Arizona study of ‘Jedi Mind Fuck’ mushroom to start by end of year

Next month, the Scottsdale Research Institute will finally begin a clinical trial for psychedelic mushrooms, having gotten a key green light from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The trial, which is partially funded by $5 million in taxpayer money allocated by the Arizona Legislature and Gov. Katie Hobbs in 2023, will be the first in the nation to use whole mushrooms rather than isolated psilocybin molecules, placing Arizona at the forefront of psychedelic research.

Dr. Sue Sisley, the president and principal investigator at the Scottsdale lab, celebrated the upcoming trial in a press release on Tuesday.

“This landmark study — made possible by the leadership at AZ Legislature, Governor Hobbs and the State of Arizona Health Dept — reflects our mission to deliver real-world data that can guide policy and expand access to promising treatments for patients with PTSD,” Sisley wrote.

Previously, the Food and Drug Administration took the magic mushroom trial off hold in March, a crucial step in getting it up and running. The FDA has not responded to a request for comment on the trial’s approval.

The lab has also received the go-ahead from the Institutional Review Board and now needs only a final stamp of approval from the Drug Enforcement Administration. However, Sisley told Phoenix New Times that she expects that to come in the next few weeks.

The study will split 24 test subjects into three groups consisting of eight firefighters, eight police officers and eight military veterans to test the therapeutic efficacy of whole mushrooms for patients with PTSD. Sisley said several hundred people of those backgrounds contacted her office and expressed interest in participating in the study. 

“They’re realizing that nothing that the system has offered them so far has really helped them,” Sisley said in an interview. A lot of them have the courage to raise their hand and admit they have PTSD or depression — but then they enter a mental health hamster wheel where they just get pummeled with tons of medications that often don’t really work.”

SRI will choose the study participants from among those who reached out, weeding out those who don’t meet the study’s criteria. For instance, patients can’t have received ketamine treatment or used psychedelics in the past year. Sisley said she hopes to have chosen the participants “by the end of November and start dosing patients in December.”

How it will work

Studying the effect of the whole mushroom is what makes SRI’s study unique, and what makes it trickier to organize. 

Mushrooms are more complex and contain more than just psilocybin — particularly a mix of alkaloids and tryptamines that “work together synergistically” to exert effects on a person, Sisley said at a state Psilocybin Research Advisory Council meeting in March.

The name of the mushroom strain is “Jedi Mind Fuck.” The strain was chosen by Sisley’s team after 14 mushroom grow cycles and 40 official tests on their mushrooms. During a panel at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies conference in June, Sisley jokingly explained that she picked the name “mostly because I enjoy writing this on the government forms,” Sisley said.

Each participant will take 30 milligrams of psilocybin in the form of about 4.5 grams of whole mushrooms, which are also grown at the lab’s own facilities under a DEA license.

“That will be enough, we think, to treat their illness and get them on a path to healing,” Sisley said. “I don’t expect one intervention to put PTSD into remission, but we hope it will at least open their mind to the possibilities for healing.”

Funding the study garnered bipartisan support when it was approved in 2023, including from then-state Rep. Kevin Payne, a Republican. Payne, who now serves in the Arizona Senate, expressed his pleasure at the study’s approval in SRI’s press release.

“Arizona is proud to lead the way with this pioneering study, which reflects our commitment to evidence-based, responsible exploration of new treatment options for patients in need,” Payne said in the release.

The release added that healthcare and clinical research company Alira Health will provide operational support for the trial.