Magic mushroom and DMT words, defined.

A serotonin receptor that 5-MeO-DMT binds more strongly than any other, which researchers suspect helps explain why it feels different from DMT. DMT and psilocin bind it too, more weakly.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is 5-HT1A receptor?

A serotonin receptor on brain cells that classic psychedelics switch on. Blocking it stopped the effects of psilocybin and LSD in human studies, which is why researchers see it as the main target.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is 5-HT2A receptor?

A serotonin receptor closely related to 5-HT2A. Several psychedelics bind it, including DMT, mescaline and bufotenine, but animal studies point to 5-HT2A rather than 5-HT2C as the key switch.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is 5-HT2C receptor?

The time it takes for the concentration of a drug in the blood to fall by half. Psilocin’s is measured in hours and DMT’s in minutes; a half-life is not a countdown to zero.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Half-life?

A substance that produces hallucinations. The word was first recorded in the early 1950s and is common in law and medicine; “psychedelic” and “entheogen” were coined partly as alternatives with a different emphasis.

Words and history · Read more: what is Hallucinogen?

A questionnaire built for Rick Strassman’s 1990s DMT studies that rates bodily feeling, mood, perception, thinking, sense of control and overall intensity after a session.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Hallucinogen Rating Scale?

Public-health measures that aim to lower the health, social and economic harms of substance use without requiring people to stop using. Drug checking and supervised consumption sites are Canadian examples.

Safety · Read more: what is Harm reduction?

β-carboline alkaloids in ayahuasca that block the enzyme MAO-A, so DMT is not broken down first in the gut and liver when the brew is swallowed. In Canada, harmaline and harmalol are Schedule III items; harmine is not named.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Harmine and harmaline?

A set of psilocybin studies led by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert at Harvard from autumn 1960 to the end of 1962. It ended in dispute and in Alpert’s dismissal in May 1963.

Words and history · Read more: what is Harvard Psilocybin Project?

A quick side-to-side head movement in mice and rats that researchers use as a marker of psychedelic-like activity. It depends on the 5-HT2A receptor, but it is a proxy, not the human experience.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Head-twitch response?

The federal department responsible for helping Canadians maintain and improve their health. It administers the drug laws that cover psilocybin, decides exemptions and Special Access requests, and authorizes clinical trials.

Law and access · Read more: what is Health Canada?

A private hospital in New Westminster, British Columbia, where medical director J. Ross MacLean ran a fee-paying LSD therapy program from the late 1950s. Its reports had no control groups, and it closed in 1975.

Words and history · Read more: what is Hollywood Hospital?

The one specimen or illustration on which the name of a species is based. It fixes what the name refers to. It does not show that any other mushroom, picture or product carrying that name is the same species.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Holotype?

The movement of genes between separate lineages rather than from parent to offspring. It is the leading explanation for why psilocybin genes appear in unrelated mushroom genera.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Horizontal gene transfer?

High-performance liquid chromatography: a lab method that separates the compounds in a liquid sample so each can be measured. Paired with a detector, it was used for early psilocin studies and some DMT brain work.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is HPLC?

Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder: a diagnosis for people who keep re-experiencing perceptual symptoms, mostly visual, after a hallucinogen has worn off, with distress or impairment. Reviews call it real but uncommon.

Safety · Read more: what is HPPD?

A Mazatec town in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico, and home of María Sabina. After Wasson’s 1957 Life article it drew outsiders seeking mushrooms, followed by deportations and lasting change.

Words and history · Read more: what is Huautla de Jiménez?

A British psychiatrist who moved to the Weyburn Mental Hospital in Saskatchewan in 1951, ran LSD and mescaline studies with Abram Hoffer, and coined the word “psychedelic” in 1956–57.

Words and history · Read more: what is Humphry Osmond?

A Canadian offence that the Crown may prosecute either by indictment, with a higher maximum penalty, or by summary conviction, with a lower one. Most drug offences involving psilocybin are hybrid.

Law and access · Read more: what is Hybrid offence?

DMT with one extra methoxy group on the ring, which makes it a different drug. It binds most strongly to the 5-HT1A receptor, and in Canada it is not named in the drug schedules; its sale falls under the Food and Drugs Act.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is 5-MeO-DMT?

A phrase popularized by the American writer Terence McKenna for small, shape-shifting, mechanical-seeming beings some people describe meeting on DMT. In 3,778 coded online reports, machine elves were 2.9% of entity encounters.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Machine elves?

The Montgomery–Åsberg Depression Rating Scale, a 10-item, clinician-rated depression score. It is the main outcome in many psilocybin, DMT and esketamine trials.

Research and trials · Read more: what is MADRS?

An everyday name for fungi that contain psilocybin. Merriam-Webster dates the phrase to 1957, the year Life ran “Seeking the Magic Mushroom”. The word “magic” is not a translation of any Indigenous name for these mushrooms.

Words and history · Read more: what is Magic mushroom?

Monoamine oxidase A, the enzyme that clears DMT and also serotonin and other signalling molecules. Blocking it lets swallowed DMT survive, which is how ayahuasca works and why it carries interaction risks.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is MAO-A?

A dangerous reaction that can follow combining a drug that blocks monoamine oxidase with certain medicines, other drugs or foods. Reported outcomes include serotonin toxicity and sudden rises in blood pressure.

Safety · Read more: what is MAOI interaction?

A Mazatec sabia, or wise woman, from Huautla de Jiménez in Oaxaca, Mexico, who died in 1985. Her 1955 velada was described by R. Gordon Wasson in Life in 1957, after which outsiders came to her town and she was blamed and stigmatised there.

Words and history · Read more: what is María Sabina?

An Indigenous people of the Sierra Mazateca in Oaxaca, Mexico, whose healers use psilocybin mushrooms in night ceremonies. Outsiders’ accounts of Mazatec practice, above all Wasson’s 1957 article, shaped the Western history of these mushrooms.

Words and history · Read more: what is Mazatec?

MDMA given during structured psychotherapy, studied mainly for PTSD. Two phase 3 trials reported benefits, but the FDA declined to approve it in August 2024.

Research and trials · Read more: what is MDMA-assisted therapy?

The main psychoactive alkaloid of the peyote and San Pedro cacti, a phenethylamine rather than a tryptamine. It acts at 5-HT2A receptors and lasts longer than psilocybin or LSD in trials.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Mescaline?

A statistical method that combines the results of several studies into one overall estimate. It is only as good as the studies it pools.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Meta-analysis?

Regularly taking a very small amount of a psychedelic, usually described as below the level of obvious effects. Placebo-controlled studies have mostly found no reliable difference from placebo, and long-term safety is not established.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Microdosing?

Naming a mushroom as the wrong species. In a safety sense it means eating a poisonous mushroom in the belief that it is something else; research shows experts, museum records and apps get names wrong too.

Safety · Read more: what is Misidentification?

Gummies, chocolates and other edibles sold as “mushroom” or “shroom” products whose contents differ from the label. Lab tests and a 2024 US outbreak found missing psilocybin, Amanita compounds and undisclosed synthetic drugs.

Safety · Read more: what is Mislabeled mushroom edibles?

A phrase people use for the sense that a DMT experience felt more real than everyday life. How often it appears depends on whether people are asked, and the feeling shows how intense an experience was, not whether its contents exist.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is More real than real?

A name that treats the ayahuasca brew as a feminine being rather than a drink. Anthropologists describe the framing as especially popular among Westerners; research describes the belief but does not test it.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Mother Ayahuasca?

The main active compounds of the fly agaric, Amanita muscaria. They act on the brain’s GABA and glutamate systems, not on serotonin receptors, so the fly agaric is not a psilocybin mushroom.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Muscimol and ibotenic acid?

