A Psychedelics Revival Should Start With Research: Editorial

R. Gordon Wasson was a Manhattan banker who fancied himself a mycologist. In 1955, after decades studying the mushrooms of ancient cultures, he traveled to the remote mountains of southern Mexico to partake of what locals called the “flesh of the gods.” Wasson chronicled the experience in Life magazine — the first widely published account of psychedelic mushrooms since Spanish friars condemned their use in the early 17th century.

Wasson’s report had two ultimately conflicting results. First, it popularized recreational use of psychedelics, which induced strange and mystical experiences but also, in some cases, “bad trips,” psychotic episodes and other ...