Stan, 35, works as an integrated therapist in Toronto and has struggled with her mental health at times. Stan says she believes it was psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient found in magic mushrooms, that helped her turn her life around.
“In December 2020 I found myself in the middle of this living space, curled up in a ball,” she explains. “It was a very dark space. So I was contemplating suicide.”
Stan says she tried different therapies but nothing really helped until she found magic mushrooms — which are illegal to produce, possess and sell in Canada without special permission.
“I’m not sure that I would still be here if it weren’t for microdosing,” Stan says.
Andrina Stan said she believes microdosing psilocybin saved her life. ‘I’m not sure that I would still be here if it weren’t for microdosing.’ (Nick Purdon/CBC)
Stan has been microdosing psilocybin for three years.
She says she is aware that using that psilocybin can pose health risks, and deciding to microdose is not something she took lightly.
“I think that there’s a bit of a craze with psychedelics, and I know a lot of people, especially people my age, they just think it’s a fun thing to do,” she says. “I don’t see it as something that you should just pick up and try.”
What microdosing psilocybin allowed her to do, Stan says, is work through her issues. “It slowly brings that pain up so you can safely deal with it.”
Stan’s experience with microdosing psilocybin is a powerful anecdotal story, but what does the science say about the practice as a potential mental health treatment?
First clinical trial into microdosing psilocybin
Neuroscientist Rotem Petranker kneels in front of a safe in a nondescript medical building in midtown Toronto. He punches a code into the safe, opens it and takes out a bottle of pills. There’s a security camera attached to the wall nearby.
When your clinical trial involves an illegal substance like psilocybin, this is how the drugs are stored.
Through the University of Toronto, Petranker is leading the first clinical trial examining the effects of microdosing psilocybin on major depressive disorder.
And when your trial is the first of its kind in the world, there’s another kind of responsibility, Petranker says.
“We’re taking it very seriously, because we are setting the foundation for what will hopefully be decades more of research,” he says. “We need the foundation to be solid.”
Rotem Petranker, the director of the Canadian Centre for Psychedelic Science, holds a bottle of placebo pills used in the world’s first trial of microdosing psilocybin for major depressive disorder. The trial is being funded by the University of Toronto. (Nick Purdon/CBC)
There are 20 participants in Petranker’s eight-week trial, and each suffers from clinical depression. Once a week they either get a microdose of psilocybin or a placebo, and then Petranker and his team put them through a series of tests to determine if they experience an improvement in their mood.
Zeina Beidas, the lead research assistant, says microdosing is so trendy right now that many people in the general public simply believe it works.
“This is just a bunch of people with personal experiences that said, ‘Oh, yeah, this works for me,'” Beidas says. “So now everyone thinks microdosing helps with depression, but actually there’s no research, there’s no systematic controlled research.”
Due to the way the trial is structured, Petranker doesn’t know who is taking psilocybin and who was given a placebo. And while he doesn’t have any concrete findings yet, he has some initial observations.
“I’ve been seeing people getting better. A lot of people have gotten a lot better,” he says.
“Some people were having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning or even holding a job. And by the end of the trial, they no longer meet criteria for major depressive disorder. So that’s a very dramatic shift.”
Zeina Beidas is the lead research assistant on the clinical trial into microdosing psilocybin. She said microdosing is very trendy right now, even though there is no definitive science to prove it works. (Nick Purdon/CBC)
Still, Petranker cautions that people shouldn’t get too excited just yet.
It’s a small study over a short period of time, and it hasn’t been peer reviewed yet. Also, he explains because the trial dose is so low, many participants can’t tell if they’ve taken psilocybin or a placebo.
“And so because they don’t know what they’ve taken, but they come in with a lot of expectations and hopes, it’s possible that just because of those hopes and because they come into the lab and they feel like they’re doing something for themselves already, this affects their depression in very profound ways,” Petranker says.
“And so this might be the placebo effect in action.”
To know more definitively, Petranker says he would need to extend the clinical trial by six months and recruit 20 to 30 more participants. The trial has been funded by the University of Toronto, but Petranker says more funding would be needed to keep it going.
“This research is important, because people are already microdosing in droves,” Petranker says.
“So the science is far behind what the actual practices in real life are. It’s extremely important to see whether microdosing is effective and also whether microdosing is safe.”
Selling magic mushrooms
Even though there’s no hard scientific proof, some Canadians are buying into the practice of microdosing psilocybin anyway. Magic mushrooms are readily available on the internet and there are a growing number of bricks-and-mortar dispensaries in cities across the country.
Mush Luv is one of them. Its first store opened in April of 2023 in downtown Toronto. The company quickly expanded to two stores and plans to open a third.
Mush Luv has a “head of outreach,” but because the stores sell illegal products he uses an alias – Bezo West. There’s no single type of person who comes to the store looking to microdose magic mushrooms, West says.
“It goes from your regular, you know, construction worker, it could be a person in finance in the office,” he says. “It could be an elderly couple, maybe who just want to add a little bit of vibrancy to their day.”
Bezo West does public outreach for Mush Luv, a mushroom dispensary with two stores in Toronto. He says business is good and the company plans to open a third store soon. (Nick Purdon/CBC)
West says a lot of the demand is from people who say they are looking for help with their mental health problems.
“I have seen so many people, personally, come in being like, ‘Oh, I’m on antidepressants. I don’t want to be on this anymore, these aren’t working for me. I’d rather go get mushrooms instead of going to take antidepressants.”
The magic mushroom products Mush Luv sells are illegal in Canada. And while it hasn’t been raided, police have pressed charges at similar dispensaries across the country.
When asked if it worries him that he works in an illegal store, West smiles.
“I feel like I’m doing a little bit of God’s work,” he says. “Just helping people find a path to whatever helps with them. You know – it genuinely makes me feel happy.”
West doesn’t think psilocybin should be illegal. He says he believes that every Canadian should have the right to safe, equitable, regulated access to the drug.
“I genuinely think it’s going to go straight to where cannabis is. We’re right there in that process. So it’s very interesting times,” West says.
A serious warning
Dr. Ishrat Husain is a psychiatrist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental health in Toronto. He’s been studying psilocybin as a potential treatment for certain mental health conditions for several years.
He’s aware of how popular microdosing magic mushrooms has become – and how little science there is to back up the practice.
“There’s no evidence to support the benefits of microdosing,” he says.
Dr. Ishrat Husein is the lead investigator in a clinical trial commissioned by Health Canada to test whether psilocybin could be a viable treatment for some mental health conditions. He is also hoping to learn if psilocybin needs to induce a psychedelic trip to have therapeutic benefits. (Nick Purdon/CBC)
Dr. Husain says people should be careful if they get psilocybin online or at a dispensary, because he stresses it’s impossible to know where the mushrooms come from or how strong they might be.
“People who self-medicate with psychedelic drugs like psilocybin may in fact damage their mental health,” he warns.
“I work in the CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) emergency department. Anecdotally, I see young people in particular coming in after using powerful hallucinogenic drugs like psilocybin, and leading to really, really negative mental health outcomes, like even a psychotic episode.”
Dr. Husain says his concerns extend to microdosing.
“Although theoretically the risk may be lower with lower doses of the drug, we just simply don’t know whether that’s the case, because there have been no studies in people with mental health problems taking microdoses of these substances.”
Andrina Stan, who graduated with a degree in psychology from the University of Toronto, continues to use psilocybin, but she urges others thinking of microdosing to do it safely.
“You should inform yourself. And you should definitely speak to professionals before, during and after. It’s not something to joke about or to do for fun.”
If you or someone you know is struggling, here’s where to get help:
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
