What Happens When You Try to Treat OCD With Psilocybin

Colloquially, OCD is known as the doubting disorder. In his new book, Simone Stolzoff explores whether treating that uncertainty with magic mushrooms can help people through it. Adam Strauss is standing in his New York City apartment, holding the limp cord of his headphones, trying to choose between the two MP3 players on his desk: the iPod and the iRiver, its Korean counterpart. He tries different songs, different genres, different instruments. The iRiver tends to sound better overall, but the iPod offers a little more nuance in the midrange. The iPod has a better battery life, but the iRiver still lasts eight hours-- longer than he's ever continuously listened to music. Then again, he's never owned an MP3 player. He goes back and forth, back and forth, testing vocal ranges, button resistance, interface aesthetics. It would be one thing if it were just Adam's decision of which MP3 player to buy. After all, it was 2003, the height of the personal audio device revolution, and Adam was a 29-year-old audiophile. For Adam, it was also other decisions-- what shirt to wear to work, what to order for lunch, even what side of the street to walk down. At one point, in an effort to simplify his decisionmaking process for what to wear, Adam bought 11 identical blue button-down shirts. But he quickly found variations in each shirt's fit and fading. He believed there was a shirt to pick; each morning he would spend 20, 30, then 45 minutes trying to find it. If he could only determine which shirt was best, he could control his fate.