By Ryan Morgan
DENVER, Colorado—When Kevin Matthews left the Army he went missing-in-action from the career in service that he planned, and the comrades he had gathered along the way; the only ally he had at his side was equally likely to save him from despair or land him in prison.
Possessing psilocybe cubensis, more commonly referred to as a ‘magic mushroom,’ is a felony offense that can land someone in prison for up to a year and can cost as much as $100,000 in fines, according to Colorado law.
‘Magic Mushrooms’ have been federally prohibited for more than four decades, following the passage of the The Controlled Substance Act of 1970. The act introduced the restriction of many recreational drugs in the United States and as the United Nations followed suit with The Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971, the illicit fungi were placed at the highest scrutiny. The establishment of the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration in 1973, centralized the enforcement of these drug-control statutes that became known colloquially as the War on Drugs.
Despite these risks, researchers and psychonauts alike have been drawn to these magic mushrooms and other psychedelic drugs for decades. The allure: recreation, transcendent experience and -according to recent research- the potential to treat depression.
Matthews is among one of those who turned to the psychedelic mushrooms to deal with his depression. Throughout his life, Matthews had shaped his life towards a career in the military.
“For as long as I can remember, I had always wanted to be a career army officer, going as far back to 9-years-old,” Matthews said.
His goal for a military career was shaped by the support of his family and he strove toward discipline, leadership roles and extracurricular activities throughout high school was made in an effort to carve a path towards the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Matthews obtained his West Point appointment in 2005 and approached his freshman year like most other cadets; soaking in the depths of the school’s competitive environment and treading those waters with the dedication to his country that he shared with the highly motivated student body.
“My second year, things started to go a little bit downhill and it was my third year where I was actually diagnosed with major depression,” Matthews said. “The army doesn’t necessarily have the tools, nor do I think should they necessarily have the tools to actually work with an individual like myself who is suffering from depression.”
Matthews said he tried to persevere for a time. He said he saw a psychiatrist and was placed on an anti-depressant and a sleep aid. For about three months the treatment seemed to at least place a “subtle overlay” over Matthew’s negative feelings, but the darkness continued to build and Matthews said he had no idea how to help himself, but to put all of his faith on his anti-depressant pill.
“I was suicidal,” Matthews finally admitted to his supervisors.
After a short medical leave, the reality set in, there would be no path forward for Matthews. In December of 2008, he was medically retired as an honorable discharge from the Army.
Matthews returned to his hometown in Denver, Colorado and waited for reality to set in.
“I had the whole like 50-year plan and had planned to just dedicate my entire existence to serving in the US military,” Matthews said. “My foundation for myself and my personality kind of crumbled beneath my eyes.”
With his career prospects cut short by depression, Matthews began his efforts to start anew.
“It’s kind of cliché but I was getting into self help and meditation,” Matthews said. He began seeking out parts of the Denver community who practiced “spiritual and esoteric modalities.”
His first time trying magic mushrooms was a carefully planned one, with days spent beforehand trying to cultivate a mindset suited for handling the intensity of a psychedelic trip, and Matthews said it was important to take his trip alongside people he trusted.
“It blew my perspective right open,” He said. “All of a sudden the fog had lifted, the clouds dissipated. I could see my life clearly. I could see the world clearly. It’s like my soul had a new set of eyes to look through.”
Matthews said it is difficult to put into words the spiritual elements of a psychedelic experience, but the trip was one part of a fascination with shaman cultures and records of such cultures using psychedelic experiences for healing and rights of passage.
The indication, to Matthew, was almost immediate that his psychedelic experience might be the start of a more positive outlook. The psychedelic element of his first trip could have lasted only a few hours, but Matthews said the positivity of the experience was a mindset that stayed with him for weeks and months afterwards.
Researchers from New York University and Johns Hopkins University have had a similar fascination with these magic mushrooms and have studied psychedelics with increasing prominence in recent years. The latter published a 2016 study suggesting a link between the psilocybin - the psychedelic property of these magic mushrooms- and a decrease in depression and anxiety among patients with cancer.
Proponents of psychedelics have turned to these compounds, suggesting their effect was a religious experience; a journey of knowledge; a way to re-arrange the troubles of the world. The late Terrence McKenna, being one of the most famous psychonauts, referred to magic mushrooms as “the teaching voice.”
McKenna suggested psychedelic drugs “invoke the logos… they work directly on the language centers, so that an important aspect of the experience is the interior dialogue.”
Put somewhat more clinically by Johns Hopkins Researcher Roland Griffith, during a 2016 Ted talk in support of his research, “under supported conditions, psilocybin can occasion mystical type experiences associated with enduring positive changes in attitudes, moods and behaviors.”
The psychedelic “interior dialogue” of McKenna’s conception could be the tool by which Griffith sees mystical experiences affecting these positive changes in mental state.
Among the Johns Hopkins studies, 51 subjects with a life-threatening cancer diagnoses were treated with psilocybin, in an effort to examine the effects on their depression. Griffith said about 80 percent of subjects with a high dose of the drug showed “clinically significant improvements” six months beyond the initial test. He added that 70 percent of the high dose subjects returned to a mental state consistent with people who are not depressed.
As with Matthew’s first time experience, the potential to offer a solution that, in one dose, could offer months of relief has been an appeal to researchers studying the potential for new treatment of depression.
