Latest news with #magicmushrooms
Bloomberg
6 hours ago
- Health
- Bloomberg
New Zealand Allows First Medical Use of Magic Mushroom Compound
By Hi, it's Karoline in Singapore, where the use of hallucinogens is largely illegal and subject to severe penalties. But one nation just allowed medical use of 'magic mushrooms'. But before I tell you more... Psilocybin, a hallucinogen found in more than 200 species of 'magic mushrooms' was defined by the UN's 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances as a drug with high potential for abuse and not recognized for medical use. But in recent years, studies have shown that it can relieve severe depression when taken in conjunction with psychotherapy.
CBC
12 hours ago
- Health
- CBC
Federal court rules Health Canada decision to block experiential psilocybin training was unreasonable
Social Sharing The Federal Court of Appeal has ruled that Health Canada's refusal to allow exemptions for health-care workers to use psilocybin as part of their experiential training was unreasonable. Wednesday's decision was the result of an appeal of a 2022 judicial review application in a case involving 96 health-care practitioners who sought an exemption to legally use dried hallucinogenic mushrooms as part of what is known as experiential training. The initial application for exemption was filed under the name of Jeff Toth, a Nova Scotia nurse practitioner. Health Canada's refusal of the health-care workers' requests for exemptions has been sent back to Health Minister Marjorie Michel for redetermination. The mushrooms, commonly called magic mushrooms, contain psychoactive substances that are only legal for use in Canada if an exemption is granted under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA). Such exemptions are reserved for psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy, which involves medically supervised consumption of the substance for the treatment of serious medical conditions including end-of-life distress or treatment-resistant depression. Late Wednesday, the federal court ruled that Health Canada's reasons for refusing to grant exemptions to the 96 health workers training to administer psilocybin were too arbitrary. Refusal of exemptions harms patients: advocate John Gilchrist, communications director for TheraPsil, a Canadian non-profit organization that advocates for legal access to psychedelic therapy, was "elated" with this week's decision, which he called a "very long time coming." Gilchrist hopes this leads the current health minister to open up access to therapies by training more professionals who can help treat patients with debilitating migraines or depression. He says Health Canada's refusal to grant the exemptions is "harming health-care professionals and, very importantly, patients who are the most vulnerable in Canada." The Federal Court of Appeal's decision noted that Health Canada changed its position on psilocybin exemptions between 2020 and 2022 with no clear explanation. In 2020, then Health Minister Patty Hajdu granted exemptions to 19 health-care practitioners. This was reversed in 2022 under Carolyn Bennett, the then minister of mental health and addictions and the associate minister of health. "Health Canada is not aware of peer-reviewed clinical evidence to demonstrate that health-care professionals need to take a psychedelic drug in order to appreciate what the patient experiences," the ministry is quoted as saying in the federal court decision this week. But Federal Court of Appeal Justice Douglas Rennie wrote in his decision Wednesday that "nearly identical exemption requests" were granted in one case and denied arbitrarily in the other. "The Minister can't make such a significant and abrupt shift without explanation," he wrote. WATCH | Psychotherapist explains what a medical magic mushroom trip will look like: What a magic mushroom trip will look like for medical participants 1 year ago Duration 1:32 Health Canada has approved a study with 20 Londoners who suffer from PTSD to experience therapy under the influence of psilocybin, the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms. Psychotherapist Jared Dalton will oversee the therapy. He explains how it will work. Wins will open access to treatments: lawyer Ottawa lawyer Nicholas Pope says this is the latest in legal wins that will help open up access to psychedelic treatments. Pope, lawyer for the appellants, said the health-care workers were approved in 2020, then denied based on a lack of scientific evidence of efficacy. "Health Canada didn't demand that level of evidence in 2020 and now is demanding it," he said. In May 2024, a Calgary man named Jody Lance who suffers debilitating cluster headaches was the first to win a Federal Court battle forcing Health Canada to reconsider his bid for legal access to psilocybin to treat his extreme pain. His case was withdrawn after he got approval for an exemption this year. Requests to access controlled substances in special medical circumstances are filed through Health Canada's Special Access Program (SAP). Lance's initial application under the SAP to help treat his pain was denied due to lack of research into the efficacy of psilocybin to treat cluster headaches. Canadians have had limited legal access to psilocybin under the SAP since 2022. Health Canada approved 56 SAP requests in 2022, 106 in 2023 and 85 as of October 2024.