Small carved stone sculptures shaped like a mushroom, found mostly in highland Guatemala and also in El Salvador and southern Mexico. Many scholars link them to ritual mushroom use, but their age and purpose are still disputed.

Words and history · Read more: what is Mushroom stones?

A two-volume 1957 book by Valentina and R. Gordon Wasson on the place of mushrooms in culture, published in a limited edition. It includes their Mexican work and the first argument that Mesoamerican mushroom stones were mushroom effigies.

Words and history · Read more: what is Mushrooms, Russia and History?

The network of fine threads, called hyphae, that makes up the main body of a fungus. Mushrooms and sclerotia are both built from it, but they are different structures.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Mycelium?

The medical term for poisoning from eating a mushroom. Effects range from stomach upset to liver failure depending on the toxin, and some of the most dangerous poisonings begin hours after the meal.

Safety · Read more: what is Mycetism?

An online registry of fungal names and one of three repositories recognized by the naming code. Since 2013 every new fungal name must cite an identifier from a repository like it.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is MycoBank?

A questionnaire, usually the 30-item MEQ30, that people fill in after a psychedelic session to rate mystical-type features such as unity, sacredness and a sense of timelessness.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Mystical Experience Questionnaire?

A German-born self-report questionnaire that rates altered states of consciousness along five dimensions, including oceanic boundlessness and dread of ego dissolution. It is widely used in psilocybin, LSD and DMT lab studies.

Research and trials · Read more: what is 5D-ASC?

Amanita phalloides, an amatoxin-carrying mushroom linked to more poisoning deaths than any other. In Canada it is established as an introduced species in British Columbia; Ontario’s records are old specimens.

Safety · Read more: what is Death cap?

The genus that took the non-bluing species once DNA showed the old Psilocybe was two lineages. None of its species is known to make psilocybin or psilocin.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Deconica?

Removing criminal penalties for an activity, usually personal possession, while the substance stays illegal to sell or produce. It is different from legalization. Psilocybin is not decriminalized anywhere in Canada.

Law and access · Read more: what is Decriminalization?

A set of brain regions most active when we are not focused on an outside task, linked to remembering, imagining and thinking about ourselves. Psychedelic studies change its connections, but not simply by “switching it off”.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Default mode network?

Tiny bumps on a neuron’s branches where connections with other neurons form. Psilocybin and DMT increased spine counts in rodent studies; no one has measured this in a human brain.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Dendritic spines?

Removing a phosphate group from a molecule. It is how the body turns psilocybin into psilocin, and how a damaged mushroom starts its blue bruising reaction.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Dephosphorylation?

N,N-dimethyltryptamine, a natural psychedelic from the tryptamine family and a close chemical cousin of serotonin. It acts mainly on the 5-HT2A receptor, its effects last minutes rather than hours, and in Canada it is a Schedule III substance.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is DMT?

The idea that DMT experiences resemble, or explain, near-death experiences. On a standard questionnaire they score alike, but detailed comparisons find clear differences, and no study shows the dying brain releases DMT.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is DMT and the near-death experience?

A community term, not a medical one, for the point at which ordinary experience gives way to a sense of having arrived somewhere else entirely. Researchers rate intensity instead, and a 2026 study describes immersion as a continuum.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is DMT breakthrough?

The idea that the body’s own DMT, or a related tryptamine, produces the visions of dreams. It began as a 1988 hypothesis and remains untested: no study has measured DMT in the human brain during sleep.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is DMT dream hypothesis?

Beings people report meeting during a DMT experience, most often described as guides, aliens, deities or feminine figures. Encounters appeared in 45.5% of 3,778 coded online reports. The evidence is self-reported, and no study shows what the beings are.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is DMT entities?

The community name for the immersive, often other-dimensional space people say they enter during a DMT experience. It describes how the experience felt, not a real place; 17.1% of 3,778 coded online reports used the word.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is DMT hyperspace?

An online claim, not a scientific experiment: that a laser spot viewed during a DMT experience reveals stable symbols or “code”. No controlled study has tested it, and ordinary optics and perception offer simpler explanations.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is DMT laser experiment?

Slang names for DMT recorded by drug-information agencies, including Dimitri, Deems, businessman’s trip, fantasia, the glory and the sacrament. A street name tells you nothing reliable about what a substance really is.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is DMT street names?

A community name for a room-like space some people say they arrive in during a DMT experience. It belongs to a small shared vocabulary with “the dome” and “the chrysanthemum”, and the words map how people talk, not shared places.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is DMT waiting room?

A trial design in which neither participants nor the staff running the study know who received the real treatment, so expectations can’t sway the results.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Double-blind?

A harm-reduction service that tests a sample of an illegal drug to find out what is in it, including unexpected or toxic substances. A result describes one sample at one time.

Safety · Read more: what is Drug checking?

A Criminal Code offence of operating a vehicle while impaired by a drug to any degree, or with a blood drug level at or above a set limit within two hours of driving. For psilocybin and psilocin, the set limit is any detectable level.

Law and access · Read more: what is Drug-impaired driving?

Canada’s national suicide crisis line, reached by calling or texting 9-8-8 at any hour, every day of the year. It offers crisis support and is not an emergency dispatch service.

Safety · Read more: what is 9-8-8 Suicide Crisis Helpline?

The Swiss pharmaceutical company in Basel where Albert Hofmann’s team isolated psilocybin in 1958. Sandoz supplied psilocybin to researchers as Indocybin and LSD as Delysid, and patented a process for obtaining the compounds.

Words and history · Read more: what is Sandoz?

Brazilian religions that use ayahuasca as a sacrament. Santo Daime was founded in the 1930s by Raimundo Irineu Serra, and the União do Vegetal (UDV) in 1961 by José Gabriel da Costa. Rulings that protect them do not make ayahuasca legal for anyone else.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Santo Daime and the UDV?

The most restrictive US federal drug schedule, for substances found to have a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use and a lack of accepted safety under medical supervision. Psilocybin and psilocyn are listed there.

Law and access · Read more: what is Schedule I (United States)?

The schedule of Canada’s Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that lists psilocin and psilocybin, along with LSD, DMT and mescaline. Possessing, trafficking or producing a Schedule III substance is an offence unless authorized.

Law and access · Read more: what is Schedule III (Canada)?

Compact, hardened masses of fungal mycelium that store nutrients. They are a structure, not a species or strain, and unrelated fungi form them too. Those of a few Psilocybe species are called “magic truffles”.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Sclerotia?

An exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that the federal Minister of Health may grant when it is necessary for a medical or scientific purpose or is otherwise in the public interest. It is not a drug approval.

Law and access · Read more: what is Section 56 exemption?

R. Gordon Wasson’s article in Life magazine on 13 May 1957, describing a 1955 Mazatec night vigil led by María Sabina. It brought the phrase “magic mushroom” and the mushrooms to a mass Western audience.

Words and history · Read more: what is Seeking the Magic Mushroom (Life, 1957)?

A study design in which participants set up their own placebo control at home, mixing real and dummy capsules so they don’t know which they take. It was used to test microdosing.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Self-blinding study?

Information people give about themselves, through questionnaires, interviews or surveys. Most measures of psychedelic experience are self-report, which brings memory and expectation biases.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Self-report?

A signalling molecule in the brain and body, chemically a tryptamine with a hydroxyl at ring position 5. Classic psychedelics resemble it and act on its receptors, above all 5-HT2A.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Serotonin?

A potentially life-threatening drug reaction caused by too much serotonin activity, with muscle, nervous-system and mental-state changes. Combinations of serotonergic drugs, especially with MAO inhibitors, carry the greatest risk.

Safety · Read more: what is Serotonin syndrome?

Shorthand for the person’s mindset (set) and the physical, social and cultural surroundings (setting) that shape a drug experience. Studies link these factors to how experiences unfold, though most of the evidence is observational.

