Fans of Super Mario play with them. Doctors study them. Chefs all over the world cook with them. They seem overnight, disappear in the same way fast and leave no trace of the visit. Students with this world are called mycologists and now, the fungus is being looked over as a possible treatment for cancer, PTSD-post-traumatic stress disorder and some psychological disorders.

Mushrooms, sometimes called toadstools, are fleshy bodies of fungus that grow above ground on soil or on a food source. They are separated from the plant world in a kingdom all their own called Myceteae because they cannot contain chlorophyll like green plants.

Without the process of photosynthesis, some mushrooms obtain nutrients by wearing down organic matter or by feeding from higher plants. These are known as decomposers. Another sector attacks living plants to kill and consume them and they're called parasites. Edible and poisonous varieties are mycorrhizal and are found on or near roots of trees such as oaks, pines and firs.

For humans, mushrooms can do among three things-nourish, heal or poison. Few are benign. The three hottest edible versions with this 'meat of the vegetable world' would be the oyster, morel and chanterelles.

They are used extensively in cuisine from China, Korea, Japan and India. In fact, China is the world's largest producer cultivating over 50% of all mushrooms consumed worldwide. All the edible variety within our supermarkets have already been grown commercially on farms and include shiitake, portobello and enoki.

Eastern medicine, especially traditional Chinese practices, has used mushrooms for centuries. In the U.S., studies were conducted in the first '60s for possible methods to modulate the defense mechanisms and to inhibit tumor growth with extracts utilized in cancer research.

Mushrooms were also used ritually by the natives of Mesoamerica for a large number of years. Called the 'flesh of the gods' by Aztecs goodtrip mushrooms, mushrooms were widely consumed in religious ceremonies by cultures throughout the Americas. Cave paintings in Spain and Algeria depict ritualized ingestion dating back so far as 9000 years. Questioned by Christian authorities on both parties of the Atlantic, psilocybin use was suppressed until Western psychiatry rediscovered it after World War II.

A 1957 article in Life Magazine titled "Seeking the Magic Mushroom" spurred the interest of America. The following year, a Swiss scientist named Albert Hofman, identified psilocybin and psilocin while the active compounds in the 'magic' mushrooms. This prompted the creation of the Harvard Psilocybin Project led by American psychologist Timothy Leary at Harvard University to study the results of the compound on humans.

In the quarter century that followed, 40,000 patients got psilocybin and other hallucinogens such as LSD and mescaline. Significantly more than 1,000 research papers were produced. Once the federal government took notice of the growing subculture open to adopting the utilization, regulations were enacted.

The Nixon Administration began regulations, including the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The law created five schedules of increasing severity under which drugs were to be classified. Psilocybin was put in the absolute most restrictive schedule I alongside marijuana and MDMA. Each was defined as having a "high prospect of abuse, no currently acceptable medical use and a lack of accepted safety."

This ended the investigation for nearly 25 years until recently when studies exposed for potential use within working with or resolving PTSD-post-traumatic stress disorder alongside anxiety issues. By June 2014, whole mushrooms or extracts have already been studied in 32 human clinical trials registered with the U.S. National Institutes of Health for their potential effects on a variety of diseases and conditions. Some maladies being addressed include cancer, glaucoma, immune functions and inflammatory bowel disease.

The controversial area of research is the utilization of psilocybin, a naturally occurring chemical in certain mushrooms. Its ability to greatly help people suffering from psychological disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, PTSD and anxiety remain being explored. Psilocybin has already been shown to work in treating addiction to alcohol and cigarettes in certain studies.