CTV News
2 days ago
- CTV News
B.C. man ‘acted involuntarily' when he attacked woman after taking magic mushrooms, court finds
Warning: This story contains details readers may find disturbing. A B.C. man who admitted to attacking and sexually assaulting a woman before stabbing himself in the chest was acquitted of all charges, with the court ruling he 'acted involuntarily' after taking magic mushrooms. Leon-Jamal Barrett was charged with sexual assault and other offences in an attack that left a woman he had never met before 'horrified and traumatized' in the early hours of March 9, 2019, according to a decision finding the accused not guilty on the grounds of non-mental disorder automatism. 'Mr. Barrett will not face a conviction in this matter, but he will live with the knowledge that he made a choice that resulted in temporarily losing his mind and committing an appalling series of acts against a stranger. The scar that he bears will be a constant reminder of these actions,' Judge Timothy Hinkson wrote in his decision. The ruling was handed down in Surrey provincial court in March and posted online earlier this month. 'This case is unusual,' Hinkson's decision began. 'There is no doubt as to whether or not Mr. Barrett did what he is accused of.' The defence of non-mental disorder automatism is rarely invoked and highly controversial. It amounts to an argument that someone who does not have an underlying mental illness acted involuntarily and is not responsible for their actions – which the judge notes is counter to the general legal presumption that people 'act voluntarily.' A 'highly unusual' case Unlike in cases where someone is found not criminally responsible 'due to mental disease or defect,' when this defence succeeds the accused is acquitted – and the court can not order detention in a psychiatric facility. In this case, the judge accepted that Barrett was in an 'acutely psychotic state' after smoking cannabis and ingesting magic mushrooms. 'While what he describes may be shocking and hard for almost anyone to comprehend, there is no evidence contradicting his version,' Hinkson wrote. 'He was hallucinating and delusional and those psychotic symptoms drove his behaviour,' the judge continued, summarizing what the court heard from an expert who also described the case as 'highly unusual.' Barrett told the court about a 'complex hallucination' that began roughly an hour after he took the mushrooms and involved a demand to 'sacrifice himself to save humanity.' Part of the delusion involved needing to find a woman in order to fulfill a command from God. 'God would sacrifice both of them during an act of sexual congress in order to save humanity. He waited at his house for this woman to come,' the decision said. 'When she did not, he left his home, believing that if he walked anywhere, God would eventually bring them together.' The attack on the woman Once he was out on the street, he saw a woman behind the wheel of a car and 'assumed she was the chosen woman,' according to the decision. Barrett started to follow her, and she ran away from him toward her home but he climbed the gate and managed to grab her and pull her to the ground, the decision said. 'He started to lick her and kiss her neck. He 'smashed' her left breast. He was pulling at her pants, she felt, in an effort to remove them. When he tried to kiss her, she repeatedly poked at his face with her key. When he put his tongue in her mouth, she bit his tongue as hard as she could,' the court heard. Barrett got up and started to undress, and the woman took the opportunity to run again but Barrett pushed her down concrete stairs. 'There was a great struggle on the floor. (The victim's) wrist was injured. She was screaming, trying to push Mr. Barrett away. Mr. Barrett was on top of (the woman), still naked, with his hands at the side of her jeans, pulling at them again,' the decision said. Ultimately, the victim was able to get inside and lock a door behind her. Her screams woke up her landlord's kids, and a neighbour called 911. Reasons for acquittal Barrett, meanwhile, went home where the delusion continued, according to the decision. 'He believed he could not die from the passage of time and that the police, who had also been corrupted, were going to lock him in a cell for the rest of time. He resolved to go home and take his own life so that another version of himself could be reborn and reincarnated and then maybe they could save the world,' Hinkson wrote. Barrett then stabbed himself in the chest before leaving again to seek out the 'actual woman' he believed God needed him to find, the judge wrote. Police apprehended him on the street after a chase, and the testimony of the arresting officers was that Barrett seemed to have 'superhuman strength' and acted like he was impervious to pain. He was also described by police as in a state of 'extreme agitation' and 'not really conscious or aware of his environment and people around him.' In order to acquit on the grounds of non-mental disorder automatism, Hinkson explained that a judge needs to be satisfied there is 'evidence upon which a properly instructed jury could find that the accused acted involuntarily on a balance of probabilities.' That burden was met in this case, the judge ruled. Next, an underlying mental illness or disorder needs to be ruled out. 