Single dose Psilocybin helps reduce pain and depressive symptoms
A new study from researchers at Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania has shown that just a single dose of Psilocybin can reduce symptoms of chronic pain from inflammation or neuropathic pain (Hammo et al., 2025). These kinds of pain are associated with sciatica type of nerve pain or inflammation, such as from infections or long Covid such symptoms. This leads to clues as to why people who grow magic mushrooms to take for healing, find great relief from their long covid symptoms.
More about the research conducted can be found here: https://rdcu.be/eJZiR
Although the study is conducted on mice, there are similar reports on social media from people experiencing similar effects. Here a Redditor found huge improvements from a 2 year Long Covid bout with magic mushroom dosing and another redditor found Microdosing with Magic mushrooms helped his Long covid symptoms. This aligns with the study as the type of symptoms from Long Covid are thought to be related to inflammation.
Chronic pain and mood disorders often coexist and amplify each other due to similar neurobiological processes. Currently pain is often treated with opioids with worse outcomes and the issue of dependence and tolerance, leading to addiction. Psilocybin is well known for not being addictive, therefore safer for use.
In the study, mice were manipulated to experience allodynia and anxiodepressive symptoms. They were then treated with a medicinal dose of psilocybin, representative of a macro dose, not a micro dose. The mice were observed and found that both the chronic pain and anxiety related depressive symptoms improved and remained so on a long term basis. This suggested that a single dose of psilocybin acts as a multimodal treatment to alleviate anxiety related depression and acted as an analgesic.
References
Hammo, A., Wisser, S., & Cichon, J. (2025). Single-dose psilocybin rapidly and sustainably relieves allodynia and anxiodepressive-like behaviors in mouse models of chronic pain. Nature Neuroscience, 1546-1726. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-025-02068-0