Safety · Read more: what is Set and setting?

An Indigenous nation of the Ucayali region of the Peruvian Amazon, whose healers and songs are among the most studied in ayahuasca research. They call the brew ayawaska or oni.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Shipibo-Konibo?

Informal shorthand for mushroom. Merriam-Webster says it can mean any mushroom, but especially one containing psilocybin, and dates it to 1976; a Collins entry dates it to the 21st century. The nickname says nothing about species or contents.

Words and history · Read more: what is Shroom?

A ‘chaperone’ protein inside cells that DMT binds, but only at high concentrations. A 2009 paper proposed DMT as its natural activator; no human study has shown it contributes to the DMT experience.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Sigma-1 receptor?

A desert toad of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, once named Bufo alvarius and now Incilius alvarius. It is the only animal known to secrete 5-MeO-DMT as a chemical defence, alongside bufotenine and heart-active toxins.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Sonoran Desert toad?

A Health Canada program through which a regulated practitioner, not a patient, can request a drug not sold in Canada, including psilocybin, for a serious or life-threatening condition when usual treatments have failed, are unsuitable or are unavailable.

Law and access · Read more: what is Special Access Program?

The basic rank of biological naming, written as a two-part name such as Psilocybe cubensis: a genus plus a specific epithet. Applying a species name to any given material still needs evidence.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Species?

A nickname for DMT taken from Rick Strassman’s 2000 book, DMT: The Spirit Molecule. It names his hypothesis about DMT made in the body, not a scientific description, and the hypothesis remains unproven.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Spirit molecule?

A DMT drug candidate given into a vein, tested by Small Pharma (now Cybin UK) with psychological support for major depression. A 2026 phase 2a trial of 34 adults is the largest placebo-controlled DMT result the site found; it is not an approved treatment.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is SPL026?

How antidepressants such as SSRIs may change, or combine badly with, psilocybin. Several studies report weaker psilocybin effects during SSRI use; serious harms are rare in published reports, but the evidence is thin.

Safety · Read more: what is SSRI interaction?

A test of whether a result would be surprising if there were really no difference. “Not significant” doesn’t prove there is no effect, and “significant” doesn’t mean the effect is large or important.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Statistical significance?

The Hungarian chemist and psychiatrist (1923–2021) who first reported DMT’s effects in people, in a 1956 paper. He tested it on himself, then on volunteers, and later worked in US federal drug research.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Stephen Szára?

Terence McKenna’s idea, published in 1992, that psilocybin mushrooms in the diet of early humans helped drive the growth of the human mind. It is a hypothesis, not an established finding: untested rather than disproved.

Words and history · Read more: what is Stoned ape theory?

A loose, context-dependent word for biological material, often the label for one culture or sample rather than a published taxonomic name. A strain name cannot predict what a mushroom contains.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Strain?

A scientific name with a documented relationship to the currently accepted one, such as Copelandia cyanescens for Panaeolus cyanescens. A basionym is the earlier name a current name was built from.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Synonym?

A review that searches for all studies on a question using set, recorded methods, then appraises and summarizes them. It may or may not include a meta-analysis.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Systematic review?

A Saskatchewan-born psychiatrist, based in Saskatoon, who worked with Humphry Osmond on LSD and mescaline research in the 1950s, including alcoholism studies and the adrenochrome theory of schizophrenia, which historians judge unsupported.

Words and history · Read more: what is Abram Hoffer?

A comparison substance with noticeable effects of its own, used so that people in the control group can’t easily tell they didn’t get the drug being tested.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Active placebo?

An Ontario government agency in Toronto, founded in 1949, that ran one of the first controlled trials of LSD for alcoholism in the 1960s and found no measurable benefit. It merged into CAMH in 1998.

Words and history · Read more: what is Addiction Research Foundation?

The presence of substances in a drug or product other than what it is sold as, whether added on purpose or by contamination. With unregulated mushroom products, the label cannot show what is inside.

Safety · Read more: what is Adulteration?

Any unwanted medical occurrence during a trial, whether or not the drug caused it. Trials must record them; serious adverse events include those that are life-threatening or need hospital care.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Adverse event?

A tryptamine measured alongside psilocybin in some mushrooms, with three methyl groups on its nitrogen where psilocybin has two. What it does in people is unknown, because no human study has tested it.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Aeruginascin?

A molecule that binds a receptor and switches it on. Classic psychedelics are agonists or partial agonists at the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor; an antagonist binds without switching the receptor on.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Agonist?

Alfred M. Hubbard (1901–82), listed in 1961 as director of psychological research at Hollywood Hospital in British Columbia and regarded by Saskatchewan researchers as a skilled LSD session guide. Stories of his spy career are unverified.

Words and history · Read more: what is Al Hubbard?

The Swiss chemist at Sandoz whose team, working with the French mycologist Roger Heim, reported psilocybin from Psilocybe mexicana in 1958 and named psilocybin and psilocin. Sandoz later supplied psilocybin to researchers as Indocybin.

Words and history · Read more: what is Albert Hofmann?

Alberta rules, in Part 3 of the Mental Health Services Protection Regulation, that require a provincial licence to offer psychedelic drug treatment services and limit who may prescribe a designated psychedelic drug such as psilocybin.

Law and access · Read more: what is Alberta psychedelic drug treatment services?

The English novelist who took mescaline with Humphry Osmond in 1953, wrote about it in The Doors of Perception, and corresponded with Osmond for a decade, including the exchange in which “psychedelic” was coined.

Words and history · Read more: what is Aldous Huxley?

An enzyme that strips the phosphate group off psilocybin, leaving psilocin, the form that acts on serotonin receptors. It is the reason psilocybin is described as a prodrug.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Alkaline phosphatase?

A mushroom genus that includes the deadliest known species, such as the death cap and destroying angels, as well as the fly agaric. No Amanita is a psilocybin mushroom.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Amanita?

The fly agaric: a poisonous mushroom in the genus Amanita. It is not a psilocybin mushroom. Its main active compounds are ibotenic acid and muscimol, and toxicology reviews group it with mushrooms that affect the central nervous system.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Amanita muscaria?

A group of liver-damaging toxins found in some Amanita, Galerina and Conocybe mushrooms. Amatoxins cause the most deaths from mushroom poisoning, and symptoms typically start hours after eating.

Safety · Read more: what is Amatoxin?

Fear, worry or sudden panic during or after a psychedelic experience. Health Canada lists anxiety and panic attacks among the effects of magic mushrooms, and they were the most common reasons for emergency care in one large survey.

Safety · Read more: what is Anxiety and panic?

Australia’s narrow medical route for psilocybin: a specialist psychiatrist holding an authority under subsection 19(5) of the Therapeutic Goods Act may prescribe it for treatment-resistant depression. Otherwise psilocybin is a prohibited substance.

Law and access · Read more: what is Authorised prescriber (Australia)?

A brew from the western Amazon that contains DMT together with β-carboline alkaloids that block the enzyme MAO, so the DMT is not broken down in the gut. Research on it is small and early.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Ayahuasca?

A name for very different events: Amazonian healing sessions built around a healer’s songs, Brazilian church services built around hymns, and night-time retreat sessions for visitors. Practices, and safety standards, vary widely.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Ayahuasca ceremony?

The vomiting that often follows drinking ayahuasca, which many traditions treat as a meaningful cleansing called “la purga”. It is common, but its meaning is a cultural view, not a tested health effect.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Ayahuasca purge?

Travel, mostly by people from outside the Amazon, to drink ayahuasca at retreats or with healers, especially in Peru. Researchers document varied safety practices, and anthropologists raise concerns about commercialization.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Ayahuasca tourism?

Overwhelming distress while a psychedelic is acting, such as fear, panic, paranoia or confusion. Researchers often call it a challenging experience. It usually passes as the drug wears off, but judgment can be impaired while it lasts.

