Indiana lawmakers move bill to fund research on magic mushrooms for mental health treatment
Correction: Senate Bill 139 passed its first committee unanimously. A previous version of this story misstated the status of the bill.
Conventional medicine doesn't always cut it for people with the most stubborn, chronic illnesses, like treatment-resistant depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. So Indiana's medical professionals want funding to study an alternative: psilocybin, known more commonly as magic mushrooms.
Lawmakers are considering a bill to establish a state fund for researching the clinical use of so-called shrooms, a schedule I drug that the U.S. Food and Drug administration has given "breakthrough therapy" status to enable clinical research.
"This bill in no way seeks to legalize anything today that isn’t legal today ― I want to make that clear," Sen. Ed Charbonneau, R-Valparaiso, said in a Senate committee hearing Wednesday while introducing his bill, Senate Bill 139. "I want to elevate the discussion."
The positive effects of psilocybin have been documented in many mainstream journals by scientists at multiple research institutions, from Johns Hopkins University to New York University. A Johns Hopkins study found that shrooms curbed depression symptoms in patients with moderate to severe depression for up to a year.
"This is in no way fringe science," said Dr. Richard Feldman, a family physician and the former state health commissioner.
Psilocybin, a psychedelic chemical derived from certain mushrooms, works by improving brain plasticity, which is the ability for neurons in the brain — typically isolated from one another in depressed people — to communicate. Feldman calls it a "brain reset."
And unlike traditional anti-depressents, psilocybin doesn't show signs of suppressing other emotions, said Brandon Weiss, a researcher at Johns Hopkins.
It's not just for depression. Ken Maxwell, a veteran from North Carolina, testified that a clinical trial of magic mushrooms helped diminish the severity and frequency of his cluster headaches ― so debilitating and painful, he calls them "suicide headaches."
"It was psilocybin that made this disease managable and gave me my life back," he said.
The Senate Health and Provider Services committee passed the bill unanimously Wednesday. It now moves to Appropriations.
Contact IndyStar state government and politics reporter Kayla Dwyer at kdwyer@indystar.com or follow her on Twitter@kayla_dwyer17.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Magic mushrooms for depression? Indiana moves bill to fund research
