Psilocybin Mushrooms Are Most Popular Psychedelic in US, Studies Show: Shots

Psilocybin mushrooms grown in Littleton, Colorado. Use of the psychoactive drug is growing in popularity in the United States Hyoung Chang/Denver Post/Getty Images .

toggle captionHyoung Chang/Denver Post/Getty Images

Psychedelics have largely entered the mainstream: investors have bet billions on potential medical treatments, scientific research has exploded, and public opinion signals growing acceptance.

Yet major sources of drug use data have large gaps when it comes to psychedelics, making it difficult to assess exactly how use is changing and in what ways.

Two reports released this week offer much-needed data on the public’s psychoactive preferences. Together, they suggest that psilocybin-containing mushrooms are now the most popular choice. And many people are choosing to microdose, consuming a fraction of their usual dose, rather than going for a full trip.

We know that microdosing has become a cultural phenomenon, but not all drug use surveys ask about dosage, says Eric Leas, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Diego, whose research has been published Friday in the JAMA Health Forum.

The study tracked the history of internet searches for microdosing, a proxy for public interest, revealing an increase of about 1,250% since 2015. And searches for psilocybin began to overtake LSD in 2019.

Meanwhile, a separate report from the nonpartisan RAND Corporation estimates that about 3% of the American public, or about 8 million adults, have used psilocybin in the past year, making it the most popular hallucinogen in 2023.

The fact that psilocybin use has eclipsed that of other popular psychedelics surprised Beau Kilmer, who co-directs the RAND Drug Policy Research Center and is the lead author of the study, published this week.

MDMA, or ecstasy, comes in second with just over 1%, followed closely by LSD. The report draws on a nationally representative survey of approximately 4,000 people and examines the policy implications of changing attitudes toward psychedelics.

The Impact of Decriminalization on Microdosing

Nearly half of those who tried psilocybin in the past year said they chose microdosing, a trend that has caught on in many circles, including tech workers and suburban moms.

While there's no universal definition of microdosing, Kilmer says it's often considered to be between 1/10 and 1/20 of a full dose.

Some users are turning to mushrooms. The majority of people who microdosed psilocybin in the past year reported taking the drug only once or twice, while only 11% reported taking the substance for more than six days.

More than half reported eating whole mushrooms, fresh or dried, almost a quarter had them in a processed form like a chocolate bar and around 14% had a tea or drink.

The increase in online curiosity around microdosing correlates with changes in law or policy related to cannabis and psychedelics.

There was a gradual increase to the point that the more liberal the state became on substance use, the more interest in microdosing increased within the state, says UCSD's Leas.

For example, the leading states were Oregon and Colorado, both of which have decriminalized plant-based psychedelics, although Oregon has recently reigned in some of its legal reforms regarding drug use.

This type of data analysis has proven to be a reliable indicator for other drugs their lab studies, including new cannabis products like Delta 8, and according to Leas, it generally correlates very strongly with product sales.

Are Mushrooms the New Party Drug?

Research suggests that the availability of psilocybin has increased in recent years, says Joseph Palamar, an epidemiologist at NYU Langone Health, who has noted that seizures of mushroom medications have increased in recent years.

Palamar cautions against drawing too many conclusions from Internet search history about whether people actually use these drugs, but he says the study is a much-needed effort to address blind spots in the epidemiology around psychedelic consumption.

We're trying to piece together little pieces of information to understand what's really going on. Ultimately, it would be great if we could harmonize this data somehow, but it's very difficult, he says.

Palamar studies drug use trends in New York's nightlife scene, a population he sees as an indicator of changes in the general population.

We've seen psilocybin use increase a lot, more than most other drugs, he says. I think it's interesting because I usually think of ecstasy and ketamine, I never thought of mushrooms as being a big party drug.

A study published several years ago estimated that about 5.5 million adults used hallucinogens in 2019 and that LSD use across all age groups had increased from about 1% to 4% since 2002 However, overall research has not caught up with the growing public enthusiasm and media coverage, says Dr. Deborah Hasin, who led this study and is an epidemiologist at Columbia University.

We need better epidemiology, she said, so we actually know how much people are using, under what circumstances they are using, how they got the drugs and what they even know about what they are taking.

Not only does the national data collected by the federal government not contain granular information about psychedelics, but, for some reason, it doesn't explicitly ask whether people have recently used psilocybin, Kilmer says. These are very important pieces of information to have to assess the size of the market and start to think about some of the health implications, whether it's the benefits or the risks.

A booming and little-studied market

When asked why they used psilocybin, the top three reasons given by respondents to the RAND survey were: social pleasure and fun, followed by mental health, and personal development and existential exploration. .

Dr. Joshua Woolley, director of the Psychedelic Translational Research Program at UCSF, says microdosing is a very different model than what is rigorously studied in clinical trials of psychedelics to treat various mental health conditions.

These tend to be very structured around some form of psychotherapy and involve giving the person a very high dose.

In fact, we don't know much about microdosing, says Woolley.

A recent review of the evidence suggests that the practice may improve mood and cognition and that the drug is safe in this setting; however, others who have analyzed the data say it is premature to draw conclusions about the effectiveness or safety of microdosing.

Kilmer believes the United States has reached an inflection point in the psychedelics space, as some states and localities take various approaches to loosening laws and policies on these substances, which remain illegal under federal law.

The psychedelics market is quite different from cannabis: it’s much smaller and driven primarily by infrequent users – but Kilmer sees clear parallels in how things are starting to play out.

This reminds me a lot of where we were in 2012 [with cannabis]says Kilmer, “Now is the time for the federal government to decide: Does it want to get involved and shape the future of these state markets? Or does he want to stand aside and just observe the process? »

Sources 1/ https://Google.com/ 2/ https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/06/27/nx-s1-5021788/magic-mushrooms-psilocybin-microdosing-psychedelics-trends The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article

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