When Dennis van der Meijden buy mushrooms online mushrooms, he’s not seeking to feel one with the universe or embark on a sacred journey. He wants to improve his mental health.

Van der Meijden, a Dutch graphic designer who goes by the artist Terilekst, takes twice-weekly microdoses of psilocybin mushrooms. The microdoses are small — usually about a fifth to a tenth of a recreational dose. “If you do more than that, then you are going too far,” he says. “If you start seeing things, then it’s too much.”

Exploring the World of Online Mushroom Purchases

In the new study, researchers used a double-blind placebo-controlled experimental design to see whether 0.5 grams of dried psilocybin mushroom, also known as psilocin, had any short-term effects on subjective experience, creativity (divergent and convergent thinking), and perception and cognition. They found that the psychedelic compound did indeed affect those measures, though it was less clear than in their earlier study of LSD and psilocybin. The new study was published as a preprint on a website and has not been peer-reviewed. It’s not the first to find that psilocybin improves certain forms of thinking, but it is the first to show it’s safe and feasible to do on a regular basis.

The research could help encourage people to use psilocybin and other psychedelics responsibly as a tool for improving their lives, especially in the face of what many perceive to be mounting evidence that the drugs have therapeutic value. But long-term use is still controversial, and psychedelics remain Schedule 1 drugs, meaning that people can be sentenced to jail for possessing or selling them. That’s why advocates are pushing for decriminalization, and in some states the compounds are already legal to grow, such as in New Mexico.