This is why psychedelics will always remain interesting.
The last sentence!
The Phoenix New Times
Arizona’s first-in-the-nation clinical trial of magic mushrooms is one step closer to becoming a reality.
Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a hold on a clinical trial being run by the Scottsdale Research Institute, clearing a major hurdle for the organization to study the effects of whole magic mushrooms on humans.
Dr. Sue Sisley, the president and principal investigator at the Scottsdale lab, announced the big news Tuesday at a sparsely attended meeting of the Psilocybin Research Advisory Council, which is part of the Arizona Department of Health Services. The council — which consists of researchers, health department employees, a military veteran and a law enforcement officer — was created to disperse the $5 million in funding the Arizona Legislature allocated for studying magic mushrooms in 2023.
SRI’s study will be funded by a portion of that money. If it clears the remaining regulatory checkpoints, it will be the first trial on the planet to test natural mushrooms rather than isolated psilocybin molecules as treatments for patients with PTSD, chronic pain and opioid addiction.
There are several more steps to complete to get the study off the ground. But Sisley, who has been advocating for scientific research of Schedule I substances for decades, said getting off clinical hold is the hardest step in the process.
“It’s a huge milestone,” she told Phoenix New Times. “It says that we’ve reached all the criteria they had for standardizing natural mushrooms and guaranteeing the purity, potency and stability.”
Studying the effect of the whole mushroom is what makes SRI’s study unique, and what makes it trickier to organize. Mushrooms are more complex than just the psilocybin molecule and contain a mix of alkaloids and tryptamines that “work together synergistically” to exert effects on a person.
“When you extract one molecule out of the mushroom, you’re taking out some of the intelligence, but you’re leaving all the wisdom behind,” Sisley. “That’s what we believe and are hoping to prove in this study — but we’ll see what the data shows.”
Guaranteeing the mushroom dosages are standardized was a particularly challenging and costly process for Sisley’s team. She told the council that the lab invested in industrial-level technology to ensure homogeneity in the mushroom chocolates planned for use in the trial. SRI also grows its own mushrooms after obtaining the first-ever manufacturing license for psilocybin mushrooms from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency four years ago.
After 14 mushroom grow cycles and 40 official tests on their mushrooms, Sisley said the team has decided on one strain to use in its trials. When asked the name of the chosen strain, Sisley’s answer generated raucous laughter.
“It’s called Jedi Mind Fuck.”
