Online Reporter
LONDON.—Nicotine is highly addictive, but new research is showing that psychedelics can shift people’s worldview in ways to help them give up cigarettes.
Tobacco is one of the toughest drugs to quit.
The nicotine it contains is as addictive as cocaine and heroin —perhaps even more so.
In surveys, around 70percent of adult smokers say they want to quit.
Yet of those who try, less than one in ten succeed in any given year.
Evidence is growing, however, that certain psychedelic drugs might offer some people an off-ramp from smoking.
In a 2017 survey, for example, 781 people said that tripping on LSD, magic mushrooms or another psychedelic had either allowed them to reduce smoking or quit altogether.
Why? The solution seems to be of the philosophical kind. Nearly all of those who managed to kick their nicotine habit reported a common insight: they suddenly felt that their life priorities or values had changed — specifically, that smoking no longer served them.
“The magnitude of the experience kind of overshadowed this previously insurmountable psychological challenge of quitting smoking,” says Matthew Johnson, lead author of the study and a professor of psychiatry and behavioural science at Johns Hopkins University, in the US.
And it is not just anecdotal. These findings have held up in a laboratory setting, too. In March 2026, Johnson and his colleagues published the most robust evidence to date showing that talk therapy combined with one dose of psilocybin, the primary psychoactive compound in magic mushrooms, is significantly more effective for helping people quit than therapy combined with nicotine patches.
Six months after undergoing treatment, the 42 people who had taken the dose of psilocybin had six times higher odds of having quit smoking than those in the nicotine patch group.
Psychedelic drugs remain illegal in most countries around the world and their use in research or clinical trials is tightly controlled. Yet there is growing evidence suggesting they could be used to help treat a range of mental health conditions and addictions.
“There hasn’t been a new smoking cessation medication in the United States in 20 years, so the potential here is exciting,” says Megan Piper, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the US, who was not involved in the research. Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death and disease worldwide, she adds, so “we need more tools to help people quit”.—BBC
