Baltimore City Paper - Sacred Intentions: Inside The Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Studies
Sacred Intentions - Inside The Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Studies
By Michael M. Hughes.
Sandy Lundahl lies on a couch, her eyes covered with a dark cloth mask. She’s listening to classical music through enormous headphones: Brahms’ Symphony No. 2, the “Kyrie” from Bach’s Mass in B Minor, Barber’s Adagio for Strings. An hour earlier, she had swallowed two blue capsules containing close to 30 milligrams of psilocybin, the primary active chemical in Psilocybe cubensis and other “magic” mushrooms, and she’s already well on her way on a trip into the hidden spaces of her psyche.
Lundahl, a 55-year-old self-described skeptic and health educator from Bowie, is looking for God.
Two experienced guides are with her in the room, monitoring her: Mary Cosimano, a clinical social worker, and William “Bill” Richards, a white-haired, 68-year-old psychiatrist and scholar of comparative religion. He’s sitting cross-legged on the carpet in front of the couch, ready to help Lundahl–to talk her out of any negative trips, to help her remain focused on the scenes unfolding behind the mask, to offer a drink or some fruit or escort her to the bathroom. The space resembles a clean, warm, but decidedly offbeat living room. The lighting is spare and soft, emanating from two lamps. A bookshelf holds a variety of picture books and well-known spiritual and psychological classics like Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams and The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. Above the books sits a wooden sculpture of Psilocybe mushrooms. Behind the couch are a Mesoamerican mushroom stone replica and a statue of a serene, seated Buddha. An eye-popping abstract expressionist painting hangs on the wall, an explosion of color and intersecting lines.
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