Safety · Read more: what is Bad trip?

Two tryptamines found alongside psilocybin in psilocybin-containing mushrooms. They are steps on the route mushrooms use to build psilocybin, and they have not been tested in people.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Baeocystin and norbaeocystin?

A woody Amazonian vine, the plant the word “ayahuasca” originally named. It contains β-carboline alkaloids such as harmine and harmaline, not DMT, and these block the enzyme MAO-A.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Banisteriopsis caapi?

A federal exemption, granted to British Columbia under section 56(1) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, that removed the possession offence for adults carrying small amounts of certain drugs. It did not cover psilocybin and expired on 31 January 2026.

Law and access · Read more: what is BC decriminalization exemption?

BDNF is a growth factor that supports neurons and plasticity; TrkB is its receptor. A 2023 mouse and cell study reported that LSD and psilocin bind TrkB directly, a finding not shown for DMT.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is BDNF and TrkB?

A 16th-century Franciscan friar whose survey of Nahua life, best preserved in the Florentine Codex, records mushrooms called nanacatl and teonanacatl that caused visions. It is a key, but colonial, source.

Words and history · Read more: what is Bernardino de Sahagún?

A private member’s bill introduced in the House of Commons on 16 June 2026 that would change how psilocin and psilocybin are treated under federal drug rules. It has had first reading only and is not law.

Law and access · Read more: what is Bill C-286?

A federal law that received Royal Assent on 17 November 2022. It repealed certain mandatory minimum penalties, widened conditional sentences and added diversion measures for simple drug possession.

Law and access · Read more: what is Bill C-5 (2022)?

The two-part scientific name of a species: a capitalized genus name followed by a lower-case specific epithet, as in Psilocybe cubensis. Italics are a convention, not part of the name.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Binomial name?

The tightly sealed lining of the brain’s blood vessels, which lets some molecules into the brain and keeps others out. It helps explain why some mushroom and toad compounds seem to do little when injected.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Blood-brain barrier?

The blue colour some psilocybin mushrooms turn when damaged. Two enzymes turn psilocybin into psilocin and then link psilocin units into blue chains, so the colour marks psilocin being used up.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Blue bruising?

A common name with more than one documented use. iNaturalist gives it for Panaeolus cyanescens, while a 2025 laboratory study used it as the label of a sample it assigned to Psilocybe cubensis. The phrase alone settles nothing.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Blue Meanies?

A US FDA status meant to speed the development and review of a drug for a serious condition when early evidence suggests a substantial improvement. It is not an approval.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Breakthrough therapy designation?

5-hydroxy-DMT: the DMT skeleton with a hydroxyl group at ring position 5. It occurs in some toad secretions, and the body also makes it from 5-MeO-DMT. Whether it is psychedelic in people is unsettled.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Bufotenine?

A community term for the buzzing, ringing or humming sound some people describe early in a DMT experience. A ringing-type sound was coded in 15.4% of 3,778 online reports, with “carrier wave” among the descriptors.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Carrier wave?

A published description of what happened to one patient, or a few. It can flag a new benefit or risk, but cannot show how common it is or prove cause.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Case report?

A questionnaire that rates the difficult side of a psychedelic experience across seven factors: grief, fear, death, insanity, isolation, physical distress and paranoia.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Challenging Experience Questionnaire?

A street name, recorded by drug-information agencies, for a smoking blend that contains DMT. Its contents vary, so the name says nothing reliable about what is in it, and it does not change the law.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Changa?

A group made of one ancestor and all its descendants: a single branch of a family tree. Modern taxonomists try to make each genus or family a clade, which is why some names have been split.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Clade?

An exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act granted under section 56(1) to a whole group of people, such as practitioners or hospital pharmacists, rather than to one named person.

Law and access · Read more: what is Class exemption?

A drug such as psilocybin, LSD, DMT or mescaline that acts mainly by switching on the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor. The members differ in chemistry, in other receptors they touch and in how long they last.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Classic psychedelic?

In Canada, the submission a sponsor makes to Health Canada before running a drug trial. Health Canada reviews it, and a research ethics board must also approve the trial.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Clinical trial application?

The numbered stages a drug passes through in human testing, from small first-in-human safety studies (phase 1) to large comparisons (phase 3) and follow-up after approval (phase 4).

Research and trials · Read more: what is Clinical trial phases?

A public registry of clinical studies run by the US National Library of Medicine. It lists trials from around the world, each with an NCT number, but a listing is not an endorsement.

Research and trials · Read more: what is ClinicalTrials.gov?

A psilocybin formulation developed by the company Compass Pathways and studied in treatment-resistant depression. As of October 2026 it was investigational, with no FDA or Health Canada approval found.

Research and trials · Read more: what is COMP360?

Timothy Leary’s 1961–63 study giving psilocybin to 32 prisoners at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Concord. It claimed to cut reoffending, but a 1998 re-analysis found the claim was wrong.

Words and history · Read more: what is Concord Prison Experiment?

A range around a study’s result that shows how precise it is. A wide interval, or one that includes no effect, means the finding is uncertain.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Confidence interval?

Canada’s federal drug law. It has been in force since 14 May 1997 and lists psilocin and psilocybin in Schedule III, alongside LSD and DMT.

Law and access · Read more: what is Controlled Drugs and Substances Act?

The US federal drug law, enacted in 1970, that sorts substances into five schedules. Psilocybin and psilocyn are in Schedule I, the most restrictive.

Law and access · Read more: what is Controlled Substances Act (United States)?

Federal regulations in force since 1 October 2026 that set the rules for lawful activities with controlled substances. They list psilocin and psilocybin as restricted drugs. They do not make magic mushrooms legal.

Law and access · Read more: what is Controlled Substances Regulations?

The UN treaty, signed in Vienna in 1971, that lists psilocybin and psilocin in its Schedule I and asks countries to limit them to scientific and very limited medical use. It controls the compounds, not the mushrooms.

Law and access · Read more: what is Convention on Psychotropic Substances (1971)?

The 1960s youth movement of hippies, protest and experimentation that adopted psychedelics. Historians link LSD’s association with it to the end of most formal psychedelic research by the late 1960s.

Words and history · Read more: what is Counterculture?

When tolerance to one drug also reduces the effect of another. Studies from the 1960s found cross-tolerance between psilocybin and LSD, which fits the idea that both act through the same receptor.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Cross-tolerance?

A trial in which each participant gets both the treatment and the comparison, one after the other, in random order. It needs fewer people but can blur what happens after the switch.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Crossover design?

The basic category of a separate naming code for cultivated plants. Mushroom growers and sellers use the word loosely, and a marketed mushroom name is not automatically a formal cultivar.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Cultivar?

A Spanish word for a traditional healer, used for people who lead ayahuasca healing in the Amazon. Researchers record many names for them, including ayahuasquero, vegetalista, maestro and, among the Shipibo, onanya.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Curandero?

A liver enzyme of the cytochrome P450 family. It helps break down psilocin and converts some 5-MeO-DMT into bufotenine. Its activity varies between people, which is one reason responses to the same drug differ.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is CYP2D6?

A group of plant alkaloids, including harmine, harmaline and tetrahydroharmine, found in the ayahuasca vine. Harmine and harmaline reversibly block the enzyme MAO-A, which lets swallowed DMT survive.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is β-carbolines?

Electroencephalography, which records the brain’s electrical rhythms through sensors on the scalp. It tracks changes over milliseconds but is blurry about where they come from.

Research and trials · Read more: what is EEG?

A number that says how big a difference between groups is, not just whether it exists. Psychedelic trials’ effect sizes may be overestimated because of broken blinding.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Effect size?

