Clinical research on psilocybin mushrooms, also known as "magic mushrooms," has inspired some scientists to speak openly about their own transformative experiences with psychedelics. Science Alert reports a recent case study of a 35-year-old male researcher from the United States who claims to have improved his red-green vision after taking psychedelics.
The study suggests that magic mushrooms may have played a role in alleviating color blindness in this individual, with the effects lasting for a significant period of time. While the report is currently just an anecdote, the authors believe that it warrants further investigation.
Case Study: Psychedelics Improved Man's Color Blindness
Doctors and researchers from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and the University of Alabama have published a report, titled "Case report: Prolonged amelioration of mild red-green color vision deficiency following psilocybin mushroom use," in the journal Drug Science, Policy and Law.
Lead author Brian Barnett, a psychiatrist at the Cleveland Clinic, revealed that the subject of the report was actually one of their colleagues. The subject is a 35-year-old male with mild deuteranomalia, a type of red-green blindness, who had periodically taken a range of psychedelics including psilocybin, LSD, and DMT.
The man noticed an improvement in his red-green vision after some of his psychedelic experiences, which motivated him to conduct his own experiment.
He did the Ishihara test before eating a single dosage of dry psilocybin mushrooms, a typical measure of red-green blindness that includes gazing at plates of colored dots, the majority of which contain patterns that are either undetectable or only apparent to those with color blindness.
He then repeated the exam at regular intervals for the following four months, only verifying the answers at the end. The physicians ran their own test 436 days after his initial psilocybin usage.
The man's self-reported score before the mushroom test was 14, and he only slightly improved to a score of 15 six hours after taking the mushrooms. A day later, his score was 18; and eight days later, he reached his peak score of 19. He still got a 16 when the physicians examined him over a year later, despite having eaten mushrooms and other psychedelics previous to this test.
Barnett said in an email to Gizmodo that the improvement lasted at least 16 days and perhaps longer. After that period, the man used other psychedelics so it is hard to know whether the initial psilocybin mushrooms were responsible for the improvements.
Psilocybin Can Alter Color Perception
Since this is just a single case mostly based on self-reporting, this does not show that psilocybin cured the genetic defect of color blindness. Nonetheless, researchers believed that psilocybin can alter color perception.
A Reddit post has shared an extraordinary yet brief solution for color blindness. Someone who suffered from color blindness after a severe concussion claimed to miraculously regain color perception after taking mushrooms. However, according to another post on Reddit four days later, the effect seems to have faded.
As Science Alert reported, magic mushrooms appear to activate the visual pathway processing areas that lie far beyond the eyes; this apparently tricks the mind into seeing colors that the eyes cannot recognize. This drug offers scientists new avenues to explore in the quest to improve the vision of people with eye-related diseases and conditions.
RELATED ARTICLE: Magic Mushrooms is Said to Help "Reset" A Depressed Person's Brain
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