WEDNESDAY, Aug. 24, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Jon Kostas, a lifelong resident of New York City, started bar-hopping at age 13. At the height of his alcoholism, he was consuming as many as 30 drinks a night.
Desperate for a way out, Kostas, 32, turned to a new therapy: psilocybin — the psychedelic compound found in so-called “magic mushrooms.”
“It definitely affected my life, and I like to say it saved my life,” said Kostas, who had his first psilocybin treatment session in March 2015.
He’s not the only one being helped. A new study suggests that psilocybin might be better at helping alcoholics give up booze than any current treatments, researchers say.
The study reported that two doses of the drug reduced drinking by 83% on average among heavy drinkers when combined with psychotherapy.
“The treatment effects observed in our study were significantly larger than those reported in meta-analyses