Magic Mushroom Coffee and Tea Coming to a Pot Near You?

One of the biggest challenges of eating magic mushrooms is the eating part, so a Denver coffee roaster wants your dose to come from a cup of joe instead. Anticipating looser regulations around psilocybin and more public acceptance, Strava Craft Coffee just announced plans to sell coffee beans and tea products infused with the psychedelic substance.

The coffee and tea will be designed to help fight anxiety and depression, according to Strava, but don't start boiling water just yet: Strava doesn't anticipate selling the beverages until 2020 at the earliest, banking on a more favorable regulatory environment emerging within the new few years.

"Just as cannabis has been misunderstood and controversial for decades, psilocybin from mushrooms has been equally polarizing, yet proponents of both suggest they each can contribute meaningfully to the human experience," Strava CEO Andrew Aamot says in a statement announcing the new product. "As research is proving, with measured consumption, cannabis and psilocybin can both promote physiological, mental and spiritual health."

Denver voters approved an initiative decriminalizing magic mushrooms and their main psychoactive ingredient, psilocybin, in May, and the city council of Oakland, California, voted in favor of decriminalizing mushrooms and peyote about a month a later — but an okay from two municipal governments is still a far cry from national or even statewide legalization.

Strava is confident that more influential regulators will come around soon, however. In 2018, the United States Food and Drug Administration granted a “Breakthrough Therapy” designation, a move that expedites drug development, to a company developing psilocybin-assisted treatment for depression, and now that treatment development is under way.

When used in small doses, psilocybin has shown promise in treating patients with severe depression as well as those dealing with anxiety, according to several trials and studies. Strava plans on infusing coffee and tea with "microdoses of psilocybin," according to its announcement.

The company already has a little experience with plant-derived substances, as it was one of the first coffee roasters to sell CBD-infused coffee in 2017. Something tells us this effort will be a little bolder, both in flavor and chutzpah.