We have a mental health problem in this country. I know, I worry about even typing it, but it’s true. Social media, smart phones, isolation, and then to top it all off, the pandemic. Therapy sessions move to Zoom, classes move online, and customers yell at you at your minimum-wage job. It’s a lot to process when your antidepressants already aren’t working like they used to. Rates of anxiety, depression, and addiction are all on the rise. But there’s reason to be optimistic, albeit cautiously, and it comes in the form of a mushroom.
It would be dubious to say that Canada has been a pioneering force in the field of hallucinogenic compounds; ancient peoples have been using mind-altering substances for thousands of years to delve into the mysteries of human consciousness, but it’s no small feat for a country to emerge from a half-century of moral panic. Illegal in Canada since 1974, psychedelics like psilocybin, LSD, and ayahuasca are worming their way back into the prohibition conversation.
ancient peoples have been using mind-altering substances for thousands of years to delve into the mysteries of human consciousness
Canada’s federal government has several compelling reasons to relax its restrictions on psychedelic mushrooms. Though their nature and scope have been limited by restrictive laws, studies have routinely shown that psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy can have radically positive effects on people suffering from debilitating mental illnesses like treatment-resistant depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Gaining another weapon in our arsenal in the fight for mental health is no small achievement; however, while advocates are quick to espouse the potential benefits across a whole spectrum of society, there’s an awareness that too much, too fast can cause a backlash.
Wading into these murky waters is Canada’s health minister, who’s been gradually doling out exceptions for psilocybin treatment for select Canadians facing end-of-life anxieties since 2020 and has recently greenlit the applications of three patients exclusively to address their mental health challenges. This has left advocacy groups, encouraged by the policy shift, nevertheless frustrated that for every patient admitted to these trials, they see hundreds of potential beneficiaries denied.
“It is faster and easier in Canada to get access to Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) than it is to get access to psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy,” says Holly Bennett, communications director for TheraPsil.
It is faster and easier in Canada to get access to Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) than it is to get access to psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy
Groups like TheraPsil, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), the Psychedelic Association of Canada, and others, have been working to bring awareness, train, heal, and effect legislative changes, and like the fungi they advocate for, their networking efforts have begun bearing fruiting bodies. Change is in the air, and it’s carrying spores.
Why are psychedelics so contentious? Is it the nature of the molecules themselves to be mercurial, or does that speak to our own human nature? As a society, can we harness the transformative properties of psilocybin without upending the social bedrock— or are advocates just tripping?
A Brief History:
Psychedelics have a long and storied history, but western civilization’s relationship with these substances is considerably more turbulent, tracing its roots back to the Columbian Exchange. The first Europeans to set foot in the new world brought more than guns and smallpox— they brought Christianity. In contrast to what the Spanish had to offer: a religion that relied on faith, Indigenous rituals involving psychedelic mushrooms connected the individual directly with the divine. Unwilling to share their spiritual monopoly, the Catholic church demonized the instruments of transcendence, waging a one-sided war on all materials or symbols relating to the shamanistic practices.
Admittedly, the Aztecs did have the more compelling sacrament, representing a tangible, and perhaps insurmountable threat to Catholicism. The Nahuatl word for psychedelic mushrooms translates to “flesh of the Gods,” so to allow the “mushroom cults” to continue unabated might risk the erosion of the church’s supreme authority. The Catholic missionaries’ attack on hallucinogenics was unrelenting, driving the tradition underground where it would remain practiced in small, isolated enclaves throughout the Americas. Centuries later, Time-Life magazine would run a story about the “mushrooms that cause strange visions,” reintroducing the “magic mushrooms,” as the article coined them, into the public sphere.
Psilocybin mushrooms now joined the psychedelic landscape alongside lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), discovered by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann. First synthesized in 1938, Hofmann accidentally exposed himself to its effects in 1943 upon reexamining it, and experienced the first known LSD trip. The experience had a profound effect on Hofmann’s life— one that would come to be replicated so widely that it would challenge the very social order of the United States.
