Is there more to magic mushrooms than psilocybin?
C&EN Global Enterprise October 20, 2025 Special To C En Mara Johnson-Groh
A facility in Vancouver, Canada, operated by Filament Health, produces enough psilocybin-containing magic mushrooms annually to provide hallucinogenic trips for 80,000 people, but these mushrooms are grown exclusively for research and clinical trials, not the black market. While most psychedelic research uses synthetic psilocybin, a small group of scientists argue that the therapeutic potential of magic mushrooms may involve more than just psilocybin, as over a dozen different compounds have been identified in them. This work suggests that natural mushroom extracts could reveal missing elements in psychedelic research.