'I am satisfied that the automatism was not caused by a mental disorder. Furthermore, it was caused by an external cause, being the ingestion of magic mushrooms 'boosted' by the use of cannabis,' Hinkson wrote. 'Erosion of trust in the legal system' Angela Marie MacDougall, executive director of Battered Women's Supported Services Society, said she wasn't surprised by the ruling, but is concerned about the message it sends. 'We're at this point where the general public is very aware that the criminal legal system is not helpful for sexual assault victims or domestic violence victims,' MacDougall told CTV News. 'There's an incredible erosion of trust in the legal system both in terms of policing but also the courts – and this case is another example of that.' MacDougall says it's another example of why sexual assault victims overwhelmingly choose not to engage with the criminal justice system. 'Anybody that wants to do harm can easily see that there are plenty of loopholes and it is unlikely that you would be held accountable,' she said. MacDougall says she will continue to advocate for victims of sexual assault who do choose to report the crimes to police despite the 'discouraging' outcome in this case and so many others. With files from CTV News Vancouver's Yasmin Gandham
CBC
3 days ago
- Politics
- CBC
B.C. man acquitted of sexual assault after blaming 'automatism' on magic mushrooms
Social Sharing On a Friday night in March 2019, Leon-Jamal Daniel Barrett concluded that humanity was corrupt and his only means to save it was by having "sexual congress" with a woman chosen by God. The fact Barrett took magic mushrooms in the hours before coming to this realization would later prove pivotal to his being found not guilty for what happened next. "He waited at his house for this woman to come," wrote Surrey provincial court judge Timothy Hinkson. "When she did not, he left his home, believing that if he walked anywhere, God would eventually bring them together." Intoxication to the point of 'automatism' Instead of a woman chosen by God, Barrett encountered a terrified stranger, who fought him as he knocked her to the ground, tried to kiss her and "smashed" her left breast before removing his clothes, pushing her down a set of steps and trying to pull her jeans off. In a decision delivered in March but posted last week, Hinkson acquitted Barrett of sexual assault, breaking and entering, and wilfully obstructing a police officer after he argued the magic mushrooms put him in a state of automatism that rendered him not criminally liable for his actions. The case, which the judge called "unusual," highlights the long and controversial legal history surrounding horrific acts of violence and claims of automatism — a term describing unconscious, involuntary behaviour. Although the incident happened in 2019, Barrett's trial was put on hold while the Supreme Court of Canada considered another case in which a naked Calgary man beat a university professor with a broom handle after consuming magic mushrooms and copious amounts of alcohol. In 2022, the nation's top court struck down a section of the Criminal Code meant to prevent people from arguing extreme intoxication as a defence for offences such as sexual assault, assault, and breaking and entering. Section 33.1 has since been amended, but the new rules did not apply to Barrett. 'She bit his tongue as hard as she could' According to the ruling, "there is no doubt as to whether or not Mr. Barrett did what he is accused of." Barrett, a dual citizen of the United States and Canada, was living in his aunt's basement suite and working for a landscaping company when he decided to eat some magic mushrooms an hour or so after smoking cannabis while relaxing after work. The 30-year-old, who suffered from depression and social anxiety, claimed cannabis "seemed to help with his mental health" and "had seen videos that led him to believe that magic mushrooms could help him with his depression." "The first time he used them, Mr. Barrett ingested the mushrooms in a tea," Hinkson wrote. "He found the effect stronger than he did when he ate them, which is how he ingested them on the other occasions. Mr. Barrett was less experienced with magic mushrooms than he was with cannabis." Barrett's 49-year-old victim screamed and yelled repeatedly for him to stop as he pulled her down to the ground. "He was pulling at her pants, she felt, in an effort to remove them. When he tried to kiss her, she repeatedly poked at his face with her key. When he put his tongue in her mouth, she bit his tongue as hard as she could," the judge wrote. "During the course of this incident, she sustained a cut to her lip. After the bite, she felt blood, but she did not know if it was coming from Mr. Barrett's tongue or the cut on her lip." The woman ultimately escaped, and Barrett returned home, where he stabbed himself in the chest after resolving to "take his own life so that another version of himself could be reborn and reincarnated and then maybe they could save the world." According to the decision, he left the house again and went looking for another woman. Instead, he encountered police, who said the naked, overheated and blood-covered man appeared "oblivious" to pain as