Magic mushrooms could provide a new treatment for depression, according to a leading psychiatrist who is calling for a change in the law to allow him to conduct the first clinical trial of the hallucinogenic drug.
Prof David Nutt, of Imperial College London, claims that a dose of the key psychedelic ingredient in the fungi, equivalent to five magic mushrooms, can switch off parts of the brain involved in depression. In a small-scale study by his team, volunteers reported that their mood improved for up to two weeks after being injected with the drug. Prof Nutt, who is president of the British Neuroscience Association and a former government adviser on drug misuse, has been given £500,000 of funding to conduct the first clinical trial with a purified form of the illegal drug.
He said that the trial, which will involve 60 patients, would use a synthetically manufactured form of psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient in about 200 species known commonly as magic mushrooms. About one in 10 people in Britain suffers from depression each year, but at least 10 per cent of them fail to respond to treatment.