A temporary breakdown of the usual sense of being a separate self, popularly called ego death. Researchers measure it with self-report scales such as the Ego Dissolution Inventory. It can feel calm or frightening.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Ego dissolution?

An 8-item questionnaire, validated in 2016, that measures how strongly a person’s ordinary sense of self weakened or dissolved during an experience.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Ego Dissolution Inventory?

The signs Canadian poison centres give for calling 911 in a possible poisoning: the person is unconscious, not breathing or having a seizure. Other first-aid guides add an altered level of responsiveness or trouble breathing.

Safety · Read more: what is Emergency warning signs?

DMT made inside the body rather than taken in from outside. It has been found in human blood, urine and spinal fluid, but never measured in a living human brain, so whether the brain makes meaningful amounts is unknown.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Endogenous DMT?

A word coined in 1979 by Carl Ruck and colleagues, including R. Gordon Wasson, as an alternative to “psychedelic” and “hallucinogen”. Its Greek roots are explained as “god within” and “to come into being”, so it frames the experience in religious terms.

Words and history · Read more: what is Entheogen?

A 2014 theory that psychedelics raise the disorder, or entropy, of brain activity. Its successor, REBUS, says they relax the brain’s high-level assumptions. Recent tests give mixed results.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Entropic brain hypothesis?

A specimen or illustration chosen later to fix how a scientific name is applied, when the original type is too ambiguous to identify critically. It belongs to scientific naming, not to strains or products.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Epitype?

What people expect a treatment to do, which can change how they feel and what they report. In psilocybin trials, expectancy may inflate results, especially when participants can tell what they received.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Expectancy?

A research method that gives DMT as a continuous infusion into a vein to hold people in the DMT state for longer than a single dose allows. Sometimes called DMTx. Studies so far are small, and found acute tolerance.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Extended-state DMT?

A Toronto company that opened a ketamine-first psychotherapy clinic on 4 March 2020, listed on three stock exchanges, split in 2022 and entered creditor protection in 2023. It is part of Toronto’s recent psychedelic business history.

Words and history · Read more: what is Field Trip Health?

The breakdown a swallowed drug meets in the gut wall and liver before it reaches the rest of the body. It is why DMT taken by mouth on its own has no effect.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is First-pass metabolism?

A brief, sudden re-experience of part of an earlier psychedelic experience after the drug has worn off. The word is loosely defined; persistent, distressing symptoms fall under the separate diagnosis HPPD.

Safety · Read more: what is Flashback?

Functional magnetic resonance imaging, a brain scan that tracks changes in blood oxygen as an indirect stand-in for brain activity. It is good at showing where, but slow and indirect.

Research and trials · Read more: what is fMRI?

The detailed regulations under Canada’s Food and Drugs Act. They hold the rules for clinical trials (Part C, Division 5) and for the Special Access Program’s emergency sale of unapproved drugs (section C.08.010).

Law and access · Read more: what is Food and Drug Regulations?

Canada’s federal law on the safety and sale of foods, drugs, cosmetics and devices. Health Canada says psilocybin and magic mushrooms are subject to it as well as to the drug law.

Law and access · Read more: what is Food and Drugs Act?

The spore-producing structure a fungus builds from its mycelium. In mushroom-forming fungi, the fruiting body is the mushroom itself. It is a temporary part of a much larger organism.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Fruiting body?

When a trial is meant to be blind but the drug’s effects reveal who got it. It is a known weakness of psychedelic trials, because strong effects are hard to hide.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Functional unblinding?

A collection of preserved fungal specimens kept for research, the fungal equivalent of a herbarium. Type specimens that anchor scientific names are stored in fungaria and cited by catalogue number.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Fungarium?

A member of the kingdom Fungi, separate from plants and animals. A mushroom is not a whole fungus: it is the fruiting body that some fungi produce. Many fungi never make mushrooms at all.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Fungus?

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility, an open database that pools species names and occurrence records from museums, fungaria and citizen science. Its records show where a name was written down, not how common a fungus is.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is GBIF?

The rank above species: a group of related species that share the first word of their scientific names, such as Psilocybe or Panaeolus. Genus boundaries change as DNA studies redraw family trees.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Genus?

A synthetic inhaled form of 5-MeO-DMT (mebufotenin) made by GH Research and tested in trials for treatment-resistant depression. It is not an approved medicine, and no GH001 trial lists a site in Canada.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is GH001?

A clean-up step in which the body attaches glucuronic acid to a molecule so it can be excreted more easily. Psilocin leaves the body largely as psilocin-O-glucuronide.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Glucuronidation?

An informal name used for material of Psilocybe cubensis, not a species or formal variety. A 2025 study assigned one labelled sample to that species by DNA; no source documents who first used the name or when.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Golden Teacher?

The 2006 US Supreme Court case in which the União do Vegetal church won a preliminary injunction protecting its sacramental use of hoasca, an ayahuasca tea, under a religious-freedom statute. It is US law and does not apply in Canada.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Gonzales v. O Centro?

Walter Pahnke’s 1962 study giving psilocybin or an active placebo to 20 divinity students during a Good Friday service at Boston University’s Marsh Chapel. It is influential, but its blinding failed and a sedation went unreported.

Words and history · Read more: what is Good Friday Experiment?

A 2017 Canadian law that added section 4.1 to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. It protects people who seek help in a substance-induced, life-threatening emergency from simple possession charges, within limits.

Safety · Read more: what is Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act?

A genus of mushroom-forming fungi in which psilocybin has been reported for a few species. Reports are mixed, partly because several species have shared one name.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Gymnopilus?

A species name, written G. spectabilis in older papers, behind the nickname “laughing gym”. Psilocybin was found in some collections under these names and not in others, and DNA shows the name covered several species.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: Gymnopilus junonius in the species atlas

The medicine songs sung by healers in Peruvian Amazonian ayahuasca practice. Healers describe them as tools that protect, diagnose and heal; researchers study them as ethnography, not as tested treatments.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Icaros?

A global database of fungal names, kept at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and mirrored by Species Fungorum. It records where each name was published and which name an authority currently accepts.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Index Fungorum?

The trade name under which Sandoz supplied psilocybin to researchers and clinicians in the 1960s. Reviews disagree on when it first became available, and nothing in the record shows it was approved to treat any condition.

Words and history · Read more: what is Indocybin?

A pair of fused rings, one of them containing a nitrogen, that forms the core of tryptophan, serotonin, psilocybin, psilocin, DMT and LSD. Compounds built on it are called indoles or indolealkylamines.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Indole?

The main breakdown product of DMT, made when the enzyme MAO-A takes it apart. It is inactive, and it is also a common end product of related tryptamines.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Indole-3-acetic acid?

Indolethylamine N-methyltransferase, the enzyme long credited with making DMT in mammals by adding two methyl groups to tryptamine. Knockout rats and mice kept making their tryptamines, so its role is now in doubt.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is INMT?

A very large genus of mostly poisonous mushrooms, known for the toxin muscarine. Psilocybin has been reported in only a handful of species, and at least one old report was later found to be wrong.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Inocybe?

The follow-up phase after a psychedelic session, in which a person reflects on the experience and relates it to their life, often in meetings with a therapist.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Integration?

The rulebook for scientific names of algae, fungi and plants. Its current edition, the Madrid Code, was accepted in July 2024 and published in 2025. It governs names, not what a mushroom is or contains.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is International Code of Nomenclature (ICN)?

The treaty body that monitors how countries carry out the UN drug control conventions. In 2010 it stated that no plants, including magic mushrooms, are controlled under the 1971 Convention.

Law and access · Read more: what is International Narcotics Control Board?

Reading the ITS region, a short stretch of ribosomal DNA used as the standard barcode for placing a fungus in a species. It works at species level, so it cannot tell one cultivated label from another.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is ITS sequencing?