Psilocybin substitutes as serotonin, becomes a better neurotransmitter, activates neurogenesis, it causes new neurons to form — new pathways of knowledge
Psychedelic substances are profoundly transformative, and not exclusively for personal wellness and social movements, according to proponents of the so-called “stoned ape theory.” In actuality a hypothesis rather than a theory, the idea points to psychedelic mushrooms as a crucial factor in the doubling in size of the human brain over the course of between 200,000 and 2 million years. Hypothesized by Terrence and Dennis Mckenna, it is succinctly conveyed by mycologist, Paul Stamets:
“With climate change and as the savannah increased and as our primate ancestors came out of the forest canopies — they’re tracking across the savannah — if you’re a hunter… you look for footsteps; you look for scat. Then the most significant fleshy mushroom growing out of poop in Africa… is psilocybe cubensis. It’s a very large mushroom. You’re hungry, you’re with your clan, you consume it, and then twenty minutes later you are catapulted into this extraordinary experience. Psilocybin substitutes as serotonin, becomes a better neurotransmitter, activates neurogenesis, it causes new neurons to form — new pathways of knowledge.”
That word, “neurogenesis” is key, as it’s the process by which the brain builds new neurons and neural pathways. Common in childhood development, the process restricts in adulthood but can be spurred on by introducing psilocybin. This is a critical element for the “theory” as the driving force for increasing our ancestral brain size, but also for mental health today. Where there are relatively few in the scientific community who lend the stoned ape theory much credence, it’s safe to say that as long as the emergence of human consciousness remains a mystery, the hypothesis will maintain its devout and loyal proponents.
Wanderlust: Kellyn
In 2018 I lost one of the most important people in my world, my brother Marc-Andre. Looking back on my life, nearly everything that became a passion of mine was directly influenced by the way I looked up to him. Marc-Andre was the person who helped make sense of the world when everything was chaotic and confusing. My whole life I’d felt out of place, and losing my brother made me feel more alone than ever.
At the time of his passing, my family shared in their grief together, with many tears shed. However, perhaps due to the shock, I only felt this deep emotional numbness. I was present with my family, but mentally I was checked out. The months that followed I really struggled to feel emotionally connected to anything or anyone. When summer rolled around two months after the incident, my family and I went on a camping trip to Keats Island, a small little spot off the Sunshine Coast. We arrived pretty early in the day. I packed with me a two gram dose of psilocybin mushrooms and ate them almost immediately after setting up my tent.
I was never taking time to stop and process my own trauma. I was simply going through the motions … Psychedelic-aided reflection in a calm environment helped me come out of that dissociative state.
I spent some time walking around during the come up, mentally sifting through a backlog of files in my brain, analysing and processing all the feelings I had stored up in my head. The more I processed each thought, it dawned on me that this experience was the first time since his death I had a moment of pause. Travelling back and forth from Alaska, attending funerals and celebrations, and going from one place and person to another, I was never taking time to stop and process my own trauma. I was simply going through the motions. It felt terrible to be that checked out, and in that moment it felt like I was waking up again. Psychedelic-aided reflection in a calm environment helped me come out of that dissociative state. After a few moments of sombre reflection, I allowed myself to break for the first time since my brother’s passing. I cried like a madman in the quiet solitude of a small rock on the beach overlooking the ocean. Feeling the grief in such a strong way came with a co-occurring euphoria. The crashing ocean waves encouraged me to cry it out while the vibrant green glow of the forest calmed my soul. I felt a profound emotional safety that until then felt so far away. Once my tears finally seceded, I breathed a calm sigh of relief.
The trip lasted roughly three hours. In that time; I met an absolutely sensational Alaskan Malamute named Wizard, swam in the ocean and met a harbour seal (no name given), did some journaling, and listened to Tea For The Tillerman by Cat Stevens. Obviously the trauma didn’t go away after the come-down. There was and still is a long road ahead of me on that front. However, that experience gifted me a new perspective on my profound grief, and helped me articulate it in a way that I could share with my family and allow us to move forward in the grieving process together. The value of an experience like that could never be fully measured.