In a separate study conducted among healthy volunteers, around 90 percent of Griffith’s test subjects reported increased positive moods and better social relationships -moods and behaviors not associated with depression and anxiety. Griffith added interviews of friends and family of those test subjects, who most often concurred with the assessment of the subject; not only the subjects, but the people in their lives believe the treatment was beneficial to their mental health.
Further contributions to the study of psychedelics have evolved the theory of how these magic mushrooms may re-wire or re-train the brain around a traumatic mental block. Increasingly, the concept of a “Default-Mode Network” or DMN has come to describe a pathway of the human brain that encompasses several key areas of thought processing that contribute to introspection. Some scientists believe that, over time, this DMN may learn a habitual form of negative and self-destructive introspection that can contribute to a person’s depression. A 2016 study, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, suggested that the DMN is suppressed under the effects of psychedelic compounds, causing the human brain to use new and novel pathways to handle introspective thought, which in turn may help resolve this depression.
While these suggestions and research about psychedelic compounds continue to challenge the concept of their overall harmfulness, these studies are not the first to suggest Psilocybin’s medical viability. In the 1960s, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz marketed a psilocybin-based drug as Indocybin, for use in psychedelic therapy. Psychedelic therapy would commonly feature the administration of the psychedelic before patients would lay down in relative isolation, with darkened shades and quiet non-lyrical music; taking the duration of their psychedelic ‘trip’ to relax and focus their minds inward. Therapists would then take the time after the ‘trip’ to engage in a therapeutic dialogue.
Indocybin’s product history was short-lived and fell out of medical use amid the growing concerns of an unchecked drug-culture in the US at the outset of the colloquial ‘war on drugs.’ Sandoz discontinued the product in 1965 and psychedelics were mostly relegated to a status as an illicit substance.
To Matthews, the shifts in medical thinking seem like clear evidence but what stands between him and the treatment he believes will benefit his life and the lives of others who have similar depression, is a re-examination of the state and national drug enforcement laws that could not only leave him with the cost of fines and prison time, but also separate him from his wife and 4-year-old son.
Magic mushrooms are a schedule 1 drug, seen by the law enforcement agencies as substances with no medical benefits and which are considered to have the highest potential for abuse. Schedule 1 drugs are classified for being the most dangerous, having the greatest potential for psychological and physical dependence. These magic mushrooms are ranked schedule 1 alongside marijuana -a substance already recreationally available in 10 states and medically available in 33 states; LSD, ecstasy, peyote and heroin – which killed 15,000 people in 2017, according to the Center for Disease Control.
The lower schedules of drug classification include Schedule II drugs which have a high potential for risk, but less potential for abuse than Schedule I drugs; Schedule III drugs which have a moderate to low potential for abuse and dependence; Schedule IV drugs which have a low potential for abuse and Schedule V drugs which contain limited preparations of narcotics, low enough to present no risk for abuse.
Ranked comparatively, these Schedule I drugs are above Schedule II drugs like cocaine, meth and fentanyl. These Schedule I drugs are also ranked for being more dangerous than schedule 3 drugs which include limited doses of Vicodin and Codeine, Ketamine, anabolic steroid and other testosterone supplements. Schedule IV drugs, including Xanax, Valium and Ambien are also seen to present a lower risk than Schedule I drugs.
Despite this highest risk classification, proponents of magic mushrooms have begun to argue a re-classification is in order.
The 2017 report of the Global Drug Survey that examines which drugs contribute most to emergency medical treatment, mushrooms ranked lowest of all, leading to .2 percent of a 10,000-participant sample size, indicating an approximate 200 people requiring emergency medical treatment out of 10,000.
Cannabis as the second lowest and LSD as the third lowest. Cocaine is featured as the fourth lowest, while methamphetamine, synthetic cannabis and alcohol are featured as the first, second and third most dangerous substances, respectively. Absent from the survey are responses on heroin and fentanyl use or prescription drug abuse.
No drug use is inherently risk-free and while the survey only reports information on the need for emergency medical treatment, less information is available for other adverse medical risks that don’t translate to hospitalization or death from overdose. Similarly, these findings may be flawed as a result of respondents choosing to under-report their hospitalization by magic mushrooms in the survey, and perhaps more experienced users may be able to down-play ‘bad trip’ experiences that would illicit different needs for emergency response from one person to the next.
Despite this consideration, it is apparent from the Global Drug Survey that magic mushrooms are approximately a third as likely to cause emergency hospitalization than the next lowest-risk drug, marijuana.
Much like marijuana -another schedule 1 drug which has been medically embraced in 33 states, Matthews believes magic mushrooms are due for a national conversation which could dramatically shift this drug from the highest schedule drug to the lowest concern of law enforcement and a much lower risk consideration by healthcare professionals alike.
“What we have right now is not working. What’s FDA approved is not working,” Matthews said. So many Americans are actually now turning to alternative medicine, alternative substances to address these issues."
Matthews is starting small. He isn’t posing the question at the national level. He isn’t even taking the question to his home state of Colorado as a whole. Instead, he has proposed a ballot initiative within the confines of Denver’s city limits. The initiative would not make magic mushrooms recreationally legal. It would not make the mushrooms available by prescription. It would simply place the mushrooms as the lowest law enforcement priority, preventing the city from expending law-enforcement resources to impose criminal penalties against personal possession and use by people twenty-one years old or older.
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