For Better Therapy, Just Add Mushrooms
For Better Therapy, Just Add Mushrooms This story is part of Fungi Week!, a deep dive into the myriad ways mushrooms and fungi make the planet a healthier place for all its inhabitants. It is supported by UPIC Health. O ne day, psychologist Brian Pilecki watched one of his patients travel back in time. Pilecki, a clinical mental health provider in Portland, Oregon, is licensed in the state to facilitate sessions where people take a dose of psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in more than 200 species of mushrooms. His time-traveling client was haunted by trauma from his youth and had struggled with depression through his life. What psilocybin enabled the patient to do, says Pilecki, is inhabit his childhood memories. Over the course of six hours, the man revisited distressing moments from his childhood and had conversations with adults who had shaped his early years, people he’d never been able to speak with in that way before — all without ever leaving the treatment facility. “He was…