a dogpile of officers fought to restrain him. Protecting the 'morally innocent' Public outrage over the defence of extreme intoxication erupted in 1994 when the Supreme Court of Canada overturned the conviction of a Quebec man who sexually assaulted a partially paralyzed friend of his wife after consuming a one-litre bottle of brandy and several bottles of beer. In response, Parliament introduced Section 33.1 of the Criminal Code which effectively prevented anyone from arguing that extreme intoxication led them to commit so-called "general intent" crimes like sexual assault or assault. But in 2022, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the section as unconstitutional in the case of Matthew Brown, a Mount Royal University student-athlete who broke into the home of professor Janet Hamnett following a night of drinking and taking magic mushrooms. Witnesses said Brown was naked and "screaming like an animal" when police found him. He expressed remorse and apologized twice, in court and outside, after his acquittal. The top court said Section 33.1 was fundamentally flawed because of "the risk of wrongful convictions it presents" by punishing an accused in a situation where no reasonable person could have predicted that whatever they were taking might render them an automaton. "It contravenes virtually all the criminal law principles that the law relies upon to protect the morally innocent," the court said. "It enables conviction where the accused acted involuntarily, where the accused did not possess the minimum level of fault required, and where the Crown has not proven beyond a reasonable doubt the essential elements of the offence for which an accused is charged." In response to the Brown decision, Parliament amended Section 33.1. "The new provision ensures an individual who harms another person while in a state of extreme intoxication will be held criminally responsible ... if there was a foreseeable risk they could violently lose control over their actions ... and they failed to take enough care to prevent that risk," the government says on a website about the change. 'Too bad you suffered that huge, violent trauma' In his decision, Hinkson said Barrett's case came at a time when "the law was evolving." "This case, therefore, will not open the floodgates," he said. But Isabel Grant, a professor at the University of British Columbia's Allard School of Law, said the case was still troubling. She told CBC News she is concerned the recent changes to the Criminal Code around extreme intoxication might not have changed the outcome in Barrett's case. "I don't agree that the complainant should bear the full brunt of his decision to combine magic mushrooms with cannabis and get himself that intoxicated," Grant said. "What we're saying is that, well, too bad that you suffered that huge, violent trauma that has left you with chronic pain — he was morally innocent. I think that's not a great message for the criminal justice system to be sending." Hinkson noted that the woman Barrett attacked "continues to suffer pain, and remains horrified and traumatized by these events." "Mr. Barrett will not face a conviction in this matter, but he will live with the knowledge that he made a choice that resulted in temporarily losing his mind and committing an appalling series of acts against a stranger," the judge concluded. "The scar that he bears will be a constant reminder of these actions. It is my sincere hope that he finds some way to redeem himself."
Medscape
4 days ago
- Health
- Medscape
How One Dose of Psilocybin Treats Depression
This transcript has been edited for clarity. Welcome to Impact Factor , your weekly dose of commentary on a new medical study. I'm Dr F. Perry Wilson from the Yale School of Medicine. The story of our lives is etched into the pathways of our brains. Some of those pathways are positive, giving us a sense of self-worth, a resilience to adversity. Some are maladaptive, promoting anxiety, fear, and depression. The pathways lead to actions, and those actions tend to reinforce the pathways. Anxiety breeds anxiety, depression breeds depression. I think this is part of the reason why problems with mental health are so difficult to treat; our brains are molded into these problematic self-reinforcing configurations and we keep falling into the same ruts. And yes, talk therapy and SSRIs can help to nudge us out of those ruts; work to create new, more productive ruts; and improve our health. But those gains can be difficult to maintain over time. But what if there were a reset button in our brains? What if we could step outside of those ruts, even for a few hours, and see the pathways for what they are? What if we could start over? It seems too good to be true, and, to be clear, it may be, but data continue to emerge that the chemical psilocybin — the psychoactive component of so-called 'magic mushrooms' — may do just that. And it may do it after just a single dose. Magic mushrooms are on my mind — no, not literally — this week thanks to this article, appearing in the journal Cancer . Note the famous final author, Ezekiel Emanuel. It's a small, phase 2 trial of psilocybin, a single 25 mg dose, among individuals with cancer and major depressive disorder. What's interesting about this study is the duration of