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If you are trying to quit smoking, there are quite a few medicine and programs to assist you in doing so. Because let’s be honest: smoking is one of the most dangerous forms of drug use there is (yes, both nicotine and alcohol are considered drugs), not just for your own health, but also for people close to you. We probably don’t have to tell you smoking isn’t really a good thing to do, but what we can tell you, is that there might be one rather magical solution to quitting smoking that you haven’t heard of yet...

Read: Magic Truffles, Peyote and Ayahuasca increase your psychological flexibility

Change of mindset

It may seem like we publish several beneficial effects about magic mushrooms and magic truffles every month, and well, you’re right. More and more research is being done on the subject, and besides several beneficial effects the fungi may have on your mental state of mind, it might also be a great tool to help you quit smoking. But don’t take our word for it: let the researchers at the John Hopkins University or the University of Durham convince you. 

In addition to being considered one of the safest drug out there, psilocybin has other magical effects. Dr. Matthew Johnson a  behavioral pharmacologist at the Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit at Johns Hopkins University, has been studying the correlation between drugs, the brain and human behavior for more than 20 years. For the last ten years, his focus has almost been completely on hallucinogenic mushrooms. In a six-year study, Johnson and a team of researchers worked with participants to analyze whether controlled psilocybin treatments could help them quit smoking.

So what happened? Well, the results were quite remarkable. All 15 participants were addicted smokers that consumed at least 19 cigarettes per day, every day for 31 years. They all had stopped smoking by various means, but always relapsed. Quite surprisingly (or not), 12 of the 15 subjects had completely quit smoking after six months after the use of carefully controlled psilocybin, a withdrawal rate much higher than other means. After the 12-month follow-up, 10 of the 15 participants were still stopped. 

Read: This engineered bacteria produces massive amounts of psilocybin

Psychedelic therapy

Johnson and his team call it psychedelic therapy: participants receive psilocybin capsules in high doses, but instead of a behavioral therapy in which they are invited to talk about their smoking habit, the researchers encouraged them to internalize it, especially as that the drug was beginning to take effect. This produced "deep and mystical experiences" that led these people to reassess why they smoked, and according to the study authors, participants had "vivid insights about their own identity and the reasons for their own smoking" in their sessions.

The researchers explained that this is not a plea in favor of ‘heal yourself’ or an incentive to use psychedelic drugs, but a proof that certain chemicals, accompanied by proper therapy, can lead to encouraging results to combat addiction. "Quitting smoking is not a simple biological reaction to psilocybin, as with other medications that affect nicotine receptors," Johnson said. "In a therapeutic context, psilocybin can lead to deep reflections on one's life and motivate change."