The Magic Mushroom Mind Shift

Could magic mushrooms be a long-term solution to crippling addictions and mood disorders like depression and PTSD? Clinical trials abroad have been showing that a few psychedelic trips may be able to ‘reboot’ the brain, changing set patterns of thinking. Science writer Leonie Joubert tells us why SouthAfrica needs to make a mind shift about psychedelic assisted therapy.

- Maya Morgan-Skillen

As Janeen Delaney looked at the capsule in her hand, she thought, ‘Boy, there’s so much promise. I am so ready for this.’ She was about to take a dose of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in magic mushrooms, as part of a 2008 study at Johns Hopkins University. Researchers were investigating whether a mystical experience brought on by the psychedelic would have a therapeutic effect on people with end-of-life anxiety. Janeen had been diagnosed with leukaemia three years previously.

‘I was living in fear,’ she says placidly, in a video interview. ‘My greatest fear was that I wouldn’t find that fullness, that place of contentment in my life before the process of dying.’ Janeen took the capsule, lay down and waited for the ‘magic’ to happen. ‘It was so overwhelmingly beautiful that tears were falling down my face.’ Samuel Barber’s ‘Adagio for Strings’ was playing through her headphones. ‘My breath was following this note up, and when the note stopped, I held my breath. I thought, “Ha, it’s okay not to breathe. How could it be that simple? Dear God, it is that simple! Remember that when you get [to the end of life]: it’s okay not to breathe anymore.”’

Janeen emerged from the session feeling totally reassured. ‘I just knew everything was going to be okay,’ she says. ‘This study changed everything: I’m more patient, I take time to be present, I smile and say thank you – because I get to breathe another day. So I have a few years chopped off my life but look at the quality that I’m able to experience now. If I got this for a week it would have been worth it – that I’ve had it for a year is astounding.’ Janeen died in 2015. In the end, she had it for seven years.

‘PSYCHOACTIVISM’