Your Health

Magic mushrooms are moving mainstream

W. Gifford-Jones MD & Diana Gifford-Jones

February 28, 2023

BY W. GIFFORD- JONES MD & DIANA GIFFORD-JONES

You may have preconceived ideas that magic mushrooms are the party drugs of days past. However, in Canada and other countries, regulations are starting to ease on these prohibited psychedelics. The impetus stems from clinical trials showing remarkable results in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and treatment-resistant depression. The question begs, when should you plan for a mind-altering trip?

“Magic mushrooms” grow naturally in many parts of the world. They contain psilocybin, which produces hallucinogenic effects when eaten.

A good many readers may have personal experience. According to data from the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health in the US, an estimated 21 million Americans reported having tried psilocybin at least once.

Despite remaining illegal for the most part in Canada, psilocybin is easy to find. Selling pre-packaged micro doses of magic mushroom powder (50 to 300 milligrams, far below the amount that would produce psychedelic effects) is becoming big business for online retailers in British Columbia. Some athletes in high stress sports are advocating for the use of micro dosing in the promotion of mental health. And Indigenous Peoples have long respected mushrooms for their medicinal properties.

The recent move by Alberta to allow psychedelic-assisted therapy means licensed providers can now treat patients with higher doses of psychedelic mushrooms for mental health disorders. A psychiatrist must oversee any treatment.

The great hope is that, even with a single dose of psychedelic mushrooms; the brain can be redirected away from troubling memory and mood ruts. For terminally ill patients, experimental treatments are showing profound results in easing the prospect of death.

Dr. Sean O’Sullivan, a clinical psychiatrist and Adjunct Professor of Family Medicine at McMaster University, explains, “Psychedelics disassemble the default mode network and they allow a person to have new experiences in a carefully controlled clinical setting. When the default mode network is put back together, it’s not put back together in the same way as it was previously.”

He reports, for example, treatment of an advanced stage lung cancer patient with “One psilocybin mushroom session occasioning a mystical-type experience that she rated four months later as being the single-most personally meaningful experience of her life.”

In 1943, Winston Churchill gave the commencement address at Harvard University, noting with customary eloquence, “The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” That was wartime talk about knowledge as power, but now at Harvard, it’s the modest but potent mushroom taking centre stage.

Michael Pollan is a member of Harvard’s English Department and well known for challenging notions about psychoactive plants. “Fungi constitute the most poorly understood and underappreciated kingdom of life on earth,” he says.

Thanks to documentaries like Dosed 2: The Trip of a Lifetime, which follows a terminally ill cancer patient’s legal use of magic mushrooms to treat anxiety, understanding among common citizens is changing.

Erika Dyck is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in the History of Health and Social Justice at the University of Saskatchewan. In a thoughtful commentary published by theconversation.com, she warns against the race “To push psychedelics into the medical marketplace.”

Dyck says we should “Take a sober approach to the psychedelic hype.”

The question remains; if a safe, natural, and low-cost mushroom can, in one well-guided experience, dramatically improve the well being of someone suffering from conditions like PTSD and depression, why wouldn’t a caring society want to enable its use?

We say, let’s put in place the right safeguards, and on this one, perhaps we would be well advised to turn to traditional healers for advice, not the medical establishment.

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Written By W. Gifford-Jones MD & Diana Gifford-Jones

Dr. W. Gifford-Jones, MD is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the Harvard Medical School. He trained in general surgery at Strong Memorial Hospital, University of Rochester, Montreal General Hospital, McGill University and in Gynecology at Harvard. His storied medical career began as a general practitioner, ship’s surgeon, and hotel doctor. For more than 40 years, he specialized in gynecology, devoting his practice to the formative issues of women’s health. In 1975, he launched his weekly medical column that has been published by national and local Canadian and U.S. newspapers. Today, the readership remains over seven million. His advice contains a solid dose of common sense and he never sits on the fence with controversial issues. He is the author of nine books including, “The Healthy Barmaid”, his autobiography “You’re Going To Do What?”, “What I Learned as a Medical Journalist”, and “90+ How I Got There!” Many years ago, he was successful in a fight to legalize heroin to help ease the pain of terminal cancer patients. His foundation at that time donated $500,000 to establish the Gifford-Jones Professorship in Pain Control and Palliative Care at the University of Toronto Medical School. At 93 years of age he rappelled from the top of Toronto’s City Hall (30 stories) to raise funds for children with a life-threatening disease through the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Diana Gifford-Jones, the daughter of W. Gifford-Jones, MD, Diana has extensive global experience in health and healthcare policy. Diana is Special Advisor with The Aga Khan University, which operates 2 quaternary care hospitals and numerous secondary hospitals, medical centres, pharmacies, and laboratories in South Asia and Africa. She worked for ten years in the Human Development sectors at the World Bank, including health policy and economics, nutrition, and population health. For over a decade at The Conference Board of Canada, she managed four health-related executive networks, including the Roundtable on Socio-Economic Determinants of Health, the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Management, the Canadian Centre for Environmental Health, and the Centre for Health System Design and Management. Her master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government included coursework at Harvard Medical School. She is also a graduate of Wellesley College. She has extensive experience with Canadian universities, including at Carleton University, where she was the Executive Director of the Global Academy. She lived and worked in Japan for four years and speaks Japanese fluently. Diana has the designation as a certified Chartered Director from The Directors College, a joint venture of The Conference Board of Canada and McMaster University. She has recently published a book on the natural health philosophy of W. Gifford-Jones, called No Nonsense Health – Naturally!

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