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Psilocybin Use Dramatically Increasing In U.S.

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on April 23, 2025.

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, April 23, 2025 — Recreational use of “magic mushroom” psilocybin skyrocketed in the U.S. during the early 2020s, as states began toying with legalization of the psychedelic drug, a new study says.

The number of adults 30 and older who had used psilocybin in the past year increased by 188% between 2019 and 2023, researchers reported April 21 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Likewise, the number of 18- to 29-year-olds who had used psilocybin in the past year increased by 44%, and the number of high school seniors who had used the drug by 53%, results show.

“We found that since 2019, the number of people using psilocybin has gone up sharply,” co-lead investigator Karilynn Rockhill, a researcher at the University of Colorado School of Public Health, said in a news release. “This seems to line up with when some U.S. states began to decriminalize or legalize it.”

Colorado became the first state to legalize psilocybin in 2019, and Oregon voters followed suit in 2020.

Since then, psilocybin use has grown rapidly in the U.S., according to data researchers drew from five nationally representative sources.

“Public views on psilocybin are shifting. However, that means we also need to make sure people understand the risks, know how to use it safely if they choose to and that health care systems are prepared,” co-lead researcher Joshua Black, a senior scientist at Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Safety, a division of Denver Health, said in a news release.

Psilocybin has been studied as a possible treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and substance use disorder, but these uses have not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), researchers said in background notes.

But researchers found people likely are already self-treating using psilocybin:

• About 5.3% of adults with moderate to severe anxiety used psilocybin, compared with 1.7% of those with no or mild symptoms.

• About 5.2% of those with moderate to severe depression used psilocybin, compared with 1.6% of those with no or mild symptoms.

• About 3.4% of chronic pain patients used the drug, versus 1.6% without chronic pain.

“What really surprised us was how quickly these numbers changed and how many people using psilocybin had conditions like depression, anxiety or chronic pain,” Rockhill said. “New laws or growing interest in its potential mental health benefits may be prompting people to seek psilocybin as a form of self-treatment.”

Calls to U.S. poison centers regarding psilocybin ingestion also have increased dramatically — 201% among adults, 317% among teenagers and 723% among children between 2019 and 2023, researchers found.

“As these drugs are used more in the community, you will see more adverse events, because people are not using psilocybin in a controlled setting such as a clinical trial, which is the only scenario in which we have study data on benefits,” senior researcher Dr. Andrew Monte, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, told CNN.

Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

© 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Posted April 2025

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