Early research, the psychedelic revolution, and the controlled substances act
Since US President Nixon declared a “war on drugs” in 1971, psychedelics, alongside a slew of other psychoactive drugs, including opiates, have been strictly regulated. Prior to the aggressive barriers placed upon conducting psychedelic research, scientists in the United States and Canada were looking at a number of applications for psychedelic substance use in psychotherapy. Studies were being conducted to measure the healing properties of mushrooms to aid in the treatment of alcoholism, anxiety, end-of-life distress in cancer patients, schizophrenia, and depression. In the modern era, the inquiry into these treatments has begun to make a renaissance.
During the 1950s, LSD and mescaline treatment was starting to become used in the mental health field in Canada, instead of the common approach at the time; institutionalisation in a mental asylum.
In 1944, Saskatchewan elected premier Tommy Douglas. At the time, Douglas was deeply invested in promoting medical research that would inform the development of public policies. Spilling into the next decade, Saskatchewan became a mecca for psychedelic research, particularly in the field of psychedelic mental health therapy.
During the 1950s, LSD and mescaline treatment was starting to become used in the mental health field in Canada, instead of the common approach at the time; institutionalisation in a mental asylum. In addition to long term stays in an institution, patients suffering depression and anxiety disorders were given multiple doses of antidepressant pharmaceutical compounds, which are commonplace to this day. However, researchers were finding that providing single doses of LSD to patients delivered stronger results with fewer dosages.
In America, the use of psychedelic therapy started gaining traction following largely in part to the work of Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, faculty members of Harvard University in the 1950s-60s. After meeting at the university, the two professors developed the Harvard Psilocybin Project. The project was designed to study the effects of psilocybin mushrooms on human consciousness. While the project made large gains in research alongside the developments happening in Canada, the methodology employed by Leary and Alpert came heavily under fire from Harvard University. The problem at hand was that Leary and Alpert were using the drugs themselves alongside their research subjects. Their actions were seen as unprofessional and frivolous, despite changes that were made to the study. The project came to a halt in 1963 when Harvard fired both professors.
Because LSD and psilocybin were legal during the time of Leary and Alpert’s research, the recreational use of these substances spread like wildfire. With the growing popularity of psychedelics, Leary and Alpert continued to promote their use and became figureheads for the psychedelic counterculture hippie movement in the United States. In 1966, Leary gave a lecture to young psychonauts in which he coined the catchphrase “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” This historic saying became synonymous with the hippie movement itself.
With psychedelics becoming so popular in the United States during the 1960s, the government felt that this was a problem needing to be contained. In 1970, the United States congress established into law the “Controlled Substances Act.” This act made psychedelic drugs, as well as other psychoactive substances such as cocaine, meth, and heroin, completely illegal for manufacture, use, sale, and possession. In Canada, the approach to scheduling psychedelics was a little more spread out over time. By the year 1968, LSD was already made illegal for possession and trafficking. However, psilocybin mushrooms weren’t made illegal in Canada until 1974.
Wanderlust: Brad
My experience with “shrooms” began in 2020 in an “Intro to Psychology” course when a minor section of a lengthy textbook focused on the psychological impacts of hallucinogenic drugs. I’ve always considered myself a rational and grounded person not prone to magical thinking, so the notion that there were drugs out there that could fundamentally alter someone’s sense-of-self was fascinating. I began to seek out all I could find on the subject, but it becomes increasingly difficult to peer into the science and the transformative personal experiences without participating firsthand. Before long, I resolved to do just that.
