Psychedelics such as magic mushrooms are having a moment. Can science keep up?
Global News
“The evidence that is already out there for some of these psychedelic substances is kind of earth-shattering, I think, in the field of psychiatry," one expert said.
If you live in downtown Toronto, you may have noticed a magic mushroom dispensary in your neighbourhood — one of many popping up in cities across the country, signaling that psychedelics could be the next frontier in the movement to decriminalize recreational drug use.
As stigmas around psychedelics like psilocybin – the active ingredient in magic mushrooms – are torn down, there’s a corresponding push among scientists to expand our understanding of how they work and the role they could play in improving our health and well-being.
In Toronto, a team of researchers backed by the University of Toronto has launched a clinical trial that will study the impact of microdosing as a treatment for depression.
One of several trials launched in Canada in recent years studying the impacts of psychedelics, it is being run by Rotem Petranker, associate director at the university’s Psychedelics Studies Research Centre.
The trial is expected to last just over two months, with participants being given either psilocybin or a placebo for the first half and open-label psilocybin for the remainder of the time.
The team decided on a sub-hallucinogenic dose that is about 10 per cent of the dosage used in most clinical studies of psilocybin.
“Deciding on the dosage was a long, drawn-out process. Because really, for many of our other hypotheses, we were just basing it on what he heard from people reporting what they were doing,” said Petranker, adding that they designed the study to closely mimic the way people consume psychedelics in everyday life.
“But the dose that people are using is very inaccurate – both for psilocybin-containing mushrooms and for LSD, because those are substances that people obtain on the black market.”