are excited by any new fungi with mind-altering potential, and P. maluti’s discovery in an unexpected locale underscores how much we still have to learn about nature’s pharmacopoeia.

For the North Spore crowd – mushroom growers and hobbyists – P. maluti is a reminder that there are untapped treasures in the fungal world. While it’s illegal to forage or consume such mushrooms in most places, the mere knowledge of their existence can inspire awe. It raises tantalizing questions: Could P. maluti be cultivated outside its native habitat? How might its effects or potency compare to better-known species like P. cubensis or P. semilanceata? Those answers remain unknown for now, as the focus has rightly been on documenting and conserving it in the wild. But given the collaborative spirit that led to its discovery, one wouldn’t be surprised if citizen mycologists attempt to study its life cycle further.

Want to Grow Your Own?

A New Chapter for African Mycology

Thanks to Psilocybe maluti (and its sibling P. ingeli), the roster of African magic mushrooms now stands at six known species – a modest number, but one that is surely just the beginning. “There are undeniably more South African species that have yet to be discovered,” the study authors wrote. The vast landscapes of Africa, from the Cape’s shrublands to the Congo’s rainforests, undoubtedly harbor more fungal surprises waiting for a sharp-eyed forager to stumble upon. The P. maluti episode has already spurred renewed interest in African ethnomycology – the study of how local cultures use and perceive mushrooms. Researchers are now asking, if some healers of the Basotho have this tradition, might other African societies have quietly incorporated psychedelic fungi in their practices too, hidden from colonial records? The door is open for further exploration.

“I think there’s at least a half-dozen more species of psilocybe [from Southern Africa] that need to be published… the pace of discoveries is definitely increasing with all of the DNA barcoding” - Alan Rockefeller, co-author of the Mycologia article

In Lesotho, the knowledge bearers like Mamosebetsi Sethathi continue to practice their ancestral healing arts. It’s poetic that a scientific publication – something as formal as a Mycologia journal article – ended up preserving some of their oral history for posterity. In a way, Psilocybe maluti serves as a bridge between worlds: between modern lab science and ancient mountain lore, between South African citizen enthusiasts and Basotho shamans. Each played a part in bringing this lost mushroom to light.

The discovery of Psilocybe maluti reminds us that in our age of satellite maps and DNA barcodes, there are still mysteries sprouting in our backyards – or in the dung of our local ruminants – if we only take the time to look. It invites us to keep exploring, to listen to the whispers of local wisdom, and to remain open to awe. After all, as this mushroom from southern Africa has shown, magic often lies just beneath the surface – waiting quietly, until curiosity brings it into the light.

Thank you to Betsy Sethathi, Alan Rockefeller, Breyten Van der Merwe, and Cullen Taylor Clark for speaking with me and helping me make sure this article is accurate!

Photo courtesy of Breyten Van der Merwe