“At one point, though, I was in a stadium-like building with stained glass—it may have been a giant cathedral. At another point I had the feeling of living on a bubble. I had my space on the bubble and other people had theirs. But mostly there was just an experience of tranquility,” Martin continues. “No people, no architecture, no thoughts, no ideas—nothing. Just calm presence.”

Today, six years later, Martin credits psilocybin—as well as the preparation and guidance that went with it—with parting the fog of his depression. He also credits his psychedelic session with transforming and opening his relationships with his daughter, friends, and even his Alzheimer’s suffering father. “I still think about it every day,” he says, choking up for a moment. “I’m still unpacking and integrating what I learned into my daily life.”

Martin describes his clinical “trip” with the Schedule I drug—like LSD, it was banned during the Nixon administration because it reputedly offered no medical purpose—as among the most profound spiritual experiences in his life. It turns out that this is not unusual. In fact, it puts him among the overwhelming majority of now more than 200 clinical trial subjects at Hopkins, says Roland Griffiths, professor in the departments of psychiatry and neurosciences, and the lead architect of psilocybin studies at the medical school’s Bayview campus.

“After our first few sessions, I realized we had to develop new questionnaires if we were going to capture what people were experiencing and trying to express,” Griffiths says. “I would ask people what they meant by one of the most meaningful experiences of their lives and they’d compare it afterward to the birth of their first child or the recent death of a parent. When we followed up with them at two months, and again at 14 months, it persisted.

“When we initiated the study, I hoped we would come across something interesting,” Griffiths continues, “but in all honesty, I was unprepared for these kinds of reports—especially when they proved enduring.”

Ten years ago, Hopkins researchers, led by Griffiths and Bill Richards, a 76-year-old clinical psychologist whose work with psilocybin dates back to the heady days of psychedelic research in the early ’60s, published their first paper on their new pilot studies. Cited as a landmark report by former National Institute on Drug Abuse Director Charles Schuster, the ongoing research at Hopkins—and now other universities—has begun revealing a host of potentially dramatic therapeutic applications for the ancient psychedelic used by indigenous Mexican and South American communities in religious rituals for thousands of years. Two examples: Hopkins’ initial trial with heavy smokers documented an 80 percent abstinence rate more than a year out from the subject’s session—an unheard of success rate that is roughly 2.5 times better than reported results of those taking varenicline, the active compound in Chantix, generally considered the most effective smoking cessation treatment option. In London, an Imperial College pilot study of a dozen individuals suffering from major depression for an average of 18 years—and who had previously tried at least two standard antidepressants—found that psilocybin sessions provided a reprieve from the depression in all 12 volunteers for three weeks and kept it at bay in five subjects for three months.

Meanwhile, early returns from other university studies are indicating that psilocybin has the potential to become a revolutionary tool in treating alcoholism, drug addiction, OCD, as well as anxiety and depression associated with cancer diagnoses such as Martin suffered. Other studies show psychedelic treatment could be useful therapy for ex-offenders, in terms of reducing recidivism, by reducing substance abuse and domestic violence. Researchers acknowledge it’s not exactly clear how psilocybin manages to reduce, and in some cases eliminate, depression and the fear of death, or, ironically cravings for other drugs and substances. What is known is new fMRI imaging shows one of the immediate effects of psilocybin is decreased activity in the region of the brain that involves habitual behaviors and thinking patterns (known as the default mode network) and the perception of the self—the ego, in other words. And, that throughout recorded history, transcendent mystical experiences have produced life-altering changes in human beings. Think St. Paul’s white-light conversion on the road to Damascus; the visions of the peasant girl Joan of Arc in France; Siddhartha Gautama’s awakening beneath the Bodhi tree.

Peter Hendricks, a University of Alabama at Birmingham researcher investigating the effects of psilocybin on people addicted to cocaine, has collaborated with the Hopkins’ team. He says psychedelic sessions, properly guided, can produce a kind of therapeutic “reboot.” Which doesn’t mean he diminishes the epiphany experience and cosmic consciousness that so many psilocybin trial subjects describe. “I call it the Ebenezer Scrooge moment,” Hendricks says. “Something profound happened to Ebenezer Scrooge.”

As strange—or alarming—as it may sound to some, it’s the belief of scientists at Hopkins and elsewhere that if FDA-approved Phase II and Phase III trials currently underway continue along the same trajectory, it may not be long before psilocybin is removed from its Schedule I classification. Researchers envision a future where psilocybin, which works in similar fashion as LSD—though its effects wear off in six to seven hours, as opposed to LSD’s eight to 10 hours—is legally available for physicians and licensed counselors for use in hospice, rehab, clinical care, and therapeutic settings. Griffiths and his team are quick to caution that powerful substances such as psilocybin are not appropriate for everyone by any means, and that trial subjects are carefully screened and guided through their experience. Nonetheless, their enthusiasm is hard to overstate.

“Why wouldn’t you want to use something like psilocybin that has been shown it can be administered safely, that’s not toxic or addictive, and makes that kind of impact in people’s lives?” Richards says. “Think of the number of people who die from smoking-related diseases alone each year. What’s the dangerous drug here?”

The questions Richards poses, of course, have a loaded history.