As part of a science experiment 63 year old Eddie Marritz agreed to take psilocybin, the main ingredient in “magic mushrooms” that makes you hallucinate.

As he waited for the drug to take effect, Marritz remembers telling the doctors who sat by his side that he was afraid nothing was going to happen. Minutes later, he realized he’d spoken too soon. “Right after that, I just took off,”.

“There was so much feeling,” he says. “You’re kind of up there in a very celestial environment.”

The healing process

The “up there” Marritz says he reached during his trip mirrors a similar place that other patients who’ve participated in the study also describe.

Cancer survivor Estalyn Walcoff, for example, who participated in the same study in August 2012 after her own struggle with anxiety, recalls feeling an intense “sense of connectedness” during her psilocybin trip. “The worst pain and the worst fear and the worst anxiety turned into something that has opened, which is the most precious thing I’ve ever known,” she says in a separate video.

Marritz says his trip has enabled him to cope with life’s struggles and overcome the most debilitating parts of his anxiety.

“I think I’m better equipped to be with whatever life throws at me, or presents,” he says in the video. “That doesn’t mean that I don’t despair but I think I’m better equipped to face it.”

What’s happening inside the brain

Research on psilocybin is beginning to hint at what is going on inside the brains of people like Marritz and Fernandez when they take the drug.

In one recent study, scientists found that the drug appears to sprout new links across different areas of the brain — regions that typically don’t communicate with one another. As a result, the drug temporarily alters the brain’s entire organizational framework.

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Source: Business Insider