I don’t think I’ve ever even discussed hallucinogens with a zoomie

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5876200&forum_id=2,5#49953567)

maybe a regional thing

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5876200&forum_id=2,5#49954265)

For psilocybin specifically, the first large national NSDUH estimate using psilocybin-specific past-year questions found that about 2.8% of U.S. residents age 12+, roughly 8 million people, reported past-year use in 2024. That survey also found that ages 18–25 had about 1.4× the odds of use compared with ages 35–49, while adults over 50 had much lower odds.

For young adults over time, Monitoring the Future shows a much larger-looking rise because it measures broader hallucinogen/psychedelic categories. Among adults 19–30, past-year hallucinogen/psychedelic use was 9.7% in 2024, up +5.4 percentage points over ten years; among adults 35–50, it was 5.3%, also up +4.6 percentage points over ten years. So the young-adult level is higher, but the growth is not confined to them.

The more psilocybin-relevant MTF category, hallucinogens/psychedelics other than LSD, rose among ages 19–30 from roughly 3.0% in 2014 and 3.5% in 2019 to 8.9% in 2024. That is about a 3× increase from 2014 and about a 2.5× increase from 2019. MTF notes that this category includes “shrooms”/psilocybin, but it is not psilocybin-only.

A multisource study summarized by CU Anschutz found that past-year psilocybin use increased 44% among adults 18–29 and 188% among adults over 30 from 2019 to 2023. That cuts directly against the simple “Gen Z only” story: younger adults remain a high-prevalence group, but relative growth was very large among older adults too.

Regionally, yes, there is concentration, but it is moderate rather than exclusive. The clearest regional signal is the West, especially the Pacific division. The 2024 NSIHT estimated adult past-year psilocybin prevalence at 3.1% in the West, compared with 1.9% in the Midwest, 1.8% in the South, and 1.7% in the Northeast. For any psychedelic, the Pacific division was highest at 6.4%, followed by Mountain at 5.0% and Middle Atlantic at 4.9%; New England and West North Central were lowest at 3.2–3.3%.

My bottom-line read: the “explosion” is real if you look at post-2019 young-adult hallucinogen/psilocybin-adjacent measures, but the generational framing is too strong. Gen Z-aged adults are more likely to use than older adults, but millennials and Gen X/midlife adults are also part of the expansion. Geographically, use is West-skewed, particularly Pacific/Mountain areas and states with decriminalization or regulated-access politics, but it is clearly national rather than confined to a few legalization states.

The main measurement caveat is important: until 2024, many national surveys did not ask clean psilocybin-specific past-year questions, so older trend lines often use “hallucinogens other than LSD” or “hallucinogens/psychedelics” as proxies. Those are useful but not identical to psilocybin

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5876200&forum_id=2,5#49954308)