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One chilly Saturday night, a group of volunteers stood at the door of a heavily graffitied building in downtown San Francisco and welcomed visitors into a “plant” ceremony that they promised would heal bodies and souls.
Despite the late hour, this was definitely not a party. You could tell that by the gongs and the incense and the quiet. It was, the organisers said, an opportunity for “intentional transformation”. Once inside, participants were guided to a space on the floor of a dimly lit studio and handed a tiny piece of “magic mycelium” — also known as magic mushroom.
Possession of this substance is not legal in San Francisco — but you wouldn’t know that from the number of ceremonies that take place around the city. In the Tenderloin district, an organisation called The Living Church advertises “Breathwork at the Mushroom Church”. Across town, the Church of Ambrosia attracted attention last year for offering magic mushrooms as part of the sacrament. Founder Dave Hodges told local news site SF Gate that his congregation had grown to more than 115,000.
Throughout America, interest in the properties of psilocybin, the psychedelic component of magic mushrooms, has reached a record high. According to a study published by the Annals of Internal Medicine in April, over 2 per cent of adults reported taking mushrooms by 2023 — more than the number who admit using cocaine.
Proselytisers include OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, who described his experiences as “totally incredible” and Peter Thiel, who backed psychedelic biopharmaceutical start-up Atai Life Sciences. Elon Musk has denied a recent report that he consumes copious drugs, including mushrooms. However, last year he told an interviewer that he took ketamine — an anaesthetic with psychedelic characteristics — “once every other week or something like that”.
The most vocal psychedelic proponents say their focus is healing, not getting high. They claim the hallucinations psilocybin produces calm anxiety and tap into a lasting sense of peace. Author Michael Pollan, who co-founded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (BCSP), once wrote that it can relieve “existential distress”.
Clinical trials show that psilocybin increases brain entropy (a measure of brain activity complexity), disrupting existing patterns. In other words, it can help you to think in different ways. (You can see why this might be popular with people in the tech sector who pride themselves on new ideas.)
At the San Francisco plant ceremony, the group spent four hours lying down without speaking. Afterwards, one described seeing visions of a jungle. Another said she saw her grandmother. Most looked cheerful, if a little spaced out, as they filed through the doors and headed home.
As public interest in mushrooms grows, legal barriers are being relaxed. In April, Colorado issued its first licence to a Denver psilocybin healing centre. Oregon and Colorado have voted to legalise therapeutic use of psilocybin (though a number of cities in Oregon later opted to ban it.) Oakland in California has decriminalised the drug.
California’s history of experimentation might suggest that the entire state would take a positive approach to mushrooms. The smell of weed is far more prevalent than cigarette smoke (Californians really, really hate cigarettes). But in 2022, governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a proposal to decriminalise hallucinogens over concerns at the lack of guidelines. At the end of last year, the Church of Ambrosia announced that it would close its San Francisco centre: the city’s planning department had accused it of safety violations.
Pollan thinks the path to federal approval is clinical not recreational. A study conducted by the BCSP found that six in 10 voters were supportive of regulated therapeutic access to psychedelics, particularly for those suffering from terminal illnesses (80 per cent), veterans (69 per cent) and depression (67 per cent). Campaigners for legalisation still need to convince lawmakers that magic mushrooms are better used for support than spacing out.
elaine.moore@ft.com