All my enquiries led me to two important factors to consider: the importance of “set” and “setting.” Set refers to one’s mindset, or intention going into the experience, while setting denotes the physical setting of the environment. Both factors felt crucial for me to get right, but first I needed a hallucinogen. I decided on psilocybin in the form of psilocybe cubensis, specifically, dried Golden Teacher mushrooms. They were relatively easy to obtain through online retailers, and I’d heard from anecdotal accounts that mushrooms are psychologically “gentle” for initiates compared to other options. The first time I ate any of the disgusting mushrooms (I don’t even like them in my entrees) I’d made sure to only have enough to constitute an imperceptible amount — a microdose. A week later, I ate considerably more; a low-to-medium dose. I hated it. I felt anxious and wound up. It was profoundly unpleasant. Apparently, it’s a rather common side effect to experience such unease with these mid-range doses, as in the world of psychedelics, there exists (at least for some) a threshold that one must cross before the regular state of consciousness lets go of the reins. I resolved to go all in.
I just kept thinking, “what was I afraid of? It’s not scary. It’s not scary,” before realising I’d been saying it out loud as tears streamed down my face. It was, in a word, bliss
I selected the ideal day and time, set a reclining lounge chair out on my deck, cued up a relaxing playlist on my noise-cancelling headphones, and ate roughly 3.5 grams of the dry, acrid mushrooms. Within twenty minutes, I was feeling funny. Twenty minutes after that, colourful fractals were lapping like waves across my mind’s eye to the rhythm of the sounds in my headset. Sometimes the experience would become overwhelming, and I’d open my eyes to pause the dramatic display. With a little effort, I stood up and looked out over the view.
I just kept thinking, “what was I afraid of? It’s not scary. It’s not scary,” before realising I’d been saying it out loud as tears streamed down my face. It was, in a word, bliss. Every seagull that soared overhead was connected to me through our relationship to the earth and our shared DNA. We would both be born, exist for a brief moment, and then move on. Whether that sense of connection was genuine, or a product of a presupposed expectation planted in my brain before I’d set out was irrelevant — it was as real as anything I’d felt before. That commonality among experiences of people tripping is exactly what induced me to take this journey myself. I spent the rest of the evening gazing out over the world as the sun set over the mountains and the skies, streaked with fire, shone like the light of creation. Years later, sunsets still stop me in my tracks.
It was pretty good.
The New Age of Research:
Today, we are in a better position to understand the nature of psychedelics than at any other point in history. Without diminishing the role of generational knowledge and ancient tradition, new fields of study are beginning to peel back the layers of mystery that surround these psychoactive substances. Science is beginning to enter yet another realm that was previously the domain of the spiritual.
Psilocybin, and other hallucinogenic compounds, are tryptamines. Their chemical structure, while differing slightly among themselves, all bear a striking resemblance to serotonin, another tryptamine, and a chemical neurotransmitter produced in our brains. Serotonin is responsible for many functions, but notable among them is its relationship to mood regulation. The classification of antidepressant drugs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) prevent the reabsorption of serotonin, allowing it to remain longer in the synaptic gap with the intent of elevating and stabilizing our mood. The psychoactive compounds are similar enough to serotonin that they readily bind with receptors in our cortex, causing them to activate.
Fooling our brain’s receptors in this way results in an altered state of consciousness, which, thanks to modern technology, we can map and analyze with functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). FMRI facilitated the discovery of the default mode network (DMN), our brain’s default state when not being externally challenged or stimulated. The DMN emerges and solidifies as we reach adulthood, and is most active when we are introspective, daydreaming, worrying, and reflecting.
In his book, How to Change your Mind, Michael Pollan likens the DMN to a “regulating valve.” The human brain is responsible for approximately 20 per cent of the body’s energy usage, which makes it disproportionately demanding of our caloric intake given its relative size. If your brain had to deal with all the raw data that your senses took in, you would be completely overwhelmed — instead, the DMN filters out the unnecessary information and handles the relevant tasks almost subconsciously.
Professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and author, Alison Gopnik, likens the adult brain to that of a “spotlight” whereas the child’s brain is more analogous to a “lantern.” Spotlights, by their nature, cast a bright light on the object of importance, but make it more difficult to perceive those objects outside of the beam. This efficiency in the adult brain allows us to become very proficient at a range of tasks that narrows in scope as we age, and our underutilized neural pathways get trimmed for the sake of efficiency in a process called synaptic pruning.
