Here’s what’s in store for you in today’s issue:
🍄 End to alcoholism?
🍄 Helping cancer patients again
🍄 Mushrooms don’t make you crazy
🍄 Taking Health Canada to court
🍄 And more.
You’ll want to stay till the end to learn about interdimensional travel!
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🍷 🍺 < 🍄
70% of alcoholics relapse within a year of treatment. Could psilocybin change this?
A recent meta-analysis of the top six best-controlled studies found that patients were 59% more likely to abstain from alcohol use after completing psychedelic therapy. Why is it so effective? Essentially, psychedelics stimulate synaptic growth to “rewire” the brain and break bad habits.
A non-profit in New York called B.More is preparing to build on this research in a Phase 2/3 FDA trial, which will study psilocybin’s effect on alcohol use disorder (AUD).
Researchers from leading universities around the globe are joining forces to make psychedelic medicine a reality.
This Friday, a $40 million psychedelic research institute called The Psychae Institute will launch in Melbourne, Australia. The institute will study psilocybin, MDMA, and DMT to develop pharmaceutical-grade psychedelic medicines, and will oversee clinical studies in Canada, Europe, and Brazil. A co-director of the institute explains that Australia is the ideal location because clinical trials do not need sign-off from an ethics committee, unlike many countries.
You probably know that psilocybin can help cancer patients with end-of-life anxiety, but it’s now being used to help with other side effects of cancer too.
Late stage cancer patients often experience a condition called cachexia, which causes loss of appetite, extreme weight loss and muscle wasting. AIkido Pharma Inc. (AIKI), a New York based company, is working to treat cancer cachexia with psilocybin. Psilocybin may be able to treat cachexia by reducing neuroinflammation in the brain and central nervous system tissues. AIkido Pharma was recently granted an exclusive sublicense to use homing peptide technology to deliver therapeutic agents to inflamed central nervous system tissue.
Good news – there’s no correlation between psychedelics and the onset of mental health issues.
An analysis conducted through a Norwegian university revealed that psychedelic drug use does not increase the risk of developing mental health disorders. In fact, psilocybin users showed lower rates of serious psychological distress, panic attacks, and psychotic symptoms than non-users. The researchers analyzed survey data from 130,000 participants (22,000 of which had used psychedelics) who were screened for various psychiatric disorders and psychosis.
** Professionals still advise those with a family history of schizophrenia or psychosis to avoid psychedelics.
Most Canadians now support psilocybin-assisted therapy.
A recent poll found that 54% of Canadians were in favour of making psilocybin medically available, increasing to 66% after being informed of the current research on psilocybin. All provinces, demographics and political groupings showed majority levels of support.
The iconic Super Mario mushrooms can actually help you level up?
As countless companies study the benefits of psilocybin mushrooms, Psyched Wellness is focusing on a different type of magic mushroom. The famous red and white spotted mushrooms are called Aminita muscaria, or fly agaric mushrooms, and they actually contain a psychoactive compound called muscimol.
Muscimol targets GABA-A receptors, whereas psilocybin targets serotonin receptors, so the experience and benefits are a bit different from typical magic mushrooms. While there isn’t much research on muscimol’s benefits, Psyched Wellness is changing this.
Psyched Wellness is in the process of making an Amanita muscaria extract to treat sleep disorders, stress, and physical pain. The company hopes to have an over-the-counter tincture for sale by mid-2022. Amanita muscaria mushrooms are legal in many countries including the US, so it will be much easier and cheaper to study their benefits and bring a product to market.
From 4 to 8 clinics in 1 month!
Novamind (NM) is on track to double its network of clinics over the next few weeks, with the goal of expanding access to psychedelic-assisted therapy if granted FDA approval. The company opened its fifth clinic in Utah today and will open three more in the state by September before expanding to other states by the end of the year. The clinics will serve as referral centers for patients with treatment-resistant conditions including depression, eating disorders, PTSD and OCD.
HAVN Life Sciences (HAVN) can now export Jamaican-grown psilocybin to Canada, the US, and Europe.
HAVN signed into an agreement with P.A. Benjamin Manufacturing Company, a Jamaican pharmaceutical company that will produce naturally-derived psilocybin at a GMP compliant facility. HAVN aims to be leader in the psychedelic supply chain by supplying researchers, patients, and companies across the globe with natural psilocybin.
To date, Health Canada has granted legal exemptions to 19 healthcare professionals and 32 terminally-ill patients so they can legally use psilocybin in clinical settings. The patients have reported life-changing results, yet at least 119 patients are still awaiting exemptions to gain access to the therapy, and experts are beginning to see the lengthy process as an ethical issue.
TheraPsil, a Victoria non-profit, has hired lawyers to take action against Health Canada and Health Minister Patty Hajdu through the federal court. TheraPsil’s efforts will hopefully speed up the application process and bring justice to patients who are desperate for psilocybin therapy.
Since 1996, a US measure has prohibited the use of federal funds for “any activity that promotes the legalization of any drug or other substance in Schedule I”. Last week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed an amendment to this measure for the second time, which would allow researchers to study the benefits of Schedule I drugs, including psilocybin. Although 49 more reps voted in favour of the amendment than in 2019 (including 7 republicans), it was unfortunately rejected by the House with 140-285 vote.
AOC Tweeted, “We’ll keep bringing it up until the times catch up. We’re undeterred!”.
“psychedelics give us a connection to the fourth dimension”
So, I went on a trip a few days ago and what I saw and experienced got me really questioning everything. I don’t really know what else to call them, but “entities” I felt their energy and it felt like they tried to communicate with me, but we didn’t really have a common language. They showed me a lot of things and basically the message I got is that the universe is all good with me and they’re waiting for me.
I’ve never really feared death, but I’ve discarded religions etc. having the mindset, that when we die, that’s it. Now I’m not so sure. I really started reading into this stuff and now I’m thinking if it’s possible that psychedelics give us a connection to the fourth dimension and is death really the evolvement of consciousness into the fourth dimension. I think I got some answers, but I got even more questions and I still can’t comprehend what I experienced on my trip.
I traveled through time, I felt myself living many lives in different lifeforms. I remembered a life that was not mine (at least at this moment). My friend told me he felt like I’ve visited his dreams and when I was tripping he felt a connection to an entity which appears in his dreams, which is really weird since he wasn’t tripping, he has never tried shrooms and was sitting my trip along with some of my other friends.
I want to see more and I’m gonna trip again for sure when I have the opportunity, but for now I’m gonna question a lot of stuff and try to figure it out for a while. My trip was nothing like I expected, I’ve done shrooms once before (dose was a lot smaller) and I just saw some funny visuals, walls breathing, some shapes, etc. But the experience I had this time was something else, literally out of this world.