A research centre at Johns Hopkins Medicine, launched in September 2019 with $17 million in private gifts, that runs psilocybin and other psychedelic studies. Hopkins called it the first such centre in the US.

Words and history · Read more: what is Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research?

The Brazilian name for Mimosa tenuiflora (also published as Mimosa hostilis), a thorny shrub or tree whose bark is used in a sacred drink of Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian religion in northeastern Brazil. Analyses of the bark report DMT.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Jurema?

A drug that blocks the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor without switching it on. Researchers use it to test whether a psychedelic effect needs that receptor.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Ketanserin?

Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry: a lab method that separates the compounds in a sample and then identifies them by mass. It is the standard way researchers measure psilocin, psilocybin and DMT.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is LC-MS?

Canada’s Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs, appointed in 1969 and chaired by Gerald Le Dain. Its 1973 final report recorded that psilocybin was then on no Canadian drug schedule.

Words and history · Read more: what is Le Dain Commission?

Making an activity lawful under a regulated system, for example licensed production and sale. Decriminalization only removes criminal penalties. Psilocybin is not legal in Canada, though two US states license it.

Law and access · Read more: what is Legalization?

The document Health Canada issues to a drug’s manufacturer when a Special Access Program request is authorized. It permits the sale of a specified quantity of an unapproved drug, such as psilocybin, to the requesting practitioner.

Law and access · Read more: what is Letter of Authorization?

A company or organization licensed by Health Canada to produce, import, export or distribute controlled substances. Since 1 October 2026 the licence is issued under the Controlled Substances Regulations.

Law and access · Read more: what is Licensed dealer?

A reported link between taking lithium, a mood-stabilizing medicine, and seizures during psychedelic use. The evidence comes from online experience reports rather than trials, but reviews repeat the warning.

Safety · Read more: what is Lithium interaction?

Mushrooms that resemble other mushrooms closely enough to be confused, including deadly ones that can be mistaken for magic mushrooms. Poison centres say appearance cannot show that a wild mushroom is safe.

Safety · Read more: what is Look-alike mushrooms?

Drug-containing products, mostly cannabis in Canadian cases, packaged to resemble familiar candy and snack brands. Health Canada warns that children and adults may not recognize them and that poisonings can be serious.

Safety · Read more: what is Lookalike candy edibles?

Lysergic acid diethylamide, a classic psychedelic first made in a lab by Albert Hofmann in 1938. It is an ergoline, not a simple tryptamine, acts mainly at 5-HT2A and lasts much longer than psilocybin or DMT.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is LSD?

Federal regulations that governed narcotics such as opioids under Canada’s drug law until 1 October 2026, when the Controlled Substances Regulations consolidated them. Bill C-286 would use them for psilocybin.

Law and access · Read more: what is Narcotic Control Regulations?

A Canadian product category for substances such as plants, fungi and their extracts sold for a health effect. Each needs a product licence and a product number, and substances in the drug schedules are excluded.

Law and access · Read more: what is Natural health product?

Research that observes people in their ordinary settings, using substances or treatments they chose themselves, rather than under controlled lab or trial conditions.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Naturalistic study?

A specimen or illustration chosen to serve as the type of a scientific name when no original material survives. A lectotype chosen from original material takes precedence over a neotype.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Neotype?

Any induced change in the brain’s function or structure. Psychedelics change plasticity markers in cells and animals; whether they rewire human brains in a lasting, helpful way has not been shown.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Neuroplasticity?

The dephosphorylated form of baeocystin, as psilocin is of psilocybin. It strongly activates 5-HT2A receptors in cell tests, but in rats it barely crossed the blood-brain barrier.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Norpsilocin?

A study that records what happens without assigning anyone a treatment. It can find associations but cannot, on its own, show that one thing causes another.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Observational study?

A study in which everyone knows what treatment is being given, with no blinding. It is useful for early safety work, but can’t separate a drug’s effect from expectation.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Open-label study?

The Dutch drug law. Psilocin and psilocybin are on its List I, and since 1 December 2008 mushrooms that naturally contain them are on List II. The Dutch government has said sclerotia (“truffles”) are not covered.

Law and access · Read more: what is Opium Act (Netherlands)?

State licensing systems created by voters in Oregon (Measure 109, 2020) and Colorado (Proposition 122, 2022) for supervised psilocybin services for adults 21 and over. Neither changes US federal law.

Law and access · Read more: what is Oregon and Colorado psilocybin programs?

A mushroom genus separate from Psilocybe. Only a few of its species have psilocybin confirmed, most notably Panaeolus cyanescens, and the genus has had no molecular revision.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Panaeolus?

A species in the genus Panaeolus, separate from Psilocybe. Species Fungorum lists Copelandia cyanescens as a synonym. It carries the psilocybin genes and is a different name from Psilocybe cyanescens.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: Panaeolus cyanescens in the species atlas

A molecule that switches a receptor on, but less fully than the strongest possible activator would. DMT and other psychedelics are described as partial agonists at the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Partial agonist?

An American mycologist and author who co-described the species Psilocybe azurescens in 1995 and wrote Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World (1996). His work is widely cited in popular writing on these fungi.

Words and history · Read more: what is Paul Stamets?

The process in which independent experts assess a paper before a journal publishes it. It catches many problems, but doesn’t guarantee a study is right.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Peer review?

An informal name used for Psilocybe cubensis material, not a separate species. One public genome carries the label, and the paper that reported it calls the strain name anecdotal. Its origin is unresolved.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Penis Envy?

Positron emission tomography, a scan that uses a radioactive tracer to map where particular molecules, such as receptors or synapse proteins, sit in the brain.

Research and trials · Read more: what is PET imaging?

A word Aldous Huxley proposed in the 1950s for the drugs now called psychedelics, from Greek words for “to show” and “spirit”. Humphry Osmond preferred “psychedelic”, which won out.

Words and history · Read more: what is Phanerothyme?

What the body does to a drug: how it is absorbed, spread through the body, broken down and removed. For psychedelics it explains why psilocybin lasts hours, DMT minutes and swallowed DMT nothing at all.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Pharmacokinetics?

A chemical family built on a benzene ring with a two-carbon chain ending in a nitrogen. Mescaline is its best-known psychedelic; the tryptamines, such as psilocybin and DMT, are a separate family.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Phenethylamine?

A genus of small mushrooms, closely tied to Conocybe, with one or two psilocybin reports. Related Conocybe species carry deadly amatoxins, and the best-known psilocybin species has been renamed Conocybula cyanopus.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Pholiotina?

The evolutionary family tree of a group of organisms, now usually built from DNA. Phylogenies decide where genus lines are drawn and explain why psilocybin appears in unrelated mushrooms.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Phylogeny?

A small gland deep in the brain that makes melatonin, popularly called the third eye and said to make the body’s DMT. That idea was put forward as a speculation; no one has measured DMT made by a human pineal gland.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Pineal gland?

An inactive comparison that looks like the real treatment, used so researchers can see whether benefits remain when people don’t know what they got. Placebo groups often improve too.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Placebo?

A genus of mushroom-forming fungi in which a few species, mostly in one section, are reported to contain psilocybin. Some were assumed psychoactive only because they bruise blue.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Pluteus?

A 24-hour phone service staffed by nurses and pharmacists with specialized training who advise on possible poisonings, including wild mushrooms and drug products. Ontario’s is the Ontario Poison Centre, run by SickKids.

Safety · Read more: what is Poison centre?

Using more than one substance at the same time or close together. Health Canada says combining magic mushrooms with substances such as cannabis, amphetamines or alcohol raises the risk of serious side effects.

Safety · Read more: what is Polysubstance use?

In Canadian drug law, the offence in section 4 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act of possessing a scheduled substance without authorization. Possession includes knowingly keeping something in another person’s custody or in any place.

