Concise large-scale synthesis of psilocin and psilocybin, principal hallucinogenic constituents of "magic mushroom".

The concise large-scale syntheses of psilocin (1) and psilocybin (2), the principal hallucinogenic constituents of "magic mushroom", were achieved without chromatographic purification. The key step in the synthesis of 2 was the isolation of the dibenzyl-protected intermediate (7) as a zwitterionic derivative (8), which was completely identified by means of 2D NMR analyses.