More Americans are using psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in psychedelic mushrooms.
A report published Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine found psilocybin use has been rising since 2019, after remaining relatively stable for years.
“That tells us something is changing,” said Kari Rockhill, an epidemiologist and assistant statistical scientist at Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Safety in Denver, who worked on the report.
In adults, a changing public perception of psychedelics is likely at the forefront of this shift — combined with decriminalization of psilocybin across several U.S. jurisdictions.
“We saw a similar phenomenon with cannabis when it started to be legalized across the country. There is probably a stigma around this that is going down,” Rockhill said.
In 2019, the city of Denver voted to decriminalize the Schedule I drug, allowing people to grow and gift, but not sell, psychedelic mushrooms that contain psilocybin. Oregon followed suit in 2020, and decriminalization expanded to the entire state of Colorado in 2022. Books like Michael Pollan’s “How to Change Your Mind” have also helped change public perception of psychedelics, said Dr. Todd Korthuis, an internist and addiction medicine specialist at Oregon Health and Science University.
“This is not surprising at all given the developments over the last 10 years,” said Korthuis, who is also co-director of the Open Psychedelic Evaluation Nexus, which conducts research on psychedelics.
Andrew Yockey, an assistant professor of public health at the University of Mississippi, added that an unregulated online market, mounting research that suggests psilocybin could be used as a treatment for mental health conditions, and a rise in microdosing also likely contributed to the increase in use. Indeed, the researchers found that psilocybin use was highest among adults with mental health or chronic pain conditions.
Rockhill and her team analyzed five national databases that included self-reported data on psilocybin use, calls made to 55 poison control centers, and medical records to get a picture of how many people used psilocybin across the nation from 2014 through 2023.
