Hundreds of millions of people worldwide suffer from depression, and researchers are now investigating whether psychedelic therapy can be an effective treatment.
Steve Shorney is one of those who took part in a clinical trial at Imperial Collage in London.
60 people participated where half received traditional antidepressant drugs and the other half psilocybin, the active substance in so-called magic sponge.
For Steve, psilocybin treatment was the way out of a long-term depression.
- A treatment with psilocybin is as good as ten years of psychotherapy, Steve says.
Can be based on wishful thinking
However, not everyone is equally enthusiastic.
Psychedelic researchers from New Zealand believe that it is difficult to have functioning placebo groups because you feel so clearly that you have received the active substance.
The results could thus be a wishful thinking from the patient more than that the hallucinogenic fungi actually make a difference.
What speaks against the fact that everything is just a placebo effect is that magnetic camera images show changes in the brain - also many weeks after the psychedelic therapy.
You can see more about the progress in psychedelic science in "Healthy of magical mushrooms" at Vetenskapens Värld on Monday 25 April at 20:00 on SVT2 or on SVTplay.