Law and access · Read more: what is Possession?

A research paper posted publicly before it has been peer reviewed. Preprints share results quickly, but their findings haven’t yet been checked by independent reviewers.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Preprint?

Publicly recording a study’s questions, outcomes and analysis plan before seeing the results, so researchers can’t quietly change them afterwards.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Preregistration?

A list kept by Health Canada of medicinal ingredients that need a prescription when sold for human or veterinary use. It does not include substances already scheduled under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, so psilocybin is not on it.

Law and access · Read more: what is Prescription Drug List?

The main result a trial is designed to test, chosen before it starts. Secondary endpoints are extra measures, and are weaker evidence on their own.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Primary endpoint?

A bill introduced in Parliament by a member who is not a cabinet minister or parliamentary secretary. Few become law. Bill C-286 on psilocybin is one.

Law and access · Read more: what is Private member’s bill?

A compound that has to be converted in the body before it is active. Psilocybin is the best-known example in this field: the body removes its phosphate group to make psilocin.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Prodrug?

In Canadian drug law, obtaining a scheduled substance by any method, including manufacturing, synthesizing, cultivating, propagating or harvesting. Section 7 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act makes unauthorized production an offence.

Law and access · Read more: what is Production (controlled substance)?

Everything published with a scientific name when it first became valid: description, diagnosis, illustrations, specimens cited, locality and discussion. Since 2013 a new fungal name’s protologue must also cite a registration identifier.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Protologue?

The enzyme that starts psilocybin-making in mushrooms by removing the carboxyl group from the amino acid L-tryptophan. It was characterized in 2017 as a new class of fungal tryptophan decarboxylase.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is PsiD?

Two psilocybin-making enzymes in mushrooms. PsiK attaches the phosphate group, making norbaeocystin; PsiM then adds methyl groups one at a time, turning it into baeocystin and then psilocybin.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is PsiK and PsiM?

The compound the body makes from psilocybin, and the form that acts on 5-HT2A serotonin receptors. It differs from psilocybin by one group: a hydroxyl where psilocybin has a phosphate.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Psilocin?

The main urinary metabolite of psilocin: psilocin with a sugar-derived glucuronic acid group attached, a form the body makes so it can be excreted. It matters for clinical and forensic testing.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Psilocin-O-glucuronide?

The mushroom genus that gave psilocybin its name. Since a 2007 proposal it is kept for the bluing, psilocybin-producing species, with the liberty cap as its conserved type; the non-bluing species moved to Deconica.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Psilocybe?

A species name credited to Paul Stamets and Jochen Gartz, published in 1995. Its holotype is at the University of Washington herbarium. Genome work covers it, but no study ties the name to effects or safety.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: Psilocybe azurescens in the species atlas

A scientific species name. Franklin Earle published it as Stropharia cubensis in 1906 from a type collected in Cuba, and Rolf Singer moved it to Psilocybe in 1948. Golden Teacher and similar names are informal labels, not species.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: Psilocybe cubensis in the species atlas

A species name published by E. M. Wakefield in 1946, with a holotype and an epitype designated in 2012. Its common name is wavy cap. It is a different name from Panaeolus cyanescens.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: Psilocybe cyanescens in the species atlas

A species name Roger Heim published in 1957, with a holotype from Oaxaca, Mexico. It was the source of the psilocybin Albert Hofmann’s team isolated in 1958, and it forms sclerotia.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: Psilocybe mexicana in the species atlas

A species name published in 1995 from a 1994 collection in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is separate from Psilocybe ochraceocentrata, named in 2026, and labels using “natalensis” often turn out to be P. cubensis.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: Psilocybe natalensis in the species atlas

A species name published in 1967 from material collected in Quebec. Index Fungorum and GBIF now treat it as a synonym of the Mexican Psilocybe aztecorum, and GBIF holds only 15 records under it.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Psilocybe quebecensis?

A species Elias Fries first published as Agaricus semilanceatus in 1818, moved to Psilocybe by Paul Kummer in 1871. Its common name is liberty cap, and it is the conserved type of the genus Psilocybe.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: Psilocybe semilanceata in the species atlas

Latin for Psilocybe “in the strict sense”: the genus as redefined after DNA studies, holding the bluing, psilocybin-producing species, about 165 of them by a 2022 estimate.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Psilocybe sensu stricto?

A species name Gastón Guzmán and Steven Pollock published in 1978, from a single collection made near Tampa, Florida, in 1977. It forms sclerotia, and labels using the name do not prove descent from that collection.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: Psilocybe tampanensis in the species atlas

A tryptamine made by certain mushrooms and named by Albert Hofmann’s team in 1958–59. The body converts it to psilocin, which acts on serotonin 5-HT2A receptors. In Canada it is a Schedule III controlled substance.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Psilocybin?

The set of neighbouring genes a fungus uses to make psilocybin. Finding the same cluster in unrelated mushrooms suggests it jumped between lineages, which helps explain why psilocybin turns up in scattered genera.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Psilocybin gene cluster?

Psilocybin given with structured psychological support, as studied in clinical trials. No psilocybin product is approved in Canada, so it is available only through authorized research and access routes.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Psilocybin-assisted therapy?

Two enzymes found in Psilocybe cubensis in a 2020 study. When tissue is damaged, PsiP turns psilocybin into psilocin and PsiL oxidizes psilocin so its units link into the blue products of bruising.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is PsiP and PsiL?

A word coined by the psychiatrist Humphry Osmond and defined as “mind-manifesting”. He used it in a 1956 letter to Aldous Huxley and introduced it publicly in 1957. It now names a class of drugs and a style of art and music.

Words and history · Read more: what is Psychedelic?

A popular name for the revival of psychedelic research from the 2000s on, after decades of near-silence. Johns Hopkins dates it to Roland Griffiths’ 2006 psilocybin study; critics warn that hype can outrun the evidence.

Words and history · Read more: what is Psychedelic renaissance?

The structured help from trained therapists that surrounds the drug session in psychedelic trials: preparation beforehand, a monitored session and follow-up afterwards.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Psychological support?

A name proposed in 2018 for fast-acting compounds, including psychedelics and ketamine, that rapidly promote changes in neuron structure and function. It describes lab findings, not proven treatments.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Psychoplastogen?

A state in which a person has trouble telling what is real from what is not. Case reports describe psychotic episodes after psilocybin, mostly in people with other risk factors. A frightening trip is not the same as a psychotic disorder.

Safety · Read more: what is Psychosis?

An older word for drugs thought to mimic psychosis. It was common in 1950s research on LSD and mescaline, including the title of Humphry Osmond’s 1957 paper that introduced “psychedelic”.

Words and history · Read more: what is Psychotomimetic?

A J.P. Morgan banker and amateur mycologist whose article “Seeking the Magic Mushroom” ran in Life on 13 May 1957. It described a 1955 velada led by María Sabina and brought outsiders to Huautla de Jiménez.

Words and history · Read more: what is R. Gordon Wasson?

A study in which participants are assigned by chance to the treatment being tested or to a comparison, such as a placebo or another drug. It is the standard design for testing whether a treatment works.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Randomized controlled trial?

Andrew Gallimore’s idea, named after his 2022 book Reality Switch Technologies, that DMT does not distort the ordinary world so much as replace it with another. Reading that as access to a real world is an untested hypothesis.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Reality switch theory?

The share of a brain’s receptors that a drug is bound to at a given moment, measured with PET scans. In a 2019 study, 5-HT2A occupancy after psilocybin tracked how intense the experience felt.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Receptor occupancy?

An independent committee that must approve research on people before it starts, checking risks, consent and fairness. In the US it is usually called an institutional review board.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Research ethics board?

Two ways trials judge depression outcomes. Response usually means a score has fallen by at least half; remission means symptoms have dropped below a low cut-off, so few remain.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Response and remission?

