Editing Psilocybin (section)

====Cultural significance and "mystical" experiences====
[[File:Johns Hopkins psilocybin session room-SessionRm 2176x.jpg|thumb|In their studies on the psilocybin experience, Johns Hopkins researchers use peaceful music and a comfortable room to help ensure a comfortable setting, and experienced guides to monitor and reassure the volunteers.]]

Psilocybin mushrooms have been and continue to be used in [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Indigenous American]] cultures in religious, [[divinatory]], or [[spirituality|spiritual]] contexts. Reflecting the meaning of the word ''[[entheogen]]'' ("the god within"), the mushrooms are revered as powerful spiritual [[sacrament]]s that provide access to sacred worlds. Typically used in small group community settings, they enhance [[group cohesion]] and reaffirm traditional values.<ref name=Winkelman2007/> [[Terence McKenna]] documented the worldwide practices of psilocybin mushroom usage as part of a cultural [[ethos]] relating to the Earth and mysteries of nature, and suggested that mushrooms enhanced [[self-awareness]] and a sense of contact with a "Transcendent Other"—reflecting a deeper understanding of our connectedness with nature.<ref name=McKenna1992/>

Psychedelic drugs can induce states of [[consciousness]] that have lasting personal meaning and spiritual significance in religious or spiritually inclined people; these states are called [[mystical experience]]s. Some scholars have proposed that many of the qualities of a drug-induced mystical experience are indistinguishable from mystical experiences achieved through [[Religious experience#Causes of religious experiences|non-drug techniques]] such as meditation or [[holotropic breathwork]].<ref name=James1997/><ref name=Metzner1998/> In the 1960s, [[Walter Pahnke]] and colleagues systematically evaluated mystical experiences (which they called "mystical consciousness") by categorizing their common features. According to Pahnke, these categories "describe the core of a universal psychological experience, free from culturally determined philosophical or theological interpretations", and allow researchers to assess mystical experiences on a qualitative, numerical scale.<ref name=Pahnke1969/>

In the 1962 [[Marsh Chapel Experiment]], run by Pahnke at the [[Harvard Divinity School]] under Leary's supervision ,<ref name=Pahnke1966/> almost all the graduate degree [[seminary|divinity]] student volunteers who received psilocybin reported profound religious experiences.<ref name=Griffiths2008/> One of the participants was religious scholar [[Huston Smith]], author of several textbooks on [[comparative religion]]; he called his experience "the most powerful cosmic homecoming I have ever experienced."<ref name=Smith2000/> In a 25-year followup to the experiment, all the subjects given psilocybin said their experience had elements of "a genuine mystical nature and characterized it as one of the high points of their spiritual life".<ref name="Doblin_1991">{{Cite journal |author-link=Rick Doblin |vauthors=Doblin R |year=1991 |title=Pahnke's "Good Friday Experiment": a long-term follow-up and methodological critique |journal=Journal of Transpersonal Psychology |volume=23 |issue=1 |pages=1–25}}</ref>{{rp|13}} Psychedelic researcher [[Rick Doblin]] considered the study partially flawed due to incorrect implementation of the [[double-blind]] procedure and several imprecise questions in the mystical experience questionnaire. Nevertheless, he said that the study cast "considerable doubt on the assertion that mystical experiences catalyzed by drugs are in any way inferior to non-drug mystical experiences in both their immediate content and long-term effects".<ref name="Doblin_1991" />{{rp|24}} Psychiatrist William A. Richards echoed this sentiment, writing in a 2007 review, "[psychedelic] mushroom use may constitute one technology for evoking revelatory experiences that are similar, if not identical, to those that occur through so-called spontaneous alterations of brain chemistry."<ref name=Richards2008/>

A group of researchers from [[Johns Hopkins School of Medicine]] led by [[Roland Griffiths]] conducted a study to assess the immediate and long-term psychological effects of the psilocybin experience, using a modified version of the mystical experience questionnaire and a rigorous double-blind procedure.<ref name=Griffiths2006/> When asked in an interview about the similarity of his work to Leary's, Griffiths explained the difference: "We are conducting rigorous, systematic research with psilocybin under carefully monitored conditions, a route which Dr. Leary abandoned in the early 1960s."<ref name="JHMed: Griffiths Interview" /> Experts have praised the [[National Institute of Drug Abuse]]-funded study, published in 2006, for the soundness of its experimental design.{{efn|The academic communities' approval for the methodology employed is exemplified by the quartet of commentaries published in the journal ''[[Psychopharmacology (journal)|Psychopharmacology]]'' titled "[http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2006/GriffithsCommentaries.pdf Commentary on: Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual experience by Griffiths ''et al''.]", by HD Kleber (pp.&nbsp;291–292), DE Nichols (pp.&nbsp;284–286), CR Schuster (pp.&nbsp;289–290), and SH Snyder (pp.&nbsp;287–288).}} In the experiment, 36 volunteers with no experience with hallucinogens were given psilocybin and [[methylphenidate]] (Ritalin) in separate sessions; the methylphenidate sessions served as a [[Scientific control|control]] and psychoactive [[placebo]]. The degree of mystical experience was measured using a questionnaire developed by Ralph W. Hood;<ref name=Hood1975/> 61% of subjects reported a "complete mystical experience" after their psilocybin session, while only 13% reported such an outcome after their experience with methylphenidate. Two months after taking psilocybin, 79% of the participants reported moderately to greatly increased [[life satisfaction]] and sense of well-being. About 36% of participants also had a strong to extreme "experience of fear" or [[dysphoria]] (i.e., a "bad trip") at some point during the psilocybin session (which was not reported by any subject during the methylphenidate session); about one-third of these (13% of the total) reported that this dysphoria dominated the entire session. These negative effects were reported to be easily managed by the researchers and did not have a lasting negative effect on the subject's sense of well-being.<ref name="urlMedical News" />

A follow-up study 14{{nbsp}}months later confirmed that participants continued to attribute deep personal meaning to the experience. Almost a third of the subjects reported that the experience was the single most meaningful or spiritually significant event of their lives, and over two-thirds reported it was among their five most spiritually significant events. About two-thirds said the experience increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction.<ref name=Griffiths2008/> Even after 14 months, those who reported mystical experiences scored on average 4 percentage points higher on the personality trait of [[Openness to experience|Openness/Intellect]]; personality traits are normally stable across the lifespan for adults. Likewise, in a 2010 web-based questionnaire study designed to investigate user perceptions of the benefits and harms of hallucinogenic drug use, 60% of the 503 psilocybin users reported that their use of psilocybin had a long-term positive impact on their sense of well-being.<ref name=Amsterdam2011/><ref name=CarhartHarris2010/>

While many recent studies have concluded that psilocybin can cause mystical-type experiences of substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance, the medical community does not unanimously agree. Former director of the Johns Hopkins Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science [[Paul R. McHugh]] wrote in a book review: "The unmentioned fact in ''The Harvard Psychedelic Club'' is that LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and the like produce not a 'higher consciousness' but rather a particular kind of 'lower consciousness' known well to psychiatrists and neurologists—namely, '[[toxic]] [[delirium]].'"<ref>{{Cite web |date=April 1, 2010 |title=Paul McHugh reviews Don Lattin's "The Harvard Psychedelic Club." |url=https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-harvard-psychedelic-club-by-don-lattin/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190410190600/https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-harvard-psychedelic-club-by-don-lattin/ |archive-date=April 10, 2019 |access-date=April 10, 2019 |work=commentarymagazine.com}}</ref>