Magic mushrooms really cause ‘spiritual’ experiences
From New Scientist - Magic mushrooms really cause 'spiritual' experiences
“Magic” mushrooms really do have a spiritual effect on people, according to the most rigorous look yet at this aspect of the fungus's active ingredient.
About one-third of volunteers in the carefully controlled new study had a “complete” mystical experience after taking psilocybin, with half of them describing their encounter as the single most spiritually significant experience in their lifetimes.
Griffiths's team recruited 36 healthy volunteers who had not experimented with the drug before. They were informed that they would receive a hallucinogen but did not know in which of two or three sessions they would receive it. Each session was separated by two months.
They either received a substantial dose – about 30 milligrams – of psilocybin or a similar dose of an "active" placebo, Ritalin. The latter has a stimulating effect but is not known as a hallucinogen. An inactive placebo would be easy to identify by the volunteers when compared to psilocybin, which could bias the experiences they reported.
The researchers used psychological questionnaires and found that 22 of the 36 volunteers had a “complete” mystical experience after taking psilocybin – far more than the four who reported this type of experience after taking Ritalin.
More than one-third of the volunteers said that their encounter with psilocybin was the single most spiritually significant experience in their lifetimes – no person given Ritalin said the same. Experts say the study is the most rigorous study of psilocybin’s potential to elicit spiritual feelings because it is the first to use an active control.
I'm not exactly sure what this proves. What exactly is a "complete" mystical experience? As opposed to a partial mystical experience?
mystical. adjective; inspiring a sense of spiritual mystery, awe, and fascination.
spiritual. adjective; of, relating to, or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.
So they've really just proved that people say its mystical/spiritual. They should have used meth amphetimine as the other one instead of Ritalin. That would have been actually interesting. Anyone could have told them that shrooms are more 'spiritual' and Ritalin.