A regulatory category for controlled substances with no approved medical use, such as psilocybin and LSD. Since 1 October 2026 it means a substance in Schedule 4 of the Controlled Substances Regulations.

Law and access · Read more: what is Restricted drug?

A Harvard assistant professor who ran psilocybin research with Timothy Leary from 1960 to 1962. Harvard dismissed him in May 1963 for giving a drug to an undergraduate. He later became known as Ram Dass.

Words and history · Read more: what is Richard Alpert (Ram Dass)?

A Harvard ethnobotanist who in 1939 published the identification of teonanácatl as a mushroom, refuting the idea that it was peyote, and later studied Amazonian psychoactive plants.

Words and history · Read more: what is Richard Evans Schultes?

An American psychiatrist whose University of New Mexico studies, from 1990 to 1995, were the first new US human psychedelic research in over 20 years. He wrote DMT: The Spirit Molecule (2000).

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Rick Strassman?

A reviewer’s judgment of how likely a study’s design or conduct is to have pushed its results away from the truth, for example through poor blinding or missing data.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Risk of bias?

An 18-storey co-operative residence at Bloor and Huron in Toronto that ran as a tuition-free experimental college from 1968 to 1975, with no curriculum or exams. It became known as a drug market and had its own street clinic.

Words and history · Read more: what is Rochdale College?

The French mycologist, head of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, who joined the Wasson expeditions, named Psilocybe mexicana in 1957 and grew it for Albert Hofmann’s 1958 psilocybin work.

Words and history · Read more: what is Roger Heim?

A Johns Hopkins psychopharmacologist (died 2023) whose 2006 study of psilocybin and mystical-type experience is widely credited with reviving psychedelic research. He was the first director of the Hopkins psychedelic research centre.

Words and history · Read more: what is Roland Griffiths?

Psychedelics: Art. Culture. Science., a Royal Ontario Museum exhibition in Toronto running from 6 June 2026 to 3 January 2027, with about 90 objects on the art, cultural history and science of psychedelics.

Words and history · Read more: what is ROM Psychedelics exhibition?

A painted figure at Tassili n’Ajjer in Algeria that the ethnobotanist Giorgio Samorini read in 1989 and 1992 as showing mushrooms. The famous image is a later redrawing, the dating is uncertain, and the mushroom reading is an untested hypothesis.

Words and history · Read more: what is Tassili mushroom shaman?

A Nahuatl word recorded by Spanish friars in the 1500s for small mushrooms that caused visions. It joins teotl (god, sacred) and nanacatl (mushroom). Popular sources say “flesh of the gods”; mycologists such as Guzmán read it as “sacred mushroom”.

Words and history · Read more: what is Teonanácatl?

An American writer and speaker (1946–2000) whose talks and books supplied much of the popular vocabulary for DMT, including “machine elves”. Researchers treat his descriptions as cultural reports, not data.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Terence McKenna?

One of the three main β-carboline alkaloids of the ayahuasca vine. Unlike harmine and harmaline it is a weak MAO inhibitor; it weakly blocks the reuptake of serotonin instead.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Tetrahydroharmine?

An American psychologist who ran psilocybin studies at Harvard from 1960 to 1962 with Richard Alpert, helped popularise “set and setting”, and became a counterculture figure. Harvard relieved him of teaching in 1963.

Words and history · Read more: what is Timothy Leary?

When the same amount of a drug has less effect over time. Tolerance to psilocybin’s psychological effects builds quickly with repeated use, and sensitivity returns after a break.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Tolerance?

In Canadian drug law, selling, giving, transferring, transporting, sending or delivering a scheduled substance, or offering to, without authorization. It is a separate and more serious offence than possession.

Law and access · Read more: what is Trafficking?

A 1950s idea that schizophrenia might come from the body wrongly making its own hallucinogens, such as DMT. It drove decades of research on endogenous DMT and the enzyme INMT, but no clear, repeatable link was found.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Transmethylation hypothesis?

Depression that has not improved enough after adequate tries of standard antidepressants, often defined as at least two. It is a main target of psilocybin and esketamine research.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Treatment-resistant depression?

An informal name for a sober person who stays with someone during a psychedelic experience. In clinical research the role is filled by trained monitors; outside research the term has no standard definition or training.

Safety · Read more: what is Trip sitter?

A small molecule built from an indole ring and a two-carbon chain ending in a nitrogen, and the name of the chemical family it heads. Psilocybin, psilocin, DMT, 5-MeO-DMT and serotonin are all tryptamines.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Tryptamine?

An amino acid from food protein and the starting material for serotonin, tryptamine, psilocybin and DMT. Removing its carboxyl group gives tryptamine, the first step on several of these routes.

Chemistry and the body · Read more: what is Tryptophan?

The place where the type specimen of a species name was collected. It anchors the name to a place. It is not proof of where a species originated or where any cultivated material came from.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Type locality?

A New York pediatrician and co-author, with her husband R. Gordon Wasson, of Mushrooms, Russia and History (1957). Scholars credit her with inspiring his interest in mushrooms; she wrote her own 1957 account of the Mexican mushrooms.

Words and history · Read more: what is Valentina Wasson?

A formal taxonomic rank below species, written with “var.”, as in Psilocybe serbica var. bohemica. In everyday speech the word is loose, and calling a commercial label a “variety” does not create a formal name.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Variety?

A night vigil in Mazatec religious and healing practice, led by a healer such as María Sabina, in which psilocybin mushrooms are consulted about illness and grave worries. Wasson’s account of a 1955 velada made the word known abroad.

Words and history · Read more: what is Velada?

Anadenanthera colubrina, an Andean tree whose seeds were used in ancient ritual snuff. Its main tryptamine is bufotenine, so many “ancient DMT” finds are chemically mostly bufotenine finds.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Vilca?

Painting and digital art that tries to depict what people report seeing on DMT or ayahuasca: shifting geometry, vivid colour, tunnels and beings. Its best-known ayahuasca painter is Pablo Amaringo of Peru.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Visionary art?

A preserved sample kept in a collection so that the material behind a study or record can be checked again later. Without one, a chemical or species claim cannot be re-examined.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Voucher specimen?

A comparison group that gets the treatment later, after a waiting period. It controls for the passage of time, but not for expectation, because people know they haven’t been treated yet.

Research and trials · Read more: what is Waiting-list control?

A physician and minister who ran the 1962 Good Friday Experiment for his Harvard doctorate and devised an early scale of mystical experience. He died in 1971.

Words and history · Read more: what is Walter Pahnke?

A common name for Psilocybe cyanescens, a species published in 1946. It is a nickname, not a scientific name, and it is easily confused with Panaeolus cyanescens because of the shared second word.

Mushrooms and names · Read more: what is Wavy caps?

The Saskatchewan Hospital at Weyburn, a large provincial psychiatric hospital where Humphry Osmond worked from 1951 and ran LSD and mescaline research. The word “psychedelic” came out of this setting.

Words and history · Read more: what is Weyburn Mental Hospital?

Another name for ayahuasca, most common in Colombian sources and older English writing. Dictionaries trace it through Colombian Spanish to an Indigenous language of southeastern Colombia or nearby Peru.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Yagé?

Anadenanthera peregrina, a tree of the Caribbean and tropical South America whose seeds were the source of a ritual snuff called cohoba by the Taíno and yopo by peoples of the Orinoco. Analyses most often report bufotenine as its main tryptamine.

DMT and ayahuasca · Read more: what is Yopo?

The Toronto neighbourhood just north of Bloor Street that became the centre of the city’s hippie and coffee-house scene in the mid-1960s, before a 1968 health scare, crackdowns and development changed it.

Words and history · Read more: what is Yorkville (1960s Toronto)?