Johns Hopkins research study showed that the previously discovered beneficial spiritual effects of psilocybin, the substance in magic mushrooms, appear to last more than a year.

According to a statement from Johns Hopkins Medicine, the research, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, is based the experience of 36 volunteers who reported 14 months after taking the substance that the hallucinogenic experience increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction.

"Most of the volunteers looked back on their experience up to 14 months later and rated it as the most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful and spiritually significant of their lives," said lead investigator Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., a professor in the Johns Hopkins departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Neuroscience, in the statement.

Psilocybin is a plant alkaloid that affects some of the same brain receptors that respond to the neurotransmitter serotonin. Some cultures have used the mushrooms containing psilocybin for hundreds of years for religious, divinatory and healing purposes.