How Magic Mushrooms Can Help Smokers Kick The Habit

"Carine Chen-McLaughlin smoked for more than 40 years."

"She didn't want to be a smoker. She'd tried to stop literally dozens of times over the decades. But she always came back."

"Smoking was 'one of my oldest, dearest friends,' she said of her habit. 'To not have that relationship was very, very scary.'"

"Then she heard about a clinical trial to treat nicotine addiction with something a little unusual: magic mushrooms. Well, not actual magic mushrooms, but a little pill of a drug called psilocybin. It's the ingredient in mushrooms that gives people hallucinogenic visions."

"New research shows that psilocybin may be an effective treatment for diseases like depression and addiction. While the work is still in its early stages, there are signs that psilocybin might help addicts shake the habit by causing the brain to talk with itself in different ways."

"'These brain changes lead to, often times, a sense of unity,' says Matthew Johnson, an experimental psychologist at Johns Hopkins University. It all may sound a little 'woo-woo,' he admits, but it seems to be working. Early results suggest that psilocybin, coupled with therapy, may be far more effective than other treatments for smoking, such as the nicotine patch.