“More parts of the brain are talking to more parts of the brain,” said Dr. Michael Bogenschutz, director of the NYU Langone Center for Psychedelic Medicine, who led the research.
Less is known about how enduring those new connections might be. In theory, combined with talk therapy, people might be able to break bad habits and adopt new attitudes more easily.
“There’s a possibility of really shifting in a relatively permanent way the functional organization of the brain,” Bogenschutz said.
Patients described life-changing insights that gave them lasting inspiration, Bogenschutz said.
Mary Beth Orr, 69, of Burien, Washington, said her psilocybin-induced hallucinations — flying over breathtaking landscapes and merging telepathically with creative people throughout history — taught her she wasn’t alone.
Before enrolling in the study in 2018, Orr had five or six drinks every evening and more on weekends.
“The quantity was unacceptable and yet I couldn’t stop,” she said. “There was no off switch that I could access.”
During her first psilocybin experience, she saw a vision of her late father, who gave her a pair of eagle eyes and said, “Go.” She told the therapists monitoring her: “These eagle eyes can’t see God’s face, but they know where it is.”
She stopped drinking entirely for two years, and now has an occasional glass of wine. More than the talk therapy, she credits psilocybin.
“It made alcohol irrelevant and uninteresting to me,” Orr said. Now, “I am tethered to my children and my loved ones in a way that just precludes the desire to be alone with alcohol.”
Patients receiving psilocybin had more headaches, nausea and anxiety than those getting the dummy drug. One person reported thoughts of suicide during a psilocybin session.
