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A study on rats found that daily doses of psilocin mucate, a stable salt of psilocin (the main psychoactive metabolite responsible for the psychoactive effects of psilocybin, a psychedelic drug) produced significant reductions in the levels of the stress hormone cortisol and improved rats’ performance in several behavioral tests indicative of anxiety. However, giving psilocin mucate once a week did not produce significant results. The paper was published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs.
Anxiety disorders are a group of mental health conditions characterized by excessive fear, worry, or apprehension that interferes with everyday functioning. They include conditions such as generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, specific phobias, and agoraphobia.
Anxiety itself is a normal response to potential threats, but in anxiety disorders this response becomes unusually intense, persistent, or triggered by situations that pose little actual danger. These disorders typically develop through a combination of genetic vulnerability, differences in brain and stress-response systems, temperament, learning experiences, and stressful or adverse life events.
Avoiding feared situations can provide immediate relief but may also strengthen anxiety over time by preventing people from learning that the situations they fear can mostly be safely tolerated. Psychological treatments, particularly cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure-based approaches, help people change patterns of thinking and behavior that maintain anxiety, while antidepressant medications such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) can also be effective.
Study author Frederick D. Sancilio and his colleagues note that psilocybin (a psychedelic drug) reduces anxiety, but can also lead to hallucinations, which are an adverse, unwanted effect of the treatments using psilocybin. These effects are produced primarily by psilocin, a compound the body creates from psilocybin that is responsible for its psychoactive effects.Sancilio and his colleagues conducted a study in which they examined the anxiety-reducing (anxiolytic) effects of psilocin mucate (a stable salt of psilocin) on rats.
The study was conducted on sixty healthy 6-8-week-old Wistar rats. 30 of them were male. The rats were divided into 5 experimental groups. One was a control group, not exposed to any experimental treatment. The remaining four groups were exposed to a series of mild anxiety-inducing events designed to create mild chronic stress and thus anxiety-like symptoms.
The four groups differed in the treatment they were receiving. The treatments lasted 4 weeks. One group received a control substance (with no expected psychoactive effects) daily, the second group received it once a week. The third group received psilocin mucate daily, and the fourth group received it once a week.
After the treatments, the rats completed a series of behavioral tests designed to assess anxiety-like behaviors (such as observing how much rats avoid open or elevated spaces, or how they interact with new objects during the Elevated Plus Maze, the Open Field Test, and the Novel Object Recognition Task). Afterwards, they were euthanized and study authors analyzed their blood, measuring the levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
Results showed that daily dosing of psilocin mucate led to significant reductions in cortisol levels compared to the stressed control group. Rats that received a daily dose of psilocin mucate also showed improved performance on the behavioral tests assessing anxiety-like behaviors. However, weekly dosing did not produce significant effects.
“Overall, daily dosing of L-130 [psilocin mucate] was able to produce anxiolytic [anti-anxiety] behaviors, but larger studies are needed to determine optimal doses and dosing schedules,” study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the scientific knowledge about anxiolytic effects of psilocin mucate. However, it should be noted that the study was conducted on rats, not on humans. While rats and humans share many physiological similarities, they are still very different species. Because of that, effects on humans might differ.
The paper, “Daily Administration of Psilocin Mucate (L-130) Produces a Favorable Safety Profile and Anxiolytic Effects in Rodents Exposed to Chronic Unpredictable Mild Stress,” was authored by Frederick D. Sancilio, Maghsoud Dariani, Purvi Chavda, Harsha Mysore Rajagopal, and Lyl Tomlinson.