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Review

Psilocybin for Treating Psychiatric Disorders: Is it a Psychonaut Legend or a Promising Therapeutic Perspective?

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Submitted:

25 June 2021

Posted:

28 June 2021

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Abstract
Psychedelics extracted by plants have been used in religious, spiritual and mystic practices for millennia. In 1957, Dr. Hofmann have identified and synthesized the prodrug psilocybin, a substance present in more than 200 species of psychedelic mushrooms. Although the limitations related to the scientific design of many studies, clinical observations performed during the 1950s and the 1960s have shown a potential therapeutic effect of psilocybin in patients affected by depressive symptoms, anxiety, and conversion disorder. Psilocybin was classed as a schedule I substance in 1970, but the fascination for psychedelics remained almost unchanged over time promoting a new scientific interest starting from the 1990s. Recent studies provided further evidences supporting the suggestive hypothesis of a therapeutic use of psilocybin for treating various psychiatric disorders including: pathological anxiety, mood depressive disorder and addiction.
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Subject: Medicine and Pharmacology  -   Immunology and Allergy
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.
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