Psychedelic Medicine: Canada authorizes limited use of magic mushrooms – RCI

Magic mushrooms, Psilocybin Cubensis. (IStockphoto)

Four months after allowing a handful of palliative care patients to use psilocybin to alleviate end-of-life suffering, Health Canada has paved the way for more than a dozen doctors to use that psychedelic drug to help develop therapies for use. future.

The Canadian Ministry of Health has reported that it has granted 16 exemptions to a group of nurses, doctors, therapists and social workers, allowing them to own and use psilocybin for their personal training without fear of being followed under control laws. drugs in the country.

This is not a small step. It’s a huge step, “said Sean O’Sullivan in the small town of Tillsonburg, Ontario. He is a doctor and director of TheraPsil, a non-profit group that advocates for the therapeutic use of psilocybin.

Dr. Sean O’Sullivan is one of 16 health professionals who have been granted an exemption from Canadian drug laws for using magic mushrooms. (Photo: CBC / Sean O’Sullivan)

This decision comes after the Canadian Ministry of Health granted four exemptions to patients in palliative care to use the drug in psychotherapy at the end of life in August last year. Since then, other exemptions have been granted to those patients who wish to use magic mushrooms.

Exemptions for healthcare professionals will allow those who want to treat psilocybin patients to understand how they would feel and how to use it best. These permits are valid for one year.

“Psychedelic substances and treatment with these substances, such as psilocybin, are a growing field of scientific studies and research. Because psilocybin is not an authorized therapeutic substance, the availability of rigorous scientific evidence to demonstrate its safety and efficacy is limited, ”said Health Canada.

“Exemptions do not allow healthcare professionals to prescribe or supply mushrooms containing psilocybin to another person. There are no medicines containing psilocybin that are authorized by the Canadian Ministry of Health. The decision of the Canadian Ministry of Health to grant these exemptions does not constitute an opinion or approval from the Canadian Ministry of Health regarding psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy, training or the safety, efficacy or quality of psilocybin.

One gram of psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms. (AP Photo / Seth Wenig)

“This is a huge step taken by the Government and a very wise step, totally in line with published science and literature. It is a very courageous decision on the part of the government, “O’Sullivan said.

Psychedelic therapies such as psilocybin and LSD have had a negative reputation, in part because of the war on drugs, O’Sullivan said.

“The war on drugs has been a total disaster around the world. You have incriminating behaviors that should not be incriminated. Cannabis has been legalized and the sky has not fallen, “O’Sullivan said.

Recipients include psychiatrists associated with the University of Toronto, a community psychiatrist in Hamilton and his partner, as well as health professionals in Calgary and British Columbia.

Psilocybin allows the brain to bypass the “default network”, the part of our brain that cares about taxes and dinner and the shopping list, and allows it to sink deeper into the subconscious.

“If you look at your network by default, you’ll find that the topics that appear are the same as they were last year, the year before, and the decade before,” O’Sullivan said. “Psychedelics implicitly disarm the Internet and allow a person to have new experiences in a carefully controlled clinical setting. When the network is reassembled by default, it is not reassembled in the same way as before.

So a single dose of a psychedelic drug can have more effect than years of speech therapy or medication, said Sean O’Sullivan, director of TheraPsil.

Sources: CBC / K. Dubinski / Canadian Press / RCI

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