While some people take magic mushrooms solely for their psychoactive effects, researchers have also explored psilocybin’s potential therapeutic benefits.

Medical Use

Can shrooms help with medical conditions? Some say yes. In 2018, researchers from Johns Hopkins University recommended reclassification of psilocybin from Schedule I to Schedule IV in order to allow for medical use.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins found that psilocybin was an effective treatment for depression and nicotine and alcohol addictions, as well as other substance use disorders.5 Studies have also shown that magic mushrooms were effective for relieving the emotional distress of people with life-threatening cancer diagnoses.6

The Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins is also researching how psychedelics affect a variety of conditions such as:

• Alzheimer’s disease
• Anorexia nervosa
• Opioid addiction
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome

Shrooms are also sometimes utilized in a practice known as microdosing. Microdosing involves taking very small amounts of a drug to test its benefits while minimizing unwanted side effects.

One study found that people who self-medicated with small dosages of psilocybin were able to relieve cluster headaches while avoiding any psychoactive effects of the drug.7

It should be noted that researchers tend to advise against self-medicating with psilocybin for a few important reasons:

• Outside of a clinical setting, it may be harder to manage your anxiety and other unpleasant or unexpected experiences while under the influence (potentially leading to a bad trip)
• You may take too high of a dosage
• It’s hard to know the purity of the drug if you’re purchasing it from an unregulated source

All hallucinogens carry the risk of triggering mental and emotional problems and causing accidents while under the influence. Among adolescents, shrooms are frequently taken in combination with alcohol and other drugs, increasing the psychological and physical risks.

Consuming shrooms can result in a mild trip, with feelings of relaxation or drowsiness, to a frightening experience marked by hallucinations, delusions, and panic. In some cases, magic mushrooms have even been known to cause seizures.12

Physical Effects and Risks

Physical effects of psilocybin mushrooms include:

• Dilated pupils
• Drowsiness
• Headaches
• Increased heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature
• Lack of coordination
• Muscle weakness
• Nausea
• Yawning

It’s also common for magic mushroom products to be contaminated. One older study of 886 samples alleged to be psilocybin mushrooms were analyzed by Pharm Chem Street Drug Laboratory. Only 252 (28%) were actually hallucinogenic, while 275 (31%) were regular store-bought mushrooms laced with LSD or phencyclidine (PCP) and 328 (37%) contained no drug at all.13

Mental Effects and Risks

Mental effects of shrooms are:

• Distorted sense of time, place, and reality
• Euphoria
• Hallucinations (visual or auditory)
• Having introspective (spiritual) experiences
• Nervousness
• Panic reactions
• Paranoia
• Psychosis

Self-reports suggest that bad trips, medical emergencies, and long-term adverse outcomes can occur, particularly at high doses or when combined with other substances.14

Long-Term Effects of Shrooms

More research is needed on magic mushrooms’ long-term, lasting side effects. But it has been reported that people can experience long-term changes in personality and flashbacks long after taking mushrooms.