Conversely, the brain of a child is much more plastic than that of an adult, and this is one reason that babies and children learn so rapidly. They are wired to discover a world that they now inhabit but played no part in constructing. They need to learn everything from scratch, and anyone who’s left their phone or iPad unlocked around a child will tell you just how adept they can be at navigating things they don’t understand that downright stump adults. This is because children do not have a preconceived notion of how things “should” work. Kids are all trial and error. In a talk at a 2011 TED conference, Gopnik relayed that four-year-olds “are actually better at finding out an unlikely hypothesis than adults are when we give them exactly the same task.” This distinction impacts the ability to problem-solve and makes children better at outside-the-box solutions.
So why discuss the brains of babies? Well, current research is showing that brains under the influence of psychedelics much more closely resemble those of children. In the words of Gopnik, “The short summary is, babies and children are basically tripping all the time.” This starts to make sense when you consider how difficult it becomes to replicate the joyous wonder of your youthful experiences, whether it’s the magic of a Christmas morning, or the adventure of exploring the woods behind your school or home. The closest I ever got to that feeling again was when I was tripping on psilocybin.
If enough psychedelic tryptamines flood your synapses it essentially takes your DMN offline temporarily — or at least relegates it to the backseat of our consciousness, and research is beginning to uncover what that ultimately means for our mental health.
Flooding our brains with tryptamines like LSD or psilocybin overwhelms our networks and results in neurogenesis and neuroplasticity.
The DMN is essentially who we are impulsively. The well-worn paths of our neural networks that are shaped by years of routines, habits, fears, and rewards can get so ingrained that they become challenging to deviate from, even when we want to. If you’re trying to start a new gym routine or break a bad habit, it’s gruelling because our brains want to use those solidified neural pathways. It’s like rolling a bowling ball down a lane that’s slanted toward the gutter — it takes a Herculean effort to get that ball where it’s not inclined to end up. Flooding our brains with tryptamines like LSD or psilocybin overwhelms our networks and results in neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. It’s this ability to “rewire” our neural networks that makes psychedelics so promising for combating addiction, depression, and other forms of mental unrest by levelling out the grooves in our cognitive terrain.
Treatment:
All of this brings us to why the decision to allow patients access to psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy is such a monumental shift in Canada’s relationship with psychedelics. Prohibited for nearly fifty years, there are now paths, albeit narrow, for legitimate, legal therapy and research involving psilocybin. The process allows for patients to address their mental wellness, whether end-of-life anxiety, PTSD, treatment-resistant depression, or a host of other maladies, in a safe, supervised environment, under the influence of powerful hallucinogens. However, our contemporary mental-health apparatus wasn’t constructed with these compounds in mind and requires a completely different set of skills and training from customary practices.
“It is not like just giving a patient a pill, hoping it works, and checking in on them in a few months,” says Bennett. “It requires on-going trusting relationships between patients and their treatment teams, and a deep understanding of the nuances of this treatment by the patient’s therapists and prescribing doctors.
“One challenge we are currently facing is the ability to continue to train healthcare professionals in the experiential aspect of psilocybin therapy,” continues Bennett, “and by this, I mean supporting healthcare professionals in legally undergoing their own psilocybin-therapy journey so they can first-hand get acquainted and understand what their patients may go through.” Essentially, if you want to help your patients navigate Wonderland, it’s a good idea to take a trip there yourself first.
This is easier said than done, as healthcare practitioners must acquire an exemption, first through Section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) and then through the Special Access Program, but “the Minister of Health is not granting them anymore,” says Bennett. “We don’t know why.” According to Bennett, there are currently only 19 practitioners in Canada that have been granted this exemption. In the meantime, groups like TheraPsil continue to train healthcare professionals, but with only a pedagogic understanding of this practice, they have no first-hand experience of what their patients might experience. And patients experience a lot. High-doses of psilocybin typically result in distortions in perception, deep feelings of connection to nature and others, and mystical, spiritual experiences, but also may unearth deep-seated traumas, hardships, and adversities that require patience and understanding to navigate through.
