The God Pill
From The Economist, July 13, 2006

"One June night in Mexico in 1955, Gordon Wasson, a vice-president of J.P. Morgan, became one of the first outsiders to eat what the Aztecs called teonanácatl, the flesh of the gods. Actually, it is the flesh of a fungus, and it soon became known to hippies as the magic mushroom. But, whereas the flower children of the 1960s and their descendants gobbled the hallucinogenic fungi in search of a good time, the Aztecs had a deeper purpose. They used the mushrooms in religious ceremonies for healing, divination and communing with the spirit world.

Now a study led by Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University, and published this week in Psychopharmacology, has shown that psilocybin—the active component in magic mushrooms—does indeed induce mental states akin to the highest religious experiences. Moreover, it has lasting positive effects on those who take it."

Source: The Economist