From Mystic mushrooms spawn magic event:
The study volunteers had an average age of 46, had never used hallucinogens, and participated to some degree in religious or spiritual activities such as prayer, meditation, discussion groups or religious services. Each tried psilocybin during one visit to the lab and the stimulant methylphenidate (better known as Ritalin) on one or two other visits. Only six of the volunteers knew when they were getting psilocybin.Each visit lasted eight hours. The volunteers lay on a couch in a living-room-like setting, wearing an eye mask and listening to classical music. They were encouraged to focus their attention inward.
Psilocybin’s effects lasted for up to six hours, Griffiths said. Twenty-two of the 36 volunteers reported having a “complete” mystical experience, compared with four of those getting methylphenidate.
That experience included such things as a sense of pure awareness and a merging with ultimate reality, a transcendence of time and space, a feeling of sacredness or awe, and deeply felt positive mood like joy, peace and love. People say “they can’t possibly put it into words,” Griffiths said.
Two months later, 24 of the participants filled out a questionnaire. Two-thirds called their reaction to psilocybin one of the five top most meaningful experiences of their lives. On another measure, one-third called it the most spiritually significant experience of their lives, with another 40 percent ranking it in the top five.
About 80 percent said that because of the psilocybin experience, they still had a sense of well-being or life satisfaction that was raised either “moderately” or “very much.”
Of course the real news isn’t that magic mushrooms cause a religious experience. The real news is that this is mainstream science, getting coverage on CNN:
Funded in part by the federal government, the research was published online Tuesday by the journal Psychopharmacology.
[...]
Charles Schuster, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and a former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, called the work a landmark.“I believe this is one of the most rigorously well-controlled studies ever done” to evaluate psilocybin or similar substances for their potential to increase self-awareness and a sense of spirituality, he said. He did not participate in the research.
(Hat tip to mi amigo Todd.)