follow-up: 2 years. Most psilocybin studies end after a few months, making the long-term implications of treatment unclear. Here's the setup: Thirty patients (average age, 58 years; 70% women; 80% White) were enrolled, and everyone got the same intervention here. There is no control group. The intervention occurred over 8 weeks. They first had four visits with a psychotherapist for screening and psychological work, preparatory to receiving the drug. Then they received 25 mg of psilocybin, in a monitored setting, where they remained for about 6 or 7 hours. After that, there were four more psychotherapy visits to integrate the psychedelic experience. Eight weeks, one visit a week, basically. At multiple timepoints, a participant's mental health was evaluated using some standardized surveys: the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale and the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale. Let's talk about these scales for a moment before I show you the results of this study. The depression scale used here gives scores ranging from 0 to 60, with higher scores being consistent with worse depression. Patients have reported that a reduction by 5 points would be clinically meaningful. A meta-analysis of SSRI therapies showed that these common antidepressant drugs lead to an average reduction of around 3 points vs placebo. Of course, some people do better and some do worse; I just wanted to do some level setting. Let's look at the psilocybin study. At baseline, participant depression scores ranged from about 10 to 45 or so — pretty significant pathology. By the end of the 8-week intervention period, the average reduction in depression score was 20 points. That is a huge effect. True, there is no placebo group here, so that 20-point reduction includes the placebo effect, which can be significant in depression trials, but I find it hard to believe that this is all placebo. We can triangulate the placebo question a bit from this study, 'Single-Dose Psilocybin for a Treatment-Resistant Episode of Major Depression,' which appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2022. This was a placebo-controlled trial among people with severe, treatment-resistant depression and used the same depression scale as the study we're talking about today. The psilocybin group had a 12-point improvement and the placebo group a 5.5-point improvement — a net difference that is still around twice as effective as SSRIs. Of course, the concern about placebo effect is somewhat academic. Especially for conditions like depression, there's a reasonable argument to be made that we shouldn't care whether the effect is mediated biologically or via placebo or both; if it works, it works. Improvements on the anxiety scale were also impressive. At 8 weeks, there was a 17-point improvement from baseline. But the most interesting part of this study is the long-term follow-up, which was available for 28 out of the original 30 participants. At 2 years of follow-up, more than half of participants had scores on the depression scale that were less than 50% of their baseline scores — an average reduction of 15 points. Similar effects were seen on anxiety scores. How might all this work? How can a drug, a molecule like this, lead to sustained changes in serious psychological conditions? There are a lot of theories. But let's look at the mechanism of action of psilocybin itself. Psilocybin binds to a particular receptor in the brain called the serotonin 2A receptor — in my opinion, the most interesting receptor in the entire brain. Other substances that bind to this receptor? Mescaline and LSD. Certain mutations in this receptor predispose to schizophrenia as well. And it's hard not to see the parallels between some symptoms of schizophrenia: the sense of unreality, the paranoia, the hallucinations — and the experiences of taking some of these psychedelic drugs. Of course, the drugs are self-limited. Well, at least the acute effects are. But how are they therapeutic? Some researchers are using a new term to describe drugs like psilocybin: psychoplastogens. The science suggests that one-time use of these agents can allow for a sudden increase in neural plasticity, allowing new neuronal connections to form where they wouldn't in other conditions, and for older connections to break down and restructure. If our brains are etched with the stories of our lives, if our behaviors deepen and reinforce those psychological ruts, psychoplastogens like psilocybin may loosen the soil, so to speak. This may suggest that those concomitant psychotherapy sessions are actually a critical component of this type of therapy. Perhaps the psilocybin shakes loose some maladaptive pathways, but putting them together in a healthy way still takes work. It wouldn't surprise me if that is the case, and it's a good reminder to those of you reading this that these drugs are not a panacea for mental health. In fact, we're really just beginning to explore the possibilities and the risks in this space. The promise is there, for sure. How many of us wouldn't want to hit 'reset' on some of the maladaptive thinking patterns we have? But for now, the use of these agents for therapeutic purposes really needs to be done under the supervision of a medical professional with experience.
