Our Unlimited Sciences Psilocybin Research Study Results

In 2019 I wrote in a private work exercise, alongside my co-founders Heather Jackson and Del Jolly, at Unlimited Sciences, the intentions I had for the future of the psychedelic movement…

“Our mission is to discover whether psilocybin can become a safe, scalable tool for mental health and wellness. My near term goal is to position our team to be able to make the biggest impact possible as psilocybin becomes adopted by the mainstream. We don’t yet know what form that should take so we will learn by collecting and categorizing a wide array of data, building allegiances and trust, and embracing people across the globe. Soon, we will become the go-to resource for practitioners, researchers, caregivers, and policy makers, to understand psychedelics and to safely bring them to their communities.”

I’m proud to share that this vision is coming to life! Our first initiative was to design a three-year longitudinal study, to observe the use, experience, and outcomes of people choosing to take psilocybin mushrooms — outside of the lab. 

I had the honor of interviewing and surveying an array of professionals with deep experience in the psychedelic medicine realm, from therapists to underground healers and retreat leaders; to find out what they would want to learn from a large-scale study like this one. We collaborated with leading researchers at The Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research to specify the study design and gain IRB approval.

Our observational, real-world, psilocybin study enrolled over 8,000 participants from across the world, making it the largest global study on psilocybin to-date.

The results, on average, showed persisting reductions in anxiety, depression, and alcohol misuse, increased cognitive flexibility, emotion regulation, spiritual wellbeing, and extraversion, and reduced neuroticism and burnout after psilocybin use. (For full results please read the original research article here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1199642/full)

I’m thankful to my co-founders, Heather Jackson and Del Jolly, for the beautiful and trusting collaboration we shared four years ago. I’m grateful to Albert Garcia, Matthew Johnson, Mary Cosimano, and the late Roland Griffiths 🙏, for their support in this ambitious initiative. I so appreciate the leadership of Dr. Matthew X. Lowe and his team, who have been carrying the torch at Unlimited Sciences since I transitioned to focus on our work at Maya Health. And I’m especially indebted to the thousands of participants willing to share (anonymously) their personal journeys with psilocybin in the name of science and progress for our society. 

This work has already spawned countless other initiatives spanning politics, activism, business, and harm prevention nation-wide. In 2020, preliminary data from our study was used to inform the Denver City Council in its implementation of Proposition 122 to decriminalize psilocybin. Now, with the study complete, the data has the potential to inform state-wide and federal legislation as well as best practices, harm prevention, and sustainable business models. 

We are entering an incredible new era for mental health and wellbeing, and I stay humbly devoted to this mission through all the challenges we face as pioneers in an emergent world.