Last reviewed
Chronic pain is one of the conditions people ask about most, and it is also one of the areas where the evidence is thinnest. This page lays out what we could find: what has been published, what is still being tested, and why nobody can say yet whether psilocybin helps.
The short version is that there are interesting early signals and a lot of unanswered questions. Every study below links to its source so you can read it yourself.
So far this is a handful of very small studies and one review. None of them is a large trial with a placebo group, which is the kind of study needed to settle the question.
A case series described three patients with nerve pain who used very low amounts of psilocybin and reported relief.
Worth knowing
There was no control group and the reports came from the patients themselves. Reviews rate the evidence as low or very low certainty.
Lyes et al., Pain, 2022
Microdosing psilocybin for chronic pain: a case series →Five adults with fibromyalgia finished an open-label pilot of supported psilocybin sessions. On average their pain severity score fell by 2.3 points and pain interference fell by 9.4 points. Asked how they felt overall, one person said very much improved, two said much improved, and two said minimally improved. No serious adverse events occurred. Four of the five had a headache after dosing that cleared within two days.
Worth knowing
Five people and no control group, so nobody can say how much came from psilocybin, from the therapy around it, or from expecting to feel better. The authors call the results highly preliminary, and recruitment stopped early.
A review in the British Journal of Pharmacology goes through how psilocybin might affect pain, from animal models of nerve and inflammatory pain to the first clinical findings. It describes ways psilocybin could act on pain signals and on the brain networks involved in chronic pain.
Worth knowing
Most of the work it covers is in animals. How a mouse responds to pain tells us little about how a person with chronic pain would respond.
British Journal of Pharmacology, Askey et al.
Psilocybin as a novel treatment for chronic pain →Several registered studies are testing psilocybin for specific kinds of pain, some of them with a placebo comparison. We checked each registry entry and found no posted results. We will update this page when that changes.
A registered trial is studying psilocybin for chronic lower back pain.
Worth knowing
No published results found.
A registered placebo-controlled trial is testing two low amounts of psilocybin against placebo.
Worth knowing
No published results found.
A small registered trial is testing supported psilocybin sessions against placebo for phantom limb pain. Participants, researchers, and the people assessing outcomes are all kept blind to who got what.
Worth knowing
No published results found.
Pain is hard to study. It is measured by asking people how they feel, and expecting relief can ease pain by itself, so a study without a good comparison group cannot say how much of any change is real.
Psilocybin is also hard to blind. People can usually tell whether they received it, which can tilt the results. In the studies so far the sessions came bundled with therapy and careful medical support, so researchers cannot yet tell which part is doing what.
And the best-developed work is in animals. A mouse study can suggest a mechanism worth testing, but it cannot tell us what would happen for a person living with pain every day.
This page describes research. It is not medical advice, and nothing here is a reason to change how you manage your pain. People in these studies were screened by clinicians and supported through every session, which is very different from trying something on your own.
If you take medication for pain or for anything else, talk to your doctor or pharmacist before you try anything new, and never stop a prescription on your own. Our page on microdosing safety covers interactions and who should check with a doctor first.
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This page is for adults 21 and older. It summarizes published research for education only. It is not medical or legal advice, and it makes no claim that any product sold by Luna treats, cures, prevents, or helps any condition. Laws about these mushrooms vary by place, and you are responsible for knowing yours.
Research moves quickly. We last checked this page against its sources on , and we will correct it if we get something wrong.