Magic Mushrooms: Looking Way Back

One year ago, in October 2025, we wrote about psilocybin and the idea that our brains can sometimes get stuck in familiar grooves.

Most grooves are useful. They help us move through life without having to rethink every decision. But sometimes a groove becomes a rut. The same fears, worries, habits, and reactions can repeat until they seem almost impossible to escape.

Research into psilocybin has suggested that, under carefully controlled conditions, the substance may temporarily loosen some of those rigid patterns. That possibility helped inspire our earlier blog, “Psilocybin: Am I in the Groove, a Rut, or on a Default Pathway?”

A year later, the story has become even more interesting.

Scientists are not only studying what psilocybin may do in the human brain. They are also asking where it came from, why mushrooms make it, and how psychedelic treatments might develop in the years ahead.

At the same time, Her Magic Mushroom Memoir has had an exciting year. We have been honored with both Signal and Webby awards. This October, we are launching the audiobook. Early in 2027, the print edition is planned for release, just ahead of the 70th anniversary of Life magazine’s famous 1957 article, “Seeking the Magic Mushroom.”

So this seems like a good moment to look in two directions.

Looking Way Back

One of the biggest questions about magic mushrooms is also one of the simplest:

Why do mushrooms make psilocybin at all?

They certainly did not evolve it so humans could have unusual experiences millions of years later.

Scientists now estimate that psilocybin production in the Psilocybe family may have appeared about 67 million years ago, close to the time of the asteroid impact that helped end the age of the dinosaurs.

That timing is fascinating.

The asteroid caused enormous changes to life on Earth. Forests were damaged. Ecosystems were reshaped. Huge amounts of dead plant material became available to fungi.

But there is an important distinction: scientists have not shown that the asteroid or the increase in dead wood caused psilocybin to evolve. The timing may be meaningful, or it may simply be an interesting coincidence.

Then came another surprise.

Researchers studying different kinds of psilocybin-producing mushrooms discovered that Psilocybe and Inocybe appear to make psilocybin through different biological pathways.

In simple terms, nature seems to have invented the ability to make psilocybin more than once.

That raises an even bigger question:

Why would evolution arrive at the same unusual chemical twice?

One possible answer is defense.

In a recent study, scientists exposed fruit-fly larvae to extracts from psilocybin-producing mushrooms. The larvae showed lower survival and changes in development and movement.

That suggests psilocybin, or other chemicals found alongside it, may help mushrooms defend themselves from insects or other animals that want to eat them.

But this is not settled science. Researchers are still trying to understand exactly what role psilocybin plays in nature.

For decades, most research asked:

What do magic mushrooms do to humans?

Now scientists are also asking:

What does psilocybin do for the mushroom?

That may turn out to be one of the most interesting questions of all.

Read the study on how different mushrooms evolved ways to make psilocybin