For decades, the gold standard of drug testing has been the double-blind study, in which some patients are given a drug, while others get a placebo. The trouble with psychedelics is that an hour after ingestion, nobody is ignorant as to what each patient received. Psilocybin just doesn’t gel with the present modality. Working with hallucinogens requires a totally different approach, but not a new one. Spelunking the unconscious requires reconnecting with our roots.
Drawing upon Indigenous knowledge and traditions, and a good deal of trial-and-error, researchers and psychologists in the 1950s and 60s learned the importance of “set and setting” in tripping. The intention of the patient, the environment, and the importance of someone there to “hold the space” so that the individual can relax and succumb to the process, are all critical ingredients in the overall success of the practice. To-date, TheraPsil has helped to train over 200 healthcare workers through their program.
Just as important as set and setting is the work that goes into reconciling the thoughts, emotions, and images brought on by the trip. This process is referred to as “integration.” It is this time, while our ego has become more malleable and open to new ideas, that we can recondition minds, address trauma, and break free from addictive patterns. This understanding is not a breakthrough, but draws from wisdom long-held by communities of persecuted practitioners working in secret to bring healing to those in need. Like Indigenous communities before them, researchers, therapists, and guides introduced to these substances before their prohibition have kept the traditions alive, and now find their experiences backed-up by modern technology and scientific instrumentation. They are links in a centuries-old chain.
These individuals, however, represent a slim fraction of the healthcare community, and there are still further hurdles to patients finding treatment. Bennett laments that “there are so few doctors who are willing to support their patients through this application process due to the cumbersome paper-work, legal liability, and the need for nuanced understanding of this extremely bureaucratic process.” So, what’s the solution? In Bennett’s estimation, it starts with an end to the outright prohibition of psilocybin, but not without guardrails. “Patient safety and ethics are paramount in this field,” she says. Advocacy groups are very aware of the cautionary tale that is recreational LSD in the 60s. For lasting progress to be made, there needs to be a legislative solution.
“TheraPsil has proposed a regulatory framework to the Government of Canada and our Federal Health Minister, Jean-Yves Duclos, for medical access to psilocybin,” says Bennett. “In this draft framework, patients and healthcare professionals would be in charge of deciding access to psilocybin, just like every other treatment option.” This is a far cry from the legalization trajectory of cannabis, but for very good reason — psychedelics carry much more cultural baggage, and arguably, the stakes are far higher. “We have seen far too many patients pass away while waiting for exemptions.”
Psychedelics are enigmas — powerful enough to erode faith and evoke spirituality in equal measure; they should not be taken lightly, but they should also not be discounted.
Integration:
To address our crises of addiction and declining mental health, advocacy groups are fighting for lasting, legislative change, but if psilocybin taught me anything, it’s that change is ubiquitous. Psychedelics are enigmas — powerful enough to erode faith and evoke spirituality in equal measure; they should not be taken lightly, but they should also not be discounted. We’ve known in this country as far back as the 1950s that when used responsibly, they can be a tectonic force for positive change, but it’s up to us, as a society, to nurture that change.
Twenty years ago, after a decade of struggle, sobriety, and relapse, my father moved into a motel and drank himself to death. We have an opportunity in this country, but we had that opportunity before. For nearly fifty years, psychedelic substances have been rendered illegal in Canada despite extensive evidence of their benefits. We have a chance to do better now. Lives may depend on it.
Long ago, when DeLoreans roamed the earth, Brad was born. In accordance with the times, he was raised in the wild every afternoon and weekend until dusk, never becoming so feral that he neglected to rewind his VHS rentals. His historical focus has assured him that civilization peaked with The Simpsons in the mid 90s. When not disappointing his parents, Brad spends his time with his dogs, regretting he didn’t learn typing in high school.
Kellyn Kavanagh (they/he) is a local writer, photographer, and musician. They first started writing what they now know to be flash fiction stories in the third grade when they learned how to make little books with a couple sheets of printer paper and a stapler. Their work typically focuses on non-ficiton journalism, short horror fiction, and very depressing poetry.
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